Category: Human Interest

Silver Bullet – Another human cost of the Irish Air Corps Toxic Chemical Health & Safety scandal

Finding a silver bullet would be a good thing.

It would be great to get a the definite answer or even to establish why I am suffering in silence, embarrassed by years of sudden uncontrollable bowel issues, breathing issues & aching to the bones even after the slightest bit of manual work. Looking at other men your age running and exercising every day without a hint of tiredness.

When you say to your family that you have no energy to do basic household maintenance work you really mean it and are not being lazy or when you suddenly seem to enter a dark mood and depressive state for no reason.

Have ticked a lot of the boxes for the range of “unexplained symptoms” listed so far and I am really hoping that they are not caused by the workplace environment & chemical products handled over the years. Because it creates a real daily worry as to what the future holds. What quality of life will I have if some of the more serious illnesses that colleagues have suffered eventually get a grip on me!

See the known list of illnesses suffered by Air Corp Chemical Abuse survivors below.

Blind Date – Another human cost of the Irish Air Corps Toxic Chemical Health & Safety scandal

For a very long time now both my mother and my sister have been encouraging me to start writing a blog. ‘Tell people your story,’ they said. I never felt I’d anything interesting to write. Well my mother pointed out something interesting today. She said ‘it’s been twenty years since the date your eyesight went’. I never really thought of myself as getting old, but twenty years is a long time. How much has changed.

Back in 1996, I was 18 and in my second year as an apprentice with the Irish Air Corps. I had joined up when I was 16 and with typical teenage brashness I thought I was the shit. And sure why not. All I’d ever wanted to do was serve. After a youth watching Rambo, Top Gun and Hot Shots on an endless loop, I had my whole career planned out. Alas it was not to be. Over a period of a few weeks around March/April 1996 I started messing up a lot; maps upside down, knocking over pints, not being able to read my writing, not saluting officers, that sort of thing. I was also extremely fatigued.

I still remember the first trip to the medical aid post. ‘Put your hand over your right eye and read the chart,’ said Commandant Collins. Not a problem: Z W T 1 3 7 q e y. Easy. ‘Now cover up your left eye and read the chart’. ‘OK’, I said, ‘Can you put the chart back up please’. After that the fun and games started. After several trips to the medical aid post I found myself on rotation in and out of the Eye and Ear. I had every type of blood and eye test done. Along with an MRI I was being tested initially for a brain tumor and diabetes and then a whole rake of other conditions I’d never heard of at the time. They hadn’t a clue what was wrong. All this time the sight in my right eye was getting worse and the sight in my left eye decided to start packing it in. It’s hard to describe. Blurry cloudy vision. Loss of sharpness with your central vision effected the most. If you look at someone straight on from about a meter away, you can make out their hands and legs but they’ve no head.  Beyond a meter people become more like blurry colours moving around.

Although a total pain in the ass and not exactly what I wanted to be doing with my life, these trips to the Eye and Ear were entertaining nonetheless. As nobody knew what was wrong every doctor and med student wanted to poke around my eyeballs. My friends from the Air Corps who would accompany me on these trips would get rather jealous as a young pretty female med student would bend over and look into my eyes with some strange instrument. Then again they had a different view.

On another occasion though I was on my own. So what happens is you’re put in a big waiting room and given a raffle ticket. ‘Take a seat your number will be called’. From what I remember I was the youngest person there. Everyone else seemed to me at that time to be ancient. You have to really picture this scenario. It’s a room full of people with bad sight or bad hearing or because of their age, both.  A voice bellows from the top of the room ‘No. 17’ (it could have been any number I can’t remember). ‘Hmm’ I think to myself, ‘it might have been handy if I’d asked what number my ticket was’. There’s a pause, a bit of shuffling and mumbling. Half the people can’t see their tickets and the other half are asking ‘did someone say something’. ‘No. 17’ the voice from the top of the room bellows again. I get a nudge on the arm from an old lady beside me: ‘Excuse me son what number ticket do I have’. Absolutely comical.

