John E Bugay Jr
1428 Lower Bull Run Road • West Mifflin, PA 15122
412-908-0618 (mobile) • johnbugay@gmail.com •johnbugay.wordpress.com
NEWS RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Iraq War Veteran (2003) and mother of six now undergoes treatment for rare leukemia:
is exposure to benzene in war-zone “burn pits” to blame?
PITTSBURGH, PA (August 15, 2011) – A Pittsburgh-area veteran of the Iraq War is undergoing treatment for
chronic myelomonocytic leukemia (CMML), a rare cancer of the blood that she believes may have been
caused by radiation or chemical exposures she received during her service in a “weapons intelligence” unit,
as part of one of the first waves of U.S. troops into Iraq in April and May 2003.
Bethany Bugay (née Airel) served as a medic for the 203rd MI BN, headquartered in the Aberdeen Proving
Grounds in Aberdeen, MD, a weapons intelligence unit whose job it was to locate and catalogue any of the
WMDs that were expected to be found in Iraq.
A housewife and mother of five children at the time of the 9/11/2001 terror attacks, she had previously
served in the Army from 1980-1985, and she believed that she could best serve her country and help her
family financially by re-enlisting in the Army Reserve, which she did in March 2002. After undergoing
training as a medic in the fall of 2002, she was “involuntarily transferred” to the 203rd, and by early
February of that year, she had relocated to Aberdeen to begin training for war in Iraq.
Hand-picked as a part of an advance team and sent to Iraq to prepare for living arrangements and
temporary medical care facilities, she established a medical clinic in desert conditions, first at the Tallil air
base in south central Iraq, then at the Baghdad International Airport, where she provided medical
treatment to more than 200 Soldiers in the unit, as well as to mobile foreign allies, and to Special Forces
units that supported the 203rd’s exploitation missions.
As one of the first to move into a newly occupied war zone, things weren’t easy at all. In fact, the unit did
not have any of its equipment for the first month it was in Iraq. In a letter dated Mother’s Day, May 11,
2003, published on the World Net Daily website that year, she noted, after she had been in Iraq for nearly
two weeks, that:
All of our equipment is still in the States. And even more crazy is, not only is everything that we
need still in the States, but the gear and life support needs are all coming by boat. Meaning that it
will be another month or so before any of that stuff gets here. Meanwhile, we’ll have about 150
people or so here without vehicles, gear, tents, or computers and equipment. I can’t understand
why we’d have everyone move to Iraq and not be able to do any work.
The fact that equipment arrived late was confirmed by her commanding officer in a 2005 article in a
Military Intelligence Journal. He said: “B Company arrived in Kuwait without their organic equipment, which
was coming by sea.”
John Bugay
more
1
Mrs. Bugay noted that one of the pieces of equipment that only showed up “just before we left” was the
Geiger counter, used to measure radiation. “We were there to find weapons of mass destruction, and we
didn’t have anything. We walked into places where we had no idea what we were walking into. We were
around armaments all the time.”
She was also exposed to benzene, a known human carcinogen through military-directed trash-burning
activities. In a letter dated May 14 (also published at WND.com), she wrote about this activity:
One of the most amazing duties to come is the sh-- burning detail. We really have to pull out the
barrel under the[latrine] seat and mix (stir) diesel fuel in the barrel of excrement and light it on fire.
We also burn all garbage. Nothing is saved from being burned up. I think all garbage burning smells
worse than the sh-- burning.
Burning diesel fuel causes the chemical benzene to be released, and benzene is a known human carcinogen.
Mrs. Bugay was awarded the Army Commendation Medal, and her official “discharge from active duty”
form notes that she completed the “Field Sanitation Course” in March 2003.
In recent months, Sens. Charles Schumer, D-NY and Bill Nelson, D-FL, have sparred with the Defense
Department over a failure of the military to provide respirators for troops deployed near trash burn pits.
The senators cited a new study suggesting that troops who served in Iraq or Afghanistan are eight times
more likely to develop respiratory illness than veterans who deployed elsewhere.
Recently, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Tim Wymore of St. Charles, one of several hundred
veterans across the country who have filed suits contending that dangerous toxins from open-air burn pits
operated on U.S. military installations in Iraq and Afghanistan made them sick, was declared “permanently
disabled” by the Veterans Administration, making his family eligible for many benefits, including medical
insurance.
At the insistence of President Obama, the Department of Veterans Affairs has sponsored the National
Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine to conduct a study on the long-term health effects from burn pit
exposure. As of May 2011, the duration of the project was extended, with an expected publication in Fall
2011.
CMML more typically affects men rather than women, at a median age ofmore than 70 years old. Mrs.
Bugay is currently 50. She is on a regimen of Vidaza, a form of chemotherapy, in preparation for a “bone
marrow transplant”, which offers approximately a 40-50% hope of a cure for CMML.
Links in this article:
Army mom: “I must be crazy”
Published June 25, 2003, World Net Daily
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=19455#ixzz1UiXfiw6c
Mommy's back from Iraq
Published October 5, 2003, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, by John Bugay
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/03278/228302-109.stm
John Bugay
more
2
Vets: Burn pits are killing us
Published January 15, 2010 Salt Lake Tribune, By Matthew D. LaPlante
http://www.sltrib.com/News/ci_14182242
The 203d MI Battalion in operation Iraqi Freedom
Originally published in the Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin, Jan-March 2005, by Daniel R. Arnold
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0IBS/is_1_31/ai_n15875098/
Senators Question Delay in Burn Pit Safety Measures
Published in Stars and Stripes, May 19, 2011, By Leo Shane III
http://www.military.com/news/article/May-2011/senators-question-delay-in-burn-pit-safetymeasures.html
Troops near burn pits to get masks, respirators
Published in ArmyTimes, February 11, 2011, By Rick Maze, Staff writer
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2011/02/military-burn-pit-masks-respirators-021011w/
Ailing veteran gets long-delayed recognition
Published in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 4, 2010, by Phillip O’Connor
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/article_4fd95da1-cbca-5c74-9d3b-a1db26206bc9.html
Long-term Health Consequences of Exposure to Burn Pits in Iraq and Afghanistan
National Academies of Science, Institute of Medicine (Study # IOM-BSP-09-03)
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/projectview.aspx?key=49191
Benzene as a known carcinogen
American Cancer Society
http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/CancerCauses/OtherCarcinogens/IntheWorkplace/benzene
Philips Petroleum Company, Diesel Fuel MSDS
“Hazardous Decomposition Products: The use of hydrocarbon fuels in an area without adequate ventilation
may result in hazardous levels of combustion products (e.g., oxides of carbon, sulfur and nitrogen, benzene
and other hydrocarbons) and/or dangerously low oxygen levels.”
http://www.petrocard.com/Products/MSDS-ULS.pdf
American Cancer Society: Chronic Myelomonocitic Leukemia
http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/Leukemia-ChronicMyelomonocyticCMML/DetailedGuide/index
Photos follow:
John Bugay
more
3
Bethany Bugay in March 2003, May 2003
John Bugay
more
4
Bethany Bugay, 2011, with daughter Bethany (left) and Danielle (right)
Bethany Bugay in Iraq, 2003
John Bugay
###
5