James E. Phelps studied electrical engineering at the University of Tennessee with his thesis being in core reactor refueling electronics for breeder reactors. Much of his work was at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee (ORNL) which is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) where he worked in the areas of radiation detection and measurements and site remediation amongst other tasks.

He developed the concept of air pharmacology while working at ORNL. This concept entails "treating" the air with chemicals to mitigate and offset the effects of other toxic chemicals in the air such as hydrogen fluoride and chlorine. The purpose was to lessen the extremely toxic effects of fluoride pollution while not stating that a problem existed to the public. The entire art of pharmacology is about how to add one more toxic effect to mitigate another from industry or environment.

The chemtrail technique is basically air pharmacology - how to add one more pollutant that has some positive synergistic effect against another. Phelps developed this approach while looking at weapons plants worker health effects at ORNL.

Jim has been actively and openly involved in criticism of ORNL and DOE and much related material may be found by searching online and also at his environmental newsletter web site: DOEWatch. There you will find much on "air pharmacology" or "scattering" or "geoengineering" or, in other words, "chemtrails". In his web pages he openly makes the claim of being a whistleblower.

Jim was asked for some opinion on the Holmestead.ca Shield Project web page and he has provided this short "review":

"I have been asked to comment on the earlier www.Holmestead.ca chemtrail question and answer web page regarding the: Shield Project. Here are my thoughts:

Sounds connected pretty close - sounds like one of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory types.

LLNL (funded by the DOE) is where all the weather and toxic computer science happens in the U.S. They do the EIS [Environmental Impact Statements] for the wars and things. Most of the science and logic "Deep Shield" describes is real close - not perfect. Any errors in the web page version may simply be due to note taking and transcription. Some additional questions could have been asked such as relating to the radiation conversion ionization mechanism of the barium and fluoride.

Keep in mind that the "Star Wars" program and "chemtrails" overlap. The Star Wars program called "Excalibur" uses all the physics connected to the chemtrail effects. Excalibur is a nuclear-pumped x-ray LASER system, whose basic operations are the same as those for the Sun's radiation acting on the fluorides in the upper atmosphere. They are so close to each other that both of them use the "shield" term.

This "Deep" person speaks the exact lingo from ORNL in the 80's that was used as the national security justification for the chemtrails and their close association to Star Wars and Ed Teller.

"Deep" refers to the need to keep all this mess secret so as not to panic the planet. What this does is allow them to manipulate things. We all know that for a problem of this magnitude, that in order to fix it, you involve all the peoples of the planet. This process would bring on real global cooperation and peace.

This is basically the time when all the peoples of the world deserve to know the problems and learn to work together. This is the real definition for greater good and bringing on global oneness.

You are headed in that direction of openness and accountability with your web site work and this is good."

Jim Phelps

Testimony of J. E. Phelps to the Sen. Thompson gas diffusion hearing of March 22, 2000 and March 28, 2000

To: Senator Fred Thompson, Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, 340 Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510

Dear Honorable Senators:

Let me begin with thanking Senators Thompson and Voinovich for raising the worker health problems to open senate committee process and receiving written testimony in order to accurately address the extent of the problems and seek more effective remedies.

I submit my testimony as a former senior staff development engineer of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) working in the areas of radiation detection and measurements and site remediation, and with knowledge of problems at the K25 site and DOE sites in general.

During the mid 1980s at ORNL, layoffs at the K25 plant brought workers from K25 to my engineering section at ORNL and from this process many of us learned of the dangerous operation of K25. We heard of a great many uranium hexafluoride (UF6) releases that concerned us due to the toxicity of the hydrogen fluoride (HF) generated in such releases. Also, during this period of the 1980s members of my work section were asked to investigate SR90 detected in the waters near K25, which is a very mobile fission product that indicates nuclear problems. I and my section have expertise in nuclear spectroscopy and process equipment and the concern was that a nuclear slow cooker criticality was generating toxic air and water releases, so this investigation came to this section. These investigations into these problems was shared knowledge in my ORNL engineering work section.

