The toxins were recorded in a bunch of pages of documents dating back to the 1980s that were received through The Associated Press through Freedom of Information Act requests. They tell a very different story than the one Air Force leaders told the nuclear missile network decades ago, when the first reports of cancer among the military began to emerge.
THE U. S. AIR FORCE U. S. INVESTIGATES HIGH RATES OF CANCER AMONG NUCLEAR MISSILE WORKERS
“The workplace is free of health hazards,” a Dec. 30, 2001, Air Force investigation found.
Doreen Jenness, the widow of Air Force Capt. Jason Jenness, is seen at her home in Missoula, Montana, on Aug. 26, 2023. Captain Jenness, a Malmstrom missile-bomber who died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2001 at the age of 31. (AP Photo/Tommy Martino)
“Sometimes illnesses tend to occur just by chance,” a 2005 Air Force follow-up study found.
The capsules are again under scrutiny.
The AP reported in January that at least nine current or former nuclear or missile officials had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a blood cancer. Then, many more people reported being diagnosed with cancer. In response, the Air Force introduced its maximum exhaustive review to date and analyzed thousands of air, water, soil, and surface samples at all facilities where the Army worked. Four existing samples returned with harmful levels of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a known carcinogen used in electrical wiring.
Air Force Detects Levels of Dangerous Carcinogens at MT Nuclear Missile Base as Hundreds of Reports of Cancerous Surfaces
In early 2024, more data is expected, and the Air Force is working on an official count of how many current or former missile community service members have cancer.
Some current missileers told the AP they were concerned by the new reports but believe the Air Force is being transparent in its current search for toxins. Many of them take some of the same precautions missileers have for generations, such as having “capsule clothes,” the civilian attire they change into once inside the capsule to work the 24-hour shift. The clothes go straight into the laundry after a shift because they end up smelling metallic.
“Every time you hear ‘cancer,’ it’s kind of concerning,” said Lt. Joy Hawkins, 23, a missile launcher at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana. For Hawkins and fellow missile launcher Lt. Samantha McGlinchey, who spoke to an AP reporter while doing an underground shift in the Charlie release capsule, the news meant they would have to be diligent with medical exams. “There’s more testing, things to come, cleanup efforts,” said McGlinchey, 28, “For us, at the beginning of your career, it’s worse to be stuck this early. “
Others claim that the risks will be minimized once they return.
When the set of lacheck control effects was released, the Air Force did not first disclose that samples that appeared contaminated had PCB levels particularly higher than those allowed by EPA criteria, and dozens of other spaces reviewed were just below the EPA’s threshold, Mayne said. a former senior supervisor of the enlisted nuclear missile facility at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, who now runs an organization on Facebook committed to posting internal Air Force news or memos.
“At this point, the EPA, OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) and the senators from North Dakota and Montana want to look into this,” Mayne said.
In December 2022, former Malmstrom missile launchers Jackie Perdue and Monte Watts, with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, asked the Department of Defense inspector general to investigate.
“I believe the suitability and protection criteria were violated, or they were not taken into account and should be investigated,” Perdue, who served as commander of the nuclear missile combat team at Malmstrom from 1999 to 2006, said in an inspector general’s complaint received through the AP. .
PAST EXPOSURES
Lately there are three nuclear missile bases in the United States: F. E. Warren, Wyoming, Minot, and Malmstrom. Each base has 15 underground launch pods, each of which serves as centers for 10 silo fields of Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles. The pills work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The missiles spend 24 hours or more per shift operating underground in those pods to monitor intercontinental ballistic missiles, so they can release them if the president asks them to.
The Air Force acknowledges that the existing review can’t provide complete answers about what the old missiles were exposed to, but the knowledge will build a proficiency profile that will allow them to apply for veterans’ benefits.
However, the documents received through AP imply many precautionary symptoms that go beyond poisonous risks.
“Type and content of asbestos, please call as soon as possible,” reads a handwritten note dated Nov. 9, 1992. All documents received through the Palestinian Authority were redacted so that names would be withheld, but the urgency was obvious. “PRIORITY” reads the handwritten note, in capital letters.
MILITARY PILOTS AND GROUND EQUIPMENT HAVE HIGH RATES OF CANCER, PENTAGON STUDY FINDS
An environmental team from the Malmstrom Hotel and Juliet Pills received disturbing asbestos readings under a generator in the pill apparatus rooms. The apparatus room is also underground, contained within the same sealed workspace. The EPA’s asbestos exposure threshold is 1% for an eight-hour workday. But the missiles were locked up there for at least 24 hours straight. If the weather is bad and replacement equipment can’t make it to the site, a team can be stuck underground for 72 hours. Hotel and Juliet recorded counterfeit samples of chrysotile asbestos (a white asbestos that can be inhaled) between 15% and 30%.
However, in the official report seven days later, the dangers were downplayed.
“Asbestos only poses a health hazard when crushed (which can be crushed or pulverized by hand pressure). Everything suspicious (asbestos) is in good condition,” says the hotel’s annual review.
In 1989, levels of up to 50% amosite asbestos, a brown asbestos found in cement and insulation, were discovered in the Quebec-12 missile silo. And a team that examined Malmström’s Bravo capsule that same year warned that even if it’s not touched, it can be dangerous. “The diesel chamber leaks asbestos when it wears out,” he warned.
