Burn Pits are the Agent Orange of this generation. With the Gulf War, they are still not sure what caused so many health problems. Why is it that after combat veterans end up discovering they have more to worry about after it than during it?
Congressman: The Military’s Burn Pits Screwed Our Soldiers
By Katie Drummond
November 3, 2011
A few months after he came home from Iraq, the Sergeant started having trouble breathing, and noticed numbness in his feet and hands. The military doctors he saw blamed his smoking habit: At 27-years-old, he’d been indulging in half a pack a day for five years. The Pentagon swore that the noxious smoke emanating from the military’s open-air burn pits — massive heaps of household trash, computer parts and even human waste that were used at bases in Iraq until last year, and are still being used in Afghanistan — weren’t at all responsible.
“We all knew that huge plumes of smoke going into the air, all the time, can’t exactly be good for you,” says the Sergeant, who requested anonymity because he fears reprisal from his commanding officers.
Now, one congressman wants the Pentagon to start paying attention to the accumulation of ailments. Rep. Todd Akin today announced a new bill that’d create a database of military personnel afflicted with health conditions they blame on burn pits.
“I have worked with a number of my constituents who were exposed to burn pits while serving in the military,” Rep. Akin, a Republican from Missouri, said in a statement. “The health consequences have been severe.”
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