Sick for KBR

While private U.S. military contracting giant KBR’s coffers look healthy, the same cannot be said for their former employees, who have gone to Capitol Hill claiming the Iraq war’s biggest fans put employee safety at risk by exposing them to sodium dichromate.

Testifying to the Democratic Policy Committee, several Americans who had worked at the Qarmat Ali water injection plant near Basra are blaming KBR’s cavalier attitude toward the expendables hired along their profiteering path for the illnesses they’ve since been plagued with. Ed Blacke, a former plant safety inspector, says he told KBR about the presence of sodium dichromate—known to cause cancer, liver problems and stymie the immune system—and was ignored. When he warned other workers, he was fired. A former U.S. soldier who worked the plant says the chemical contaminated hundreds, this in spite of a 2003 memo showing KBR project managers had discussed the fact that “people are potentially exposed to something that may be very dangerous.”

KBR dismissed the allegations and an invitation to testify. The DPC is a partisan committee created by Senate Democrats and has no legislative powers.

by SCOTT SAXON