A perceived problem seen at ORNL was many persons were being noticed with thyroid conditions and it was first suspected that releases of I131 might be generated by a slow cooking nuclear criticality in drains, sumps, ponds, or other areas of K25 with unmonitored highly enriched uranium (HEU) deposits, as well as several fissile slow cooking problems at ORNL. It was later found that the K25 SR90 presence was coming from upstream of K25 and coming from inside the Y12 nuclear weapons plant and was then suspected of coming from the Chestnut Ridge burial ground where HEU and water migration could set up such a problem and allow SR90 to get into this creek. Y12 guards had seen flames shooting from the Y12 Chestnut Ridge burial ground and trees died nearby, which suggested a nuclear criticality in this area. A fission problem would make hydrogen that easily ignite rising from the burial ground. This problem has been suppressed to the public.

We, at ORNL, also noticed high emissions of UF6 from all kinds of release points from the explosive testing of 12 ton cylinders in gas fires, to process leaks in hundreds of areas running at positive pressures, the operation of a uranium fluoride burning incinerators, to the leaks of storage cylinders valves and perforations produced concerns of the high emissions of HF gases and oxyfluoride (OF2) gases into both the workers areas and the regional air. It was well known that fluorine is a halogen element and thus in the body is mistaken for iodine and from this harm can come to the thyroid gland, and even endocrine processes, from the releases of HF into air. Damage to the thyroid is also connected to immune diseases, heart disease, and metabolism of every cell in the body. Thyroid disease is now recognized by the state to be high in this region.

I raised this K25 HF toxic release concern with my ORNL section in the mid 1980s and members of my ORNL engineering section were sent into the communities near the K25 plant to get samples of vegetation, milk, and well water to test for the concentrations of K25 toxic releases primarily fluorides. They also tried to suggest to folks to get off well water and onto public water to mediate the potential for health harm. The ORNL staff collecting these samples in the community were under the management of Hugh Brashears and they were engineers like Martin Bauer and Barbara Hoffheins. Dozens of community persons recall these ORNL folks wearing white lab coats coming to their homes and farms in this area, but when they asked ORNL for the data, ORNL claims no knowledge. This information is being suppressed in the public.

The ORNL management well knew of the health concerns from the K25 UF6 releases in the mid 1980s and suppressed this information. I believe this played a strong role in the decisions to close the plant after the cold war ended to lessen the harm to the area.

This is not the only thing this engineering group at ORNL investigated and suppressed. These same ORNL engineers and managers were well aware that a reactor called the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) at ORNL had a severe problem with generation of HF and fluorine from the radiolysis effect with U233 based UF4. The corrosive nature of these effects produced leaks in the fuel storage piping valves that released fluorine, HF, oxyfluorides, and UF6 into the building air space. This was further made a problem because the basement exhaust fans were not well maintained and had broken belts, as evidenced to me by ORNL maintenance workers like Mr. A. E. Massengill. The leaks at the MSRE were allowed to persist so long that a pile of uranium dust accumulated near a valve and caused a nuclear criticality explosion and a reportable event, which was also suppressed. One of the workers at MSRE, named Richard Mathis, ended up with detectable levels of U233 in his body due to exposures. ORNL technician V. C. Miller cleaned up the criticality mess and the building was painted to entrap the U233, with toxicity effects like plutonium. Many of the workers at this MSRE building are sick from ills much like those seen at the K25 site and these exposures were due to persistent low level fluoride emissions into the building air resulting in cumulative fluoride toxicity.

This same ORNL section also covered up nuclear criticality problems in the ORNL gunnite tanks over concerns that these dangerous reactions and emissions might result in the closing of the central laboratory area of ORNL. These issues were carefully suppressed as well and a sluicing device used to physically get to the slow cooking areas of the high level fissile containing wastes in these tanks. As these nuclear reacting slow cooking zones were being disturbed, the fast gas, xenon and krypton isotope, off gassing was so extreme that it came out the top of the tanks and flooded a wide area around the tanks with fallout of SR90 and CS137, which is well documented and shown in area surveys of this area. I was contaminated in this release and one of my section technicians overdosed with internal contamination. These same gases also blanketed the area from stack gas release for the many years that this was allowed to occur as the tank stirring failed to control the problem.

