Meteorological and Intelligence Evidence of Long-Distance Transit of Chemical Weapons Fallout from Bombing Early in the 1991 Persian Gulf War

Abstract

Background: Coalition bombings on the night of 18–19 January 1991, early in the Gulf War, targeted the Iraqi chemical weapons infrastructure. On 19 January 1991, nerve agent alarms sounded within Coalition positions hundreds of kilometers to the south, and the trace presence of sarin vapor was identified by multiple technologies. Considering only surface dispersion of plumes from explosions, officials concluded that the absence of casualties around bombed sites precluded long-distance transit of debris to US troop positions to explain the alarms and detections. Consequently, they were discounted as false positives, and low-level nerve agent exposure early in the air war was disregarded in epidemiologic investigations of chronic illnesses. Intelligence Data: Newly assembled evidence indicates that plumes from those nighttime bombings of Iraqi chemical facilities would have traversed the stable nocturnal boundary layer and penetrated the residual layer where they would be susceptible to rapid transit by supergeostrophic winds. This explanation is supported by plume height predictions, available weather charts, weather satellite images showing transit of a hot air mass, effects of solar mixing of atmospheric layers, and observations of a stationary weather front and thermal inversion in the region. Conclusions: Current evidence supports long-distance transit. Epidemiologic studies of chronic postwar illness should be reassessed using veterans’ reports of hearing nerve agent alarms as the measure of exposure.

Multiple Sclerosis in Gulf War Era Veterans. 2. Military Deployment and Risk of Multiple Sclerosis in the First Gulf War

“…Figure 1 shows the central Kuwaiti theater of operations with chemical weapon research and production facilities, and military unit locations in January 1991 [23]. This was the setting during the first weeks of the Desert Storm conflict, which officially ended February 28, 1991.…”

“…This was the setting during the first weeks of the Desert Storm conflict, which officially ended February 28, 1991. Recent meteorological and intelligence data have provided support for more widespread troop exposure to chemical weapons during the conflict [23]. …”

“…KKMC = King Khalid Military City. (Reproduced with permission from Karger and Tuite and Haley [23]. ) …”

“…Standard bivariate and multivariate statistical tests were used to measure significance and confidence intervals for relevant variables [23,24]. Risk estimates as well as differences in continuous or ordinal variables were evaluated using SAS (version 9.2; SAS Institute, Cary, N.C., USA).…”

Assessment of Potential Long Term Health Effects on Army Human Test Subjects of Relevant Biological and Chemical Agents, Drugs, Medications and Substances

“…High arsenic levels in drinking water (>100μg/L) increased the risk of peripheral artery disease, coronary heart disease, stroke, and carotid atherosclerosis in studies conducted in Chile, 177 Taiwan, 178 Inner Mongolia, 179,180 Bangladesh, 181,182 and Pakistan. 183,184 The prospective cohort study from Bangladesh also examined the lower threshold of arsenic concentrations of arsenic in water and found that concentrations above 12 μg/L were associated with an increased hazard of CVD mortality.…”