Toxic Battlefields Burn Pits Leave Afghanistan and Iraq Veterans Fighting for Their Lives

'Toxic battlefield'
Many tie Iraq, Afghanistan War veterans' illnesses to burn pits, dust
Live Well Nebraska
By Steve Liewer
World-Herald staff writer
Posted: Sunday, October 12, 2014

U.S. MARINE CORPS
Burn pits used especially in the early days of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars to destroy trash sent piles of wood, paper, medical waste, metal, plastics and even human waste up in smoke.

Jeff Flint remembers the sandstorms that regularly cloaked his military base in Iraq in a choking darkness.

And the black smoke, from the base’s fiery 10-acre garbage pit, that frequently blanketed both the gate where he stood guard and the tent where he slept during his yearlong deployment with the Nebraska National Guard in 2006-07.

“It was constant, 24 hours a day. It made you sick, nauseated,” said Flint, 45, of Fremont, Nebraska. “Put a dome over a city, and that’s what it was like.”

The hacking cough he developed more than seven years ago has never gone away. And it’s been joined by the tingling in his body and the numbness in his hands from multiple sclerosis, which he was diagnosed with two years after his return.

Flint is among tens of thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan War vets who have developed chronic illnesses since returning from the war zones. Many — including Flint and his brother, John, who served with him and also has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis — are convinced they are sick because of noxious stuff they breathed in during their deployments.

“It’s just a toxic battlefield,” said Dan Sullivan, president and CEO of the Sergeant Sullivan Center, a nonprofit organization that supports veterans with post-deployment health problems.
“You’ve got a bunch of toxic stuff floating around in an atmosphere that picks everything up.
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