The ORNL Division that I worked in also designed much of the K25 Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA) incinerator and my input was also included in the designs of the incinerator. K25 and Oak Ridge had a huge problem from the need to store the huge volume of fissile liquid uranium fluorides around the site and one way to address this was to run them into the incinerator. For this reason, the TSCA incinerator has the highest emissions of uranium and with this also the burn products of fluorine. The fluorides cause the dominant toxicity issues, similar to that of burning chlorine compounds in municipal waste incinerators making dioxin. The incinerator was designed with controlled burn temperature and also a triple stage filtering system to try and keep down the fluorine emissions. TSCA incinerator was also designed to burn things together with multiple feeds that would form less toxic compounds of fluorides and metals due to catalytic like effects. Even with this the toxic emissions of the TSCA incinerator were rated to kill the pine trees downwind of it after a few years of operation. Before the 1982 TSCA legislation, older incinerators at K25 and Y12 burned toxic materials with no restrictions, filters, or temp controls.

The emissions of fluorides are well known to affect pine trees and there are many aluminum plant operations that not only killed pine trees, but affected the health of farms and cattle and even honey bees for miles downwind. This same section at ORNL also came up with a pine beetle plausible denial story to hide the fluorides toxicity killing the downwind pine trees of K25 and TSCA, and this was patterned right after these same techniques used by the aluminum industry to deny environmental damages. ORNL prefabricated this lie to cover up the extensive damage to the reservation trees from the decades of HF releases and even further problems from the TSCA incinerator emissions and cutting open the process stages in dismantlement.

Near Oak Ridge is also the ALCOA aluminum works and it is known to have caused damages to the nearby farms, and its releases also involve HF. The combined effects of all the sources of HF affect the region.

As it came to be known that the K25 plant would be closed and go through D & D there were also concerns about opening so much of the process that had trapped UF6 in the system and square miles of UF6 surface contamination, that could put tons of HF into the region's air. In closing the plant, the stages were purged with dry nitrogen gas, but there is still much UF6 trapped in valves, square mile area surfaces of metals, flanges, and diffusion barrier tubes The K25 building is at the center of a lot of the health effects of the workers at the K25 plant and this appears to stem from the removing of enriched uranium deposits and failing to weld up the holes, which let in moist air, and let HF evaporate into the building air. The building's high volume air systems were turned off to allow this effect to happen, just like a similar effect seen at the MSRE problems at ORNL.

Workers that spend much time in the K25 building come down with lung problems and lung infections. As the exposures accumulate they seem to have increasing bone and joint problems, foggy thinking, low energy, and debilitating fatigue characteristic of being exposed to poison HF gas at low levels for years. They also get other ills like asthma and arthritis that are well known to occur in related HF exposures for aluminum pot line workers exposed to low level HF day after day. HF is both a bone seeker and thyroid seeking chemical oxidant that damages cells and it accumulates in the bone over time. HF causes health problems like exposures to SR90 and I131 because of this effect and resembles a radiologic exposure with oxidation effect.

The problems of HF exposure also occur at the Y12 nuclear weapons plant because HF is used in that process to make UF4 or "green salt." There are also emissions from those process stacks that can affect the nearby community of color named Scarboro. The ORNL engineers also well knew these effects in the 1980s from simple observations of the MSRE and K25 emissions problems. ORNL engineers and managers even put in some things to confuse the issues there. They intentionally planned to blank out a large part of the aerial survey of Y12's 40 million pounds of uranium chips buried in the dirt to attract attention to that, so that the plant's HF emissions would be off the prime RADAR screen of the Scarboro community public interests. While the Scarboro Community has been found to have detectable levels of enriched uranium in its soils, there is an even greater level of fluorides, which will biologically concentrate (bioconcentrate) in garden plants, much like I131 effects. The children of Scarboro are believed to have elevated rates of asthma and other ills. A recent report from the Joint Center also found bone breaks in the community to be high and other ills that fit the effects of HF and fluorides exposures. The releases of HF and the correlation to the health effects are also being suppressed here, and the management at these plants fully knows this problem exists.