On one of these trips to the Eye and Ear to get poked at again by so called experts who’d no idea what was wrong I was sitting in the waiting room when I heard a nurse talking to an older man. I was positive I recognised his voice. Getting up I went to the other end of the corridor. ‘Uncle Danny,’ I said, ‘Is that you’. (Uncle Danny was my mam’s uncle). ‘It is’, he said, ‘who’s that’. ‘It’s Wes,’ I said, ‘there’s something wrong with my sight. What are you here for?’ ‘My sights going too’, he said with a worried sigh. Not being able to see each other clearly we both could tell we were looking at each other and thinking ‘what the …’ The nurse was thinking the same. She went off to get the doctor.

With the extended family brought in we discover we have a condition called Leber’s hereditary optic neuropathy (LHON). At the time there was no test in Ireland because it is a genetic condition. A cousin of my grandmother had been clinically diagnosed with mutation 11778. After we told the doctor about LHON I still remember the doctor taking down a book and blowing off the dust. (Or at least that’s my version of the account). ‘Yes that’s what you have. Some of the cells in the optic nerve are dead and the signal isn’t going to the brain. It’s a very rare condition’. Personally I’d have preferred to have won the lotto.

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As mentioned in the above story Leber’s Hereditary Optic Neuropathy involves genetic mutations that can lead to blindness through optical nerve mitochondrial depowering. One very interesting aspect to this disease is that only a minority of persons with the mutation actually suffer blindness. The breakdown by sex is that only 10% of females and only 40% of males with the mutation go blind.

For years the “trigger” for the blindness was unknown but in the past 20 years a number of trigger chemicals have been identified. One of these chemicals is an Alkane known as nHexane and it is important to note that this chemicals was involved in the intoxication & injury of 2 Air Corps technical personnel in 2015 that lead to the eventual Health & Safety Authority investigation.

Furthermore the neurotoxicity of nHexane is enhanced significantly in the presence of Methyl Ethyl Ketone (MEK). This is another chemical that was also used without any precaution for decades in the Irish Army Air Corps.

It is important to also note that the person in the story above went blind within two weeks of starting work in Engine Repair Flight (ERF). As an Air Corps Apprentice he only had to spend 10 weeks work experience in this location which were, unfortunately for him and others, life changing and career ending. ERF and its associated Non Destructive Testing (NDT) workshop (photographed below in 2007), were possibly one of the most chemically toxic workplaces anywhere in Ireland.

This workshop was found to be 3½ times over allowable limits for Dichloromethane (DCM) in 1995 but personnel were not warned and it was left operational for a further 12 years. During that time there were at least 5 adult deaths, at least 1 child deaths and and at least 2 children born with severe genetic mutations that we believe were associated with chemical exposures in this workshop alone. Chemicals in use were carcinogenic, mutagenic & teratogenic.

The engineering officer who commissioned these air quality tests is still serving in the Irish Army Air Corps in a senior role as is the engineering officer who ordered the test results destroyed in later years.

The Athlete I Married – Another human cost of the Irish Air Corps Toxic Chemical Health & Safety scandal

My husband joined the Irish Army Air Corps as an apprentice in 1991, he was 17 years old. He was so young in fact he was legally classed as a child soldier which required his parents to sign away their legal guardianship to the Minister for Defence. Prior to joining the Air Corps he was one of Donegal’s top junior athletes.

I met him in 1992 while he was still living in in the apprentice hostel accommodation at Casement Aerodrome, Baldonnel. At that stage he had already represented the Air Corps at athletics and was a regular member of their winning Business House League cross country team. At 18 years of he was running a 10k in 31 minutes and a 5k in 15 minutes. He was full of life and I remember meeting this force of energy. He was very funny and had more energy than I thought possible in one individual. Fast forward to 2017 and now aged 43 he can now only manage a 5k in his mobility scooter.

A year after I met him he graduated from the Air Corps Apprentice School and moved “up camp” to Avionics Squadron where within a few short months he became very emotional and started to suffer from extreme anxiety. He went, in a short space of time, from being a huge force of energy to an unpredictable troubled man and that is how he has remained.

Through 20 years of marriage and 24 of the 25 years that I have known and loved him I still feel lucky enough that he hasn’t lost all of his love of life. But although he is losing more of his physical ability each day he still manages a smile and he still loves me and the children. He still wants to be energetic for me and his family but as his list of medical problems get progressively worse his driving force gets more and more depleted.

