[CPEO-MEF] DISPOSAL, GLOBAL: Burn pit, Balad, Iraq

[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

Burn pit at Balad raises health concerns

Troops say chemicals and medical waste burned at base are making them 
sick, but officials deny risk

By Kelly Kennedy
Military Times
October 29, 2008

An open-air "burn pit" at the largest U.S. base in Iraq may have exposed 
tens of thousands of troops, contractors and Iraqis to cancer-causing 
dioxins, poisons such as arsenic and carbon monoxide, and hazardous 
medical waste, documentation gathered by Military Times shows.

The billowing black plume from the burn pit at 15-square-mile Joint Base 
Balad, the central logistics hub for U.S. forces in Iraq, wafts 
continually over living quarters and the base combat support hospital, 
sources say.
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And even though the military now has three clean-burning incinerators 
operating there, officials acknowledged that as of midsummer, the burn 
pit still was taking in 147 tons of waste per day — significantly more 
than half the daily output at Balad, home to about 25,000 U.S. military 
personnel and several thousand contractors.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.militarytimes.com/news/2008/10/military_burnpit_102708w/

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Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org



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