New cleaning tasks have been ordered.
The discovery “is the first in an extensive sampling of active US ICBM bases to address specific cancer concerns raised by members of the missile community,” the Air Force Global Strike Command said in a statement. In a statement issued Monday, two launch facilities at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana showed levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) above the thresholds recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in those samples. ).
PCBs are oily or waxy substances that the EPA has identified as probable carcinogens.
In response, General Thomas Bussiere, commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, has ordered “immediate steps to begin the process of cleaning up the affected facilities and mitigate the exposure of our airmen and custodians to potentially hazardous conditions.”
After The Associated Press obtained a military report in January that at least nine current or former Malmstrom missile personnel had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine launched a study to look at cancer cases among the entire missile officer community, to check for the possibility of outbreaks of the disease.
Non-Hodgkin lymphoma is a blood cancer that spreads through the lymphatic system, which is responsible for fighting infection. And there could be hundreds more cases of cancer of all kinds, according to new data from a group of former missile launchers and their surviving family members.
According to the Torchlight Initiative, at least 268 soldiers who served at nuclear missile facilities, or their family members, have reported being diagnosed with cancer, blood diseases or other conditions in the past few decades.
At least 217 of those reported cases are cancer, of which at least 33 are non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
What is striking about these numbers is that the missile officer community is very small. Only a few hundred airmen serve at each of the country’s three Minuteman III ICBM bases in any given year. In all, there have only been about 21,000 missile officers since Minuteman operations began in the early 1960s, according to the Torchlight Initiative.
For context, in the general population of the United States there are about 403 new cases of cancer per 100,000 people per year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma affects about 19 out of every 100,000 people. annually, according to the American Cancer Society.
Minuteman III missile silos are based in Malmstrom, at FE Warren AFB in Wyoming and Minot AFB in North Dakota.
Missile officers, both men and women, work in underground launch control centers, where they are responsible for supervising and, if necessary, launching silo-based nuclear weapons. Two missile officers sometimes spend entire days on guard duty in underground bunkers, ready to fire Minuteman III ICBMs if ordered by the president.
The Minuteman III missile silos and underground control centers were built more than 60 years ago. Most of the electronic devices and infrastructure are decades old. Over the years, missile officers have repeatedly raised concerns about ventilation, water quality and possible toxins, all of which they cannot avoid due to spending 24- to 48-hour shifts underground.
The Air Force discovery of PCBs came as part of visits by its bioenvironmental team from June 22-29 as part of the larger investigation the Air Force is conducting into the number of cases of registered cancer among the missile officer community. During the visits, a health assessment team collected water, soil, air, and surface samples at each of the missile launch facilities.
At Malmstrom, of the 300 surface samples taken, 21 detected PCBs. Of those, 19 were below EPA-established levels that require mitigation, and two were above. PCBs were not detected in any of the 30 air samples. The Air Force is still awaiting test results on air and surface samples taken at FE Warren and Minot, and soil and water samples for all bases.
FOUNTAIN: Associated Press