24 years ago his medical problems started with anxiety & stress then a sudden loss of all pigmentation in his right leg & groin area where all the hair went white and all his skin pale after a tubbing incident with an unknown chemical. There is still a visible line with two different skin tones each side. Later followed stomach ulcers and Crohn’s like bowel problems which are a constant source of embarrassment.

Next started the nerve damage, pins & needles, loss of sense of touch in arms & legs and eventually sudden excruciating pain in random parts of the body as bad as a toothache but 1,000 times worse.

Then came the “in your head” diagnosis. The vast majority of Irish doctors & consultants simply have no experience of industrial diseases but they all have a deep need to “pigeonhole” and move on. As my husband got progressively worse his GP was convinced that he was simply malingering and suggested that he see a psychiatrist.

After suffering at the mercy of an unsympathetic Irish medical establishment for many years he finally discovered a specialist in Scandinavia who invited him over for tests. He has been diagnosed with Stage 3 Chronic Solvent Induced Encephalopathy. Stage 3 is the top of a 1 to 3 scale and means that damage has reached as far as his internal organs.

He has suffered Thermoregulation Vasoconstrictor failure, this means his body cannot control his body temperature, he sweats when he is cold, shivers when he is hot and every step in between.

And it goes on, he has suffered Cardioaccelerator failure of his heart. This means that his body cannot increase his heart rate when needed, so his heart constantly pumps at a slow rate meaning even climbing a stairs is like climbing Mount Everest to him. If his heart rate cannot speed up it cannot pump enough oxygen around his body causing huge fatigue. Staying with his heart he has also suffered Cardiodepressor function failure which results in complicated blood pressure problem. He also suffers Baroreflex Hypersensitivity.

These genuinely are only a fraction of the abnormal tests results, in fact we cannot understand many of the results as they are so technical but they prove why my husband is so weak & tired all the time.

This consultant Neurophysiologist confirmed that due to the litany of autonomic nerve damage there are only a few chemicals in use that can cause such damage. But one thing is certain, all of the chemicals that are capable of causing the injuries my husband suffers from were used in the Irish Army Air Corps with utter disregard to any chemical health & safety.

It is further shocking to learn that the failures of health & safety in the Air Corps that were present and known about in the 1990s, are only now being remedied in 2017. This took several protected disclosures to the Minister for Defence, the Chief of Staff and the Health & Safety Authority.

My husband held the Irish Defence Forces fitness test 2 mile run record for 15 years. It was 9 minutes 6 seconds and was only beaten about 6 years ago by another proud Donegal man. Today even his top of the range mobility scooter cannot beat that time.

Does anyone know what it feels like to watch the man you love go through all of this suffering & pain and to then watch the Taoiseach Enda Kenny and the Junior Minister for Defence Paul Kehoe say in Dáil Éireann that the Irish Air Corps has a very high standard of health & safety?

It is like listening to a rapist defending himself in court by saying that he did what he did out of love…

A Second Life – Another human cost of the Irish Air Corps Toxic Chemical Health & Safety scandal

It was 1998 when my brother Stephen began feeling unwell. He started coughing a lot and needed a few pillows to sleep on. He was coughing a lot of fluid up from his lungs and was very short of breath. We all thought it was a bad chest infection but sadly within weeks everything got much worse.

My first recollection is of my mam & dad carrying Stephen to the car late one night. It looked so odd for him to have his arms over both their shoulders. When I looked closely only his tip toes were touching the ground, they were dragging him!  I felt sick, I was 17 at the time.

Multiple late night visits to casualty became the norm in our house. He was told his heart was the size of a football and it was so weak that it couldn’t pump fluid away from his lungs. He was drowning. He was 24 or 25 years old and was very unwell. He was admitted to St Bricans Military Hospital in Dublin for review. That was the start of the waiting game. The doctors were trying to obtain a diagnosis , a cause and a treatment plan. It was never decided how this all came about. Maybe just a bit of bad luck!

