In Panama's `Zone,' Fears Flourish

RESIDENTS OF THE CANAL ZONE suspect high rates of cancer and other maladies are the result of the U.S. government's practice of spraying and dumping toxic chemicals.

PANAMA CITY - It was hard enough for Karen Lavallee to watch her seemingly healthy, 34-year-old husband die of cancer in 1978 in a tropical wonderland the couple once regarded as paradise.

But when another man in her neighborhood got the same form of cancer, Lavallee said alarm bells went off. Both died within six months of each other from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Both had worked as police officers on the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal Zone.

Today, she asks, were their deaths related to a toxic-waste dump the two men regularly patrolled? Or did it have anything to do with a chemically defoliated jungle site where the officers would stop to chat with their counterparts in the U.S. military police?

Lavallee is not the only one asking such questions. Former Canal Zone residents, who call themselves "Zonians," increasingly are raising concerns about cancers and other serious health problems that are cropping up among them.

Many want to know whether their health problems are normal or whether they might be linked to the U.S. government's practice of spraying and dumping toxic chemicals in Panama since the 1940s.

Canal Zone was bug-free paradise

The 360,000-acre Canal Zone, revered among thousands of former residents for its pristine lawns, bug-free backyard barbecues and country-club lifestyle, also was a place where the U.S. government sprayed massive amounts of DDT, a pesticide linked to cancer, as a means of keeping nature at bay. The U.S. military dumped cancer-causing PCBs, toxic wastes and chemical weapons, while pushing the jungle back with herbicides such as Agent Orange, according to various Canal Zone residents and retired military personnel.

U.S. military officials neither confirm nor deny the use of Agent Orange in Panama but say they have found no written record to prove it was sprayed. Officials also acknowledge use of a range of chemicals and hazardous materials but insist they have followed U.S. environmental guidelines since the early 1970s.

Search for an explanation

A group of University of Texas researchers hopes to move the Zonians' health concerns beyond the speculative stage and conduct a series of tests and surveys to determine whether Canal Zone residents were routinely exposed to toxins or other dangerous substances. If so, the researchers say they want to determine whether such exposure is linked to various forms of cancer and other diseases that many Zonians are now suffering.

The researchers, led by Drs. Anne Sweeney and Deborah del Junco, said they became interested in Panama after a student, Kathleen Pitts, contacted them on behalf of former Canal Zone residents, including some of her relatives. Pitts believed the residents had unusually consistent stories about battling cancer and other chronic diseases.

Zonians have registered particular concern about the amount of DDT they believed they had been exposed to as children growing up in the Canal Zone, Pitts said.

Last month, the Panama-based environmental group CEASPA published a report detailing the types of chemical exposure some residents may have received based on a limited analysis of soil on two still-operative U.S. military bases in the former Canal Zone. The study concluded that, in some cases, exposure rates to DDT and chlordane, another pesticide banned in the United States because of its high toxicity, were far higher than the maximum levels regarded by the Environmental Protection Agency as acceptable.

"Though there is not enough data to establish a concise exposure scenario, there are plenty of indicators that demonstrate a significant human health hazard exists," the study concluded.

Panama wants mess cleaned up

A 1997 study by the Panamanian government concluded that levels of lead in water, asbestos in building materials, and cancer-causing dioxin and PCBs in various soil samples taken across the Canal Zone were far above maximum safe levels established by the U.S. government.

Panama is demanding that the United States agree to clean up its environmental mess before departing on Dec. 31. The United States says it has cleaned up what it could but acknowledges it will be leaving some dangerous materials behind, largely consisting of unexploded ordnance used in training exercises.

For the Zonians, however, the diplomatic haggling between the two nations is not answering crucial questions they have about the toxins and hazardous materials they might have been exposed to.

"We were so used to being in the middle of military bases. Whatever the military did, they acted like they had carte blanche to do," said Lavallee, who left Panama when her husband died. "It was something you grew up with. It was accepted policy among the Zonians that you never questioned what they did."

