Babies born deformed: The US' toxic burn pits in Iraq

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US troops stationed overseas have long held a practice of using burn pits to get rid of their toxic waste. The items that went into the burn pits included batteries, medical waste, plastics, ammunition, even amputated body parts, rubber and chemicals.

A Sputnik report went beyond the burn pits' effects on US troops, and spoke with an Iraqi-American researcher who shared firsthand accounts of the health problems faced by Iraqis exposed to the pits.

One Iraqi, who chose to identify herself as Warda to protect her privacy, was a mother to three healthy children, the oldest of whom was 10. Warda was able to return to her town in Iraq after it was liberated by Iraqi security forces from ISIS in 2016.

However, the environment around her town of Karma had become toxic after it had been a key battleground during the US invasion of Iraq, and was a US Marine Corps stronghold. Warda's exposure to the toxins in the environment near her village turned her life into a nightmare following repeated miscarriages, and children born with birth defects.

"In 2017, she had a child with anencephaly, which means no brain and no head. And then she had another child with spina bifida and hydrocephaly. It lived for a few days and died. And then she had another child that was stillborn. The doctors said – like many women in this situation shouldn't be conceiving more children. But of course, she really wanted another baby. She then had three consecutive miscarriages and two more stillbirths. So yeah, people are sick", Kali Rubaii, an anthropologist from the University of California who began research on this issue in 2009 and is currently on a field research trip in Iraq, told Sputnik.

Warda herself also struggled with health problems herself, as she began to feel pains in her body, suffered from allergies, and the skin on her fingers was peeling.

Health problems and birth defects

One environmental toxicologist was among the first US researchers to show a link between the rise in birth defects among Iraqi women and how close they lived to US burn pits.

Rubaii also noted that farm animals in Iraq also face similar problems. One Iraqi herder who lived more than 2 km downwind from a US burn pit had 52 cows before the US army came into town. Today, he only has two left, and is afraid of investing in more since so many have died or were born sickly, or even with birth defects.

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Another problem is the disability care for parents whose children are born with birth defects because of the US' burning of toxic waste. This increases the burden for poor families going back to their homes to rebuild them, only for them and their children to encounter additional health problems, adding a burden on the public health infrastructure of Iraq, which was already ruined by the US invasion.

"When the child survives and is severely disabled, then everyone is on board with having no more children, because of the extreme cost [to care for the disabled child]. And we were talking about a place where the basic medical infrastructure has been ravaged by war. The Fallujah General Women and Children's Hospital, where many of these women are giving birth, has been destroyed three times in the last 10 years. Completely levelled. So the idea that you could have any support system, caretaking for a child with a disability is unrealistic, right? So we have children who can't walk. They have enlarged heads. That's the spina bifida problem. You'll be lucky to get a wheelchair. It's a lot of labour for everyone", Rubaii said.

Exposure killing US troops

Nearly 30,000 troops and filled out a survey on exposure to burn pits between April to December 2014, and data from the survey highlighted the health conditions experienced by US troops. 

The most commonly diagnosed health problems were insomnia and neurological problems. Other problems included allergies, high blood pressure, lung diseases like emphysema, chronic bronchitis, and asthma.

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One veteran, Julie Tomaska from the Minnesota Air National Guard, who was deployed during the invasion of Iraq on twice in 2005 and 2007, was living near one of these burn pits, which was in Iraq's Balad airbase. She and her colleagues knew this could not be good for them.

Years after returning to Minnesota, she was diagnosed with deployment-related lung disease, according to ABC News. She was told she has a range of conditions, including constrictive bronchiolitis, chronic pleuritis, and pleural fibrosis.

"It basically means that my lungs, the airways, are scarred. The small airways are very scarred, and rigid, so I can't get a full breath," she said. 

Although more than 200,000 servicemembers have registered at the burn pits registry to help "better understand the potential health effects of burn pits and other exposures", the majority of the claims have so far been rejected. 

Tomaska's close colleague, Amie Mueller, who was deployed on the same tours as her, died in 2017 of pancreatic cancer. Mueller had wrote in her journal her concerns about sleeping next to the burn pits.

"There is a huge garbage pit on the perimeter of the base (inside)", she wrote in an entry dated May 25, 2005.

"They continuously burn plastics, rubber, you name it and the stench is OUT OF CONTROL. I swear, if I get any type of pulmonary disease, this is where it came from."

Study: Burn pits lead to high cancer mortality rates among vets

A 2019 study showed that US troops who were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan have a higher rate of cancer because of their exposure to burn pits. 

The Augusta University in Georgia study, titled, “Deployed Veterans Have Higher Proportionate Cancer Mortality from Exposure to Open-Air Burn Pits,” used data from a registry compiled by an advocacy group called Burn Pits 360. The registry was created after the group's founder's husband was misdiagnosed by Veteran Affairs doctors, who told him his lung disease was psychosomatic.

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The registry contained medical data from 44 deceased veterans, and included age, death due to various cancers and respiratory diseases, and their service unit. 

It was determined that there was an 88.6% cancer mortality rate among the deceased veterans, whereas the remaining 11.4% succumbed to respiratory diseases. The study also determined that higher proportionate mortality was observed in Army veterans (65.9%) than those who served in other military units such as Air Force (18.2%), Navy (4.5%) or Marines (11.4%).

“This is likely due to those in the Army were living much closer to the pits and had longer exposure,” the study's author said.