DATE: Friday, July 25, 1997                 TAG: 9707250664

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A5   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS

DATELINE: WASHINGTON                        LENGTH:   76 lines

PENTAGON WARNING 100,000 VETS OF POSSIBLE EXPOSURE TO IRAQI GAS BUT OFFICIALS INSIST EXPOSURE WAS TOO SMALL TO HAVE CAUSED HEALTH PROBLEMS.

The Pentagon is notifying nearly 100,000 Persian Gulf War veterans they may have been exposed to Iraqi poison gas but apparently in amounts too small to have caused health problems.

While insisting that no U.S. troops encountered dangerous levels of chemical agents, Pentagon officials said Thursday that they would use new computer-generated estimates of troop exposure to study long-term health effects.

It is not clear what constitutes a ``dangerous level'' of exposure, although the Pentagon's new data show the vaporized Iraqi gas was in concentrations well below levels known to kill or incapacitate humans. No troops reported health problems at the time, but in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War some have suggested that exposure to Iraqi chemicals could be a cause of the mysterious ailments, known as Gulf War Illness, suffered by many veterans.

Relatively little is known about the long-term effects in humans from exposure to small amounts of nerve agent, said Bernard Rostker, head of the Defense Department office investigating the causes of Gulf War Illness. What evidence exists suggests there are no harmful effects, he told a news conference.

``I think we're much closer to solving the mystery'' of whether chemical exposure is linked to veterans' undiagnosed ailments, such as memory loss and chronic fatigue, Rostker said.

In June 1996 the Pentagon first acknowledged that U.S. troops unknowingly demolished chemical weapons in an open pit at the Khamisiyah ammunition depot in southern Iraq in March 1991. Thursday's report was its first estimate of how many soldiers likely encountered the vapor cloud created by the demolition.

Based on computer models and interviews with soldiers involved in the demolition, the Pentagon and the CIA determined that 98,910 U.S. soldiers - plus a smaller but unspecified number of non-U.S. troops - were exposed to very low levels of sarin gas, a nerve agent Iraq had put in hundreds of 122mm rockets.

Most of the troops were from the Army's 18th Airborne Corps and 7th Corps.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., who has been highly critical of the Pentagon's investigation of Gulf War Illness, called Thursday's report ``unsettling news'' for veterans. He also questioned the Pentagon's estimate that only 18 percent of the sarin at Khamisiyah was released into the atmosphere.

``I have very real concerns that the exposure was, in fact, greater than the Pentagon is now reporting,'' Rockefeller said. ``And I continue to be worried that there were `other Khamisiyahs' that we still don't know about.''

Last year the Pentagon contacted about 20,000 gulf war veterans who were within 31 miles of the Khamisiyah site around the time of the demolition. At that point, the Pentagon was unsure of the size or path of the vapor cloud.

Rostker said 26 soldiers among 7,400 who responded to that survey reported symptoms that could be attributed to exposure to sarin, but the symptoms, such as dizziness and blurred vision, might also be caused by the flu. Nine of the 26 soldiers were not in the area over which the sarin gas cloud traveled.

In its latest analysis, the Pentagon identified Army units that were in the area covered by the vapor cloud that drifted hundreds of miles south, into Saudi Arabia. It is asking soldiers from those units who have health problems that might be related to their war service to report it and get a medical exam.

``Our analysis shows that the exposure levels would have been too low to activate chemical alarms or to cause any symptoms at the time,'' the letter says.

``Although little is known about the long-term effects from a brief, low-level exposure to nerve agents, the current medical evidence indicates that long-term health problems are unlikely,'' it added.

The Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs are sponsoring several studies, including one to determine whether soldiers who suffer from Gulf War Illness were among the 98,910 who were exposed to gas from Khamisiyah. KEYWORDS: GULF WAR SYNDROME PERSIAN GULF WAR CHEMICAL

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