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CITING AGENT ORANGE EXPOSURE, CANADIAN VETERANS
ARE
FIGHTING BACK -- Vets contend their exposure to
defoliant
triggered the cancer that is killing them
today.
Story here...
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/
news/story.html?id=ac56d5a9-dd7b-4468-8204-fc2427e43d2e
Story below:
---------------
Citing toxic exposure, veterans fight back
'I'm doing this because I think it can help the
others.'
JAN RAVENSBERGEN
The Gazette
Chester Bednarski of Kirkland contends that his officer training during
the late 1970s, which exposed him to defoliant Agent Orange, triggered
the cancer that is killing him today.
He's not alone. Another 1,400 Canadian Forces veterans or family members
with a past connection to CFB Gagetown in New Brunswick have raised a
spectrum of concerns about the health effects of the herbicide, and are
trying to get their day in court under class-action law.
"We spent a lot of time crawling around the training area, eating a lot
of dust" at the base outside Fredericton, Bednarski recalled, inhaling
"constant plumes of dust" raised by tanks.
Bednarski is now 60.
His doctors tell him he's perhaps months from death, from inoperable
kidney cancer.
He's one of many ex-Gagetowners with a range of medical problems after
"really rolling around in the plants and the dirt, in intimate contact
with the flora" on the base, as Bednarski phrased it.
Thousands of Canadian soldiers were exposed to 1.3 million litres of
defoliants, including Agent Orange, sprayed at Gagetown between the
mid-1950s and 1984, according to Department of National Defence records.
Most of the time, Ottawa argues, the defoliants used at the base were
identical to those being sprayed commercially.
But Agent Orange tested by the U.S. military in Gagetown in 1966 and
1967 was produced south of the border under accelerated conditions
during the Vietnam War - and has been shown to have contained
higher-than-usual levels of dioxin, rated a Group 1 carcinogen "known to
be carcinogenic to humans," by the International Agency for Research on
Cancer.
The U.S. National Toxicology Program also classifies dioxin as "known to
be a human carcinogen."
Bednarski's nine months at Gagetown led to junior officer status, as a
second lieutenant. He soon left the military for more lucrative work,
first as a business executive, then as a stockbroker.
Since 1995, Veterans Affairs Canada has approved five applications for
disability pensions submitted by ex-Gagetowners claiming ill effects
from Agent Orange exposure at the base.
Between June 1, 2005, and last Monday, Veterans Affairs rendered 1,203
decisions on requests for Agent Orange disability pensions. "The
majority" of those applications were related to service at Gagetown,
department official Julie Daoust said on Friday.
Veterans Affairs accepted two of those applications - and turned down
the rest of the ex-Gagetowners, she added.
Bednarski was among the overwhelming proportion of ex-Gagetowners who
were rejected. His turndown letter is dated July 16.
Undaunted, the former officer has chosen to stay on the front lines of
this fight - and assume a leadership role from his sickbed.
He has emerged as the Quebec lead plaintiff in a lawsuit over the health
effects of exposure to Agent Orange, Agent Purple, Agent White and other
herbicides at Gagetown.
Along with Bednarski, 1,400 former members of the Canadian military who
served at the base, or their family members who were housed there, have
enlisted in a class-action request filed in Federal Court in July 2005.
They claim "devastating illnesses in men, women and children" and
"premature and wrongful death" because of "negligent spraying of harmful
chemicals, including Agent Orange."
Bednarski is one of 18 plaintiffs - so far - from Quebec.
Ottawa "is committed to a timely response to Agent Orange concerns,"
Daoust said, and is developing "compensation options for government
consideration that are fair and compassionate."
Although those options will probably be "considered later this fall or
in early 2007," she added, no time frame has been set for them to be
implemented.
The class-action suit, which several Ottawa officials including Daoust
said is completely independent of the compensation-options process, has
already raised a series of legal issues that boost the prospects for
appeals along several steps of the way.
And with a final court verdict probably years away, Bednarski has no
illusions he will last the distance.
"There's no magic pill for what I've got," he said. "I've made my peace
with God.
"I'm doing this because I think it can help the others," including his
wife, other veterans and their families.
