This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Nov. 3, 2011 - WASHINGTON - Imagine a gaping pit filled with every sort of waste imaginable -- plastics, appliances, batteries, dead animals -- and then set ablaze using jet fuel, spewing plumes of black smoke into the air.
And then imagine breathing that dark air from the "burn pit" -- not once or twice, but several times a week over several months. Where you work, where you eat and where you sleep.
That's what Aubrey Tapley of Elsberry, Mo., remembers from her months as an Army human resources manager at Joint Base Balad in Iraq in 2004. And Tapley, 32, the mother of two, vividly recalls that smoke every time she was hospitalized or treated in later years with maladies that included severe migraine headaches, a lung condition and endometriosis.
Tapley, who sees a clear link between the toxic smoke and her illnesses even though the Pentagon does not draw a direct connection, is now a leader of a group called BurnPits360. Those veterans argue that Burn Pit smoke toxins are "the new Agent Orange" -- a reference to the defoliant used during the Vietnam War that many vets contend was responsible for serious maladies.
"When I left for Iraq, I was able to run two miles in around 19 minutes. When I returned home, I couldn't even walk a mile," Tapley told the Beacon in an interview on Wednesday. She was on her way to Washington, D.C., to appear at a news conference with U.S. Rep. Todd Akin, R-Wildwood, and groups concerned about the burn pits.
"While we were over there, there was always a thick cloud of smoke," recalled Tapley, who worked at Balad for about four months, then was transferred to another base with burn pits, before being evacuated out of Iraq with severe pelvic pain in September 2004. "We lived in tents that had air conditioners but no circulation. And the burn pits were only 700 yards from our living area."
Akin, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, is the main House sponsor of a bill, sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., that would instruct the Veterans Affairs Department to establish a burn pits registry -- a database of symptoms, similar to the Agent Orange and "Gulf War illness" registries of earlier wars -- to be used by researchers seeking a link between the smoke and various illnesses. The legislation would not mandate new benefits or treatment.
"We kept running into people who [said], 'We were healthy before and we think there was something in the smoke and pollutants in the burn pits that causes medical problems,'" Akin said at the Capitol news conference. "It became common enough that we started looking at what we ought to be doing about it."
Akin was joined at the news conference by representatives of several of the organizations that support the bill, including the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, the National Military Family Association, AMVETS, the Reserve Enlisted Association, the Disabled American Veterans, the Vietnam Veterans of America, the Non-Commissioned Officers Association, the Association of the U.S. Navy and the Air Force Association.
A registry and an intensive study of possible links with diseases were among the ideas discussed in a "burn pits" report issued Monday by the Institute of Medicine. The inconclusive report by a panel of experts, which mainly examined air and other environmental samples from the Balad base area, suggested that the respiratory problems of Iraq and Afghanistan vets might be more closely related to poor air quality in general in those locations rather than specifically to the effects of smoke from burn pits.
"Based on this data, the committee found that levels of most pollutants at the base were not higher than levels measured at other polluted sites worldwide," the report's summary states. "However, insufficient evidence prevented the [institute's panel] from developing firm conclusions about what long-term health effects might be seen in service members exposed to burn pits."
The report recommended a study to "evaluate the health status of service members from their time of deployment [at the Balad base] over many years to determine their incidence of chronic diseases, including cancers, that tend to not show up for decades." It added: "Given the many hazards to which military personnel are exposed in the field, service in Iraq and Afghanistan in general, rather than exposure to burn pits only, might be associated with long-term adverse health effects."
While Tapley and other activists are demanding more action, there has been some movement on the burn pits issue. Last year, the Veterans Administration issued guidelines for its staff to seek out veterans with the sort of illnesses that might be linked to exposure to burn pit fumes. And the Pentagon has been phasing out the use of burn pits in both Iraq (where most U.S. forces will withdraw by year's end) and Afghanistan. There were still about 180 burn pits in Afghanistan last year, but Akin said he had been told that few, if any, remain. Tapley said some pits were still burning in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, about 300 alleged victims or surviving family members joined in a class action lawsuit against a military contractor that operated some of the burn pits in Iraq. The company sought dismissal of the suit on the grounds that the pits were operated at the direction of the U.S. military, and most pits were operated by the Army itself.
Because the U.S. military did not keep track of exactly what was burned in the waste pits, researchers may have a difficult time determining the levels of toxic chemicals that soldiers breathed at the Iraq and Afghanistan bases. And establishing a direct connection between such toxic chemicals and diseases that emerge later is extremely challenging.
"We know these burn pits cause health problems," Tapley contends. "And a detailed registry is what is needed to help find answers."
Read More
Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine (September 2011): "Respiratory Symptoms Necessitating Spirometry Among Soldiers With Iraq/Afghanistan War Lung Injury"