BondCote Corp

Military Fabric's Safety Disputed 

RON MARTZ / The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 26mar04

Keith Ayers says he just wanted to do the right thing.

The Tallapoosa businessman wanted to persuade one of his clients to stop putting cancer-causing chemicals into fabric used to make tents, tarpaulins and equipment covers for the military.

The client, BondCote Corp. of Pulaski, Va., supplies about 70 percent of the material used in their manufacture and has done so for decades. Ayers believes the practice has exposed hundreds of thousands of American troops and anyone else who handled the fabric to unsafe levels of toxic materials.

But when Ayers raised his concerns with BondCote in August 2001, it stopped doing business with him, he said, costing his company, Advanced Materials, nearly $1 million a year.

Ayers is nearing what he fears could be an unsatisfactory end of a federal whistle-blower lawsuit he filed more than a year ago. He now finds the forces of the U.S. Department of Justice, which once backed him, and the Pentagon arrayed against him.

"Sometimes I'm not sure I did the right thing when I look at the hardships it's placed on my family," Ayers said this week.

On Friday, Ayers' attorney, Mike Bothwell of Roswell, filed a motion in U.S. District Court in Savannah seeking a hearing on a government offer to settle the case for $1.7 million.

Ayers and Bothwell feel the settlement is too low and does not adequately address damages to those who may have been exposed to the chemicals. Bothwell said such an offer also would absolve 22 co-defendants, most of which are larger than BondCote, from any liability.

The Fair Claims Act allows a citizen to sue contractors for fraud on behalf of the government and receive a percentage of any financial settlement. Ayers could collect from 15 percent to 40 percent of the settlement, Bothwell said.

"But a percentage of [$1.7 million] would be a disincentive to be a whistle-blower," the attorney said.

Ayers, whose company provided pigments and dyes to BondCote for use in the manufacture of camouflage fabric, said he is more concerned about the possible health risks to anyone who handles the toxin-laced material.

Manufacturer mum

The chemicals at question are lead, lead chromate, hexavalent chrome and trivalent chrome. The Department of Heath and Human Services' National Toxicology Program lists chromium hexavalent compounds as human carcinogens.

BondCote officials declined comment and referred questions to a New York-based public relations firm, Stanton Crenshaw Communications.

Pat Carle of Stanton Crenshaw did not deny the chemicals were used in the fabric but said in a written e-mail response to questions that "BondCote voluntarily changed our manufacturing process to eliminate the use of this product."

Carle denied that the chemicals posed a health risk.

"The chemicals at issue were present in a plasticizer matrix, which prevented the chemicals from being available in a form to be inhaled, ingested or to be in contact with the skin [i.e., to pose a health hazard]," Carle wrote.

The Pentagon says it still uses "quite a lot" of tents, tarps and equipment covers made of the fabric produced by BondCote but also denies they are hazardous to troops.

"We have tested this material under a number of different conditions and it was found not to be a danger to troops," said Air Force Maj. Michael Shavers, a Pentagon spokesman.

But when Pentagon investigators served a search warrant on BondCote last year, the affidavit accompanying it noted that lead chromate found in a sample of fabric "posed a significant health and safety risk to U.S. military personnel, or any other persons, who used, or otherwise handled, the coated fabric produced by BondCote."

Bothwell said he has seen results of one test done on the tent fabric and the results were inconclusive because only a limited sample was tested. That test, conducted last year by the U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., sampled only a few new tents.

The interim conclusions were that "the results presented in this report indicate that the tents sampled to date produce a low health risk to soldiers who live and work in them." But the report noted the test results were from "tents that are no more than lightly worn, and may not reflect exposures from heavily weathered tents."

The test report is suspect, said Charles Calmbacher, principal scientist for Safe Environmental Alternatives Group Inc. in Lawrenceville.

Calmbacher, a former environmental science officer with the Army's Environmental Hygiene Agency, said in an analysis of the Army's report written for Bothwell there was "great doubt to the validity of the conclusions in this report."

"Once a soldier is exposed to a tent that is not new and is more than lightly worn," Calmbacher continued, "it must be assumed that there is a higher risk of exposure or, more accurately, that no risk assessment has been performed to determine the level of exposure that is present for moderately or heavily worn tents."

Ayers: Chrome leaches

Ayers contends in his lawsuit that one of the chemicals, commonly known as chrome yellow and used in pigments for woodland green and desert tan camouflage, can leach out of the material over time.

Shavers, the Pentagon spokesman, said a subsequent and more thorough test done this year confirmed the results of the first test. But those later test results have not been furnished to Bothwell nor to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who has begun investigating the question of toxin-laced military fabric.

Bothwell said he believes the government has another motive for recommending the small settlement and for its refusal to admit the chemicals are dangerous.

"Our impression from speaking with the government attorney is the government needs tents and they don't believe anyone else can supply the tent materials," he said.

In his early discussions with Justice Department lawyers, Bothwell said, it was agreed they would settle for no less than $10 million.

Charles Miller, a spokesman for the department, declined comment of any aspect of the case.

"We just have no comment on that," Miller said, referring additional inquiries to the Pentagon.

source: http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/0304/27milsuit.html 27mar04

Products:
MIL-PRF-20696F: Cloth, Waterproof, Weather Resistant, Types I, II, & IV, Classes 1, 2, & 3 
MIL-C-22787D: Cloth, Coated, Fuel and Flame Resistant; Type IV 
MIL-PRF-32002: Cover Material, Vehicle Coated Tactical and Combat, Heavy-Duty, Waterproof, Options A & B, Class B 
MIL-C-43006G: Cloth and Strip, Laminated or Coated, Vinyl Nylon or Polyester, High Strength, Flexible; Types I & II, Classes 1, 2, & 3, Form 1 & 2
MIL-C-43086C: Cloth, Coated, Nylon, Vinyl Coated; Type I 
MIL-C-43285: Type I, Class 4, Pale Green Face, Uncoated Back 
MIL-C-43808A: Cloth, Coated, Nylon; Type II 
MIL-PRF-44103D: Cloth, Fire, Water and Weather Resistant; Classes 1, 2, 3 & 4 and Grades A, B, & C 
MIL-C-46168, Amend II: Infrared Reflectance 
MIL-E-52798A (ME): Infrared Reflectance 
MIL-C-53039: Infrared Reflectance 
A-A-55308: Cloth and Strip, Laminated or Coated, Vinyl Nylon or Polyester, High Strength, Flexible; Types I & II, Classes 1, 2, & 3, Form 1 & 2 
A-A-59325: Pouch, Human Remains 
SS-482: Vinyl-Polyester Laminated Cloth, Yellow, Types I & II, Classes 1 & 2 
D-80-001-149/SF-001: Cloth, Coated Synthetic Fibre and Vinyl Chloride, Polymer or Copolymer; Types I, II, & III 
D-80-001-065/SF-001: Cloth Coated Fibre and Polyvinylchloride

source: http://www.bondcote.com/mil_prods_specs.htm 27mar04