At a memorial service in 2022, veteran Air Pressure Capt. Monte Watts bumped right into a fellow former Minuteman III nuclear missile operator, who instructed him that she had non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Watts knew different missileers with related cancers. However the connection actually hit residence later that very same January day, when the outcomes of a blood check revealed that Watts himself had continual lymphocytic leukemia, a sort of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
“I don’t know if it was ironic or serendipitous or what the right word is, but there it was,” Watts stated.
Throughout the group of U.S. service members who employees nuclear missile silos scattered throughout the Northern Rockies and Nice Plains, suspicions had lengthy been brewing that their workplaces have been unsafe. Simply months after Watts was identified in 2022, Lt. Col. Danny Sebeck, a former Air Pressure missileer who had transferred to the U.S. Area Pressure, wrote a short on a possible most cancers cluster amongst individuals who served at Minuteman III launch management facilities on Malmstrom Air Pressure Base in Montana.
Sebeck recognized 36 former staff who served primarily from 1993 to 2011 and had been identified with most cancers, together with himself. Of these, 11 had non-Hodgkin lymphoma; three had died. The Air Pressure responded swiftly to Sebeck’s findings, launching a large investigation into most cancers circumstances and the atmosphere at three intercontinental ballistic missile bases and a California launch facility. The objective is to finish the analysis by the top of 2025.
The service has launched parts of the research as they conclude, holding on-line city halls and briefings to spotlight its findings. However whereas former missileers say they’re heartened by the speedy response, they continue to be involved that the analysis, which crosses many years and consists of 1000’s of ICBM personnel and administrative staff, might handle too giant a inhabitants or use statistical analyses that gained’t present a connection between their sicknesses and their army service.
They want that tie to expedite advantages from the Division of Veterans Affairs.
Traditionally, the Division of Protection has been sluggish to acknowledge potential environmental ailments. Veterans sickened by publicity to Agent Orange in Vietnam, Marines who drank contaminated water at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and repair members who lived and labored close to burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan fought for years to have their sicknesses acknowledged as associated to army service.
Within the case of the missileers, the Air Pressure already had studied potential contamination and most cancers at Malmstrom in 2001 and 2005. That analysis concluded that launch management facilities have been “safe and healthy working environments.” However with Sebeck’s presentation and the choice to pursue additional investigation, Air Pressure World Strike Command — the unit accountable for managing nuclear missile silos and aircraft-based nuclear weapons — stated the sooner research might not have included a big sufficient sampling of medical information to be complete.
Sebeck, who serves as co-director of the Torchlight Initiative, an advocacy group that helps ICBM personnel and their households, instructed congressional Democrats on April 8 that the Protection Division has not precisely tracked exposures to the group, making it troublesome for veterans to show a hyperlink and acquire VA well being care and incapacity compensation.
“I had to go to a VA person and pull some papers,” Sebeck stated, referring to the federal government system for recording service members’ environmental dangers. “It says that I visited Poland once. It doesn’t mention that I pulled 148 alerts in a launch control center with polychlorinated biphenyls and with this contaminated air and water.”
PCBs — And the Missileers Uncovered to Them
PCBs are artificial chemical compounds as soon as utilized in trade, together with missile management electrical elements corresponding to show screens, keyboards, and circuit breakers. They’ve been banned for manufacture since 1979, deemed poisonous and a probable carcinogen by the Environmental Safety Company.
The Air Pressure’s Missile Group Most cancers Examine compares 14 varieties of frequent cancers within the normal U.S. inhabitants and the missile group and in addition research the environments at Malmstrom Air Pressure Base in Montana, F.E. Warren Air Pressure Base in Wyoming, Minot Air Pressure Base in North Dakota, and Vandenberg Area Pressure Base in California to find out whether or not they might have contributed to the danger of creating most cancers.
The Malmstrom, Warren, and Minot bases collectively subject 400 Minuteman III missiles, the land-based leg of the U.S. nuclear triad, which additionally consists of submarine- and aircraft-launched nuclear weapons. The missiles are housed in silos unfold throughout elements of Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska, staffed across the clock by missileers working from underground, bunkerlike launch management facilities.
To date, the Air Pressure investigation has discovered no “statistically elevated” deaths from most cancers within the missile group in contrast with the overall inhabitants, and it discovered that the demise charges for 4 varieties of frequent cancers — non-Hodgkin lymphoma, lung, colon and rectum, and prostate most cancers — have been considerably decrease in missileers than within the normal inhabitants.
