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Lead poisoning at Army bases

Rogue Valley

Rogue Valley

Lead or get out of the way
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Senators demand answers on reported lead poisoning at Army bases

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8/181/18
A handful of senators sent a letter to Army on Friday asking about reports of lead poisoning on U.S. military bases and urging officials to outline steps they are taking to protect any affected families and children. “The health and safety of our servicemembers and their families are of the utmost importance,” Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), David Perdue (R-Ga.), Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) wrote in the letter to Army Secretary Mark Esper obtained by Reuters. "We ask that you provide our offices with a detailed briefing as soon as possible outlining the immediate and long-term mitigation strategy to keep military families safe, provide medical treatment for those potentially or previously affected, make long-lasting repairs and finally, provide legislative proposals or guidance on legislation needed to hold contractors accountable." The senators cited a Reuters investigation published this week that found instances of lead poisoning at on-base housing at Army bases in Georgia, Louisiana, Texas and Kentucky.

Reuters reported that more than 1,000 young children tested at military clinics had elevated lead levels between 2011 and 2016. It also found military bases failed to report children’s blood test results to state health departments in violation of state laws. “We are committed to providing a safe and secure environment on all of our installations, and to providing the highest quality of care to our service members, their families and all those entrusted to our care,” Army spokeswoman Colonel Kathleen Turner said, according to Reuters. Isakson serves as chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, while Kaine and Perdue are members of the Armed Services panel.
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Let's fix these down-to-earth kind of problems before spending trillions on a Space Force.

Related: Special Report: Reuters' testing triggers lead cleanup at Fort Knox base
 
Rogue Valley said:
Senators demand answers on reported lead poisoning at Army bases

lead-FAQ-XRF-300x200.jpg




Let's fix these down-to-earth kind of problems before spending trillions on a Space Force.

Related: Special Report: Reuters' testing triggers lead cleanup at Fort Knox base
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How do you rid of lead poisoning on army bases? Fort hood and fort jackson still heavily use lead panit in their barracks, infact in fort jackson I remember placks saying those barracks were nbc shelters as well, implying they were meant to stop nuclear chemichal and biological attacks, Their effectiveness at such would be questionable however probably much better than nothing.

Lead paint was not only a common use item in older buildings, but also believed to stop radiation(not sure if true or not but used for it none the less) and besides lead paint lead ammo is always used by soldiers, even if copper plated they all contain lead.
 
beerftw said:
How do you rid of lead poisoning on army bases? Fort hood and fort jackson still heavily use lead panit in their barracks, infact in fort jackson I remember placks saying those barracks were nbc shelters as well, implying they were meant to stop nuclear chemichal and biological attacks, Their effectiveness at such would be questionable however probably much better than nothing.

Lead paint was not only a common use item in older buildings, but also believed to stop radiation(not sure if true or not but used for it none the less) and besides lead paint lead ammo is always used by soldiers, even if copper plated they all contain lead.
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Sure, soldiers deserve lead poisoning because that's a hazard of their job, but that's not what the stories about:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...s-army-bases-as-hazards-ignored-idUSKBN1L11IP
a call from JC’s pediatrician: He had high levels of lead in his blood. When Darlena told Villages of Benning of his poisoning, contractors ordered home testing.

The results: At least 113 spots in the home had lead paint, including several peeling or crumbling patches
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Reuters tested five homes at Benning, using a methodology designed with a Columbia University geochemist. All five contained hazardous levels of deteriorating lead paint within reach of children, in one case exceeding the federal threshold by a factor of 58.

Testing turned up problems elsewhere as well. At West Point, New York, home of the United States Military Academy, paint chips falling from a family’s front door contained lead at 19 times the federal threshold.

At Kentucky’s Fort Knox, whose vaults hold much of America’s gold reserves, Reuters found paint peeling from a covered porch where small kids play. It contained 50 percent lead by weight, or 100 times the threshold.
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The billions Trump wants to spend on a Space Force, or military parade, could be used to clear neurotoxins out of the homes of soldiers families.
 
apdst said:
Oh, now it's a problem. :lamo
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Only for those who care about the US military. Obviously, that's not either you or beerftw.
 
apdst said:
Oh, now it's a problem. :lamo
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Well, it's always been a problem. But you know the military: Grey walls painted with cheap bad paint is always better than grey walls painted with expensive good paint. And as long as the faucet works, it ain't broke.

