Intelligence

Nerve gas tests revealed

TheStar.com - Nerve gas tests revealed

75 soldiers, scientists exposed to sarin, VX gas, papers show
No follow-up on health effects of 40-year-old project

BRUCE CAMPION-SMITH
OTTAWA BUREAU

OTTAWA—Scientists and soldiers crawled through terrain contaminated with deadly VX nerve agents and exposed themselves to the dangerous chemicals to understand how they worked, documents obtained by the Toronto Star show.

Military officials say the tests, done in the 1950s and `60s and involving up to 75 people, would never be allowed today.

"We'd lose our jobs," said Dr. Thomas Sawyer, a scientist at the military base in Suffield, Alta., a windswept patch of prairie that has been home to Canada's research into chemical warfare since World War II.

But it was a different story 40 years ago, as scientists and military officials worked to understand these deadly nerve agents — and develop protections against them — amidst fears that the hair-trigger Cold War would turn Europe into a chemical battleground.

News that humans had been subjected to nerve agent testing sparked an outcry in 1988, led by federal New Democrats such as MP Jim Fulton, now retired.

But, Fulton says, the government immediately clamped down on the release of information. Government officials have recently said that virtually no one's health was affected by the tests, but they admit that they're not doing any follow-up today.

A defence department document prepared in 2002 outlines how Suffield became the testing ground for sarin and VX, some of the most toxic chemicals ever developed.

Nerve agents are absorbed through the respiratory system, the skin and the eyes. They attack the nervous system and in lethal doses, can cause death in a few minutes.

In one test, five students helped test how various fabrics worked removing drops of VX nerve agent, according to the note obtained under the Access to Information Act by Ottawa researcher Ken Rubin.

In another trial in 1967, scientists exposed two people to measure how much VX vapour it took to produce miosis, a constriction of the pupil, which is usually the first symptom of exposure to nerve agents.

The two people were given gas masks with one eye exposed for the test and "were removed to a safe location as soon as they developed miosis," the document said.

The four-page document, prepared for the minister of national defence, says there were only a "handful" of tests involving the deliberate exposure of humans to nerve agents "due to the hazard these materials posed."

It says that all test subjects "had a good insight into the conditions of the experiments and the safety precautions employed."

"Most of the subjects that were used in these experiments were the scientists and technologists doing the experiments themselves," said Clement Laforce, the deputy director-general of the defence department's Suffield research operation.

"A whole lot of them are still alive today, playing hockey and riding motorcycles," he said.

"They had families, they had mortgages, they liked to take vacations just like you and me. Believe me, they would not take unnecessary risks."

But even with that caveat, officials today concede that scientists at the time didn't fully understand the long-term consequences of exposure to even small doses of the materials.

"In those years, it's pretty safe to say that the common understanding was that nerve agents at sub-lethal doses had no long-term effects," Laforce said.

But over the years, that thinking has changed and there's now a recognition that even low-doses of the toxic substances can have a lasting impact.

"There does seem — I'm not going to define low-dose — does seem that there is indeed long-term effects to low-dose exposures," Sawyer said in an interview.

However, he added that the Canadian tests, usually involving just one or two drops of the nerve agents, were so limited that there would be no lasting health effects.

And officials say the tests were vital to understand how nerve agents worked.

"You have to understand the devil you might face to be able to protect against it," Laforce said.

"Was the research useful? I guess the best statement I can make is that the Canadian Forces and, by extension, the first responders in this country are amongst the best protected against chemical agents in the world," he said.

`We would not even dream of drafting a protocol nowadays that would involve exposure of humans to nerve agents.'

Clement Laforce,

Defence department official

Among the tests that were carried out, according to the defence document:

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Applying "very small quantities" of VX to the skin of nine "test subjects" for up to 12 hours "to determine the rate of evaporation, decomposition and absorption."

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Placing patches of battledress contaminated with one or five drops of VX on the forearms of 10 people for up to 24 hours. The briefing notes that the battle clothing provided a "ten-fold protection factor" from the chemical.

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Testing the ability of various fabrics in removing drops of VX from the hands of 24 people. In another trial, scientists looked at how much VX agent a person could remove with their finger from a cloth patch.

"All these experiments were carefully designed to minimize the hazard posed to the test subjects and were only conducted after extensive preliminary animal testing," the document said.

The briefing note hints at other tests in which personnel were not directly exposed to nerve agents "but which were nonetheless distinctly hazardous."

It describes "crawling trials" in which personnel wearing "full protective gear" crawled across 10 metres of terrain contaminated with VX to determine how much of the nerve agent would be picked up by their clothing. These trials, done in 1962 and 1965, involved six civilians and seven soldiers.

Laforce said the days of those kinds of tests are long gone.

"We have very strict guidelines as to any human experimentation ... and all of our protocols have to reviewed by a human ethics committee," he said.

"We would not even dream of drafting a protocol nowadays that would involve exposure of humans to nerve agents."

Fulton calls Suffield a "dark side" of the Canadian military.

"I don't think the full story of (Suffield) has been told," said Fulton, now executive director of the David Suzuki Foundation.

Fulton raised questions about the nerve agent testing during question period in 1988, and was stunned to see the government clampdown on the release of any information.

"In the 15 years I was in the House of Commons, I never saw the level of unusual security procedures that then surrounded me raising that in question period," he said in an interview last week.

"When I tried to dig into it, I found such extraordinary pushback."

A week after he raised the issue, his Parliament Hill office was broken into, and Fulton says, nothing was touched except for his paperwork on chemical testing.

"The Suffield file was the file that clearly had been tampered with," he said, adding that he has no idea who was responsible for the break-in.

Still, the public attention forced the government to promise to track down all the participants and assess whether their long-term health had been affected. The defence department established a special hotline that eventually fielded 132 calls.

But after a review, the department concluded that, with one exception, "nobody's long-term health was affected, said military spokesperson Commander Mike Considine.

He says there's been no monitoring of the soldiers' health over the years.

"We're not doing any pro-active follow-up with those folks. At the time they were reminded what the business was they were in and if anything should come up they should approach the department," he said.

"We don't know of anyone coming forward. ... As far as we're concerned, there's no issues here," he said.

However, one soldier exposed to deadly nerve agent has been compensated for his work.

In all, the federal government has paid out more than $20 million to soldiers who served as human guinea pigs in various secret chemical warfare testing programs over 30 years.

So far, 850 veterans — of the estimated 3,700 who took part in all of those programs — have each received tax-free payments of $24,000 "in recognition" of their service, said Lieutenant-Colonel Brian Sutherland, who administers the payouts.

July 19, 2005 at 03:44 PM in Cold War | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home