State to examine Stealth base for toxic fumes

Keith Rogers
Review-Journal

State environmental chief Lew Dodgion said Monday he will investigate whether Lockheed Corp. and the Air Force burned toxic chemicals in open pits near a secret base, exposing Nevada Test Site workers to dioxins while they constructed hangars and buildings downwind of the pits.

The exposures, alleged by some of the workers and the family of one who died, occurred in the 1980s while Air Force and Department of Energy contract workers built the secret, experimental base near Groom Lake, 35 miles west of Alamo. The base was used for testing the radar-evading F-117A Stealth fighter.

The state Environmental Protection Division, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health and Nellis Air Force Base environmental officials said they had no knowledge toxic chemicals were burned in open pits near Groom Lake.

Dodgion, administrator of the state Environmental Protection Division, said, "I can investigate this, and will." He said he was not aware of the open pit burning "and apparently no one else in the division is either."

Sam Paternostro, a former test site worker from Boulder City, said, "The bottom line is it did occur. I don't know exactly what was burned, but everybody dumped in there. I've seen guys from Lockheed dumping."

Paternostro described the burn pits as open trenches up to 15 feet deep, 300 feet long and 15 feet wide.

"Depending on which way the wind was blowing you always got to smell acrid smoke. It had a plastic smell to it," said Paternostro, a pipefitter who worked for Reynolds Electrical & Engineering Co. Inc., a test site contractor.

"I don't believe anybody had any idea of what was going on, what was burning," he said.

Another test site worker said, "There were burning pits." But, he added, "Ican't help. I took an oath."

Their comments were made during interviews last week in response to claims the widow of one worker made in U.S. District Court this summer. Helen Frost of North Las Vegas claimed in a federal suit that her husband's death from cirrhosis of the liver was hastened by inhaling dioxins and furans.

Furans are solvents used for resins and plastics that when burned produce dioxins, the same compounds found in Agent Orange, the defoliant used by the United States in Vietnam that is blamed for health problems in soldiers including liver disorders and skin diseases, and birth defects in their children.

In October 1988, Frost's husband, Robert, a sheet metal worker, won a worker's compensation claim after he complained he had been exposed to toxic substances while working in May that year at Groom Lake. The base was in the test site's secret Area 51.

Frost told a State Industrial Insurance System hearing officer that one day while working atop a building his hands and neck turned red, and his face split open and began bleeding. His condition had been diagnosed as phototoxic dermatitis.

Frost's employer, REECo, appealed the decision, but Frost died Nov. 23, 1989.

Two years later, an administrative appeals officer concluded Frost's fatal liver condition was linked to excessive alcohol consumption and not inhalation of toxic substances.

REECo claimed Frost consumed about eight beers a day.

But Helen Frost said he only drank two beers a day after 1983, and the appeals officer did not pursue the possibility that dioxins could have altered the liver's ability to detoxify substances. That could have resulted in misleading blood-alcohol levels on which REECo based its evaluation of her husband's drinkinghabits, she said.

Following the appeal, Helen Frost filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Lockheed Corp. But U.S. District Court Judge Howard McKibben denied her complaint July 12, siding with appeals officer Geraldine Schwartzer that the evidence linking Robert Frost's death to dioxin exposure was inconclusive.

Nevertheless, an affidavit filed in the case by biochemist Peter Kahn said Frost's tissue samples revealed levels of dioxins from "substantial exposure to chemicals which contain and/or convert to dioxins and dibenzofurans."

McKibben said Helen Frost and her daughters, who were co-plaintiffs in the case, did "not have enough `new evidence' to overcome Lockheed's evidence that Mr. Frost's cirrhosis was caused by excessive alcohol abuse."

Frost's daughter, Judy Lema said, "No matter what he drank, that didn't explain the chemicals in his body."

Helen Frost said last week she knows of other test site workers who contracted skin disorders and illnesses that have been linked to dioxins similar to Agent Orange.