Dean Osborn, a fresh GI at Fort Ord in Monterey County, California, trained on land and guzzled water from channels and groundwater that were previously known to be contaminated with cancer-causing pollutants.
” They were marching the snot out of us”, he said, recalling his time and a half stationed on the basic, from 1979 to 1980. He even remembers, not so warmly, the poison wood widespread across the 28, 000- acre installation that closed in 1994. Due to the increasingly uncomfortable rash, he went on ill visit at least three times.
According to mounting facts, the military used and sprayed the potent pesticides combination known as Agent Orange in an effort to combat the omnipresent venom oak and other plants at the Army basic as far back as the 1950s.
The herbicide was used by the U.S. defense to defoliate the deep forests of Vietnam and neighboring countries, but it was contaminating southern California with the same substances, according to documents.
The Defense Department has made it known that Agent Orange was stored at the Naval Construction Battalion Center in Gulfport, Mississippi, and the original Kelly Air Force Base in Texas before being tested at Florida’s Eglin Air Force Base during the Vietnam War.
According to the Government Accountability Office, but, the Pentagon’s list of sites where pesticides were tested went more than a decade without being updated and lacked sensitivity. GAO researchers described the checklist in 2018 as “inaccurate and incomplete”.
Fort Ord was not included. It is among about four hundred bases that the state has excluded but where Pat Elder, an climate activist, said he , has documented , the use or store of Agent Orange.
According to , a 1956 article , in the book The Military Engineer, the use of Agent Orange pesticide at Fort Ord led to a “drastic decline in apprentice allergy casualties”.
A well-organized chemical war has been waged against this woody plant pest in training areas like Fort Ord, where poison oak has been extremely troublesome to military personnel, according to the article.
The use of Agent Orange at the sprawling base that 1.5 million service members cycled through from 1917 to 1994 is documented in other documents, including a report by an Army agronomist as well as documents related to hazardous material cleanups.
The most toxic chemical, in your opinion?
Agent Orange is a 50- 50 mixture of two ingredients,  , known as 2, 4- D and 2, 4, 5- T. Herbicides with the same chemical structure slightly modified were available off the shelf, sold commercially in massive amounts, and used at practically every base in the U. S., said Gerson Smoger, a lawyer who argued before the Supreme Court for Vietnam veterans to have the right to sue Agent Orange manufacturers. The combo was also used by farmers, forest workers, and other civilians across the country.
The chemical 2, 4, 5- T contains the dioxin 2, 3, 7, 8- tetrachlorodibenzo- p- dioxin or TCDD, a known carcinogen linked to several , cancers, chronic conditions and birth defects. A recent , Brown University study  , tied Agent Orange exposure to brain tissue damage similar to that caused by Alzheimer’s. Acknowledging its harm to human health, the Environmental Protection Agency , banned the use of 2, 4, 5- T , in the U. S. in 1979. Still, the other weed killer, 2, 4- D is , sold off- the- shelf , today.
The bottom line is that TCDD is the most toxic substance that man has ever created, Smoger said.
For years, the Department of Veteran Affairs has provided vets who served in Vietnam , disability compensation , for diseases considered to be connected to exposure to Agent Orange for military use from 1962 to 1975.
Decades after Osborn’s military service, the 68- year- old veteran, who never served in Vietnam, has battled one health crisis after another: a spot on his left lung and kidney, hypothyroidism, and prostate cancer, an illness that has been tied to Agent Orange exposure.
He claims that many of his former Fort Ord friends are also ill.
” Now we have cancers that we did n’t deserve”, Osborn said.
Prostate cancer qualifies for Agent Orange disability compensation as a “presumptive condition,” as per the VA, acknowledging that those who served in particular locations were likely exposed and that their illnesses are related to their military service. Veterans ‘ claims are made more quickly thanks to the designation.
But when Osborn requested his benefits, he was denied. According to the letter, “your age is more likely to have this cancer than your military service.”
” This did n’t happen because of my age. This is occurring because we were stationed in areas that were contaminated and sprayed, he said.
Studies show that diseases caused by environmental factors , can take years , to emerge. And to make things more perplexing for veterans stationed at Fort Ord, contamination from other harmful chemicals, like the industrial cleaner trichloroethylene, have been , well documented , on the former base, landing it on the EPA ‘s , Superfund site list , in 1990.
” We typically expect to see the effect years down the line”, said Lawrence Liu, a doctor at City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center , who has studied Agent Orange. ” Carcinogens have additive effects”.
In February, the VA , proposed a rule , that for the first time would allow compensation to veterans for Agent Orange exposure at 17 U. S. bases in a dozen states where the herbicide was tested, used, or stored.
Fort Ord is not on that list either, because the VA’s list is based on the Defense Department’s 2019 update.
