Panama: U.S. toxic chemicals blamed in cancer, other diseases
The Panama News
blamed in cancer cases, other diseases
10/11/99
By Tod Robberson / The Dallas Morning News
PANAMA CITY - It was hard enough for Karen Lavallee to watch her
seemingly healthy 34-year-old husband die of cancer in 1978 in a
tropical wonderland the couple once had regarded as paradise.
But when another man in her neighborhood fell victim to the same form
of cancer, Ms. Lavallee said alarm bells went off in her head. Both
men died within six months of each other from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Both had worked as police officers on the Atlantic side of the Panama
Canal Zone.
Today she asks whether their deaths were related to a toxic-waste dump
the two men regularly patrolled. Or did it have anything to do with a
chemically defoliated jungle site where the police officers would stop
to chat with their counterparts in the U.S. military police?
Ms. Lavallee is hardly the only one asking such questions. Former
Canal Zone residents, who call themselves "Zonians," increasingly are
raising concerns about cancers and other serious health problems that
are cropping up among them.
Many want to know whether their health problems are normal or whether
they might be linked to the U.S. government's practice of spraying and
dumping large amounts of toxic chemicals in Panama since the 1940s.
The 360,000-acre Canal Zone, revered among thousands of former
residents for its pristine lawns, bug-free backyard barbecues and
country-club lifestyle, also was a place where the U.S. government
sprayed massive amounts of DDT, a pesticide linked to cancer, as a
means of keeping nature at bay. The U.S. military dumped cancer-causing
PCBs, toxic waste and chemical weapons, while pushing the jungle back
with herbicides such as Agent Orange, according to various Canal Zone
residents and retired military personnel.
U.S. military officials neither confirm nor deny the use of Agent
Orange in Panama but say they have found no written record to prove it
was sprayed. Officials also acknowledge use of a broad range of
chemicals and hazardous materials but insist they have followed U.S.
environmental guidelines since the early 1970s.
Medical testing
A group of University of Texas researchers hopes to move the Zonians'
health concerns beyond the speculative stage and conduct a series of
tests and surveys to determine whether Canal Zone residents were
routinely exposed to toxins or other dangerous substances. If so, the
researchers say they want to determine whether such exposure is linked
to various forms of cancer and other diseases that many Zonians are now
suffering.
The researchers, led by Drs. Anne Sweeney and Deborah del Junco, said
they became interested in Panama after a student, Kathleen Pitts,
contacted them on behalf of former Canal Zone residents, including some
of her relatives. Ms. Pitts believed the residents had unusually
consistent stories about battling cancer and other chronic diseases.
"They were concerned that they were finding a trend. They were finding
an unusual amount of concern about their health," said Ms. Pitts, a
student in the school of nursing and public health at the University of
Texas in Houston.
"They wanted to know if it was just a normal part of aging, was it
because of the environment, or was it because of the fact that they had
all lived together in the zone."
Zonians have registered particular concern about the amount of DDT they
believed they had been exposed to as children growing up in the Canal
Zone, Ms. Pitts said.
Last month, the Panama-based environmental group CEASPA published a
report detailing the types of chemical exposure some residents may have
received based on a limited analysis of soil on two still-operative
U.S. military bases in the former Canal Zone. The study concluded that,
in some cases, exposure rates to DDT and chlordane, another pesticide
banned in the United States because of its high toxicity, were far
higher than the maximum levels regarded by the Environmental Protection
Agency as acceptable.
"Though there is not enough data to establish a concise exposure
scenario, there are plenty of indicators that demonstrate a significant
human health hazard exists," the study concluded.
A 1997 study by the Panamanian government concluded that levels of lead
in water, asbestos in building materials, and cancer-causing dioxin and
PCBs in various soil samples taken across the Canal Zone were far above
maximum safe levels established by the U.S. government.
Panama is demanding that the United States agree to clean up its
environmental mess before departing on Dec. 31. The United States says
it has cleaned up what it could but acknowledges it will be leaving
some dangerous materials behind, largely consisting of unexploded
ordnance used in training exercises.
Crucial questions
For the Zonians, however, the diplomatic haggling between the two
nations is not answering crucial questions they have about the toxins
and hazardous materials they might have been exposed to.
"We were so used to being in the middle of military bases. Whatever
the military did, they acted like they had carte blanche to do," said
Ms. Lavallee, who left Panama when her husband died. "It was something
you grew up with. It was accepted policy among the Zonians that you
never questioned what they did."
She said her husband, Robert William Lavallee, regularly stopped to
chat with military police officers at an area known as the "drop zone"
near the Panama Canal's Gatun Locks, where the canal meets the Atlantic
Ocean. The drop zone was a site used by the Army's 8th Special Forces
for parachute training during the Vietnam War. According to at least
nine civilian and former military witnesses, the drop zone had been
sprayed heavily with Agent Orange during the late 1960s and early
1970s.
Two men who commanded the 8th Special Forces during that period and
regularly parachuted into the drop zone, Majs. William Patton and Dick
Meadows, had leukemia and died within six months of each other in 1996,
according to Mr. Patton's widow, Barbara Patton.
Army Spec. Donald Jones regularly rode his motorcycle around the drop
zone while serving in Panama from 1971 to 1974, according to his widow,
Pamela Jones, of Pleasanton, Texas. He died in 1997 of non-Hodgkin's
lymphoma, a cancerous condition typically linked to Agent Orange
exposure, which is the same disease that caused the death of Mrs.
Lavallee's husband.
About 10 years ago, Dallas tow-truck driver Robert Youngs said he
noticed blotches of brown skin spreading across his chest, stomach and
back. About four years ago, he became disabled with severe numbness in
his arms and legs. He said he never understood why it was happening,
although he knew those symptoms were typical of servicemen who had been
exposed to Agent Orange.
