The mother of a Marine from Columbus, Neb., who died of lung cancer after being exposed to toxins in Iraq is urging Nebraska’s congressional delegation to support a bill that would help other veterans potentially sickened by the same health hazard.
Connie Thomas said the bill, which would mandate medical exams for troops exposed to the “burn pits” — primitive landfills where contractors reportedly burned arsenic, cyanide and other hazardous materials — is an obvious way to protect American service members.
“If that was the law two years ago, maybe it would have saved Klayton’s life,” she said.
Sgt. Klayton Thomas died two days after Christmas, following a bout with an aggressive lung cancer that invaded his bones and brain with a speed that stunned doctors.
As The World-Herald first reported last Sunday, a growing number of experts suspect that thousands of Iraq War veterans’ lung ailments can be traced to the burn pits, which constantly billowed black smoke over dozens of military bases in Iraq.
Rep. Tim Bishop, D-N.Y., introduced a bill last year outlawing most burn pits. Nebraska’s five-man congressional delegation voted unanimously to pass it into law as part of a larger defense spending bill.
Now Bishop is drumming up support for a new bill that would detail the history of every burn pit in Iraq and Afghanistan, compile a registry of troops exposed to those burn pits and give those troops special medical exams.
Bishop, speaking at a Veterans Affairs public hearing last week, cited Thomas’ story as one example of “a disturbing pattern of sickness across Iraq and Afghanistan.”
“Our country’s difficult experiences with Agent Orange and Gulf War illness taught us that we must be vigilant … in treating our veterans long after they’ve returned from the battlefield,” he said.
The World-Herald received dozens of phone calls and e-mails following its first story on Thomas, including some from veterans who believe that they, too, might have been sickened by the burn pits.
A guardsman from Lincoln sometimes entered a burn pit four or five times a day and took photos to show his VA doctors in case he fell ill.
Craig McDowall of Omaha, a former Marine who went back to Iraq as a contractor, lived and worked approximately a mile from a burn pit.
McDowall experienced a nagging cough and a cold he couldn’t shake while living near the burn pit, which was constantly on fire and billowing black smoke, he said. He eventually suffered chest pains and was flown to a German hospital when doctors found inflammation around his heart.
And Harold Helwick of Hastings, a 52-year-old private contractor, spent many days in 2006, 2007 and 2008 hauling parts into and out of a burn pit near Taji, Iraq.
Helwick described the burn pit at Taji as longer than a football field. Bulldozers would push mountains of trash into 25-foot high piles. At least once a day, employees would set off controlled explosions to blow up weapons and ammo confiscated from Iraqi insurgents, he said.
He saw contractors burning entire trucks, transmissions, generators and electrical parts in a constant, raging fire that put off a noxious odor unlike anything he’d ever smelled.
In 2008, Helwick said he started having trouble breathing and felt constant pressure on his chest or back. He could no longer work out.
He was diagnosed with bronchitis in Iraq and then pneumonia in Germany. In December, doctors in the United States finally pinpointed the problem: a cancer that had spread into his back and lungs.
Doctors have told Helwick that, with luck, he may live two years.
“I hadn’t smoked since 1988, and I quit drinking then, too,” Helwick said. “You just have to wonder if the burn pit was what set this thing off.”
Thomas and his parents suspected the burn pits, as well, a suspicion that grew when they heard from doctors that “something toxic” had likely caused the 25-year-old nonsmoker to develop a cancer that generally afflicts much older smokers.
Connie Thomas said she’s thankful to Rep. Adrian Smith and Sen. Ben Nelson, both of whom provided help as her son’s health quickly deteriorated.
A staff member in Smith’s congressional office helped the sergeant move to a better hospital as his condition worsened, she said.
Both officials’ offices ensured that the military would continue to pay Thomas’ mounting medical bills at the nonmilitary hospital as the cancer invaded his bones and brain and he was forced to use a wheelchair.
Nelson called Connie Thomas’ cell phone and left a voice mail when her son died Dec. 27, just three months and 10 days after his original diagnosis.
Connie Thomas saved that message and plays it proudly for friends and relatives.
Now, Thomas said, she hopes the elected officials who helped her son will back legislation that could help others.
Nelson will review the bill if and when it is introduced in the Senate, said spokesman Jake Thompson.
Smith wants to see the results of the ongoing VA burn pit study before taking a stand on the new burn-pit legislation, said spokesman Charles Isom.
“I certainly would hope they support it,” Connie Thomas said of the bill. “They need to protect our military, and right now a lot of these guys might not know they have something wrong with them until it’s too late.”
Contact the writer:
444-1064, matthew.hansen@owh.com
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