The Air Force has recently discovered unsafe levels of a potential carcinogen at underground launch control centers in a nuclear missile base in Montana. This finding has prompted a new cleanup effort to address the issue. The Air Force Global Strike Command stated that this is the first time a comprehensive sampling of active US intercontinental ballistic missile bases has been conducted to address specific cancer concerns raised by members of the missile community. The samples taken from two launch facilities at Malmstrom Air Force Base revealed levels of PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) higher than the thresholds recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency. PCBs have been identified as a likely carcinogen by the EPA.
In response to these findings, Gen. Thomas Bussiere, commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, has ordered immediate measures to begin the cleanup process at the affected facilities. The goal is to mitigate the exposure of airmen and Space Force Guardians to potentially hazardous conditions. This action was prompted by a military briefing obtained by the AP in January, which revealed that at least nine current or former missileers at Malmstrom were diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a rare blood cancer. Following this briefing, the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine launched a study to investigate the occurrence of cancer among the entire missile community and to explore the possibility of disease clusters. There is concern that there may be hundreds more cases of cancer and other illnesses within the missileer community, based on data from the grassroots group, the Torchlight Initiative.
According to the Torchlight Initiative, at least 268 troops who served at nuclear missile sites, or their surviving family members, have self-reported being diagnosed with cancer, blood diseases, or other illnesses over the past several decades. Out of these reported cases, at least 217 are cancer cases, with 33 of them being non-Hodgkin lymphoma. These numbers are significant considering the small size of the missileer community. Each year, only a few hundred airmen serve as missileers at the country’s three silo-launched Minuteman III ICBM bases. Since the Minuteman operations began in the early 1960s, there have only been approximately 21,000 missileers in total, according to the Torchlight Initiative. To provide some context, the CDC reports around 403 new cancer cases per 100,000 people in the US general population each year.
The Minuteman III silo fields are located at Malmstrom, FE Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, and Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota. Missileers are military officers who serve in underground launch control centers, spending days at a time in underground bunkers on watch, ready to launch Minuteman III ICBMs if ordered to do so by the president. The silos and control centers were built over 60 years ago, and much of the infrastructure and electronics are decades old. Missileers have raised concerns in the past about ventilation, water quality, and potential exposure to toxins that are unavoidable while underground. The discovery of PCBs by the Air Force during site visits is part of an ongoing investigation into the reported cases of cancer among the missile community.
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