AAEM news: Ft Bragg infant death toll may climb to 12

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<http://newsletters.environmentalhealthnews.org/t/53115/29786/63740/0/>Fort

Bragg infant death toll may climb to twelve. A

12th infant apparently has died of undetermined

causes in military housing at Fort Bragg, N.C.,

and investigators are now trying to determine

whether the death is linked to fumes from

contaminated drywall or some other environmental

problem in the home.

<http://newsletters.environmentalhealthnews.org/t/53115/29786/19014/0/>ProPublic\

a.

http://tinyurl.com/4qur588

<http://www.propublica.org/article//topic/tainted-drywall>Tainted Drywall

Fort Bragg Infant Death Toll May Climb to Twelve

By

<http://www.propublica.org/site/author/joaquin_sapien/>Joaquin

Sapien, ProPublica, and Kessler, Sarasota

Herald-Tribune March 8, 2011, 9:31 p.m.

Ft. Bragg, North Carolina (Photo by Hondros/Getty Images)

March 9, 2011: This article has been corrected. [1]

A 12th infant apparently has died of undetermined

causes in military housing at Fort Bragg, N.C.,

and investigators are now trying to determine

whether the death is linked to fumes from

contaminated drywall or some other environmental problem in the home.

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Do You Have Tainted Drywall?

Are you dealing with tainted drywall? Is it

causing health problems, or damage to your home?

If so, we at ProPublica want to

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your story

Last month, federal officials declared that 11

earlier infant deaths were not caused by

environmental contaminants, but they did not suggest any alternative causes.

Four-and-a-half-month-old Jaxson Garza died on

Feb. 24. His parents, Sgt. Garza and his

wife Brittany, both 26, were moved to a guest

house on the base later that day. Brittany Garza

later learned that her home was being tested for

defective drywall and other environmental problems.

The Garzas, who have three other children, are

still waiting for the final results of Jaxson’s

autopsy. Brittany Garza said she recently spoke

with the pathologist from the Armed Forces

Institute of Pathology in Rockville, Md., who

performed the autopsy. She said he told her that,

so far, he hadn’t been able to find a cause for Jaxson’s death.

“He said there is no external trauma. He [Jaxson]

appeared to be a healthy baby and he didn’t

expect to find any internal trauma,” Brittany Garza said.

An AFIP spokesman said the institute wouldn’t comment on a pending autopsy.

Ben Abel, a spokesman for Fort Bragg, said

Jaxson’s autopsy will be factored into the

military’s investigation of the infant deaths.

“As was stated all along throughout the entirety

of this process … housing here is safe,” Abel

said. “Our concern right now is that the Garza family is well cared for.”

Grey, a spokesman for the Army's Criminal

Investigation Command, known as CID, said that at

this point Jaxson’s death is being investigated

independent of the other infant death investigations at Fort Bragg.

“Of course CID is looking at this death very

closely to determine if there are any

similarities with the other undetermined death

cases,” Grey said. “At this time we have no

information or evidence to link this death to any

other infant deaths, nor do we have any

information or evidence that the other deaths

under review are linked to any environmental cause.”

Ft. Bragg's Garrison Commander, Col. J.

Sicinski, said he is confident that the homes are

safe. He suggested that the deaths could have

been caused by factors that neither the military, nor the CPSC can control.

“There could be many, many things that affect the

lifestyle of the family and the conditions of the

home that aren’t part of the structure,” Sicinski

said. “If you follow what I’m saying, there are a

lot of things that can go into the general

welfare and the health of children in a home in a

family environment that we cannot affect and we

will not affect, we are not going to be the

thought police. This is America--everybody has a right to privacy.”

Three Deaths in a Single House

The first unexplained infant death at Fort Bragg

occurred in February 2007. Three children from

three different families died in a single home.

M. Abramson, a professor at Columbia

University’s Mailman School of Public Health and

director of research for the National Center for

Disaster Preparedness, said that such a situation is extremely unusual.

“The odds of three babies dying in a short order

in the same house without an underlying condition

of some sort, it’s very unlikely. It’s enormously

unlikely,” Abramson said. “Common sense would

dictate there’s something common in the environmental exposure.”

