Our soldiers in Afghanistan may be facing brain damage from not only bombs and bullets, but from toxic sand, according to a study by the Navy.
The dust that’s blown around during sandstorms contains manganese and other materials that are neurotoxic, in other words, substances that injure the nervous system in the brain. Manganese in and of itself is known to cause brain damage and symptoms like Parkinson’s disease.
The Navy reported its findings, which it says are preliminary, at a neurotoxicology conference earlier this month in Portland, Ore.
But I’ll say that my first reaction is that it is much too early to jump to the conclusion that the memory loss that some soldiers coming back from Afghanistan are suffering can be attributed to manganese, rather than traumatic brain injury.
During his presentation in Portland, Palur Gunasker, a scientist with the Navy Environmental Health Effects Laboratory, said that our soldiers face injury from environmental factors, like inhaling the toxic sand during sandstorms.
Afterward, soldiers have been complaining of not only respiratory illness, but also about problems with their cognitive functions, according to Gunasker.
The Navy study detected manganese, silicon, magnesium, iron, aluminum and chromium in sand from Afghanistan that it tested.
The Navy research team, which is also testing sand from Iraq, found that nerve cells exposed to sand with high concentrations of the toxic materials actually die.