Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 7, 1993 TAG: 9301070215
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
MILITARY POISON-GASSED RECRUITS IN EXPERIMENTS
They were called "man-break" tests and their object was simple: To see how long it would take before young military recruits placed in sealed gas chambers would be overcome by two toxic chemicals.Many were exposed repeatedly. At a Navy lab in Washington, those suffering the classic symptoms of gas poisoning - inflamed eyes, laryngitis and nausea - were instructed to ignore their ailments and return to the chamber. In all, thousands of sailors and soldiers were subjected to the tests at military research facilities in Washington, Maryland and elsewhere during World War II - and then sworn to secrecy about the events.
The tests were not made public until June 1991, when the Department of Veterans Affairs acknowledged that many of the servicemen could have suffered long-term disabilities as a result. At that time, the VA called for a study by the National Academy of Sciences into other ailments that may have been caused by the gases.
That study, released Wednesday, shows that the injuries suffered were more grievous than previously believed.
In announcing the results, the VA agreed to add four respiratory cancers, skin cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and acute nonlymphocytic leukemia to the list of seven ailments it recognized in 1991 as linked to the tests.
"The years of silent suffering have ended for these World War II veterans," acting VA Secretary Anthony J. Principi said in a statement.
The study, conducted by a committee formed by the National Institute of Medicine, lays out in sometimes ghastly detail how more than 60,000 recruits were exposed to chlorinated mustard gas and an arsenic-laden chemical called Lewisite. The object of the testing was honorable: To devise clothing and ointments to protect allied service personnel from chemical weapons the War Department was confident Americans would face.
Those weapons were never used in combat. Yet an estimated 4,000 of the recruits underwent tests that exposed them to as much gas as they would have encountered in a full-scale chemical attack.
Often small drops of the chemicals were placed directly on the recruits' forearms. But in Washington, an estimated 2,500 sailors were shunted 10 at a time into 10-by-15-foot gas chambers and exposed to the gases for up to four hours.
Sometimes the men were not allowed to wear protective gear; and those with gas masks often found their rubber hoses leaked and proved ineffective. In one case, the men were given carbon-impregnated suspenders to wear over their shirts in the hopes that would give researchers a strip of protected skin to compare with exposed skin.
Describing the tests and decades of secrecy as "evidence of betrayal and a sad legacy," the committee report called on the VA to expand the number of medical ailments it has linked to gas exposure. The agency readily agreed.