- WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Pentagon
officials will soon notify 35,000 veterans they might have been exposed
to trace amounts of nerve gas in 1991 after U.S. soldiers blew up a an
Iraqi ammunition dump at the end of the Gulf War.
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- Meanwhile, officials now believe that 33,000 soldiers
who received a similar notification in 1997 were not exposed to the nerve
gas, sources told CNN on Monday.
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- The Pentagon now believes, based on updated computer
modeling, the chemical cloud from the destruction of the ammunition dump
at Kamisiyah, in southeastern Iraq, had moved in a different direction
than previously thought.
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- Based on that new analysis, the Pentagon estimates 101,000
U.S. troops might have been exposed to low levels of nerve gas. Previously,
the Pentagon had said about 99,000 soldiers had been exposed.
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- New study to be released
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- The sources also told CNN that the Pentagon will release
a new RAND review of medical studies on the effects -- including health
impacts -- of low level exposure to nerve agents.
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- The review found no evidence of adverse health effects
resulting from brief nerve gas exposure at doses low enough that no symptoms
were reported at the time of exposure, the sources said.
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- The study, the sources said, is consistent with other
reports.
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- U.S. troops destroyed Iraqi weapons stockpiles -- including
500 rockets filled with the deadly sarin nerve gas -- at the end of the
Gulf War in March 1991.
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- 'No well-controlled studies'
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- After learning that troops had destroyed chemical weapons
in the mid-1990s, the Pentagon investigated the possibility that exposure
to nerve gas might have caused health problems suffered by some Gulf War
veterans.
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- The Institute of Medicine said in a review released in
September that there was "inadequate" and "insufficient"
evidence to support that theory.
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- The institute concluded that while it was "reasonable
to hypothesize that long-term adverse health effects can occur after exposure
to low levels of sarin, there are no well-controlled studies on long-term
health effects."
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