KBR originally claimed it didn’t know about the deadly toxin until the spring of 2003. Documents produced in the lawsuit, however, revealed that KBR
knew the chemical was being stockpiled and used in massive quantities at the water treatment facility as early as January of that year. Prior to the
U.S. invasion, Iraqi workers would treat water at the plant with sodium dichromate before injecting it under pressure into the ground, driving oil to
the surface. Sodium dichromate helped increase the life of pipelines and pumps by preventing corrosion.
Soldiers assigned to guard the facility said the chemical dust came from bags stacked both inside and outside the plant, which some soldiers would sit
on or use for protection from the wind. Wind spread the orange powder from the thousands of 100-pound bags. Gentry estimated the dust covered about
half the plant’s area.
“There were soldiers that actually brought it up, asked what it was, and they were told it was a mild irritant at first,” Rocky Bixby, 45, a
plaintiff in the Oregon National Guard suit that bears his name, told HuffPost.
“They had this information and didn’t share it,” Gentry said in a deposition two days before his final Christmas, in 2008. “I’m dying now
because of it.”
Another soldier, Larry Roberta, now 48, was exposed to the chemical after a gust of wind blew it into his eye and into a chicken patty he was eating.
After washing his face and mouth, he tried washing the chicken, because it was the only food he had left for the day. “It tastes like a mouthful of
nickels,” Roberta said. “I just kept washing my mouth and I couldn’t get that taste out.”
Roberta said he now requires an oxygen tank because he has less than 60 percent of his lung function and gets migraines stemming from the eye that was
exposed to the chemical. He had surgery to fix the muscle at the top of his stomach that prevented food from coming back up.
...
A federal jury in Oregon found on Nov. 2 that KBR negligently exposed troops to the toxic dust and ordered the company to pay $85 million in
noneconomic and punitive damages to the Oregon National Guard members.
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