Vets Demand Data on Balad Burn Pit

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Vets Demand Data on Balad Burn Pit

November 24, 2008
Salt Lake Tribune

Military officials insist there's no problem.

But veterans' advocates are calling for full transparency about the health risks faced by service members who have been stationed at the largest U.S. air base in Iraq, where one inspector called an open-air burn pit "the worst environmental site I have ever personally visited."

But for the moment, that quote -- found in a memo from a military environmental engineer from Utah -- is all that is publicly known from a 2006 Environmental Health Site Assessment on the situation at Balad Air Base. That's because the U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventative Medicine is refusing to make the document public, saying that the information it contains "would damage our national security."

How could a health assessment damage national security? For veteran Paul Rieckhoff, the situation smells as bad as Iraq's foul air.

"It's troubling," said Rieckhoff, an Iraq combat veteran and director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, which lobbies on behalf of vets who have served in the nation's ongoing conflicts. "Just saying 'everything is fine' is not going to fly."

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http://www.military.com/news/article/vets-demand-data-on-balad-burn-pit.html?col=1186032310810