” It’s a very tricky question”, Smoger said, emphasizing how widely the herbicides were used both at military bases and by civilians for similar purposes. ” On one hand, we were service. We were exposed. On the other hand, why are you different from the motorists who use it for personal gain?
The VA claims that the Defense Department provided the information for its proposed rule.
No evidence of herbicide use, testing, or storage was found in the DOD’s review. Therefore, VA does not have sufficient evidence to extend a presumption of exposure to herbicides based on Fort Ord service at this time, according to VA press secretary Terrence Hayes in an email.
The Documentation
Yet environmental activist Elder, with help from toxic and remediation specialist Denise Trabbic- Pointer and former VA physician Kyle Horton,  , compiled seven documents , showing otherwise. They include a journal article, the agronomist report, and cleanup-related documents dating back as recently as 1995, all of which point to widespread herbicide use and experimentation as well as long-lasting contamination at the base.
Though the documents do not call the herbicide by its colorful nickname, they routinely cite the combination of 2, 4- D and 2, 4, 5- T. A “hazardous waste minimization assessment” dated 1991 reported 80, 000 pounds of herbicides used annually at Fort Ord. It lists 2, 4, 5, and T as separate products for which” substitutions are necessary to minimize the environmental effects.”
The poison oak” control program” started in 1951, according to a report by , Army agronomist Floyd Otter, four years before the U. S. deepened its involvement in Vietnam. More detailed about the use of these chemicals alone and in combination with diesel oil or other substances, at rates ranging from “one to two gallons of liquid herbicide” per acre.
” In conclusion, we are fairly well satisfied with the methods”, Otter wrote, noting he was interested in “any way in which costs can be lowered or quicker kill obtained”.
More than a decade later, an article in , California Agriculture , includes before and after photos that demonstrate the efficacy of chemical brush control applied to a live-oak woodland at Fort Ord, again citing both chemicals in Agent Orange. The Defense Department did not respond to inquiries about the contamination sent on April 10 or specify when the Army stopped using 2, 4, or 5-T at Fort Ord.
According to Julie Akey, a former Army linguist who worked at the base in the 1990s and later developed the rare blood cancer multiple myeloma, “what’s most compelling about Fort Ord is that it was actually used for the same purpose as it was in Vietnam,” rather than just to store it.
Akey, who also collaborated with Elder, runs a Facebook group and maintains a list of the personnel stationed at the base who later were diagnosed with cancer and other illnesses. So far, she has tallied more than 1, 400 former Fort Ord residents who became sick.
The group has been inspired to speak out about the VA’s proposed rule during a public comment period thanks to Elder’s findings. Of 546 comments, 67 are from veterans and others urging the inclusion of Fort Ord. Numerous others have written in about how their bases use Agent Orange and other chemicals.
The herbicide itself only sticks around for a short while, according to Kenneth Olson, a University of Illinois Urbana- Champaign professor emeritus of soil science, who has studied the contaminant for decades.
A , 1995 report , from the Army’s Sacramento Corps of Engineers, which documented chemicals detected in the soil at Fort Ord, found levels of TCDD at 3.5 parts per trillion, more than double the remediation goal at the time of 1.2 ppt. Olson calls the evidence convincing.
It “proves that 2, 4, 5, and 5-T with unspecified amounts of dioxin TCDD were applied on the Fort Ord grounds and border fences,” Olson said. ” Some military and civilian personnel would have been exposed,” he said.
The Department of Defense , has described , the Agent Orange used in Vietnam as a “tactical herbicide” , , more concentrated than , what was commercially available in the U. S. But Olson said , his research , suggests that even if the grounds maintenance crew used commercial versions of 2, 4, 5- T, which was available in the federal supply catalog, the soldiers would have been exposed to the dioxin TCDD.
The halb-dozen veterans who spoke with KFF Health News emphasized the need for responsibility in the military.
Questions relating to the list’s maintenance or the adding location procedure were not answered by the Pentagon.
Between 1985 and 1994, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry is conducting an investigation into potential chemical exposure among Fort Ord residents. The agency is checking drinking water for trichloroethylene, as opposed to contamination or pollution caused by Agent Orange or other chemicals found in firefighting foams, for contaminants like trichloroethylene.
Other veterans are irritated by the VA’s lengthy process of discovering their illnesses and believe they were sickened by Fort Ord exposure.
It’s likely going to be a long, difficult battle until Fort Ord is recognized by the VA as a presumed site, according to Mike Duris, a 72-year-old veteran who was diagnosed with prostate cancer four years ago and who underwent surgery.
Like so many others, he wonders about the connection to his training at Fort Ord in the early ‘ 70s — drinking the contaminated water and marching, crawling, and digging holes in the dirt.
” Often, where there is smoke, there’s fire”, Duris said.
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