More Than Just Military Members Exposed to Chemicals

The following is a personal story submitted to Civilian Exposure and published as part of our new series: “Contamination Chronicles: Personal Stories of Exposure”. If you would like to submit your story, you may fill out our form here or send directly via email to share-@-civilianexposure.org.

Let’s remember all the workers inside the Military who were exposed daily to chemicals such as TCE, etc. I was an Armorer, but I have talked to airplane cleaners and motor pool people who used TCE, or one of the many names it has, on a regular basis.

I touched it and smelled it daily for about 12-18 months. Now I have cysts on my kidneys, right ventricle fibrosis, a non-alcoholic fatty liver, systemic sclerosis, and a cyst in my nostril. Also, my T-4 is up and down. My platelets and lymphocytes fall all the time below standards. My bones are ate up by TCE as it mixes with the calcium in my body and causes calcinosis. My lungs have a misty fibrosis, and two cysts. My skin has some cherry angiomas. I suffer with sleep apnea, etc.

The VA still acts like they know nothing all these years. Mine happened in 1987. So after the country spent billions to clean up TCE, they continued to use it! They continued to contaminate new people like myself! How do you spend billions to clean something up and not have a plan to take it out of use permanently?!

Not until 1995 did they realize the true dangers of TCE. That was because they took all the old rags from cleaning weapons and burned them in burn pits. When they realized the problem, they changed the SOP for disposal of weapon cleaning rags and gave it the name “burn pits” to camouflage it from anyone who would put it together with TCE.

The plan was to wait until most were dead, but people like myself and others are ramping the timeline up on the Government.

Note from the Editor: The account/editorial is verbatim from the author without edit, with only the omission of their name to preserve anonymity.