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. 

Several independent sources claim that samples of fallout from the lingering 
smoke trails and have been independently tested and found to contain 
ethylene dibromide (EDB). "We had the fuel sampled in August, 1997," a 
contrails investigator who wishes to remain anonymous told this reporter. 
"The lab immediately identified the sample my friend took in, however once 
the lab started receiving quite a few phone calls, they went cold! They 
didn't want much to do with us after that." 

The lab in question - which shares its name with several subsidiaries and 
several separate laboratories - could not confirm the test, which would 
remain confidential in any case. But in 1998, a US Air Force public affairs 
officer told residents of Las Vegas that their sudden upsurge of respiratory 
ailments could have come from "routine" fuel-dumping by military aircraft 
reducing weight for landing. 

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 
low 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 me 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, told 
that 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, Arizona, headlines in Today's News Herald 
announced: "Victims curse unnamed bug, but can't call it the 'flu'." MD Mary 
Lou Kallername 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 me 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 me 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 this reporter. "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 me 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] 

As this story goes to press, fresh leads now point to a bacteria in the 
spray that targets the respiratory tract. Lab tests confirming this 
development are expected to be in my hands shortly. Stay tuned. 

My investigation continues. 

PLEASE ADDRESS INQUIRIES, REPORT YOUR 'CONTRAILS" SIGHTINGS AND JOIN OUR 
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