Within weeks Stephen became very unwell. He was in agony with chest pain, stomach pains, hunger, thirst and every other symptom you can imagine. He often voiced that he couldn’t live like this and he didn’t want to anymore. He was admitted to the Mater and put on the heart transplant list. He was very very lucky to receive a new heart within months of his diagnoses, “Dilated Cardiomyopathy”.

For many years, Stephen led a normal life or perhaps that should be extraordinary, he travelled the world, he studied hard in college. It was hard to keep track of him. He had (and has) an amazing circle of family & friends. He worked hard to obtained a degree, a masters and had just started studying again for his doctorate shortly before he became ill again.

Throughout his life “post transplant” Stephen had to attend multiple Out Patient hospital appointments, he had to take medication every 12 hours and had a myriad of extra tests to endure. All his organs & body systems were affected. Throughout the years he suffered from stomach pains, kidney function issues & spontaneous pneumothorax. I’m sure there are plenty of other symptoms but he never complained and made it look easy.

Sadly, in December 2012, only months after he retired after 21 years service, Stephen lost that fight age 39. He always said his second life started post transplant. He was extremely grateful and led a life of healthy living. His level of fitness & nutrition stood to him. He didn’t want to waste a minute of his “second life”.

His heart finally failed during the night in the CCU in Beaumont Hospital. My colleagues worked extremely hard but it was too late. The day he was buried was the worst day of my life and I suppose the worst day of everyone who knew him. Stephen was supposed to be reading a best man speech for his friend Keith that day, not having a speech/eulogy read out about him.

It saddens me to think that his life was taken early and that it may have been prevented. We have all wondered over the years why his heart was affected and are still looking for answers.

Stephen worked in Avionics Squadron at Casement Aerodrome, Baldonnel. The Avionics workshops shared a building with the Engine Repair Flight (ERF) workshops where air quality tests were commissioned by the Irish Army Air Corps in August 1995. These independent tests found that Dichloromethane, which had a TWA legal limit of 50ppm, was measured in parts of ERF at 175ppm.

Avionics & ERF personnel were NOT informed by Air Corps health & safety management that the air quality was found to be over the health & safety limits but instead were left in the same dangerous working environment for a further 12 years. Air Corps health & safety management ordered these Air Quality test results destroyed in 2006/2007.

Read more about the cardiac, gastric, respiratory and other health effects of Dichloromethane (also know as Methylene Chloride) below.

https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/mmg/mmg.asp?id=230&tid=42

Serving the State – Another human cost of the Irish Air Corps Toxic Chemical Health & Safety scandal

I’m writing this piece to give the reader an idea of the unusual life I have lived thus far and maybe by writing it to give myself some understanding of all that has happened me.

In 1989 I did my leaving cert and a year later joined the 3rd Infantry Battalion of the Irish Army. This was the beginning of my working life which has been spent always in the service of the state, something I am quite proud of.

After my basic training in the army I got an apprenticeship as an aircraft technician in the Air Corps. I had to discharge from the army and reenlist I think because this would mean I could be paid less as an apprentice. I didn’t mind. The future was bright.

When I was 22 my partner, later to become my wife and then ex-wife, gave birth to our daughter. At 23 I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a form of cancer. This was a terrible shock to me. I was attending St. Bricin’s military hospital but was sent to an outside hospital for diagnosis. I had no family or friends with me when I was told of my illness and had a non chatty army driver to return me to St. Bricin’s after hearing the news.

I was discharged from the military hospital and was sent to an oncologist in St Luke’s hospital in Rathgar. I began an aggressive regime of 6 months strong chemotherapy followed by 6 months of strong radiotherapy. This was an horrific period of my life but I lived. This was obviously a positive outcome. I was young, strong and very fit when I began the treatment, very keen on sports and my physical conditioning.

It took me 3 years, in my estimation, from diagnosis to getting back to the place I was before it all began. Looking back though I am not sure anyone ever truly”gets over” an experience like that. You learn to move on but always with your fragile mortality in mind.

I enjoyed my job in the Air Corps working primarily on the piston engined Marchetti Warrior aircraft. I worked on 2 “IRAN”‘s while employed there. This involves completely disassembling the aircraft, inspection and rebuilding of same. I was also heavily involved in the restoration of an Avro Anson and various other historical aircraft for the museum which was just beginning at the time.

