The Air Force is increasing a assessment of cancers for service members who labored with nuclear missiles

The Air Force is increasing its research of whether or not service members who labored with nuclear missiles have had unusually excessive charges of most cancers after a preliminary assessment decided {that a} deeper examination is required.

The preliminary research was launched in response to stories that many who served are actually unwell. The Air Force isn’t making its preliminary findings of most cancers numbers public for a month or so, however launched its preliminary evaluation Monday that extra assessment is important.

“We’ve determined that additional study is warranted” primarily based on preliminary analyses of the information, stated Lt. Col. Keith Beam, considered one of a number of Air Force medical officers who up to date reporters on the service’s missile neighborhood most cancers assessment.

The findings are a part of a sweeping assessment undertaken by the Air Force earlier this yr to find out if missileers – the launch officers who labored underground to function the nation’s silo-launched nuclear missiles – had been uncovered to unsafe contaminants. The assessment started after scores of these present or former missile launch officers got here ahead this yr to report they’ve been recognized with most cancers.

In response, medical groups went out to every nuclear missile base to conduct hundreds of assessments of the air, water, soil and floor areas inside and round every of its three nuclear missile bases; Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota and F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming.

At a briefing Friday with reporters to debate its findings forward of the discharge, the Air Force stated not one of the greater than 2,000 samples of air, water and soil at both the Montana or Wyoming bases got here again displaying dangerous ranges of contamination. However 4 places within the underground launch management capsules the place the missileers labored had unsafe ranges of PCBs. The service continues to be ready on outcomes from the North Dakota base.

PCBs are oily or waxy substances which were recognized as a possible carcinogen by the Environmental Protection Agency.

But whereas that information could present that the air, water and soil are protected now, it nonetheless raises questions as to what earlier missile launch officers could have breathed in or been uncovered to up to now. The silos and underground management capsules had been dug in the course of the Sixties and far of that infrastructure hasn’t been up to date since.

“We can’t return and take a look at to totally quantify what was there within the ‘90s or 2000s, or even the ’50s and ‘60s,” said Col. Tory Woodard, commander of the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine. “But we can use this data to help us inform what those risks might have been.”

Woodard said between the sampling and further data review, it will help the Air Force “build a risk profile of what past members may have been exposed to.”

To help with that the Air Force is expanding its review of medical records to try to account for as many service members as possible. The initial dataset only goes back to 2001, when DOD began using electronic medical records. But the group they hope to capture includes any personnel who worked with military nuclear missiles going back to 1976, and will add Department of Veterans Affairs data and state cancer registries.

“The limitations that were discovered with this initial dataset is driving us to open the aperture to ensure that we are capturing as many cases as possible, particularly among those who previously served in missile related career fields,” the Air Force said in a statement.

In all, the study hopes to capture data on all missile community members who served from 1976 to 2010.

The Air Force response is far different this time than it has been in the past, when earlier generations of missile launch officers raised concerns about illnesses among their community. For years the missileers were told in multiple Air Force reviews that there was not cause for concern.

But the issue received significantly more attention this year as scores of current or former officers or their surviving family members joined forces and went public with self-reported data of their cancers. In particular, 41 of those launch officers self-reported a diagnoses of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a blood cancer. Those families have formed an organization, called the Torchlight Initiative, to heighten awareness on the issue.

While the Air Force review is looking at a broader set of cancers, the number of self-reported NHL cases is striking because the community of missile launch officers is very small. Nationwide rates of NHL are 18.7 per 100,000 people, according to the National Cancer Institute.

For comparison, there have only been about 21,000 who have served as missileers since the 1960s, according to the Torchlight Initiative. The entire missile community population – to include maintainers to fix the warheads and security forces who patrolled the sites – is likely about 84,000, the Air Force said.

In a statement, the Torchlight Initiative said “despite the air, water, and soil findings, the PCB results are concerning. The missile community continues to struggle with disproportionate rates of cancer. The community is in desperate need of appropriate exposure documentation so they can get the care they need.”

The heightened response in the Air Force is part of an overall sea change within the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs to look more bluntly at the issue of exposure to toxic contaminants such as exposure to radiation or harmful air particles in military occupations.

It often still requires a grassroots effort, whether by the Torchlight Initiative, or by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who breathed in toxic fumes from trash-burning pits on base, or by individual pilots drawing attention to numbers of sickened aviators who all flew the same airframe, such as the Navy’s E-2 Hawkeye radar airplane, to drive additional motion on army most cancers clusters.

Perhaps the largest distinction from years previous within the Air Force‘s missileer community is that a number of those diagnosed officers are still serving, and many of the officers leading the missile community now have ties to former missileers who have been diagnosed with or have died of cancer.

“I personally know a number of the folks who are non-Hodgkin lymphoma survivors, so a lot of empathy and a lot of desire to understand better,” said Col. Barry Little, commander of the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base. “We’re leaving no stone unturned.”