by William Thomas
posted February 15,1999
http://www.islandnet.com/~wilco/investsky.htm
SEATTLE, WA.... As formations of unmarked tanker aircraft continue to
criss-cross American skies on a mission authorities refuse to disclose, an
environmental laboratory has identified an extremely toxic component of the
spray drifting over cities and countryside.
ENS has learned that samples of oily fallout collected by farmers, truck
drivers and pilots in Maryland and Pennsylvania were tested by Aqua-Tech
Environmental of Marion, Ohio in September, 1997 and found to contain ethylene
dibromide (EDB). An extremely hazardous pesticide, EDB was banned by the US
Environmental Protection Agency in 1983.
But in 1991, the composition of jet fuel used by commercial and military jet
aircraft in the U.S. was changed from JP4 to somewhat less flammable JP8. A
Department of Defence source says the move "has saved some lives" in air
crashes. Ethylene dibromide is a key component of JP8.
The 1991 Chemical Hazards of the Workplace warns that repeated exposure to ow
levels of ethylene dibromide results in "general weakness, vomiting, diarrhea,
chest pains, coughing and shortness of breath, upper respiratory tract
irritation" and respiratory failure caused by swelling of the lymph glands in
the lungs. "Deterioration of the heart, liver and kidneys, and hemorrhages in
the respiratory tract," can also result from prolonged contact with JP8.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's hazardous materials
list: "Ethylene dibromide is a carcinogen and must be handled with extreme
caution." A seven-page summary of this pesticide's extreme toxicity notes that
EDB may also damage the reproductive system. According to the EPA, "Exposure
can irritate the lungs, repeated exposure may cause bronchitis, development of
cough, and shortness of breath. It will damage the liver and kidneys".
Mark Witten, a respiratory physiologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson
where an official US Air Force study on JP8 was carried out, told Scientist in
March, 1998 that crew chiefs "seem to have more colds, more bronchitis, more
chronic coughs than the people not exposed to jet fuel."
EDB is 6.5-times heavier than air. Unlike normal contrails, the thick white
streamers being sprayed from downward-pointing tailbooms over at least 39
states does not dissipate, but spreads into an overcast that refracts a purple
color in sunlight and appears suddenly as an oily film in puddles and ponds.
Hundreds of photographs and videotapes made by ground observers show pairs or
larger formations of aircraft spreading a white mist that thickens and drifts
toward the ground. More than 200 eye-witnesses - including police officers,
pilots, military and public health personnel - have provided detailed accounts
of aerial spraying in characteristic "X"s and east-to-west grid patterns,
followed by occluded skies - and acute auto-immune reactions
and respiratory infections throughout affected regions.
"I keeps coughing phlegm that tastes bad," 50 year old Mary Young of Sallisaw,
Oklahoma told ENS after an aircraft sprayed her home at rooftop level one
night last January with something that struck the windows like sand. "My eyes
hurt, my joints hurt. I'm not catchin' my breath right. I can't get rid of
this cold. I've had this bad headache - it's not just a headache. My eyeballs
hurt so bad - way in the back - I just wish they would fall out."
Severe headaches, nosebleeds, shortness of breath, joint pain and a dry
hacking cough "that never leaves" are being reported by countless Americans
jamming hospital Emergency Rooms from coast to coast. While December and
January are traditionally bad months for asthma sufferers, patients, doctors
and nurses across the U.S. report hospital wards filled to overflowing with
bronchitis, pneumonia and acute asthma admissions at up to twice normal winter
rates.
Early last month, The News and Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina reported
that respiratory admissions to Durham regional hospital jumped from the usual
184 patients a day to 247. Ambulance drivers were told that the hospital was
not receiving any more patients.
In New York City, doctors are calling a flood of respiratory cases an
epidemic. "We have people double- and triple-parked in the ER on stretchers,"
Dr. Elliot Friedman, associate director of emergency medicine at Jamaica
Hospital Medical Center in Queens, told the New York Times on January 31. "And
there have been times when upwards of 40 people have been admitted but are
waiting for someone to be discharged," Friedman added.
"This high fever is not typical of other flus," Dr. Sigurd Ackerman, the
president of St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center told the Times shortly after
a TV cameraman panned up to frame lingering "X"-shaped contrails over
Times-Square. Dr. Robert Saken, a partner in the Soho Pediatrics Group,
toldthat newspaper, "It was surprising to me how sick they got and how
quickly it happened."
Dr. Ilya Spigland, Montefiore hospital's director of virology, doesn't know
the reason for the sudden epidemic of respiratory cases. It is, Spigland told
the New York Times, "very possible that the increase in respiratory infections
may not be due to the flu."
That same day in Lake Havasu, California, headlines in Today's News Herald
announced: "Victims curse unnamed bug, but can't call it the 'flu'." MD Mary
Lou Callername told the Herald "that a nameless virus is bringing at least 10
patients a day into her office and driving some into the hospital, but
laboratory tests show only a few are suffering from Type A or other
identifiable strains of influenza."
The previous weekend, after San Francisco resident Curtis Schumann noticed
"sky grids in the making," and Melanie Zucker watched nine contrails being
woven over Berkeley, local TV stations reported Bay area emergency rooms
inundated with flu-like cases.