In his inspector general complaint, former Malmstrom missileer Watts said there was asbestos in the floor tile as well, and that missileers also “routinely removed, handled and replaced these tiles as part of required survival equipment inventories.”
The documents also reveal PCB spills over the course of decades. A report from 1987 tells of a missile launcher who called his commander to report severe headaches and dizziness. The team discovers a clear, sticky syrup flowing underneath the capsule’s electrical panel. “I recommended opening the blast door for better ventilation and to avoid contact with the substance,” documents a bioenvironmental engineer. “All the team had to do was open the blast door and stay away from the spill. There was no desire to close the capsule. “
“It’s frustrating to know they had any idea about this at the time,” said Doreen Jenness, whose husband, Jason Jenness, a Malmstrom missile launcher who died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2001 at age 31. “It frustrates me and angers me that they can keep telling those young men and women that they can’t locate anything, knowing that in 2001, 2003 and the early 2000s, something was going on there.
SAW CAPSULE
Doreen and Jason Jenness met while he was stationed at Malmstrom. They married and lived on the base in the mid-1990s. Their missile-launching friends teased them for having a golden Labrador named Sierra, the same name as one of the pills operated through Jason’s squad.
The environmental reports from Malmstrom when Jason was assigned there show Sierra had a long list of hazards. In 1996, a medical team reported there were more than 25 gallons of fluid overrun with biological growth festering on Sierra’s capsule floor. An intake that collected outside air for Sierra was located by the parking lot, and the team watched a running car idle near it for 20 minutes. The team documented that a fan needed to pull clean air down into Sierra had been broken for at least six months, so the only way crews could get fresh air was if they left the capsule’s steel vault door open.
In the other pods, the team said the air quality was “marginal, but not expected to cause serious health problems. “Sierra was dangerous. In March 1996, the medical team measured the degrees of carbon dioxide in the air in 1,700 portions equivalent to millions. “With those degrees, court cases of headaches, drowsiness, fatigue and/or difficulty concentrating can be expected in most occupants. The withdrawal of personnel. “
Nothing has changed. In May of that year, the medical team recorded exposure levels of 1,800 ppm and endorsed the removal of the missiles.
COMPUTER CONSOLE LEAK
By the mid-1990s, a new formula for targeting the missiles was needed, and each pod began a remodel to install a wall-sized computer console called REACT, for Rapid Execution and Combat Targeting System. The new formula would allow the U. S. reprogram and reorient its nuclear missiles more temporarily in the event of war. The demolition of the old computer and REACT structure began inside each of the 15 Malmstrom capsules.
The missiles wonder if the REACT revamp has already altered the asbestos and PCBs that were still in the pods. But once installed, the new console also exposed the missiles to a new toxin.
“Crew members reported a malfunction of the demonstration video characterized by a click,” says a report on a May 1995 incident at the Malmström Bravo capsule. “After the click, the demo video was turned off and only a visual white line appeared for the team members. “.
A clear liquid began to flow, followed by a fishy smell reminiscent of ammonia. The team began complaining of headaches and nausea and the capsule was evacuated two hours later.
Malmstrom’s team learned about liquid dimethylformamide, an electrolyte used in capacitors in REACT’s video demonstration units, because F. E. Warren, the Wyoming base, had recently reported similar leaks.
“The capacitors overheat and escape into the capsule rather than suffer a catastrophic failure,” was discovered in 1996 after a momentary dimethylformamide leak at Bravo. “To date, we have no idea how much of this material is contained in the pods, nor how much of it is a relative danger that missile crews and the maintenance worker corps are in contact with these curtains. “
Medical studies on the link between dimethylformamide and cancer are divided; Some point to a transparent link to liver cancer, others say more studies are needed.
UPCOMING CHANGES
All the pills will be closed in a few years, with the commissioning of the new military intercontinental ballistic missile, the Sentinel. As part of the modernization, the old pills will be demolished. A new, state-of-the-art underground centre will be built in most of them. Air Force groups using the new designs are aware of cancer reports and apply fashionable environmental fitness criteria to the new centers, needs that didn’t exist when the Minuteman pills were first built, said Maj. Gen. John Newberry, the Air Force commander. Nuclear Weapons Center.
“We are absolutely learning from or understanding what’s going on with Minuteman III, and if there’s something that we need to look at from a Sentinel side,” Newberry said.
AIR FORCE WILL REVIEW CANCER AMONG PERSONNEL WHO WORKED CLOSE TO NATION’S GROUND-BASED WARHEADS
The old pills will continue to be used until then, making it even more apparent that the Air Force is now wide open with its missiles, Jenness said.
Because they were so young, neither she nor Jason suspected cancer when he started feeling tired in the fall of 2000, or when his hip hurt in December of that year.
When, despite everything, he relented and saw a doctor in February 2001, he was admitted to the hospital the same day. By March, Jason and Doreen knew their lymphoma was incurable. He died in July.
“We can all pretend we don’t know, because knowing is hard,” Doreen Jenness said. “Knowing and doing anything is even harder. Now, 23 years after Jason left, there are a lot of young men and women who are going through the same things we were going through. They have to go through the same thing, live and maybe have the same journey as me, and it’s just sad. Really sad.