Non-Hodgkin lymphoma accounted for roughly 5.8% of all most cancers deaths amongst individuals who labored in launch management facilities from January 1979 to December 2020.
Early outcomes, derived from Protection Division medical information, discovered elevated charges of breast and prostate cancers within the missile group, however a later evaluation incorporating further information didn’t help these findings. The research additionally didn’t discover elevated charges of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Air Pressure officers famous throughout a June 4 on-line city corridor, nonetheless, that these assessments are based mostly on roughly half the info the service expects to overview for its ultimate epidemiological stories and cautioned towards drawing conclusions given the constraints.
The ultimate incidence report will embody federal and state information, together with info from civilian most cancers registries, and delve into subgroups and exposures, which can “provide deeper insights into the complex relationship” between serving within the missile group and most cancers threat, wrote Air Pressure Col. Richard Speakman in a September 2024 memo on the preliminary epidemiology outcomes.
Gen. Thomas Bussiere, commander of Air Pressure World Strike Command, stated throughout the June city corridor that solely the ultimate outcomes will decide whether or not the missile group’s most cancers charges are larger than the overall inhabitants’s.
Some lawmakers share the priority of missileers in regards to the Air Pressure research. Following the discharge of a College of North Carolina overview of Torchlight Initiative information that confirmed larger charges of non-Hodgkin lymphoma — at youthful ages — amongst Malmstrom missileers, Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) launched an modification to a protection coverage invoice calling for the Nationwide Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medication to overview well being and security circumstances within the amenities.
“Let’s make sure that we have some outside experts working with the Air Force studying cancer rates with our ICBM missions,” Bacon posted July 30 on the social platform X. “We want to ensure credibility and that whatever results come out, we’ve done total due diligence.”
Concerning further research on the working environments on the installations and a doable relationship between exposures and most cancers threat, Speakman, who instructions the Air Pressure Faculty of Aerospace Medication, stated Malmstrom had two varieties of PCBs that the opposite two missile wing bases didn’t.
He added that benzene, present in cigarette smoke, automobile exhaust, and gasoline fumes, was the biggest contributor to most cancers threat in evaluations of the bases.
The evaluation concluded that well being dangers to missileers is “low, but it’s not zero,” Speakman stated. He stated it could be applicable to observe the well being of launch management staff.
Subsequent Steps
Watts, whose story has been highlighted by the Torchlight Initiative, has requested the Protection Division’s inspector normal to research — the watchdog company referred his request to World Strike Command — and is intently watching the Air Pressure analysis. He stated the majority of the most cancers circumstances reported to Torchlight occurred within the 2000s, when ICBM personnel nonetheless used know-how that contained PCBs, burned labeled materials corresponding to handled paper and plastic coding gadgets indoors, and presumably have been uncovered to contaminated water.
“I open the door and there’s guys standing there in pressurized suits with sampling equipment,” Watts recalled. “They said, ‘We’re here to check for contaminated water.’ I look at my crew commander, and we’re standing there in cotton uniforms. I said, ‘Do you see anything wrong with this?’”
Launch management operators now not burn code tapes indoors and the Air Pressure has made enhancements to air circulation within the facilities. Sebeck desires Congress to think about together with missileers and others sickened by publicity to base contamination within the PACT Act, landmark laws that mandates well being care and advantages for veterans sickened by burn pits and different pollution.
“It’s documented that there is a large cancer cluster in Montana, probably also in Wyoming. People act surprised, but all they have to do is go to the oncology office in Denver. I can find my missileer buddies there. We are sitting in the same chairs getting chemotherapy,” Sebeck stated.
Air Pressure World Strike Command spokesperson Maj. Lauren Linscott stated in response to Sebeck’s remarks that the unit understands the affect of most cancers on its personnel and is dedicated to supporting them.
“While current findings are preliminary and no conclusions can yet be drawn, we are dedicated to a rigorous, peer-reviewed, data-driven process to better understand potential health risks because the safety of our airmen is our top priority,” Linscott stated.
Payments launched within the Home and Senate would handle the scenario. Along with Bacon’s modification, the Senate model of an annual protection coverage invoice would require a “deep cleaning” of launch management facilities each 5 years till the websites are decommissioned as a brand new ICBM, the Sentinel, replaces the Minuteman IIIs.
The Air Pressure goals to launch its ultimate epidemiological report by the top of the 12 months.
