After a hearty round of applause, Maui District Health Officer Dr. Lorrin Pang took the stage. While he is a State Department of Health official, he stressed that he was speaking as a private citizen. There have been unconfirmed reports that his employment has been threatened as a result of him speaking out on the health effects of DU exposure.

Pang discussed the fate of state House Bill 1452, which was to require testing of the soil around all military bases in Hawai‘i. It stalled in the Senate Ways and Means committee in April, which means the bill will not be heard again until next year. And he talked about where responsibility for DU contamination ultimately lies.

“The [United States] military is the biggest unregulated dirty industry polluting our planet today,” he said.

• Hawai'i is one of the most militarized groups of islands in the world.
• The military controls over 20% of all land in the Hawaiian Island chain.
• The military population makes up over 11% of the state of Hawai'i, as opposed to less than 1% of the U.S. population.
• The U.S. Army secretly tested chemical, biological, and deadly nerve gas agents in Hawai'i watershed/forest reserve areas, facts repeatedly denied but later confirmed.
• Currently 7.1 million live rounds of various weapons are fired annually on sacred Hawaiian lands at the Pohakuloa Training Area (PTA) on the Big Island of Hawai'i.
• More than 400 square miles (250,000 acres) on Hawai'i Island may contain live arms and other military toxins and should be considered military hazard areas.
• In 1995, there were 405 toxic sites in 122 military facilities statewide.