It was only when he read a Dallas Morning News report about Agent
Orange testing in Panama that Mr. Youngs said he realized there might
be a link: He had served in the 8th Special Forces in Panama in 1970
and 1971 and had regularly parachuted into an area he called the "drop
zone." He said it was well known at the time that the area had been
defoliated with the same chemical being used in Vietnam, although the
defoliant was not known at the time as Agent Orange. Mr. Youngs said he
never served in Vietnam.
Although the U.S. government says it cannot confirm any use of Agent
Orange in Panama, Charles M. Bartlett, the operational commander of the
military's defoliant-testing program in the 1960s and early '70s,
testified in 1997 that several hundred barrels of Agent Orange had been
shipped to Panama for testing.
"Whether the government admits it or not, I now know for a fact that
Agent Orange was delivered there," Ms. Patton said. "I want to know the
answers. Are we going to die of something we were exposed to 30 years
ago?"
Jerome Steiner, a former Panama Canal employee, said he regularly
sprayed Agent Orange in the early 1970s to control vegetation that
threatened to clog a crucial river outlet feeding the canal. He and
others said the herbicide was not known at the time to be dangerous.
An official for the Panama Canal Commission, the U.S. government
agency that operates the canal, said the commission did not keep any
paperwork before 1973 regarding Agent Orange and could neither confirm
nor deny its use.
"We should keep in mind that a lot of this was used back then by the
Army guys, and it might not have been sprayed under orders from the
PCC," said the official, who asked not to be identified.
The official did confirm that dumps in at least two sites along the
canal were used for hazardous and toxic disposal but said such
practices were halted when the Environmental Protection Agency
tightened rules in the 1970s.
Cleaning up
It is clear from current U.S. Department of Defense contracts that some
kind of U.S. environmental cleanup is in progress in Panama. Since
1996, the Lockheed-Martin Corp. has been fulfilling a military contract
to receive and ship out a variety of toxic wastes that the military has
collected as it closes down its various bases in Panama.
David Jewell, a Lockheed-Martin spokesman, declined to specify the
types of wastes being received at the company's warehouses at the
Corozal Army base outside Panama City but described them as "normal and
industrial," including what he called "hazardous materials."
Capt. Larry Winchell, a spokesman for the U.S. Army command that was
based in Panama until September, said that the wastes include paints,
oils, chemicals and some pesticides but that he was unable to be more
specific.
Alfredo Smith, a former supervisor for Lockheed-Martin at the Corozal
warehouse, said he handled a wide range of toxic materials.
"We were handling cyanides, asbestos, poisons, known carcinogens,
herbicides, pesticides. Some of this stuff had labels going back to the
1950s. . . . All of the stuff from the cleanup sites were coming in to
us," he said.
Lockheed-Martin provided employees with a list of substances that Mr.
Smith and other workers were instructed to be wary of. The list
included 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T, the potentially dioxin-tainted chemical
compounds that became nicknamed Agent Orange during the Vietnam era.
Mr. Smith said he handled several barrels marked 2,4-D but did not
recall any marked with 2,4,5-T. He said he regularly handled PCBs, an
oil-like coolant used in transformers, which also has been linked to
cancer.
Mr. Smith said one Panamanian employee under his supervision began
coughing up blood one day on the job after handling an unmarked barrel
filled with a chemical powder. Mr. Smith, who says he suffers constant
skin rashes, breathing problems, headaches, stomach problems and sexual
dysfunction, is suing Lockheed-Martin for compensation for what he says
were lax safety procedures at the Corozal facility.
Mr. Jewell said Lockheed-Martin has an exemplary environmental safety
program and complies with all Occupational, Safety and Health
Administration requirements. He said he could not discuss Mr. Smith's
allegations because the matter is in litigation.
Cancer rates rise
Dr. Rosa Marie de Britton, a leading Panamanian oncologist, said she
knows of no studies that focused exclusively on cancer rates among
Canal Zone residents. But she said that overall, cancer is the No. 1
killer among Panamanians, with stomach cancer and leukemia leading the
list of cases. She said that in the 1970s, cancer was the cause of 12
percent of deaths, whereas today it is around 20 percent.
"We don't have a lot of pollution here. We don't have a lot of
factories, so [those factors] don't explain why we have these rates,"
she said. But she was skeptical about assertions of high cancer rates
among Zonians.
"The Zonians were a strange bunch. They drank too much, they smoked too
much. It's so easy for humans to blame these things on the food they
ate, the water they drank or something they might have been exposed to.
But they never want to answer for the things they did to themselves."
Zonians acknowledge that their fears, at least so far, are based purely
on anecdotal information exchanged over the Internet or relayed during
the many reunions that Zonians have celebrated this year as the U.S.
presence in Panama comes to a close.
Johanna Carlson, a Zonian who grew up near Corozal and three other
military bases, said it is exactly the type of chemical exposure
described by Mr. Smith that is causing so many former residents to
raise concerns today. Now a resident of New York state, she has been
incapacitated for years by lupus, a potentially fatal auto-immune
disease linked to various environmental and genetic factors.
One of Ms. Carlson's closest childhood friends from her old
neighborhood in the Canal Zone, Cynthia Rudesheim Derrick, is
incapacitated with the same disease. Both suspect that environmental
factors, particularly their long-term, daily exposure to DDT and the
fact that they rode horses regularly near one suspected toxic-waste
dump, could have played a role in their disease.
"I loved my childhood there. It was wonderful. But there was also
something bad there. Something horrible," Ms. Carlson said. "We used to
run behind the DDT trucks every evening. We all played in it....I know
there were many, many other chemicals the military used."
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