Military Pollution Will Remain a Threat for Years, Doctors Report

The Cold War may be over, but the poisons that are a byproduct of the nation’s military machine remain a threat to health and the environment, a doctors’ group reported Saturday.

More than 11,000 sites at more than 900 facilities of the Department of Defense and Department of Energy are contaminated, either with radioactive materials or chemicals, according to the report by Physicians for Social Responsibility.

“Military pollution at both DOD and DOE facilities will remain one of the nation’s most critical problems for years to come,” said the report by the physicians’ group, which has been active on both peace and environmental issues.

“With the end of the Cold War, threats to U.S. national security from outside its borders have sharply decreased. But the toxic threat to the health and the environment of the American people posed by its own military complex is dangerously high,” the report said.

Lt. Col. Dave Garner, a Defense Department spokesman, said Saturday that the agency could not comment until it reviews the study. An Energy Department spokesman did not return a telephone message.

A high-level Defense Department official told a congressional subcommittee Thursday that the “Administration recognizes that the post-Cold War era requires a new approach to solving DOD’s environmental problems.”

Sherri Wasserman Goodman, a deputy undersecretary of defense, said environmental concerns are being given more emphasis under Defense Secretary Les Aspin and President Clinton. “Our national security can and must include protection of the environment,” she said.

The pollution comes from the production, testing, cleaning and use of weapons, explosives and rocket fuels, vehicles, aircraft and electronic equipment, the physicians group reported.

“If you have a military base in or near your community, you most likely have a toxic waste problem nearby. Therefore the nation should have this as a priority because it is everywhere,” Peter P. Tyler, associate director of policy for the group, said Saturday.

The report criticized the Defense Department’s cleanup efforts so far, and questioned its estimates that the work would cost $25 billion. The real cost of purging military sites could be closer to $100 billion, it said.

All 50 states had some contamination, most from Defense Department sites such as military bases and airfields. Fourteen major Energy Department facilities and dozens of smaller and abandoned facilities in 24 states were contaminated by nuclear weapons research, production and testing, the report said.

The report cited a General Accounting Office estimate that the cleanup of Energy Department facilities could cost at least $150 billion over the next 30 years.

It said more information is needed on the health effects on workers at the polluted facilities and on people living nearby.