During this work I was exposed to countless amounts of toxic chemicals with little or no protective equipment. But as it was the military orders were orders and I just did as I was told. I often wondered at the time was it this exposure that caused my cancer. I was never told any cause for my cancer and I suppose I could have been just unlucky.

I served for 11 years in the Air Corps and then I joined An Garda Siochana. I had no real idea of the job of a Garda and had no family or friends in that job but just felt like it was something I would like to do. I was right. I enjoyed the work and challenges from day one. I really felt I could make a positive difference to people’s lives. I discovered that I found studying the law enjoyable. A job where you could be as busy as you chose. I chose to be very busy. I earned numerous commendations for excellent police work, was awarded a silver medal for bravery and got to meet the president in Áras an Uachtaráin. With relatively short service in the guards I made it off the regular unit and was appointed into the traffic corps. After 12 years and the belief I was infertile my wife became pregnant again and I had a son. Then we planned again and 3 years later another daughter arrived. Life was good.

Or was it? I found in my mid 30’s I was suffering from anxiety for no reason. I fell into serious depression, again for no apparent reason. This depression was serious enough that I considered suicide and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for a time. I was having severe abdominal pain in sync with this. I was still very fit, had my own little gym in my garage and worked out every day. No logic could explain my anxiety or depression. The abdominal pain was diagnosed as a stomach ulcer. A stomach ulcer is no big deal in this day and age……it destroyed my life!

The normal treatment for a stomach ulcer today is a triple therapy of 3 different medications that kill that that helio-whatever bacteria. This didn’t work on me. Over a number of weeks as an in patient in a private hospital, fasting, the consultant tried every way he could think to cure me. He was unable. He informed me one Friday that he was going to a gathering of the most eminent gastro consultants over the weekend and that he intended to talk to the top professor in relation to my case. On his return he told me this professor was very interested in my case and would see me in St Jame’s hospital in Dublin.

I had a meeting with the professor who thought that surgery was the only option I had to get rid of this stomach ulcer I was suffering with. In May of that year I had the surgery during which 70% of my stomach was removed. I had a scar from my bellybutton to chest but the ulcer was gone. I went to Wexford with my family to a mobile home over the summer to recover after I was released from hospital. In September I began to feel unwell and got extreme pain even through the strong medications I was on. I have little memory of what happened next but now know that the wounds I had internally had failed to heal and the stitching burst inside. I was rushed to James where emergency surgery was performed and they managed to save me. I was in an induced coma for 2 weeks after this where I was in intensive care on life support. I contracted VRE and CRE which I believe are something similar to MRSA. To shorten the story this happened twice more to me. Each time I was in intensive care and each time I was very lucky to survive.

My marriage broke down. I lost my house. Because of the time period I wasn’t getting paid anymore and was on social welfare payments. Each time I went to hospital I had, and still have, to be in isolation because of my history. On one occasion a couple of weeks after a surgery I was moved from intensive care to a high dependency room. Normally when I got out of intensive care I would be overjoyed mostly because I would then have a toilet and not rely on nurses to help me and then clean me. On this occasion I just got into the bed and lay there. Something didn’t feel right but I couldn’t say what. An hour or 2 later I suddenly couldn’t breathe. I don’t mean shortness of breath or panting. I literally couldn’t breathe. I hit the nurses call button and thankfully she came straight away, saw what was happening and shouted for help. Again my memory is gone from this point but I later found out my sister was just arriving for a visit only to see my bed being rushed down a corridor by doctors. As she works in a hospital she happened to know one of the doctors in the unit. She asked what was happening and was taken to a family room to be told it was touch and go and that she should contact the rest of my family. This timing was messy because of my separation from my wife there was next of kin issues. I had had a pulmonary embolism which I believe is a clot in the lungs that stopped them working. I then spent another couple of weeks in intensive care but thanks to brilliant doctors I again survived.

