New Report Unable to Link Burn Pits, Health Woes

Posted Oct 31, 2011 by Howard Altman

Updated Oct 31, 2011 at 04:06 PM

In a report that has angered the widow of a retired Spring Hill Army sergeant who died from cancer the Veterans Administration said was caused by chemicals burned at Joint Base Balad in Iraq, The Institute of Medicine is “unable to say whether long-term health effects are likely to result from exposure to emissions from the burn pit at JBB.”

Amputated body parts, Humvee parts, human waste, plastic meal trays and other garbage is incinerated, using jet fuel, in large trenches called burn pits. The smoke billowing from the pits is so pervasive it can be seen from miles away.

The burn pits no longer operate in Iraq, according to U.S. Central Command. They still operate in Afghanistan.

According to the report, compiled by a panel of health scientists:

[N]one of the individual chemical constituents of the combustion products emitted at JBB appears to have been present at concentrations likely to be responsible for the adverse health outcomes studied in this report. However, the possibility of exposure to mixtures of those chemicals raises the potential for health outcomes asso¬ciated with cumulative exposure to combinations of the constituents in burn pit emissions. As a preliminary step toward understanding possible long-term health effects of multiple contaminants or cumulative exposure, the com¬mittee looked at all the detected pollutants and the target organs or specific effects associated with them. Because a specific adverse health outcome may be influenced by several chemicals in a mixture, the overall effect of the mixture may be to increase the likelihood or severity of the outcome. Many of the chemicals detected at JBB are known to produce similar health effects—for example, anemia, reduced liver function, and birth defects—or to act on the same organs or organ systems, such as the liver, kidneys, central nervous system, and cardiovascular system.

IOM is recommending further, long-term study to determine what, if any effect, the burn pits have had.

Dina McKenna, whose husband, retired Army Sgt. Bill McKenna, died last year from the cancer the VA determined he contracted from the chemicals at the JBB burn pit, called the report’s findings “disturbing.”

“I am an eyewitness to what those burn pits had done,” said McKenna, who now lives in New York.

McKenna said she is flying to Washington tomorrow to meet with other members of Burnpits360.org, an organization of families who say they have lost loved ones to diseases caused by the burnpits.

I’ll have a lot more on this tomorrow, including an interview with one of the scientists involved in the IOM study.