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Congress turns up heat on burn pits

Two lawmakers have called upon the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, to determine if open-air burn pits for waste disposal in Iraq and Afghanistan are exposing troops to harm, as well as if there are any alternatives.

“Preliminary reports have indicated that fumes from these burn pits produce a considerable amount of contaminants that may cause short- and long-term harm to our service members serving in proximity to these operations,” wrote Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., in a letter dated July 9.

And on Tuesday, Feingold and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., proposed an amendment to the 2010 defense authorization bill that would “prohibit the disposal of covered waste in an open-air burn pit during a contingency operation lasting longer than one year” and would direct the secretary of defense to submit a report about what is burned in the pits and a plan for alternative options. The House has already passed a similar amendment in its version of the defense policy bill.

The actions come after a series of Military Times articles since last October showed that military environmental health experts had serious concerns about the pits. Since then, 400 people have come forward with respiratory problems and cancers they believe were caused by the burn pits, which are known to have released carcinogens and particulate matter into the air.

Military morbidity reports also show the number of service members with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease has increased from 13,554 in 2001 to 24,555 in 2008, and chronic sinusitis cases have increased from 9,793 cases to 31,534 over that time. Recent reports showed that a group of pulmonary doctors in Hawaii determined unanimously that one soldier’s bronchiolitis was “probably due to the burn pits.”

A doctor at Vanderbilt University also determined that 56 airborne soldiers who have been short of breath since deploying to Iraq have bronchiolitis due to “inhalational exposure.”

Feingold and Filner asked the GAO to review the extent of the burn-pit operations and what pollutants are emitted, as well as what measures are being taken to monitor those pollutants. They also asked the GAO to investigate other options to using burn pits to dispose of waste during contingency operations, as well as if those options have been pursued.

The amendment would direct the military to explain why alternatives are not viable, if that is the Defense Department’s conclusion. According to Defense regulations, burn pits are meant to be short-term solutions, but some of the pits in Iraq and Afghanistan have been operating since the start of the wars. Initially, the pits were used to dump everything from petroleum products to plastic water bottles to Styrofoam to amputated limbs, military documentation shows, although efforts have been made recently to restrict some types of material burned in the pits, suich as plastic water bottles.

Defense Department officials did not directly respond to a Military Times question about whether service members are being monitored for their illnesses after several doctors connected a number of troops’ ailments to “inhalational exposure.”

But in an e-mail dated July 13, Craig Postlewaite, senior analyst for the Pentagon’s force health protection directorate, noted there are now 27 incinerators in place in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that many burn pits have been closed or relocated so troops would not be exposed to the smoke.

He reiterated that an assessment of the burn pit at Joint Base Balad, the largest U.S. facility in Iraq that at one time was burning more than 250 tons of waste per day in its open-air pit, found “no indication of any long-term health risks in personnel.” A previous report that said there were, in fact, risks associated with the Balad pit has been classified, as have environmental exposure reports throughout the war zones.

“We continue to investigate and monitor the environment throughout theater to determine if our service members may be exposed to any health hazards that would place them at risk for either short-term or long-term health risks,” Postlewaite said in the e-mail. “The health of our service members is very important to us. If a service member has a health concern, they should visit their medical treatment facility or Veterans Affairs facility for medical evaluation.”