The most disturbing part of all this, is that it was fully known at ORNL in the mid 1980s and was totally suppressed and still is suppressed. Many of these cover ups were totally illegal, harmed workers as well as communities, and ORNL managers and DOEORO managers have acted to suppress this information. Such actions are totally criminal in nature and this speaks for the need for criminal prosecution in this entire matter. These types of coordinated cover ups speak to the need to use the RICO laws. The plant manager acted irresponsibly and they harmed workers, community children, and thousands of acres of environment using deliberate sets of planned lies to the public, which is criminal and does need prosecution and those harmed deserve to see justice done.

A number of the K25 fire protection workers are also ill and this is really simple to connect the reason why. Today, firemen use supplied air respirators to go into burning homes because of the presence of Teflon fry pans and Freon cooling systems that the fires turn into poison gases. They also use this to protect from burn PVC and other chlorine bearing compounds used in modern housing that tend to form dioxins. These same toxic effects occur with fires at the K25 plant processes and can involve uranium fluoride compounds, PCB's, and even Freon breakdown products into poison gases. We also see these same effects come into effect in airplane crashes which often use Teflon insulated wiring, PVC plastic interiors, and even DU counterweights and these too are well known to cause long lasting toxic impacts and illnesses for both the firefighters and communities. Both Teflon and Freon were inventions for use with UF6 in the Manhattan Project. Neither Freon or Teflon are inert in fires. Freon is not inert in the atmosphere as it breaks down with UVb irradiation into toxic fluorides and chlorides that provide a new form of global chemical fallout that affects the health of the world to an extent due to it not being inert observed too late.

The halogen elements are becoming an increasing problem in national health partly because of their extensive use in the last 50 years in home items like Teflon fry pans, and Freon cooling systems, but also because they are increasingly used in pesticides. When sprayed on fruits and produce they do kill bugs and blight, but after years of use these toxic products increase in soil concentration and have uptake and bioconcentration into the plants, which in turn puts more of these cumulative toxins in the human food chain. It is made worse with the inclusion of toxic metal wastes in fertilizers as well. These same toxic halogen exposure situations happen for the gas diffusion workers and they do have health impact.

Another issue that is often omitted with the operations of gaseous diffusion plants is that of the use of huge amounts of electric power and CO located coal burning plants at or near these sites contribute to the air toxic exposures. These coal burning plants often produce high levels of NOx and SOx compounds that are acid products that harm lungs, and they also emit levels of toxic metals and fluorides that further contribute cumulative immune system health effects. In many areas these coal fired plants alone are acknowledged to cause health problems with lungs, fatigue, and other illnesses. Adding in these emissions near the gas diffusion plants causes even greater indication of the health harm to be expected from multiple sources. The effects of coal emissions in other states are already admitted as being health risks, but they appear to be not included in the gas diffusion issues. Their emissions cause cumulative toxic health effects. The connections of burning fluorides is well known to the fire fighting community and well known downwind of fissile fuel plants and these same simple connections to health damages are equally well known in connection to gaseous diffusion plant releases of HF or burning of fluoride compounds, and not clearing stating these connections to sick workers and communities is pure deception and deceit on the part of DOE and the Government.

In the early 1980s, some of the research into beryllium disease pointed to facts that the beryllium concentrations were highest in the lung's lymph nodes and in the 1980s also came the immune mechanism reasons that produced this effect from the actions of Tcells and macrophages. This same effect happens with any oxidative metal, like beryllium, nickel, chromium, or uranium, or chemical oxidative effect, like that from fluorine, chlorine, bromine, or ozone. When these effects involve internal contamination with these toxic materials they do bioconcentrate in the lymph nodes and this causes the maximum toxic stress to this part of the immune protection cells. The most sensitive DNA in these cells is the mtDNA, or mitochondrial DNA that supplies the energy conversion used to power cells. These toxic damage effects lie at the very root of the issues of internalized toxic contamination slowing the immune protective response and allowing viral, fungal, and bacterial problems to affect the body. Slowing these processes also produces greater risk of uncontrolled cancer cells and the transmissions of viruses like HIV or Legionnaires bacteria. It is interesting to note that most of the African countries most devastated with HIV are the ones with endemic high level fluoride concentration in the natural water supplies. These simple observations and well known mechanisms as they relate to toxic exposures at the gaseous diffusion plants also directly connect to many of the rising health plagues in the greater US and the world. The DOE cover ups of these gaseous diffusion plant health issues and their simple mechanisms for disease and cancer risk increase are at the root of a lot of things that involve liabilities and profits for industry and medicine. What we need is a total end to all the national security deceit, all the facts on the table, and the public's given right to decide which way to go here; after they are fully informed. Giving the workers and the affected communities the run around is not the way to have gone. Neither is allowing the NEC to make these decisions in a slow piecemeal fashion for each affected group, this is a far larger issue that needs a larger and more inclusive long term solution.

