US Military Afghan Burn Pits -- Contemporary Analogues to Agent Orange

By John Ballard

Everyone by now knows how agent orange, the defoliant widely and indiscriminately used by US forces in Vietnam, has had devastating long-lasting effects on all who came in contact.

On March 25, 2010, VA published a proposed regulation that will establish B-cell leukemias, such as hairy cell leukemia; Parkinson's disease; and ischemic heart disease as associated with Agent Orange exposure. Eligible Vietnam Veterans may receive disability compensation for these diseases when the regulation becomes final. You may apply online now, so VA can begin development of your claim. Read the press release to learn more.

We are concerned about veterans but imagine how it continues to affect those who live where it was used.

Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange will fly to the US on April 14 to continue their struggle for justice in their ongoing lawsuit against US chemical companies, says the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin (VAVA).

Nguyen Thi Hien, president of the VAVA chapter in Da Nang City, and Pham The Minh from Hai Phong City, will make a one-month trip to a number of major cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Washington DC, New York and San Francisco.

This is the Vietnamese AO victim�s fifth trip to the US since 2005 to gather support for AO victims in Vietnam, the US and elsewhere in the world.

Minh�s parents were exposed to the chemicals in Quang Tri province � a contaminated hotspot in central Vietnam. He was born during peacetime but suffered from immobility and other diseases due to the harmful effects of toxic chemicals sprayed by US troops.

The Communist Party of Vietnam mentioned Agent Orange just today in a press release.

Vietnam �s experiences in recovery in the aftermath of war were shared at a talk in Hanoi on April 28 in anticipation of the 35th anniversary of the liberation of South Vietnam.

The talk, held by the Vietnam Union of Friendship Associations (VUFO), drew the participation of international friends from the United Kingdom, Egypt, India, Brazil, Poland, Germany, Hungary, France, Switzerland, Sweden, Japan, Sri Lanka, China, Venezuela,  Russia and Ukraine .

At the talk, foreign delegates expressed their impressions on the country�s socio-economic development and international economic integration. They said they wished to learn from Vietnam�s experiences and policies that helped the country turn from a food importer into an exporter of rice ranking second in the world.

The participants were also interested in bio-agricultural development, the environment in the urbanisation process, and the impact of Vietnam joining the World Trade Organisation on farmers and agricultural products.

VUFO Vice President Tran Dac Loi briefed the participants on Vietnam �s development over the past 35 years, including efforts to address the serious after-effects of the war such as bombs and mines, and the victims of Agent Orange/dioxin.

Despite the participation of "international friends" from countries that are US allies, the United States is conspicuously absent from the list of participants.

Wonder why?

Is anyone surprised that a similar story is coming out of Afghanistan?

American soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are suffering from new ailments that have nothing to do with bullets or bombs or battlefield stress. It was, they believe, something in the air.

As you might imagine, an army produces a lot of garbage. And the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan has burned tons of that trash since the beginning of the war. But these are not your average country trash fires. They are called burn pits and they are enormous, one was the size of several football fields. What's burned? Everything. Plastic to foam to batteries, computers and paint, even human body parts � you name it � it was stacked in these burn pits and set ablaze. Many times jet fuel was used as the igniter.

Thick, choking smoke from the fires often hung over U.S. bases for days and soldiers complained of the smell from the potentially toxic clouds. And now vets returning to the US are learning their battles are far from over, and some are blaming the smoke for lung ailments and other illnesses including cancer. Hundreds of plaintiffs have recently filed a lawsuit. The defendant is a familiar name from the Iraq war, KBR, Kellogg Brown and Root. The company was contracted by the military to burn the trash.

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KBR says they never operated the burn pit at Balad, and they say at bases where they did provide burn pit services, they did so in accordance with army directives. The Defense Department is reluctant to talk about this. The same pattern developed when first questions arose about soldiers' health and environmental concerns regarding the use of "Agent Orange" chemicals in the Vietnam War.

Whether problems growing out of "burn pit" use in Iraq and Afghanistan will ever reach the level of those caused by "Agent Orange" no one can yet know. Scientists we talked to believe the problems are real, growing and have the potential of becoming big-very big.

Perhaps this story caught my attention because one of my care-giving assignments includes assisting a young man who will require assistance for the rest of his life thanks to the removal of a brain tumor caused by exposure to airborne chemicals during his tour of duty in Iraq. Or maybe I still remember seeing that Korean child brought in for x-rays while I was an Army Medic in Korea in 1966. He was injured by an explosion in his village when something detonated in the scrap metal still littering the land following the Korean War more than a decade before.

One of my cousins who is a volunteer fire-fighter for a small town in Kentucky told me years ago that the most dangerous part of fire-fighting is not the flames but the chemicals in the air resulting when our modern lifestyle catches fire. Everything from cleaning solutions to the foam used to make furniture comfortable becomes toxic when burned. Following 9/11 anyone who remains unaware of this effect must be living in a cave. I'm not going to waste time with documentation.

Check out this last link to Huffington Post and see a preview of a story scheduled to be aired next week. (Our old buddy Dan Rather is being rehabilitated.)

A final question:
Does any part of our much-bragged-about Counter Insurgency Strategy address generational after-effects of our military efforts -- stuff like land mines, toxic chemicals, or burn pits?

Somebody needs to explain to me how these long-lasting effects on civilians as well as future soldiers, many yet to be born, puzzle together with winning hearts and minds.