The Fallon, NV Cancer Cluster And A US Navy Bombing

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The Fallon, NV Cancer Cluster And A US Navy Bombing

By St. Clair

CounterPunch.org

8-10-2

Last June, Adam Jernee died from acute lymphocytic leukemia, a remorselessly

fast-moving cancer of the blood. He was 8-years old and had fought the

cancer for more than two years of his short life. Adam and his father

lived in Fallon, Nevada. This small ranching town of 8,000 people in the

Carson Desert 50 miles east of Reno may have the highest per capita rate of

childhood leukemia in the nation. The children of Fallon are more than 100

times more likely to be stricken with leukemia then children elsewhere in

country.

Last week, another Fallon child was diagnosed with leukemia. That makes 17

kids from Fallon who have been contracted leukemia since 1997. Adam is the

second child to have died within the past year. In September,

Sands succumbed to the cancer after battling it for two years. She was 21.

Cancer isn't the only problem. Kids and adults in Fallon and surrounding

Churchill County are coming down with a myriad of other rare diseases, such

as Myelodysplastic Syndrome and aplastic anemia. These diseases also

relentlessly attack the bone marrow.

The kinds of cancers and other illnesses that have cropped up in the Fallon

area are almost certainly caused by some kind of exposure to toxic

chemicals. The source of that poison almost certainly sits a few miles

outside the town of Fallon--somewhere on the 240,000-acre Fallon Naval Air

Station, one of the Navy's largest bombing ranges, and home of the Top Gun

fighter pilot training school. But good luck to getting the Navy to take

responsibility or even look very hard to find out what the problem might be.

Years have passed and the Navy has done next to nothing, except deny

culpability and try bully anyone who demands answers from naval brass.

Apparently the Navy doesn't even care if the cancers are killing children of

its own officers. The Navy has known about high levels of cancer among the

children of Fallon workers and Navy officers since at least 1991; yet, the

Pentagon has done little except try to conceal information on levels of

pollution at the base and to stiff-arm investigators.

" Our frustration level is very high, " says Gross, who 6-year old son

has been sick with leukemia for two years. " This should have been found and

stopped a long time ago. But you can't get anything out of the Navy. "

Local residents think they know the answer: jet fuel spills and fuel dumping

by Navy aircraft. JP-8 jet fuel, a combination of kerosene and benzene, is a

known carcinogen and has been linked to leukemia and other bone marrow

diseases. The Navy has summarily ruled out jet fuel as a cause of the Fallon

cancers, but records from the state of Nevada show that the Fallon air base

has at least 26 toxic waste sites, 16 of them contaminated by jet fuel. Most

of the Fallon area is playa, a dry lakebed over shallow groundwater.

According to the Geological Survey, several distinct plumes of jet fuel have

entered the water table beneath the air base. Nearby residents charge that

Navy fighter pilots routinely dump excess fuel into the desert prior to

landing at Fallon. The Navy says this is a rare occurrence, with emergency

fuel dumps happening about three times a year. However, Navy records show

that in a single instance a few years ago more than 800 gallons was dumped

into the Carson playa.

In 2000 alone, according to the Navy's own statistics, Fallon-based fighters

and bombers consumed 34 million gallons of jet fuel, much of it pumped in on

a jet fuel pipeline, which runs from Sparks, Nevada to Fallon. Locals and

environmentalists say that the pipeline regularly leaks the poisonous gas

into the desert. Publicly, the Navy contends that the pipeline spills are

minor and inconsequential, averaging less than 45 gallons a year. But two

whistleblowers at the air base told Navy investigators that more than 30,000

gallons of fuel had leaked from the pipeline and from a truck in 1988 and

1989 alone. Initially, the Navy dismissed the allegations. But later

admitted that there had in fact been two major spills.

While Navy officials claim that the jet fuel is not the cause of the Fallon

cancers, they admit that there's been no independent monitoring of jet fuel

inventories at the base, even though federal officials demanded an oversight

system in 1989. There have been persistent rumors that Navy contractors

have been dumping fuel at the base in order to increase fuel purchases.

Because of the lack of oversight, the Navy has almost no idea how much fuel

it has on the base or where it goes. In 1990, the base commander, Cpt. Rex

Rackowitz, admitted that he couldn't account for the whereabouts of more

than 350,000 gallons of fuel. Another source of jet fuel contamination of

Fallon area water are the three old underground storage tanks. A report

filed with Congress two years ago revealed that underground saltwater has

seriously corroded the 45-year old tanks (each with a capacity of more than

a half million gallons) and noted that the tanks lack any kind of overfill

and leak protection.

" I lean toward the base as the cause, " says Posey, a former aircraft

mechanic at Fallon, whose daughter was diagnosed with leukemia in 1990. " Jet

fuel dumping, radar and electronic emissions, jet fuel spills. All that is

dangerous stuff. " Despite the rising cancer rate and the deaths, the

people of Fallon have gotten few answers from state and federal government.

The parents of sick kids feel they are being stonewalled. " I think there's a

potential cover up here, " said Jernee, Adam's father. " I don't have

faith in any of these people. How many kids have to die before we get to the

truth? "

The jet fuel spills may well be one source of the cancers. But another study

suggests that there may be a more ominous explanation. A 1994 survey of

groundwater in the Fallon area by the US Geological Survey showed that 31 or

73 drinking water wells showed high concentrations of radioactive minerals.

It was only revealed to the public last September by a former USGS staffer

who thought it might have a bearing on the Fallon illnesses.

The radiation may in part come from depleted uranium expended by bombs and

missiles at the Fallon bombing ranges. Navy statistics show that more than 7

million pounds of ordinance is dropped on the Fallon bombing ranges,

including the notoriously cratered B-20 site, every year.

Now the Navy wants to move some of its Vieques bombing training missions to

Fallon. It recently renewed its 20-year lease on the B-20 bombing range and

acquired another 50,000 acres of BLM lands for target practice. " The Cold

War is over, " says Kalynda Tilges of the Reno-based Citizen Alert. " The Navy

is ignoring the consequences of its pollution, and the nation continues to

throw money into a big, black hole. "

Fallon isn't the only airbase with a leukemia cluster. Seven children have

recently been diagnosed with childhood leukemia in Sierra Vista, Arizona,

adjacent to the -Monthan Air Force Base.

" When are these people going to do something real? " says Floyd Sands, whose

daughter died of leukemia last year. I haven't seen them do

anything real so far. " So much for Bush's bluster about Iraq being an

international demon-state for poisoning its own people.

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