But I'm surprised I'm the first one to bring up that the military is supposed to deal in lead poisoning. <---- Get it? Yeah, you get it.
 
Rogue Valley said:
Only for those who care about the US military. Obviously, that's not either you or beerftw.
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Where were you, oh, two years ago? When Obama was prez. :lamo
 
Rogue Valley said:
Senators demand answers on reported lead poisoning at Army bases

lead-FAQ-XRF-300x200.jpg




Let's fix these down-to-earth kind of problems before spending trillions on a Space Force.

Related: Special Report: Reuters' testing triggers lead cleanup at Fort Knox base
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As usual, the stuff dems promised they would fix, they never did. Instead they like to call out republicans for the failures of the dems. :lol:

April 2016 - "In 2005, then-Senator Barack Obama, supported by then-Senator Hillary Clinton, forced the Bush administration to issue a long-overdue rule to ensure contractors used lead-safe work practices when conducting renovations, repairs, and painting work at homes and child-occupied facilities. So when Senator Obama became President Obama, there was tremendous promise for advances in lead poisoning prevention.

By the second half of 2009, it appeared that promise was turning into reality. Under President Obama’s leadership, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made lead poisoning prevention a priority and undertook a series of important commitments to protect children. Despite that initial success, many of those prevention efforts were foundering by late 2010. ..."



Unfulfilled: EPA?s 2009 commitment to fix lead-based paint hazard standard
 
apdst said:
Where were you, oh, two years ago? When Obama was prez. :lamo
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Duh. The extent of the problem wasn't known two years ago. It's known now.

Why do you hate the military?
 
spud_meister said:
Sure, soldiers deserve lead poisoning because that's a hazard of their job, but that's not what the stories about:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...s-army-bases-as-hazards-ignored-idUSKBN1L11IP



The billions Trump wants to spend on a Space Force, or military parade, could be used to clear neurotoxins out of the homes of soldiers families.
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Clearing neurotoxins out of homes is not an easy task, besides lead paint being widely used until 1979 for civilian structures, and likely much later for military structures, it can be too big a challenge to overcome short of tearing everything down and restarting. No one stops to think about how much lead is in the soil either, your housing unit built in the 80's may have been a gun range in the 70's, leaving heavy amounts of lead in the soil. There may have been dioxin tested in areas before housing was put up, as the worst dioxin is simply known to be in agent orange, and military equipment to this day still has beyond normal dioxin traces, no imagine that in concentrated areas.
 
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This reminds me of the story about toxins in the drinking water at Camp LeJeune for the Marine Corps. It was covered 5 years ago or so and was front page story on a magazine I was reading at the time, can't remember which.

The base had the wells for its drinking water right next to the POL facilities, about as dumb as you can get. Big healthy marines with breast cancer, not a good thing.

Here the Army has bad water like Flint Michigan. :doh
 
Suffer the children?

apdst said:
Where were you, oh, two years ago? When Obama was prez. :lamo
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The problem (& the context here) is loose/flaking lead paint in military residences. & the issue isn't the troops, it's their children, especially as children are prone to pick @ loose paint, chew woodwork, inhale loose particles - especially if they play on the floor. Lead - long-term exposure, even @ minuscule levels - is a neurotoxin, with nasty (permanent?) effects on the CNS. Chelation is possible, but it's expensive, intensive - & I don't know if it works well for children or not.

Lead has been phased out of gasoline & house paint in the US for some time, by federal law.

& no, I don't care who was in charge @ the time of the original problem, or in between, or now. We have obligations to our military - & certainly their children didn't sign up to barter away their health & possibly life for the cause, no matter how noble. This situation needs to be fixed as soon as immediately possible. Which means all military family housing needs to be checked, & then barracks, & then all other military offices, warehouses, anywhere that lead could have been used & abandoned in place or covered over with other materials. (& some expertise is needed - sometimes, like asbestos - if the material is isolated & stable, it's best to note its presence & leave it there, until demolition of the building. The note is make sure that demolition minimizes dust/particles from the lead).
 
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