We Must Help Those who have borne the cost of war.

To: Miriam Flisser.

From: Michael Kusi.

Topic: We must help those who have borne the cost of war.

Date: 9/11/24.

                                    We must help those who have borne the cost of war.

Welcome, and it is good to talk to you. Today I will talk about our veterans and our honored servicemembers. We must help those who have borne the cost of war, and aid their families who have sacrificed so much.

            In Iraq, Afghanistan, and other areas of the CENTCOM combatant command, the disposal of trash and other waste in burn pits was a regular occurrence. The Department of Defense has now shut down many burn pits and is trying to stop having most of the other burn pits in operation.               Researchers, including experts at VA, are strongly investigating airborne hazards like burn pits that have a detrimental effect on the American soldier’s health.

.          Burn pits are a familiar mechanism in the military but they come with grave dangers that have to be addressed. Until 2015, burn pits were regularly utilized in the CENTCOM command of Iraq and Afghanistan to get rid of waste products that accumulated at military installations. These burn pits also disposed of things that had dangerous after-effects when burned such as plastics and medical wastage. 

In a lot of places, these burn pits were colossal endeavors.  In  Joint Base Balad one of the biggest Iraqi military installations,  the burn pit encompassed almost 10 acres and the smoke went to the nearly military installations as the burn pits were in operation.

During 2008, there were reports about service members who had finished their overseas tour of duty and were afflicted with respiratory diseases that were a result of the toxic fumes of the burn pits. Since then, there has been a plethora of evidence that showed the connection between the air quality affected by the burn pits and certain diseases among veterans. There has been an estimation that 3.5 million soldiers have been affected by the usage of burn pits. This problem creates a health crisis for our soldiers.

The Defense Department was not exact in its recordkeeping of the items that were burned in the burn pits, and therefore the exact nature of the emitted smoke is unclear. The burn pits were a common occurrence, but soldiers were not kept under surveillance to determine the impact of burn pits upon their health.

         The Department of Veteran Affairs has pushed back against efforts to correlate many illnesses that are not commonplace to burn pit usage. They have claimed that the scientific evidence is lacking. People have stated that this refusal to acknowledge the dangers of burn pit usage have cost many veterans disability pay and have been damaging in terms of medical bills.

VA officials have recently softened their stance, and have given presumptive benefits status to veterans who suffer from asthma, rhinitis and sinusitis in the past 10 years that they were deployed overseas.

 These veterans do not need to have evidence that their medical illnesses were tied to their tenure in the military, because the illness is dispositive.  People have stated that the coverage should be more extensive to encompass more illnesses and for a longer time period.

As late as early 2019, there were still burn pits that the Department of Defense were utilizing. This was revealed in a report to Congress in April 2018 by the undersecretarfy of defense for acquisition and sustainment. The Pentagon admitted that this disposal of dangerous wastage in burn pits facilitated smoke that would be dangerous to soldier’s health. However they stated that it was a last resort for regional combatant commanders who did not have any other viable option for disposal.

The story also become a national story from various news outlets and programming such as Jon Stewart’s program.

An open-air burn pit at the biggest Iraqi  U.S. base in Iraq may have given  tens of thousands of troops, contractors and Iraqi sustained exposure to disease causing toxins. The burn pit encompassed a wide area and also hit the living area of the base and the hospital. Although incinerators are a better option because they do not cause toxic smoke to be released in the air,  the burn pits were disposing of 147 tons of waste a day. This left 25,000 soldiers and several thousand contractors at risk from contracting diseases from these burn pits.

The military bases’s  average daily output of almost 250 tons of waste is greater the average of 83 tons per day generated by the city of Juneau, Alaska, even though they have a similar population size.

In a memo dated Dec. 20, 2006, Air Force Lt. Col. Darrin Curtis, former bioenvironmental flight commander for Joint Base Balad,  stated that the burn pits at Joint Base Balad were hazardous to soldiers, contractors and Iraqis who were operating in that region. There were acute health dangers that had the potential to turn chronic.  These bioenvironmental engineers are well versed in the dangers that arose out of operating a burn pit.

         Many large U.S bases in Iraq possess burn pits. However, the military does not possess a uniform procedure for dealing with burn pits and ensuring that they are not toxic to the people in the region.  This report has stated that burn pits are one of a troubling amount of instances of bad waste disposal

The burn pits have disposed of a plethora of items that were deemed to be waste. However , there were many contaminants that soldiers would have come into contact with by using the burn pits.

He said there were many toxic chemicals that people were exposed to that include benzene, which is an aircraft fuel that has been documented to give people leukemia. It is troubling that these burn pits have been allowed to go on without regulation.

After being deployed for 4½ months  as a doctor at the Balad Combat Support Hospital from September 2007 to February 2008, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Steve Bowers stated  his headaches worsened to the point where he wanted an MRI after his deployment.

Army Sgt. Loyd Sawyer stated that he was deployed  at the Joint Base Balad mortuary, which was located a distance of 400 yards from the burn pit.  The burn pit had to be left because people kept getting diseases that emanated from the burn pit. These diseases included bronchitis and other illnesses.

Air Force Capt. Alysia Harvey, spokesperson for the 609th Combined Air and Space Operations Center Southwest Asia, stated that there were that last year, for example, two incinerators were  created  at Balad to remedy the situation and a third was built later. There was about  120 tons of waste that was put through the incinerators every day. However, there were another 147 tons that went into the burn pit each day, which created a hazard for the soldiers, contractors and Iraqis who were in the region.

There was also an Iraqi recycling center when Iraqis tried to retrieve recyclables that have been put in the burn pit and sell them to local people. This practice is very dangerous because it exposed Iraqis to the toxins in the burn pit.

         ‘Aaron Rogstad, an airman who was at the base, has stated that everyone at the base had to breathe in the toxic fumes and that it was affecting everyone’s health. The fumes were a reason that he had chronic health problems.  To make matters worse, sometimes the incinerators did not work and so there was an increased reliance on the burn pits. They would utilize the burn pits to dispose of amputated limbs and there were eye and respiratory problems as a result.

        The trouble also arises when one of the propellants utilized to power the burn pits is jet fuel, which can create an onset of leukemia. This type of propellant can cause leukemia in vulnerable populations.

       Early in the Iraq war, the soldiers would be stationed the burn pit at Balad, and utilizing machine to cart the waste. The base did not possess incinerators for medical waste, so all sorts of medical items that were no longer needed were discarded in the burn pits. There were a total of 41 incinerators that were earmarked for usage at U.S bases in Iraq, but only 17 were operational. Congress has passed the PACT Act, which is a law that extends VA health care and benefits for Veterans who have been afflicted by burn pits. This law helps veterans who have served in war with the care and benefits  that they bought with their blood, toil and sweat.

The PACT ACT has been celebrated as the most important expansion of care in the Department of Veterans Affairs’ history. The  PACT Act made it governing law that  veterans did not have to show that their afflictions were a direct result of toxins to get VA coverage.

The full name of the legislation is Sergeant First Class (SFC) Heath Robinson Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act. This act was Named after SFC Robinson, who passed away in 2020 because of exposure to toxins during Iraq war service.