Last year, 2016, there was only 2 months of that year in which I wasn’t an in patient of one hospital or another for varying lengths of time. In December, out of nowhere, I got double pneumonia and pulmonary sepsis. This happened within the space of 2 hours and again I may have died. I now use a nebulizer twice a day and an inhaler in an effort to get my lungs working correctly again. I have a new partner now and she is a living saint to put up with all the hardship I bring her. With her help I again have a home, after having to move back to my mother’s, and I can take care of my children.

Although long, this is only a synopsis of everything I have suffered in the past 5 years or so. I never told my consultant in James hospital that I had worked in the Air Corps and had been exposed to dangerous chemicals over a prolonged period. I just never joined the dots. I was a Garda. That was it. He was at a loss as to explain how so much went wrong with me even though the greatest care was given to me. He thought probably the radiotherapy from 20 years previously had damaged me. But if that had been the case more radiotherapy patients from that time would most likely have displayed similar symptoms and this is not the case. Having recently heard it mentioned in the Dáil and seeing it in the newspaper I have finally found a possible reason for what has happened me. I hurt all the time now, physically and mentally. My goals when I joined the guards all those years ago were to make a positive difference. I will never walk the beat again. I will never do a drug search or a check point ever again. I’ll never do all those things I loved in the police ever again.

Now my goal is to live to see my youngest kids grow to adulthood. That is my challenge. I hope I can achieve it and I hope I haven’t bored you.

The “Baldonnel Shake” – Another human cost of the Irish Air Corps Toxic Chemical Health & Safety scandal

The medication helps me a lot (but has bad side affects in other ways) but it can’t get rid of all the symptoms.

Thanks to Trichloroethylene which we used unprotected and with no safety advice to clean aircraft parts, our nervous systems have been damaged to the point were they misfire.

This is one of the reasons one doctor though I had MS due to leg tremors . This is my left hand all the time but when I try to sit still I can feel it elsewhere. (Press HD)

My Toxic Life – Another human cost of the Irish Air Corps Toxic Chemical Health & Safety scandal

Sitting here waiting to cool down enough to have a shower after another gym session. Worried that posting my fitness goals on social media will give ammunition to the Dept of Defence against my fight for an apology, yes an apology, compensation would be nice but will not cure me only help me and my family should the worse happen and pay for all the medications and tests I’m already taking. An apology for endless years of being told ‘suck it up and put on your uniform and go back to work’…being bullied for being sick.

I served twenty two years. You think if I didn’t love my job and wanted money I’d have stuck all that harassment for 22 years. You think I’d have paid thousands of euros for medical tests out of my own pocket if I wasn’t worried about my health?

The Dept weren’t there when I got up every morning suffering from diarrhoea. Hoping it make it to work without soiling myself. I can’t go anywhere without anti-diarrhoea tablets.

They weren’t there when I was vomiting on my knees in the toilet from pure anxiety. When I was crying like a baby not knowing why or what was happening in my body. When I couldn’t get out of bed for fear of well fear of nothing because the wiring in my brain was malfunctioning.

They weren’t there when I blew a fuse with my wife because of uncontrollable mood swings. They weren’t there when I had to get cameras up me to see why I was always suffering stomach pains. They weren’t with me when I embarrassingly had to tell my story over and over again to counsellors, psychologists, psychiatrists, doctors , nurses , who all bar one brushed it off and said I don’t think this is psychological. “I laughed and said google says I’ve MS!” His face went serious and said that was his next opinion. I paid to get a brain MRI the next day and waited an agonising 48 hrs for the results which were negative . Fancy that , it’s being caused by something else.

I was finally diagnosed with toxic Neuropathy three years ago and associated conditions. I was also told I was at high risk of cancer of some form (like many of my mates already).

So Dept of Defence , all those days I went to work and done my best, performed flawlessly according to my personal record, I was pushing myself to the limit. When I was sick I had passed that limit (sorry I forgot, I was malingering hence my extra duties) but all those days I held it together in my ticking time bomb of a body because I loved my job. Was I lying ? No. Are you lying ? Yes!!!!

You can’t give me my life back I’m damaged till this body gives up but at least say sorry and say it loud so that the many who don’t realise why they are suffering also can hear you.

Better have that shower now and continue on my seemingly heavenly social media life.

22 Years Air Corps Service

Constructively dismissed by Irish Army Air Corps management as a malingerer.