All the information above is nothing new, as I knew all this in the mid 1980s and so did the engineers that I worked with at ORNL and the managers of these plants in Oak Ridge. In late 1987, I tried to do the ethical and moral thing and report these issues and address these problems, which would have fully prevented the crisis situations with many of the workers and communities we have today. Instead, I am now a graying whistleblower, after 13 years of trying to get the issues into the public, asking the DOJ to investigate, asking congress persons to help, and finding; there was no help, only control, only Government denial. I am one of many whistleblowers at the Oak Ridge site now, as DOE has failed to address them. Our Government is not working and this is a large part of the problem with the gas diffusion illness. The problem does not stop there as this same system of denials holds millions of sick persons in limbo, examples being NTS and Hanford downwinders, dozens of DOE plant workers, families, and even communities, not to mention related issues with GWV's.

An aside note on the Gulf Veterans. Modern warfare, case in point Iraq, needs to be carefully considered for its environmental and health impacts. Today use of new materials makes war much more serious in terms of long term human health. The use of HF in both improving oil well production and in the process of oil refining both released huge amounts of burning extremely toxic cumulative HF compounds into the region's air. These effects even showed up on the NASA "ozone hole" tracking satellite, where the ozone hole effects are largely from Freon, a fluorochlorocarbon compound. Local problems also exist from the use of DU munitions as they aerosol and contaminate soils. Infrastructure destruction also targets buildings with chlorine based materials that form dioxins and have air conditioning systems that make poison gas from the burning Freon. These are entirely new processes as compared to W.W.II era toxic effects. We can begin to see the long term effects of dioxin from the Vietnam era Vets and the use of Agent Orange as a forest defoliant. The Atomic Vets also have long term internal contamination from the nuclear fallout. The involvement of toxic releases that bioconcentrate in the body and cause DNA cell damage is quite clear. The warning signs of this now predominate the health of the world. These mistakes don't need to continue in war, in industry, food production, or national security. It is way past time to stop. If DOE were not so intent on hiding its serious problems in the Gulf War and those additional sicknesses at gas diffusion plants did not have to happen, they were preventable. Sad, but true. It is a tremendous cost these national security cover ups, they now threaten the very citizens they were supposed to protect.

Senators and Government persons, it is time for a real change in the way of doing business in the national security uranium and nuclear weapons business. It is time for real ethics, total facts on the table, inclusion of all sick and affected in a democratic open process, and time for deeper congressional hearings and returning the government to the citizens. It is time to end the piecemeal approach to limit and contain these health problems that are common to so many industrial situations today. We the people need a fully effective solution that includes everyone and the US needs to care for its citizens and provide directions toward a nationalized health care solution that depends on common sense and not that of lawyer litigation practices that fall short of what is needed.

I and others would like to see more of these congressional hearings that include all the health affected workers and communities from the Manhattan Project's mistakes, hearings that seriously inquire into the constitutionality of these cover ups and information denials at the hands of national security, and hearings that notice the commonality off all these health issues, and hearings that seek long term, effective solutions or the betterment of the nation and its' people.

What "We the people" expect of you in congress is honesty and Government accountability, and with that all the broad based simple truths, followed with common sense total solutions. We're not getting that from the DOE, and not from this single hearing, and this needs to change.

Sincerely, 

James E. Phelps