Earth Equity News

Burn Pit at US Military Base in Iraq Raises Health and Policy Concerns. By Kelly Kennedy, Army Times, October 28, 2008. "An open-air 'burn pit' at the largest U.S. base in Iraq may have exposed tens of thousands of troops, contractors and Iraqis to cancer-causing dioxins, poisons such as arsenic and carbon monoxide, and hazardous medical waste, documentation gathered by Military Times shows. The billowing black plume from the burn pit at 15-square-mile Joint Base Balad, the central logistics hub for U.S. forces in Iraq, wafts continually over living quarters and the base combat support hospital, sources say... Even though the military now has three clean-burning incinerators operating there, officials acknowledged that as of midsummer, the burn pit still was taking in 147 tons of waste per day... In a memo dated Dec. 20, 2006, Air Force Lt. Col. Darrin Curtis, former bioenvironmental flight commander for Joint Base Balad, wrote of the burn pit: 'In my professional opinion, there is an acute health hazard for individuals. There is also the possibility for chronic health hazards associated with the smoke'... Most large U.S. installations in Iraq, as well as Afghanistan, have burn pits.A report recently released by the Rand Corp. think tank concluded that the military has no standard operating procedure or training policy for making sure those pits are operated properly. The report said burn pits are one of a number of examples of improper waste disposal by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan."