Michael Noonan – Page 3 – Air Corps Chemical Abuse Survivors

The University of Limerick failed to inform students of Baldonnel chemical fears

The University of Limerick failed to pass on health concerns about the Air Corps hangars to its work placement students, despite several warnings over chemical exposure fears.

Irish Air Corps Non Destructive Testing (NTD) Workshop

Although it was told that students “may have been exposed to toxic chemicals and organic solvents during the course of their work placement”, UL did not follow up on requests to inform the relevant students.

The warnings came over six months before the Health and Safety Authority issued a damning report on the Air Corps’ management of harmful chemicals at Casement Aerodrome, Baldonnel.

Dáil Éireann Written Answers 05/04/17 – Irish Army Air Corps – Main Technical Stores Air Quality Test Reports

Lisa Chambers (Mayo, Fianna Fail)

To ask the Taoiseach and Minister for Defence if he will provide a copy of the results of the air-quality test that was carried out in the Main Technical Stores, Casement Aerodrome, Baldonnel and adjoining office complex on the 9 February 2017 by an external assessor. [16892/17]

Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)

The Occupational Air Survey Report referred to by the Deputy was forwarded to the Military Authorities on 28th March 2017 by the external assessor.

The monitoring found that none of the areas tested exceeded the Occupational Exposure Limits outlined in the 2016 Code of Practice for the Safety, Health and Welfare (Chemical Agents) Regulations, 2001.

In line with the recommendations of the report, I am informed by the Military Authorities that;

1. All personnel working in the Technical Stores building were paraded and informed of the content of the report and its findings.

2. The report is currently available for viewing by all personnel at the Air Corps Health and Safety Office.

3. In due course the report will be published on the Defence Forces Intranet site.

It is good news that none of the tested areas of Main Technical Stores at Baldonnel have exceeded the Occupational Exposure Limits outlined in the 2016 Code of Practice for the Safety, Health and Welfare (Chemical Agents) Regulations, 2001.

It is disappointing however that Minister Paul Kehoe has not shared any details for the Air Quality report including the exact locations tested nor the actual results.

If there is nothing to hide, please publish the report in full on the Department of Defence website.

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

The other whistleblowers: Looking at the human cost of the #IrishAirCorps chemical scandal

AN AIR CORPS whistle-blower who claims he was exposed to harmful chemicals whilst in the force believes there could be more than 1,000 people affected by what he has described as “a scandal of the highest order”.

In an interview with TheJournal.ie, the man – who we are not naming as he has made a protected disclosure – detailed the trouble he experiences with daily life which he alleges traces back to his exposure to chemicals over a nine-year period at Baldonnel Airfield in west Dublin.

A 2016 inspection by the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) identified a number of shortcomings at Baldonnel with corrective actions then taken by the Defence Forces in relation to how it handles such chemicals.

According to the HSA report seen by TheJournal.ie, the Air Corps was warned it could face prosecution if it did not “comply with advice and relevant legal requirements” about how hazardous substances were managed, among other safety matters.

Dutch Ministry of Defence pays out €2.1 million so far in Ex Gratia Chromium-6 Exposure Compensation Scheme.

So far the Ministry of Defense paid out more than 2.1 million euros to 309 employees and former employees who became ill after working with paint containing carcinogenic substance Chromium-6, a Defense spokesperson confirmed to NU.nl.

The Defense workers in question took advantage of a goodwill scheme the Ministry instituted two years ago for Chromium-6 victims. Employees and former employees who worked with the toxic paint for more than a year and are sick can claim between 3 thousand and 15 thousand from the scheme, without the Ministry of Defense acknowledging guilt for their illness. The compensation scheme will remain in place until public health institute RIVM finished its investigation into the risks and health effects of using Chromium-6.

According to the spokesperson, Defense employees from across the Netherlands applied to the scheme. The Ministry received a total of 719 applications, 255 of which were immediately approved. Another 54 were approved or partly approved after the employee objected.

The compensation scheme shall remain in force until the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) research into the risks and health effects of Chromium-6 has been completed

Added new information to the ACCAS “Chemical Info” page

Added some more chemicals to the chemical list including the following sealants & primers. These were used a lot by sheet metal workers and are very toxic. Have also added some constituent chemicals from the SDS list , some are unpronounceable.

Added manufacturer SDS

Added constituent chemicals

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)

Pressure mounts for Irish Army Air Corps inquiry

There is growing pressure on the Government to launch an independent inquiry into the exposure of members of the Air Corps to cancer-causing toxins at Casement Aerodrome. Six members are suing the State, claiming their health was adversely affected due to working with hazardous chemicals.

An investigation by the Irish Examiner also revealed the Health & Safety Authority threatened to prosecute the Air Corps in 2016 unless it implemented improvements in the management of employees’ exposure to hazardous chemicals. It found staff did not have access to basic equipment, such as gloves, goggles, and protective clothing.

Calling in the Dáil for separate investigations, Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin described the revelations and lack of response as a “serious scandal”. He also accused Taoiseach Enda Kenny and the Government of trying to “bury” the controversy.

20 years on from the Brigit McCole Case, Michael Noonan still in power, victims still the enemy…

Letter shows State saw Bridget McCole not as the victim but as the enemy

From the start of his involvement with the aftermath of the hepatitis C debacle, Michael Noonan seemed determined to hold the departmental line. This meant, firstly, insisting that the expert group report published in February 1995 was the last word on the scandal.

Secondly, it involved an insistence that the victims should be compensated through the tribunal established for that purpose rather than through the courts. The tribunal made awards without admission of liability, whereas the courts would seek to establish, in essence, who was to blame.