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Scientists focus on heavy metals in combat vets

Researchers at Stony Brook University Medical Center in New York have determined that a soldier who deployed to Iraq is now carrying particles of titanium, iron and copper in his lungs.

In a letter published this month in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Stony Brook Assistant Professor of Surgery and Medicine Dr. Anthony Szema wrote that samples of a service member’s open lung biopsy were found to contain the heavy metals.

Open lung tissue biopsies done on troops who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan have been shown to sparkle with crystalline material, as noted by researchers Dr. Robert Miller of Vanderbilt University and Dr. Matthew King of Meharry Medical College, Nashville, Tenn.

But until now, scientists have not determined exactly what the particles were.

“I was at a barbecue speaking to my colleagues and learned that a method to identify the material was available just down the road at Brookhaven National Laboratory,” Szema said.

He sent the biopsy slides to the laboratory, which used its National Synchrotron Light Source, a facility-sized machine that uses bright beams of x-rays, ultraviolent and infrared light for research, to analyze the material.

“The patient had hot spots all over his lungs,” Szema said.

The soldier, identified as a laundry staff supervisor in Iraq and Kuwait, had been diagnosed with nonspecific interstitial pneumonitis, a type of pneumonia that can’t be categorized into existing patterns, as well as bronchiolitis.

The soldier said he had not worked around grinding apparatus or industrial paint, both common sources for occupational exposure to the metals, but admitted to breathing in airborne dust from “the laundry facility, improvised explosive device blasts, sandstorms, burn pits and the occasional cigar.”

Szema’s work is part of an ongoing effort to determine why some service members deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan have respiratory problems.

“What makes healthy individuals who have never had asthma end up in wheelchairs on oxygen, or a 34-year-old non-smoker who has near-normal [physical fitness tests] but is short of breath and has lungs that are totally destroyed? These are the problems we’re trying to solve,” Szema said.