enough fuel to keep several alien planets going, and all this while chasing their tail.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0327-21.htmPublished on Sunday, March 27, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
Military Pollution:
The Quintessential Universal Soldier
by Lucinda Marshall
As children, we were taught that the military protected us in times of war. We learned about soldiers being killed and wounded by 'the enemy', and how people died if they got shot or if a bomb landed on them. Sometimes innocent people got killed during a war, but the fact that most victims were civilians was carefully hidden from us by our elders. They knew that children are smart enough to understand that there is a big moral difference between killing other soldiers and killing ordinary people. That a significant number of deaths were caused not by a weapon's impact, but by its toxicity and by military pollution, was never mentioned.
We did not learn that military toxins know no boundaries, that they don't just kill the enemy, they kill our military personnel and people living near military bases, that they pollute the water, land and air. We were not taught and still aren't told today that military toxins go anywhere and kill everything, that they are in fact the quintessential universal soldier.
We Have Met The Enemy
The U.S. Department of Defense is the largest polluter in the world, producing more hazardous waste than the five largest U.S. chemical companies combined. (1) The types of hazardous wastes used by the military include pesticides and defoliants like Agent Orange. It includes solvents, petroleum, perchlorate (a component of rocket fuel) lead and mercury. And most ominously, depleted uranium.
The health problems that have been documented as being attributable to these various toxins in military use include miscarriages, low birth weight, birth defects, kidney disease and cancer. Military pollution most directly affects those who are targeted by our weapons, soldiers and anyone living near a military base, both in the U.S. and abroad. In the U.S., one out of every ten Americans lives within ten miles of a military site that has been listed as a Superfund priority cleanup site. (2)
Given where chemical and nuclear weapons are used, tested, manufactured, stored and disposed of, the burden of health impacts and environmental destruction falls disproportionately on poorer communities, people of color and indigenous communities. Women face particularly severe problems because of their sensitive reproductive tissues and children because their immune systems are not yet fully developed. (3)
Way Off Base
The number of health problems and environmental problems that have been reported near military installations throughout the world is truly staggering. The following are only a few of the many examples.
The U.S. Navy is the largest polluter in the San Diego, California area, having created 100 toxic sites during the last 80 years. Environmental damage caused by the Navy includes spilling over 11,000 gallons of oil into the San Diego Bay in 1988. Fish in the Bay contain high levels of mercury and radioactive compounds that are attributable to Navy pollution of the Bay. (4)
Near the Naval Air Station in Fallon, NV high rates of cancer and rare diseases have probably been linked to the dumping of jet fuel, radio and electronic emissions and the contamination of groundwater with radioactive materials. Fallon has the highest per capita rate of childhood leukemia in the nation. (5)
It is important to note that the contamination of military bases is also a problem overseas where significant toxic pollution has impacted the areas near U.S. military bases in countries such as South Korea, the Philippines and Panama.
Pollution from the manufacturing of military weapons is equally horrific. The soil near a plant that manufactured depleted uranium rounds in Colonie, New York was found to have 500 times the amount of uranium that one could normally expect to find in soil. (6)
Military waste disposal sites also pose significant problems. Recently, evidence of contamination from the Diamond Alkali plant which manufactured Agent Orange that was used in Vietnam was found in the Newark Bay in New Jersey. Bottom dwellers in the Bay contain the highest levels of dioxins ever recorded in aquatic animals, high enough to guarantee cancer at the same levels in humans. Many low income, immigrant and homeless residents of the area rely on the Bay for subsistence fishing and thus face the considerable risks of exposure and ingestion of Agent Orange. (7)
At Rocky Flats, a former nuclear weapons plant site in Colorado, Jon Lipsky, a former FBI agent, has recently come forward to expose the contamination of the land that he says the EPA and FBI and Department of Justice are suppressing. Lipsky and other plaintiffs in a case against the DOJ are concerned about plans to turn Rocky Flats into a wildlife refuge without adequately cleaning up the contamination. As Lipsky and others point out, disguising a toxic dump as a tourist attraction to be visited by schoolchildren is unacceptable. (8)
The cleanup of sites such as these have slowed considerably since President George W. Bush took office. EPA inspections at military sites have dropped by 10%. The number of fines has dropped by 25% and the dollar amount of fines has been smaller. Overall spending on the cleanup of military sites has dropped 20% since 2001. Military spending on the cleanup of hazardous sites amounts to only 1% of the military budget. (9)
As is the case with many pollutants, the effects of perchlorate, a toxic rocket fuel component, knows no bounds. New research has found perchlorate, in women's breast milk in eighteen states. It can also be found in ground water, crops such as lettuce and dairy milk. Perchlorate can cause mental retardation, loss of hearing and speech and motor skill problems. (10) Like other pollutants that are now finding their way into breastmilk, perchlorate puts mothers in the untenable position of simultaneously nurturing and (many times unknowingly) poisoning their children.
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