The Consumer Product Safety Commission, the lead

agency in the federal government’s two-year

investigation of tainted drywall, has examined

the 11 infant deaths and last month ruled out

environmental causes. But the CPSC’s

investigation has been criticized by drywall

experts, who say that the test the agency used

–known as an elemental sulfur test­doesn’t

actually measure the amount of sulfur gasses

coming off the board. They said that another

test, known as a chamber test, should have been used.

“The idea that they are skating around this and

not doing the obvious measurement is very

troubling,” Shaw, vice president of

Interscan Corp. and a member of a voluntary

standards committee for drywall manufacturers

told ProPublica and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune

last month after the CPSC study was released. “If

you want to see what’s wrong with the drywall,

you test the drywall. You don’t have to be a

rocket scientist to appreciate that when you’re

trying to address how much the drywall is off-gassing.”

Parents of the deceased infants don’t understand

why the CPSC didn’t use the more reliable test,

or why the agency tested samples from only two of

the homes where the deaths occurred.

“I felt betrayed, honestly. I trusted the CPSC as

an independent agency to bring the truth out and

clearly that didn’t happen” said Spc. ael

Duke, whose son, , died in March 2010.

“Anybody with experience with Chinese or tainted

American drywall knows from the way they tested

the board that they are worried about something.

They still refuse to do any chamber testing and

as far as I know that is the only thing that

could confirm or deny the presence of problem drywall.”

‘The Nightmare Just Got Worse’

The Garzas said they had problems with mold and

leaks in and outside their home soon after they

moved into it in February 2010. For help, they

called Picerne Military Housing, the private

company that builds and maintains housing at Fort Bragg.

“I complained about what turned out to be mold on

the outside of the house the day we did our

walk-through, and Picerne assured me that it

would be cleaned up after we moved in,” Brittany

Garza said. The mold was never removed, she said.

Picerne directed questions to Ft. Bragg’s public affairs office.

The Garzas didn’t notice any corrosion on the

copper wiring on their house, which is the most

obvious sign of defective drywall. But Brittany

Garza said that while she was pregnant with

Jaxson she fainted several times and often had a

bloody nose, problems that have been linked to

exposure to defective drywall. She said she

didn’t have those problems during her earlier pregnancies.

Garza said that just before Jaxson was born in

October 2010, the icemaker in their refrigerator

began to leak and water poured into their living

room. Picerne fixed the leak immediately and a

couple of days later a contractor arrived to dry out the carpet with a fan.

In February, the water heater broke, and the

maintenance crew that arrived to fix it spilled

water in the hallway and on the living room

floor. Some of the water seeped into the walls

and into the kitchen, Garza said.

The Garzas called Picerne several times, saying

they were worried about mold and the health of

their children. A maintenance crew arrived a week

later, and on Feb. 23 lifted the carpet and

placed a fan over it to dry it out, Brittany Garza said.

The next morning, she woke up at 7 o’clock and

checked on Jaxson. She said he was already awake,

so she fed him and placed him in his bouncy

chair. Then she went downstairs to get eight-year

old Maddison ready for school.

When she went back upstairs to check on Jaxson,

just before 8 a.m., she said he wasn’t

moving. She called the paramedics and began

giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. When the

paramedics arrived they began trying to revive

Jaxson, while Garza called her husband.

Instead of being taken to the hospital with their

son, the Garzas were interviewed at their home by

CID investigators. Two hours later they were

taken to the hospital where they held Jaxson one last time.

“Then the nightmare just got worse,” Garza said.

When the Garzas were taken back to their house,

the CID investigators told them to gather enough

of their possessions to last a few days, because

they would be staying at a guesthouse that

Picerne had set up for them. Before they could

leave, however, an official with Cumberland

County’s Child Protective Services arrived at their house.

“They told us that North Carolina law says they

have to remove the children from the premises

until my husband and I have been cleared for any

wrongdoing because a child died in the house and

we don’t know why yet,” Garza said.

The Garzas’ three remaining children stayed with

family friends for four days. They’re now back

with their parents at the guesthouse where the family is still staying.

Brittany Garza said she doesn’t want to live on

the base any more, but she worries that moving will be too expensive.

“I don’t know what to do, because I want to keep

my other kids safe,” she said.

Correction:An earlier version of this article

stated that Grey was a spokesman for Fort

Bragg’s Criminal Investigation Command. He is

actually the spokesman for the Army’s Criminal investigation Command.

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