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>[...] U.S. special operations forces who deployed to a military site in Uzbekistan shortly after the 9/11 attacks found pond water that glowed green, black goo

>[...] U.S. special operations forces who deployed to a military site in Uzbekistan shortly after the 9/11 attacks found pond water that glowed green, black goo oozing from the ground and signs warning “radiation hazard. [...] After returning from combat years later, we are all coming down with various forms of cancer that the [Department of Veterans Affairs] is refusing to acknowledge,” said retired Army Chief Warrant Officer Scott Welsch [...] That's insane. As someone completely unfamiliar with such proceedings, shouldn't locations be checked for such, well, dramatic attributes? If so, what went wrong here? Because this is not satisfying: >The U.S. military jumped on using K2 because it had few other good options in the immediate response to 9/11, said former Army Reserve Capt. Ken Richards, who deployed to the base in 2002, and was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2009. "There were a lot of good reasons to accept what they [the Uzbeks] gave us,” Richards said. “Safety was never an issue.”

eloff 7y ago
To play devil's advocate, yeah that sounds bad, but the article didn't quantify any risks. If the risk of cancer for those stationed there rose by some small fraction of a percent per day, it may still have been basically irrelevant compared to the very real combat risks these people faced. In fact it may well have been irrelevant compared to e.g. A chest or dental x-ray or even a transatlantic flight. We just don't know without hard numbers.
- krageon 7y ago
  > We just don't know without hard numbers. If the risk increased only very little, it would be extremely unlikely for there to be such a big blip in cancer occurrence. The combat risk is always going to be there, but the cancer is not. Putting those against each other isn't terribly relevant from a decision-making standpoint (unless the odds are very, very low - but we know this is not likely) So really, we can know a few things with a reasonable degree of certainty.
  - eloff 7y ago
    Is it such a big blip? I didn't see that established either, but I may have missed it while skimming through. The risk of having to support troops from a suboptimal spot further away could have a very real impact on casualty rate in a conflict. So I think you do really have to quantify the tradeoffs here to say if one is better than the other.
    - kaikai 7y ago
      It is a big blip, and they talk about it in the article.
- omarhaneef 7y ago
  From the article: 61 people were diagnosed with cancer 7005 people were stationed there 5 brain cancers in 7,005 the US base rate is 1 in 16,000 for brain cancer (And this might undercount special forces etc etc)
  - eloff 7y ago
    So for brain cancer anyway we're in the neighborhood of an order of magnitude increase in risk over the general population. This is significant and seems reasonable to say it may be higher than the number of lives that could have been saved in combat by using this base.
    - noir_lord 7y ago
      Worse than that, not many 70 year olds in the us military.
      - eloff 7y ago
        True this rate will get worse over time.
- baybal2 7y ago
  Many explosives are carcinogens
  - eloff 7y ago
    That's mostly neither here nor there if you don't eat them or handle them directly.
    - baybal2 7y ago
      But live ammo training is where soldier breathe in the combustion products and vapours from the portion of explosives that did not combust.
- kaikai 7y ago
  No one is asking for a risk-free military experience. They're asking for the VA to cover their medical expenses, which means recognizing that they're a result of their deployment.
  - eloff 7y ago
    Yes, I think this is sufficiently established and the least the government can do here. That we even have to debate that at all is sad.
smacktoward 7y ago
> As someone completely unfamiliar with such proceedings, shouldn't locations be checked for such, well, dramatic attributes? It's depressing, but not surprising. This was right after 9/11, remember, when the war in Afghanistan was just getting started. Whenever the switch gets flipped from "peacetime" to "wartime," a lot of the military's usual peacetime processes tend to fall by the wayside. Everybody's vision narrows down to just doing whatever needs to get done to win the war. There's also usually a greater willingness to accept risk to personnel, because the very definition of "risk" shifts. The people you're sending into the field are now facing the very serious risk of bad guys shooting bullets at them all day, so "this place we're billeting them might give them cancer in ten years" seems like less of a big deal than it would in peacetime. If this base was one of the only ways we could get within range to strike a blow at the Taliban, I could totally see a general deciding that it was worth exposing their soldiers to potential health risks years down the line in order to get the capability to strike that blow.
jandrewrogers 7y ago
Pond water glowing green is almost certainly bioluminescence. Radioactive waste does not give off a green glow, popular myth notwithstanding. (Phosphors will give off a green glow when in very close proximity to an alpha emitter, which is the genesis of this myth, but that is not what we are talking about here). From a cancer risk standpoint, I'd be far more worried about organic (and metallo-organic) chemical dumping, which is endemic in less developed parts of the world.
- AWildC182 7y ago
  And if it actually glowed through Cherenkov radiation (blue instead of green) they'd be dead if they saw it... That's not to say they didn't likely still end up in a radioactive hellhole though.
  - Xixi 7y ago
    Why do you think they would be dead if they saw Cherenkov radiation? It's a matter of depth: if the radioactive material was deep in the pond, they should be fine. I could see the Cherenkov radiation (indeed blue and not green) when I visited the Cattenom nuclear power plant [1] two decades ago: it was used nuclear fuel (uranium rods) stored at the bottom of a 50 meters deep pool. There was nothing between us (visitors) and the pool. 50 meters of water is pretty good insulation from radioactivity. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattenom_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattenom_Nuclear_Power_Plant
    - AWildC182 7y ago
      If a pond is glowing blue it's safe to assume there is far more radioactive contamination laying around than there is near the Chernobyl elephant foot. In a reactor it's contained but sitting near some random army base is bit different...
fcsp 7y ago
Nothing went "wrong" here, the managers evaluated the risks from their office and decided that this is the greater good. Some other manager now has to deal with the aftermath while meeting their expected budget to get their annual bonus.

