Jet Contrails May Be Sickening People Across The US Source: Environment News Service (ENS)
January 8, 1999
SEATTLE, Washington, - Contrails spread by fleets of jet
aircraft in elaborate cross-hatched patterns are sparking speculation
and making people sick across the United States.
Washington state resident William Wallace became ill
with severe diarrhea and fatigue after watching several
multi-engine jets spend New Year's day laying cloud lines in an east
to west grid pattern. A neighbor working outside came down with
similar symptoms. But their wives, who remained indoors, suffered no
ill effects from the inexplicable maneuvers which observers liken to
high-altitude "crop-dusting" by unidentifed multi-engine aircraft.
Series of aircraft contrails in a high traffic region
over the northern Gulf of Mexico 1992 (Images courtesy NASA)
Condensation trails, called contrails, are generated at altitudes high
enough for water droplets to freeze in a matter of seconds and not
quickly evaporate - typically where the temperatures are below -38
degrees Celcius.
Contrails can form through the addition of water
vapor to the air from the jet engine exhaust. Even tiny nuclei
released in the exhaust fumes may be sufficient to generate ice
crystals, and hence, condensation trails.
Wallace wonders if ethylene dibromide, a highly toxic
component of JP-8 jet fuel, is making people sick. Similar
incidents over Las Vegas last year prompted a US Air Force spokesman
to explain that the military aircraft were "dumping fuel" before landi
ng.
But the strange spray patterns are being reported
repeatedly over towns in Tennessee, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New
York, Nevada, Idaho, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma,
Washington state and California.
Wallace has been watching formations of high-flying
jets weave grid-like contrails above his home since last summer.
Each time, "We get a taste in our mouth," he reports. He and his
wife Ann get "kind of tired and sick," having "no energy to do
anything."
After plants began dying around his mountain cabin,
"I got real sick for about three weeks," Wallace relates. "My eyes
watered. Fluid came out of my nose. I could hardly move my arm up
above my head to comb my hair for about a week."
Wallace and his wife are not alone in their plight.
In March, 1996, Dr. Greg Hanford bought an expensive camera and
binoculars to keep an eye on jets spraying white bands above his
Bakersfield, California home. Hanford has counted 40 or 60 jets on
some "spray days."
"Everybody seems to be getting sick from it," Hanford
told ENS. "Hackin' and coughin' when you really get nailed with this
stuff." The dentist, many of his patients and two receptionists have
repeatedly contracted severe respiratory infections. Hanford's illness
lingered for five months despite courses of four different
antibiotics.
"It's really weird," Hanford says. "You think two
jets are going to hit each other - and then they make an X." The
dentist says he has sometimes seen "furry globular balls" spread
downwind in a long feather from the high-flying aircraft.
Unlike normal contrails, which dissipate soon after a
lone jet's passage, video taken by Wallace and Hanford show eerily
silent silver jets streaming fat contrails from their
wingtips in multiple, criss-cross patterns. But instead of dissipating
like normal contrails, these white jet-trails coalesce into broad
cloud-bands that gradually occlude crystal clear skies.
"Passenger jets don't make contrails that stay and
become clouds," Wallace observes.
Government officials deny that anything unusual is
taking place. When Hanford called the local airport, tower
personnel told him there was nothing going on." The jets were "just
commercial" undergoing "international flight training."
But a skeptical Hanford responded, "Is the FAA going to
allow two jets to come at each other?"
Pseudo-color, multispectral images taken April 20, 1994
by a NOAA satellite, reveal a number of contrails over Oklahoma and
Kansas.
X'es, overlapping W's and the Roman numeral XII are
among the patterns flown by the mystery aircraft. Last June, Hanford
watched four aircraft spraying in circles to form a perfect bulls-eye.
Through his Swaroski binoculars, Hanford could see what "looked like a
737" painted all-white on top with an "orangish-red" underbody and red
engine cowlings. Another 727-like aircraft was painted "all-white with
a black stripe up the middle of fuselage." None of the planes carried
identifying markings.
Pat Edgar has been watching the jets spraying over
eastern Oklahoma since a sunny day in October, 1977 when as
many as 30 contrails gradually occluded the sky. "They look like
they're playing tic-tac-toe up there," he says. "You know darn well
it's not passenger planes."
Edgar says he has watched "cobwebbing stuff coming
down" from the zigzagging jets flying "all day long, line after
line, back-and-forth, like furrows in a farm field."
Edgar adds that "There is a lot of Lupus in the area
now. A lot of women have come down with it."
Edgar's father-in-law, a former judge, and three or
four other close friends were hit hard in their immune systems.
Symptoms include swollen hands and legs, night fever and shortness of
breath.
Contrails spread out over time. (Photo by Ronald
Holle, U. of Illinois Cloud Catalog)
Retired Oklahoma state judge Bill Ed Rogers now runs out
of breath after walking 20 feet to the bathroom. Climbing stairs, he
says, "is directly out of the question."
Rogers, does not attribute his strange malady to the
mystery jets. But neither he nor his doctors can explain his breathing
difficulty, which began shortly after spraying began
in November, 1997, and is getting worse. The 57 year old former
judge says he thought he was experiencing congenital heart failure
when he was admitted into the Mayo clinic last January. But after
being diagnosed with severe inflamation in his right lung, a team of
top surgeons were unable to pump an unidentified "jello-like" fluid
from his lung.
Edgar, Wallace, Hanford and other eye-witnesses are
uneasy over the ongoing aerial "experiments and the secrecy
surrounding them. "They're gettin' ready, practicing," Edgar believes,
for some kind of mass population cull.
Before Edgar sold his restaurant, customers came in
complaining of airplanes "flyin' around all night" over a remote
area of Oklahoma. In the morning, they could see "stuff comin' out of
their wings." Edgar says he knows four-dozen witnesses who have "come
down violently ill, coughin' up blood for two weeks - or [with] real
bad nosebleeds." As far as he's concerned, "it had to be something in
that doggone plane that was spillin' out in the middle of the night."
Edgar joins witnesses across the U.S. who worry that
whoever is behind the mystery spraying just has to "come up with
something a little stronger later on. It's just a guess," he
says. "But it sure seems weird. They have a mission. They go back and
forth all day. Hey man I'm talkin' hundreds of contrails in a day!
It's unbelievable."
by William Thomas