Protecting the troops – war and chemicals

Many soldiers who fought in the 1991 Gulf War are suffering from chronic health problems. The US now accepts a link with the vaccines, pesticides and other chemicals used. The British government denies a connection, but is taking more precautions after the Iraq War. John Harvey reports.

Soldier wearing full nuclear, biological and chemical protective equipment used during the Gulf War. Photo: Gulf Veterans Association

British troops returning from the second Gulf War are to be monitored to see if their health has been damaged by a cocktail of vaccines, pesticides and other pollutants. War Veterans’ Minister, Lewis Mooney, has written to Paul Tyler, the Liberal Democrat MP who chairs the all party group on organophosphate (OP) chemicals saying that up to 50 returning personnel will be interviewed by scientists at King’s College, London, as soon as possible.
    In a second study, troops who have returned to normal duties will receive questionnaires about their health and what they were exposed to in the Iraq conflict. Mr Tyler welcomed the research, but added: ‘It is of paramount importance that the government ensures the work is carried out immediately. There must be no delays in which the evidence becomes more difficult to evaluate.’
    Ministers are anxious not to repeat what happened after the first Gulf War when some of the 53,000 personnel returning from the conflict complained that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) had taken little notice of their illnesses.
Just before Dr Mooney’s announcement about research on Iraq war veterans, Alex Izett, a former soldier who was ‘prepared’ for the first conflict, won a ruling from a war pensions appeal tribunal, which linked Mr Izett’s osteoporosis with the vaccines he had been given while training for the first Gulf War. Dr Mooney immediately went on BBC Radio Four and denied that the injections caused Mr Izett’s illness. Later, John Reid, leader of the House of Commons, said in response to Mr Tyler, that the MoD had not challenged Mr Izett’s tribunal ruling because they could not find a point of law on which to do so.
    Mr Tyler, who is also a member of the Royal British Legion Gulf War Group, immediately put down a question asking defence secretary Geoff Hoon to make a statement on his department’s policy towards former service personnel suffering from Gulf War illness ‘…with particular reference to the war pensions tribunal decision in the case of Lance Corporal Alex Izett, RE.’ Scientists and campaigners on behalf of the veterans were waiting to see if the response would show any shift in the government’s previous policy of denying a specific Gulf War syndrome.
    Malcolm Hooper, Emeritus Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at Sunderland University – who advises the Gulf Veterans Association and the National Gulf War Veterans and Families Association – said he expected a second Gulf War syndrome from the Iraq conflict. ‘I already know of three people who have come back and are ill,’ he said.
Professor Hooper said the first Gulf War syndrome was due to a combination of vaccines, pyridostigmine bromide in tablets, pesticides, nerve agents such as sarin, depleted uranium from munitions, and oil and smoke. In the second war, Professor Hooper said he expected more depleted uranium to have been used and little or none of the nerve agents such as sarin. Nethertheless, personnel had been exposed to the combination of other toxins used in the first war: organophosphate (OP) chemicals sprayed on tents to repel insects, vaccines, oil and smoke and the rest.
    ‘There is no evidence that any nerve agent was detected and set off alarms in the second war.’ In the first war, Professor Hooper argued that bombing of munitions stores by allied aircraft had released a combination of sarin and other nerve agents. ‘No one thought you could have very low exposure to a nerve agent and the problem of chronic, long term exposure had not been considered. But work by Professor Robert Haley at the University of Texas has demonstrated that chronic, low level exposure to these agents could cause progressive illness’, said Professor Hooper(1).
    Faced with Professor Haley’s results, the United States government began to change its attitude. They also realised that the incidence of motor neurone disease among Gulf veterans was twice that of any comparable group(2). But if the war pensions tribunal in the UK is slowly but surely recognising the veterans’ case, the government’s apparent indifference could turn out to be irrelevant. Elizabeth Sigmund, coordinator of the OP Information Network – who has taken a close interest in the experience of Gulf War veterans because of the parallels with sheep farmers and others suffering from OP poisoning – disagreed. ‘What the veterans say they want is for the MoD to admit that something they were exposed to in the Gulf caused their illness. That will provide a warning to other young men going into the army.’
    Mrs Sigmund added that veterans were trying to obtain a pension with their hands tied behind their backs. ‘The MoD says there is no syndrome – yet we know there are a lot of people who are very ill. They are in the same position as the sheep farmers with OPs: it is impossible to prove anything in law because there are so many symptoms.’
    John Tate, a veteran who lives at Northam near Bideford in Devon agrees with Mrs Sigmund’s comment about the MoD. ‘All I want is for them to admit liability.’ Mr Tate was a paramedic with the Royal Army Medical corps in the first war. He was attached to the support helicopter force, flying to the front line, picking up wounded soldiers and evacuating them back to hospitals. When he returned, he was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 27 – something which is almost unknown. When he was 35, Mr Tate had his shoulder replaced. ‘I was told I had the shoulder of an 80 year old.’ He was exposed to everything on Professor Hooper’s list. ‘It was a combination of all of them – tablets, vaccines, pesticides, the lot. I went to the war in 1991 and four years later I had a progressive, degenerative disease. There is no history of arthritis in my family and rheumatoid arthritis is not hereditary.’
    Mr Tate has a war pension called a ‘lower standard of occupation’ pension: it compensates him for not earning his full potential in the ambulance service which he wanted to join when he came back from the Gulf. Now he says he wishes he had never been exposed to the cocktail of pollutants. ‘I had no doubts because I was told they were for my own protection. If I had my time over again, I would not touch them.’

1. Haley, RW, A Research Campaign to Understand the Gulf War Syndrome, http://www.smu.edu/statistics/Haley-Abstract.htm
2. Charatan, F, US links motor neurone disease with Gulf war service, British Medical Journal, 12 January 2002, 324:65, http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/324/7329/65/a

John Harvey is an agricultural writer and broadcaster.

[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 60, June 2003, page 3]