Letters sent to 433 from the 162nd Infantry Battalion

PORTLAND - The Oregon National Guard has written to 433 of its soldiers to say they may have been exposed to a toxic, carcinogenic chemical at an Iraqi water pumping plant shortly after the war began.

Guard spokesman Maj. Mike Braibish said three companies of the 162nd Infantry Battalion were deployed in Kuwait, and the troops were sent, about 50 at a time, into Iraq to escort employees of Houston-based KBR, which was inspecting oil facilities.

He said no symptoms indicating exposure have been reported to the Oregon Guard.

"That doesn't mean they won't be," Braibish said Wednesday. "Some may have been treated by the Veterans Administration, and we don't know about it. It's a possibility."

U.S. Sens. Evan Bayh of Indiana and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota say there are unanswered questions about the exposure of U.S. troops to the chemical hexavalent chromium at the Basra water plant in 2003.

Bayh first raised concerns about the Indiana Guard. Tuesday, in a letter to the Pentagon, the senators mentioned Oregon troops.

They say KBR allowed soldiers to be exposed to the chemical for more than two months even though KBR knew the site was contaminated. KBR has denied it knowingly harmed troops or was responsible for an unsafe condition.

The senators also say that Indiana National Guard troops didn't learn of possible exposure until they saw KBR workers wearing special clothing and that Guard troops from Oregon, South Carolina and West Virginia haven't been told they may have been exposed.

But Braibish said 433 letters were sent earlier this year. He said 18 were returned as undeliverable.

"We have the responsibility to let the soldiers know what we know," he said.

He said Oregon troops did the guard duty for six to eight weeks in 2003, and then the Indiana National Guard took it over.

Each Oregon soldier may have gone into the area four times but not necessarily to the water treatment facility at Basra, Braibish said.

They would go into Iraq and return to Kuwait each night, he said.

He said Indiana troops went to the same locations each day and might have stayed at the facility at times.

The company closed the site in the summer of 2003 for "remediation," or to fix problems, he said.

In October of that year the Army started studying hexavalent chromium levels at the site.

Braibish said a key to determining exposure would be concentrations of the chemical before "remediation," which KBR might know but which the Army does not.

"There are three factors," Braibish said. "Time, or duration, frequency and concentration."

He said symptoms can include respiratory problems, torn nasal membranes and, in severe cases, various forms of cancer.

Hexavalent chromium is used, among other things, as an additive to dyes, paints, inks and plastics and as an anticorrosive surface coating.