In Seattle - where a resident reports "I've lived here for 26 years never
seeing this number of contrails at once" - pneumonia patient Lowell Barger
told ENS that in the hospital where he was admitted in late January, "their
respiratory ward was overflowing with people, and they were having to put
respiratory patients in other wards." At that time, a resident of Spokane
listening to a police radio scanner told ENS he heard "many rescue calls for
people with breathing difficulties."
In Palmyra, New Jersey, shortly after Lucrecia Moon watched unusual lingering
contrails from a McDonald's restaurant, a nurse reported "many people ill." In
Las Vegas, Nevada, TV news coverage told of area hospitals being filled with
people experiencing breathing problems.
After a resident of Lexington, Kentucky watched helicopters circling the city
for several days, flying low overhead at 3 a.m., "the sky looked like a giant
checkerboard from the planes criss-crossing it, and the air still had the
steel mill smell." According to this eye-witness, "Everyone here is sick. So
far six counties have closed all the schools because all the
students were sick with 'flu-like symptoms'. I've been having headaches, a
sore throat, and an annoying, hacking cough for the past four months and it
seems to get worse after I see these aircraft circling the area."
Similar "chem trails" sightings continue to be reported over Phoenix, Arizona.
The January 28, 1999 edition of Arizona Republic reported that "The incidence
of bronchial problems in Phoenix this month is 237 hospitalizations vs. last
year at 160 or so."
At the same time, hospitals in Portland, Oregon; Marietta, Georgia; Chandler,
Arizona, Bakersfield, Santa Cruz, Redding and Salinas, California - and other
cities across the nation - were jammed with bronchitis, pneumonia and other
acute respiratory cases after repeated spraying and cobweb-like fallout was
reported in those regions.
"We're getting sprayed real heavily with the contrails," a south Pennsylvania
resident told ENS. "It's just total saturation." As overfilled Pennsylvania
hospitals were forced to divert respiratory emergencies to other facilities
with bed space, another south-central Pennsylvania resident, Deborah Kammerer,
looked out her window and watched aircraft
"flying and dispersing over the city. It was supposed to be a clear sunny day.
It became more overcast as the day progressed. I observed how the white trails
widened out and settled down creating a haze over everything."
South Florida resident Karen Okenica told ENS she has watched on several
occasions as contrails "criss-crossed or ran parallel to each other. They did
not dissipate but got thicker and stayed in the sky for quite a while."
Okenica says she became frightened after gazing through Nikon binoculars and
noticing an all-white jet with "plumes" coming from the rear of the plane. In
early December, local newspaper reported that Bethesda Memorial and Delray
Community hospitals were full and could not accommodate any more patients.
The January 7 Philadelphia Daily News reported that "Emergency Room patients
overflowed into the hallways at West Jersey Hospital in Berlin, New Jersey,
and ambulance crews were temporarily diverted to other institutions as a wave
of respiratory illnesses swept the area." At Northern Westchester County
Hospital, "there was a 24 hour waiting
period to get in."
In Manitou, Michigan, Registered Nurse Kim Korte was driving north on M52,
when she noticed "stripes" in the sky. "It appeared as if someone took white
paint on their fingers and from north to south ran their fingers through the
sky. These contrails were evenly spaced and covered the whole sky!" from east
to west.
Within 24 hours, Korte became very weak and feverish. After her boyfriend told
her that "many in his family started coming down with the same complaints,"
the RN "started noticing alot of my patients and their family members were
coming down with these symptoms at the same time." On checking with her
colleagues, the former hospital supervisor learned that other nurses and
physicians were complaining "of being extremely busy with respiratory
diagnoses."
In Austin, Texas - where Richard Young reports that "The skies here are filled
almost daily with trails crossing each other" - a school nurse told a worried
parent that she had seen over 100 sick children in a single day.
Where is the mass media's reporting of this mass phenomenon? Indications of a
concerted cover-up came on February 11, when a retired Southern Baptist
preacher named Everett Burton finally succeeded in reaching C-span. After
voicing his opinion on the Clinton impeachment trial, this former minister
told Americans to get a copy of the Constitution and read it to realize what
they have lost. Rev. Burton then advised viewers not to take his word for what
was happening in the US - but to "just look up in the skies as the planes
regularly spray contrails across the skies, spraying people and making them
ill." At this point, Rev. Burton was cut off. The screen flipped from C-span
to the Tennessee state seal, remained silent for several minutes.
Americans are not alone in their anxious bewilderment and suffering. In
England, after lingering contrails and cobweb-like fallout were reported over
London and Birmingham, the BBC reported on January 14 that more than 8,000
people - mostly elderly - died from pneumonia and other respiratory
complications in the last week of December and the first two weeks of January,
1999.
According to the BBC, in early January of this year, more than 97,100 people
in England and Wales were stricken with respiratory ailments in a single week
- almost double the usual rate. Ambulances in the Greater Manchester and
Mersey region were each dealing with more than 1,000 calls every day - almost
twice the norm. Norfolk and Norwich suffered such an unexpected increase in
deaths, a refrigerated semi-trailer capable of holding 36 bodies was pressed
into service as a temporary morgue. [see BBC photo]
The ENS investigation continues.
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