This story, part of a series of reporting projects by Military.com on service member and veteran health, was supported by the Pulitzer Center. You can read our first story on missileer cancer concerns here and our second story on maintainers’ health worries here.
Missileers will soon have workplace exposures and hazards added to their records, and there will be more inspections of the underground bunkers where they work, a major reform as the service continues to investigate growing cancer concerns within the career field.
During a Thursday town hall hosted by Air Force Global Strike Command, which was open to the public, service officials announced that, by December, missileers will have their information submitted to the Defense Occupational and Environmental Health Readiness System, or DOEHRS — a Pentagon database for reporting occupational and exposure hazards while on the job.
Missileers, the service members who are stationed 60 feet underground to watch over and potentially fire America’s nuclear missiles, were considered for decades to have an administrative job. But, as detailed in a Military.com investigation, those officers have been exposed to widespread carcinogens and toxic dangers in the Cold War-era launch control centers where they live and work for days at a time.
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