She said her husband, Robert William Lavallee, regularly stopped to chat with military policemen at an area known as the "drop zone" near the Panama Canal's Gatun Locks, where the canal meets the Atlantic Ocean. The drop zone was a site used by the Army's 8th Special Forces for parachute training during the Vietnam War. According to at least nine civilian and former military witnesses, the drop zone had been sprayed with Agent Orange during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Two men who commanded the 8th Special Forces during that period and regularly parachuted into the drop zone, Majs. William Patton and Dick Meadows, were diagnosed with leukemia and died within six months of each other in 1996, according to Patton's widow, Barbara Patton.

Army Spec. Donald Jones regularly rode his motorcycle around the drop zone while serving in Panama from 1971 to 1974, according to his widow, Pamela Jones of Pleasanton, Texas. He died in 1997 of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancerous condition linked to Agent Orange exposure and the same disease that caused the death of Lavallee's husband.

U.S. mum about Agent Orange

Although the U.S. government says it cannot confirm any use of Agent Orange in Panama, Charles Bartlett, operational commander of the military's defoliant-testing program in the 1960s and early '70s, testified in 1997 that several hundred barrels of Agent Orange had been shipped to Panama for testing.

"Whether the government admits it or not, I now know for a fact that Agent Orange was delivered there," Patton said. "I want to know the answers. Are we going to die of something we were exposed to 30 years ago?"

An official did confirm that dumps in at least two sites along the canal were used for hazardous and toxic disposal but said such practices were halted when the Environmental Protection Agency tightened rules in the 1970s.

It is clear from current U.S. Department of Defense contracts that some kind of U.S. environmental cleanup is in progress in Panama. Since 1996, Lockheed-Martin has been fulfilling a military contract to receive and ship out a variety of toxic wastes that the military has collected as it closes down its bases in Panama.

David Jewell, a Lockheed-Martin spokesman, declined to specify the types of wastes being received at the company's warehouses at the Corozal Army base outside Panama City but described them as "normal and industrial," including what he called "hazardous materials."

Alfredo Smith, a former supervisor for Lockheed-Martin at the Corozal warehouse, said he handled a wide range of toxic materials.

"We were handling cyanides, asbestos, poisons, known carcinogens, herbicides, pesticides. Some of this stuff had labels going back to the 1950s. . . . All of the stuff from the cleanup sites were coming in to us," he said.

Lockheed-Martin provided employees with a list of substances that Smith and other workers were instructed to be wary of. The list included 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T, the potentially dioxin-tainted chemical compounds that became nicknamed Agent Orange during the Vietnam era.

Smith said he handled several barrels marked 2,4-D but did not recall any marked with 2,4,5-T. He said he regularly handled PCBs, an oil-like coolant used in transformers, which also has been linked to cancer.

Smith said one Panamanian employee under his supervision began coughing up blood one day on the job after handling an unmarked barrel filled with a chemical powder. Smith, who says he suffers constant skin rashes, breathing problems, headaches, stomach problems and sexual dysfunction, is suing Lockheed-Martin for compensation for what he says were lax safety procedures at the Corozal facility.

Jewell said Lockheed-Martin has an exemplary environmental safety program and complies with all Occupational, Safety and Health Administration requirements.

Cancer country's top killer

Dr. Rosa Marie de Britton, a leading Panamanian oncologist, said she knows of no studies that focused exclusively on cancer rates among Canal Zone residents. But she said that overall, cancer is the No. 1 killer among Panamanians, with stomach cancer and leukemia leading the list of cases. She said that in the 1970s, cancer was the cause of 12 percent of deaths, whereas today it is around 20 percent.

Zonians acknowledge that their fears, at least so far, are based purely on anecdotal information exchanged over the Internet or relayed during the many reunions that Zonians have celebrated this year as the U.S. presence in Panama comes to a close.