eloff 7y ago

To play devil's advocate, yeah that sounds bad, but the article didn't quantify any risks. If the risk of cancer for those stationed there rose by some small fraction of a percent per day, it may still have been basically irrelevant compared to the very real combat risks these people faced. In fact it may well have been irrelevant compared to e.g. A chest or dental x-ray or even a transatlantic flight. We just don't know without hard numbers.

krageon 7y ago
> We just don't know without hard numbers. If the risk increased only very little, it would be extremely unlikely for there to be such a big blip in cancer occurrence. The combat risk is always going to be there, but the cancer is not. Putting those against each other isn't terribly relevant from a decision-making standpoint (unless the odds are very, very low - but we know this is not likely) So really, we can know a few things with a reasonable degree of certainty.
- eloff 7y ago
  Is it such a big blip? I didn't see that established either, but I may have missed it while skimming through. The risk of having to support troops from a suboptimal spot further away could have a very real impact on casualty rate in a conflict. So I think you do really have to quantify the tradeoffs here to say if one is better than the other.
  - kaikai 7y ago
    It is a big blip, and they talk about it in the article.
omarhaneef 7y ago
From the article: 61 people were diagnosed with cancer 7005 people were stationed there 5 brain cancers in 7,005 the US base rate is 1 in 16,000 for brain cancer (And this might undercount special forces etc etc)
- eloff 7y ago
  So for brain cancer anyway we're in the neighborhood of an order of magnitude increase in risk over the general population. This is significant and seems reasonable to say it may be higher than the number of lives that could have been saved in combat by using this base.
  - noir_lord 7y ago
    Worse than that, not many 70 year olds in the us military.
    - eloff 7y ago
      True this rate will get worse over time.
baybal2 7y ago
Many explosives are carcinogens
- eloff 7y ago
  That's mostly neither here nor there if you don't eat them or handle them directly.
  - baybal2 7y ago
    But live ammo training is where soldier breathe in the combustion products and vapours from the portion of explosives that did not combust.
kaikai 7y ago
No one is asking for a risk-free military experience. They're asking for the VA to cover their medical expenses, which means recognizing that they're a result of their deployment.
- eloff 7y ago
  Yes, I think this is sufficiently established and the least the government can do here. That we even have to debate that at all is sad.

smacktoward 7y ago

> As someone completely unfamiliar with such proceedings, shouldn't locations be checked for such, well, dramatic attributes? It's depressing, but not surprising. This was right after 9/11, remember, when the war in Afghanistan was just getting started. Whenever the switch gets flipped from "peacetime" to "wartime," a lot of the military's usual peacetime processes tend to fall by the wayside. Everybody's vision narrows down to just doing whatever needs to get done to win the war. There's also usually a greater willingness to accept risk to personnel, because the very definition of "risk" shifts. The people you're sending into the field are now facing the very serious risk of bad guys shooting bullets at them all day, so "this place we're billeting them might give them cancer in ten years" seems like less of a big deal than it would in peacetime. If this base was one of the only ways we could get within range to strike a blow at the Taliban, I could totally see a general deciding that it was worth exposing their soldiers to potential health risks years down the line in order to get the capability to strike that blow.

jandrewrogers 7y ago

Pond water glowing green is almost certainly bioluminescence. Radioactive waste does not give off a green glow, popular myth notwithstanding. (Phosphors will give off a green glow when in very close proximity to an alpha emitter, which is the genesis of this myth, but that is not what we are talking about here). From a cancer risk standpoint, I'd be far more worried about organic (and metallo-organic) chemical dumping, which is endemic in less developed parts of the world.

AWildC182 7y ago
And if it actually glowed through Cherenkov radiation (blue instead of green) they'd be dead if they saw it... That's not to say they didn't likely still end up in a radioactive hellhole though.
- Xixi 7y ago
  Why do you think they would be dead if they saw Cherenkov radiation? It's a matter of depth: if the radioactive material was deep in the pond, they should be fine. I could see the Cherenkov radiation (indeed blue and not green) when I visited the Cattenom nuclear power plant [1] two decades ago: it was used nuclear fuel (uranium rods) stored at the bottom of a 50 meters deep pool. There was nothing between us (visitors) and the pool. 50 meters of water is pretty good insulation from radioactivity. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattenom_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattenom_Nuclear_Power_Plant
  - AWildC182 7y ago
    If a pond is glowing blue it's safe to assume there is far more radioactive contamination laying around than there is near the Chernobyl elephant foot. In a reactor it's contained but sitting near some random army base is bit different...

fcsp 7y ago

Nothing went "wrong" here, the managers evaluated the risks from their office and decided that this is the greater good. Some other manager now has to deal with the aftermath while meeting their expected budget to get their annual bonus.