[CPEO-MEF] GLOBAL: "U.S. Forces Are Leaving a Toxic Environmental Legacy in Afghanistan"

[Lenny Siegel <LSiegel@cpeo.org>]

U.S. Forces Are Leaving a Toxic Environmental Legacy in Afghanistan
Legal and practical obstacles make it difficult to clean the burn pits and health-damaging chemicals that remain at military bases

By Kelsey D. Atherton 
Scientific American
August 30, 2021


As U.S. forces withdrew from Afghanistan, the Taliban immediately rushed in, and it recently took over the country’s major cities in just a few days. The end of the two-decade American occupation has not only produced a fraught political situation; it has also created an environmental one. Some of the military bases the U.S. handed over to the Afghan national security forces—which this month stood down rather than continuing to contest a seemingly inevitable Taliban victory—hold toxic detritus that may never get a full cleanup.

The U.S. has operated some of these facilities for almost 20 years. As part of the sites’ routine functioning, the American military and its allied partners generated waste, including substances that increase the risk of cancer and other diseases. These materials can produce long-lasting environmental hazards in and around such sites as they seep into the ground, remain exposed in uncovered landfills and—when some items are incinerated—drift into the air as smoke particles.

A defunct military base may produce less pollution than an active one—for example, the uncovered remains of a burn pit present less direct harm than the active release of toxins from burning waste. But such a base still requires some degree of environmental remediation before it can be safely converted to civilian use. In a 2017 report, the Government Accountability Office estimated the final cost of such cleanups in bases closed inside the U.S. between 1988 and 2015 would be nearly $15 billion.

…

For the entire article, see
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/u-s-forces-are-leaving-a-toxic-environmental-legacy-in-afghanistan/

—

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)

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