Washington | January 10

Stars and Stripes - At least 48 Oregon guardsmen may have been poisoned by an airborne carcinogen while working in southern Iraq, and hundreds more may have been exposed when those troops returned to camp with the chemical on their boots, according to a report in The Oregonian on Friday.

The news comes just weeks after a CBS News report that KBR officials waited up to four months before warning the Army that troops were exposed to an airborne carcinogen.

Depositions from KBR employees obtained by the TV network detailed concerns about hexavalent chromium at a southern Iraq water plant as early as May 2003. The chemical, used there to prevent rust in water pipes, was left in open containers and circulated by the wind throughout the plant, according to The Oregonian.

Army officials did not know about the problem until August 2003, and responded by pulling Indiana guardsmen from their posts at the site. Last month, 16 Indiana guardsmen sued KBR, claiming it downplayed the danger of the site contamination.

The Oregonian, by Julie Sullivan, January 8

Early in the Iraq war, Oregon Army National Guard soldiers say they encountered environmental disaster in oil fields. Now it's clear a deadly toxin also swirled in the desert air.

At least 48 Oregon soldiers assigned to protect contractors rebuilding a water treatment plant near Iraqi oil fields in 2003 were exposed to hexavalent chromium. The industrial compound, if inhaled, greatly increases the risk of lung cancer.

Last month, 16 Indiana National Guard soldiers sued Houston-based KBR, claiming the nation's largest war contractor "disregarded and downplayed the extreme danger of wholesale site contamination." The suit claims KBR hid its civilian workers' elevated chromium levels and dismissed widespread symptoms -- including constant nosebleeds that toxicologists call "chrome nose" -- as sand allergies.

Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Indiana, is asking Congress to create a medical registry to track all soldiers and ensure monitoring, which President-elect Barack Obama and Oregon's Sen. Ron Wyden already support.

cross posted on Iraq thread