Service members who are reporting respiratory problems

Debate Swirls Around Research Showing Lung Problems for Returned Troops
By JAMES DAO
Published: June 19, 2011


As a teenager in northern New York, Gary Durham ran cross-country and hiked the Adirondack’s high peaks. In Army basic training, he did two-mile runs in under 13 minutes. But after a yearlong deployment to Iraq with the 101st Airborne Division in 2003, he says he started gasping for air while just mowing the lawn.

An emerging body of research indicates that Mr. Durham is one of a significant number of American service members who are reporting respiratory problems like coughing, wheezing or chest pains that started during deployment and continued after they returned home.

In 2009, a major survey of military personnel, the Millennium Cohort Study, found that 14 percent of troops who had deployed reported new breathing problems, compared with 10 percent among those who had not deployed.

Though the percentage difference seems small, when extrapolated for the two million troops who have deployed since 2001, the survey suggested that at least 80,000 additional service members had developed post-deployment breathing problems.

But now, a fierce debate is under way over just how long-lasting and severe those problems really are.

On one side are scientists, many working for the government, who say that a large number of returning troops have serious and potentially lifelong ailments. They point to an array of respiratory hazards in Iraq and Afghanistan — including powerful dust storms, fine dust laced with toxins and “burn pits” used to incinerate garbage at military bases — as potential culprits.
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Debate Swirls Around Research Showing Lung Problems