The case stalled temporarily after Ottawa filed court papers in March
contending that herbicide producers Dow Chemical Co. and Monsanto Co.
should both be parties to the action because they produced the Agent
Orange used at Gagetown in 1966 and 1967 - and should be liable to the
Crown for any damages.
On May 3, for that reason, the lawsuit was moved to provincial
jurisdiction from Federal Court. On Sept. 22, the Manitoba Court of
Queen's Bench ruled that the request for class-action certification - a
necessary step to keep the case moving - should be heard in that
province.
The Crown, which argued vigorously that the case should be tried in New
Brunswick, hadn't yet announced by the end of last week whether it will
appeal.
None of the claims has been proven in court. The plaintiffs haven't
pinpointed actual and punitive damages sought.
A son of postwar Polish immigrants, Bednarski signed up in Thunder Bay,
Ont., in 1965. He served 12 years as an enlisted man, including almost
five in West Germany. He then took unpaid leave to study Russian, Far
Eastern history and political science at McGill University.
That degree of initiative got him admitted to officer training - an
unusual accomplishment, given his status as an enlisted man with a
high-school education.
But it also landed him in Gagetown.
In the summer of 2005, "a big ache in the side of my gut" sent Bednarski
to his doctor.
His right kidney was removed last January. But the malignancy had
spread.
Now generally bed-ridden, Bednarski said he has "good days and bad
days," his home care eased by "the professionalism, caregiving and
tenderness" of the Victorian Order of Nurses, now known as NOVA.
janr@thegazette.canwest.com
- - -
U.S. settlement
About 291,000 people - U.S. military veterans who served in Vietnam and
family members - obtained a $180-million U.S. class-action settlement in
1984 with Dow, Monsanto and five other companies for damages suffered as
a result of their exposure to Agent Orange used to defoliate large
swaths of South Vietnamese jungle and parts of Cambodia between 1961 and
1971.
Those payments ended in 1997.
While the U.S. settlement "is no precedent for liability," a Federal
Court judge in Canada ruled last May, it "illustrates the rationale for
the claim" over Gagetown.
- - -
For more information
An extensive website has been developed and maintained by the Agent
Orange Association of Canada, an advocacy group for ex-Gagetowners.
www.agentorangealert.com
provides links to:
An internal Department of National Defence document obtained under the
federal Access to Information Act indicating that more than 1.3 million
litres of Agent Orange, Agent Purple and Agent White and other
defoliants were sprayed at CFB Gagetown from 1956 to 1984;
Research material.
A detailed timeline.
An Agent Orange litigation site maintained by Merchant Law Group of
Regina, Sask. The national law firm has filed statements of claim
seeking damages over Gagetown spraying in provincial courts across
Canada. It is poised to proceed with a national class-action suit in
Manitoba.
EVIDENCE OF LINK
Veterans Affairs Canada says the U.S. Institute of Medicine, or IOM, "is
the leading scientific authority on Agent Orange" and has concluded
there is "sufficient evidence of an association" for five types of
medical conditions resulting from exposure:
Chronic lymphocytic leukemia, soft-tissue sarcomas, non-Hodgkin's
lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease, Chloracne.
The IOM has also found "limited or suggestive evidence of an
association" for seven other conditions, the department notes:
Respiratory cancer (of lung and bronchus, larynx, and trachea), prostate
cancer, multiple myeloma, early onset transient peripheral neuropathy,
porphyria cutanea tarda, Type 2 diabetes, spina bifida in the children
of veterans.
Veterans Affairs says it "accepts the findings of the IOM" and adds that
"we use these findings to help rule on pension applications in relation
to Agent Orange."
Click on "Agent Orange" at:
www.vac-acc.gc.ca/general or call: 1-866-522-2122
INFORMATION
Department of National Defence has posted a variety of reports and
information on the use of herbicides at Gagetown:
www.forces.gc.ca/site/Reports/defoliant/index_e.asp
The Base Gagetown and Area Fact-Finders' Project has a mandate to report
to the federal government on herbicide spraying programs at Gagetown:
www.basegagetownandareafactfindersproject.ca or call:
1-866-830-9090.
---------------
Larry Scott
