Patricia Kime
At a memorial service in 2022, veteran Air Force Capt. Monte Watts bumped right into a fellow former Minuteman III nuclear missile operator, who advised him that she had non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Watts knew different missileers with related cancers. But the connection actually hit house later that very same January day, when the outcomes of a blood take a look at revealed that Watts himself had power lymphocytic leukemia, a kind 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 mentioned.
Within the group of U.S. service members who workers nuclear missile silos scattered throughout the Northern Rockies and Great Plains, suspicions had lengthy been brewing that their workplaces had been unsafe. Just months after Watts was recognized in 2022, Lt. Col. Danny Sebeck, a former Air Force missileer who had transferred to the U.S. Space Force, wrote a short on a possible most cancers cluster amongst individuals who served at Minuteman III launch management facilities on Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana.
Sebeck recognized 36 former workers who served primarily from 1993 to 2011 and had been recognized with most cancers, together with himself. Of these, 11 had non-Hodgkin lymphoma; three had died. The Air Force responded swiftly to Sebeck’s findings, launching a massive investigation into most cancers instances and the atmosphere at three intercontinental ballistic missile bases and a California launch facility. The purpose is to finish the analysis by the tip of 2025.
The service has launched parts of the research as they conclude, holding on-line city halls and briefings to spotlight its findings. But whereas former missileers say they’re heartened by the fast response, they continue to be involved that the analysis, which crosses a long time and contains 1000’s of ICBM personnel and administrative staff, might tackle too massive a inhabitants or use statistical analyses that received’t present a connection between their diseases and their army service.
They want that tie to expedite advantages from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Historically, the Department of Defense has been gradual 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 diseases acknowledged as associated to army service.
In the case of the missileers, the Air Force already had studied potential contamination and most cancers at Malmstrom in 2001 and 2005. That analysis concluded that launch management facilities had been “safe and healthy working environments.” But with Sebeck’s presentation and the choice to pursue additional investigation, Air Force Global Strike Command — the unit liable for managing nuclear missile silos and aircraft-based nuclear weapons — mentioned the sooner research might not have included a big sufficient sampling of medical data to be complete.
Sebeck, who serves as co-director of the Torchlight Initiative, an advocacy group that helps ICBM personnel and their households, advised congressional Democrats on April 8 that the Defense Department has not precisely tracked exposures to the group, making it tough 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 mentioned, 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 Exposed to Them
PCBs are artificial chemical substances as soon as utilized in business, together with missile management electrical parts equivalent to show screens, keyboards, and circuit breakers. They have been banned for manufacture since 1979, deemed poisonous and a possible carcinogen by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The Air Force’s Missile Community Cancer Study compares 14 kinds of frequent cancers within the normal U.S. inhabitants and the missile group and in addition research the environments at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, and Vandenberg Space Force Base in California to find out whether or not they might have contributed to the danger of growing 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 contains 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.
So far, the Air Force 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 dying charges for 4 kinds of frequent cancers — non-Hodgkin lymphoma, lung, colon and rectum, and prostate most cancers — had 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 Defense Department medical data, discovered elevated charges of breast and prostate cancers within the missile group, however a later evaluation incorporating extra knowledge didn’t help these findings. The research additionally didn’t discover elevated charges of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Air Force officers famous throughout a June 4 on-line city corridor, nevertheless, that these assessments are primarily based on roughly half the info the service expects to assessment for its ultimate epidemiological studies and cautioned towards drawing conclusions given the constraints.
The ultimate incidence report will embrace federal and state knowledge, 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 danger, wrote Air Force Col. Richard Speakman in a September 2024 memo on the preliminary epidemiology outcomes.
Gen. Thomas Bussiere, commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, mentioned in the course of the June city corridor that solely the ultimate outcomes will decide whether or not the missile group’s most cancers charges are greater than the overall inhabitants’s.
Some lawmakers share the priority of missileers in regards to the Air Force examine. Following the discharge of a University of North Carolina review of Torchlight Initiative knowledge that confirmed greater charges of non-Hodgkin lymphoma — at youthful ages — amongst Malmstrom missileers, Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) introduced an amendment to a protection coverage invoice calling for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to assessment well being and security circumstances within the services.
“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.”
Regarding extra research on the working environments on the installations and a attainable relationship between exposures and most cancers danger, Speakman, who instructions the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine, mentioned Malmstrom had two kinds 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 most important contributor to most cancers danger in critiques of the bases.
The evaluation concluded that well being dangers to missileers is “low, but it’s not zero,” Speakman mentioned. He mentioned it will be acceptable to watch the well being of launch management staff.
Next Steps
Watts, whose story has been highlighted by the Torchlight Initiative, has requested the Defense Department’s inspector normal to research — the watchdog company referred his request to Global Strike Command — and is carefully watching the Air Force analysis. He mentioned the majority of the most cancers instances reported to Torchlight occurred within the 2000s, when ICBM personnel nonetheless used know-how that contained PCBs, burned labeled materials equivalent to handled paper and plastic coding gadgets indoors, and probably had 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 not burn code tapes indoors and the Air Force has made enhancements to air circulation within the facilities. Sebeck needs Congress to contemplate 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 mentioned.
Air Force Global Strike Command spokesperson Maj. Lauren Linscott mentioned in response to Sebeck’s remarks that the unit understands the impression 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 mentioned.
Bills launched within the House and Senate would tackle the state of affairs. In addition to 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 Force goals to launch its ultimate epidemiological report by the tip of the yr.
