Toxic legacies of warfare: Burn pits and other health hazards

The legacy of warfare can manifest itself in many ways. Economic loss, geopolitical changes to countries and borders, and many varieties of human suffering are associated with both winning and losing wars. Physical destruction of infrastructure, damage to the natural world, and long-term interdiction of land in the form of unexploded munitions and minefields are well-discussed and well-documented problems. In the twentieth century, the rise of technological warfare and modern materials has brought new dimensions of problems, ones that arise in chemical and biological aspects.

The rise of an industrial and technological society since the industrial revolution has not always been without problems associated with toxic chemicals. Most readers will be familiar with historic issues such as leaded paint, leaded fuels, asbestos, or agricultural chemicals that turn out to pose long-term health problems or cause other environmental damage. Use of chemical compounds in various ways during military operations or encountered in the aftermath of military operations have caused numerous problems long after the war was over. Almost always unintended at the time, literally millions of people, both combatants and non-combatants, have suffered medical effects and even death from exposure to chemical substances. This article leans heavily upon American sources and experiences, but this should not be meant taken to imply that this experience is uniquely American. Rather, litigation, activist efforts, and robust advocacy in the USA, often by vocal and well-resourced veterans’ groups, has ensured some degree of disclosure of some well-known examples of the toxic legacy of warfare.

Unintended consequences: Two historical examples

Two historical examples provide an illustration of the ‘toxic legacy’ issue. Perhaps the most widely-discussed issue has been the historic use of so-called ‘Rainbow herbicides’ by the US military in the Vietnam War. The US military used prodigious amounts of herbicides during the Vietnam conflict to eradicate forests and vegetation that was providing cover and concealment for insurgents and North Vietnamese regular forces. These were named ‘rainbow’ agents as they had codenames that were colours, e.g., ‘Agent White’ or ‘Agent Purple’. So-called ‘Agent Orange’ was one of them, and became the most notorious and eponymous with the overall defoliation programme.

Agent Orange and some of the other defoliant chemicals were, in fact, contaminated by dioxin compounds that were an inevitable but originally unexpected by-product (and difficult to refine out of the end-product) of the manufacturing process. Approximately 45 million litres of dioxin-bearing defoliant chemicals were sprayed over Vietnam and parts of Laos and Cambodia between 1961 and 1971. There were and are adverse environmental effects from the defoliation efforts, seeing how millions of hectares of forest were affected, and many thousands of hectares of cropland. Even more gravely, long-term medical effects of the dioxin exposures on both US military personnel and local civilians have been infamous. Cancer, birth defects, high blood pressure, and a panoply of other medical issues were, eventually, firmly linked to these chemical exposures. Living veterans of the era still suffer effects, and thousands of Vietnamese, many born long after the war, suffer from problems associated with the Rainbow Herbicides. The impact, in terms of blight to individuals and expense to governments, has been high.

A generation later, another toxic peril emerged in the form of so-called ‘Gulf War Illness’ or ‘Gulf War Syndrome’ (GWS) which emerged in both military personnel and civilian populations after the First Gulf War (1990-1991). A wide variety of signs and symptoms, GWS refers to a broad mix of conditions that vary significantly. For decades, GWS has defied simplified categorisation and numerous hypotheses have been floated to account for some but not all of the medical problems encountered by veterans. Effects on local civilian population have largely and sadly been overlooked.

The mystery may be closer to being resolved. Recent studies, in particular by the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas, published in Environmental Health Perspectives in 2022, have shed some life on GWS. There is a strong prevalence within the populations affected by GWS of a particular gene that is associated with increased vulnerability to nerve agents. When combined with geographic data about the release of nerve agents from the demolition of stored chemical agent munitions at Khamasiyah, one of Saddam Hussein’s ammunition storage depots, there appears to be a causal link. The mystery is not ended and it may not account for everything, but the science is starting to point towards low level nerve agent exposure, not other things like anthrax vaccinations, depleted uranium munitions, or smoke from oil well fires.

Burn pits

The destruction of large amounts of chemical agent munitions at Khamasiyah, Iraq in March 1991 is only a large and egregious example of what have become known as ‘burn pits’. Used, captured, expended goods and waste materials of every conceivable type have been disposed of in ways that have not been good for the environment or health. Sometimes simply buried (or even sunk in the sea, as described in the ESD 5-25 article on chemical demilitarisation), all too often excess materiel, waste, and captured goods have been disposed of by burning. While this practice is more closely documented in American military operations, burn pits as part of warfare have been a global phenomenon.

Exigency and economy were the impulses that led to burn pits. The US military practices global mobility, power projection, and world-wide logistics as both art and science. But the ability to provide food, water, ammunition, and connectivity to a soldier on a mountaintop in Afghanistan or Vietnam or South Korea can come at great expense. In 2012, moving one tonne of goods to or from a front-line position in Afghanistan, by air, from the USA was estimated at USD 14,000. Human nature, military bureaucracy oriented towards shipping forward not back, and the ingrained parsimony of military logisticians meant that a lot of things got burned rather than incur the expense of properly disposing of them. During the US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the true number of burn pits in use is unknown but some studies have identified over 200 locations.

The burn pits have posed a complex mix of toxicological and ecological threats, not just for military personnel, but for local populations. The sheer volume and variety of materials subjected to destruction by burning at or near military bases has been staggering. Ammunition, explosives, food waste, containers and packaging of every description, medical waste, human excrement, electronics, and similar material, often combusted with the assistance of accelerants like JP-8 aviation fuel, have routinely been noted in burn pits. It should be noted that JP-8 itself poses environmental hazards and such burn pits combust at a temperature well lower than more sophisticated industrial incineration operations. Incomplete combustion leads to formation of numerous toxic compounds or incomplete destruction of others.

 

Eventually, scientific attention was directed onto the actual contents of exhaust from burn pits and a number of studies have identified a panoply of chemical compounds associated with both acute and chronic health hazards. One study (Masiol et. al., Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, August 2016) looked at a particular base in Iraq and identified the same dioxin compounds that were the most troublesome component in Agent Orange. Furthermore, dozens of other highly dangerous compounds were found to have been created, including various furan compounds and many types of “polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon” chemicals. If anything, burn pits are more complex than Agent Orange due to the multiplicity and diversity of the chemicals involved, many of which have toxicological properties that are underexplored to date.

Hostile environments

While burn pits cause myriad hazards because of the toxic substance emitted by means of combustion, other cases of toxic exposures have resulted from military personnel inadvertently encountering environmental hazards left by others. Broadly speaking, these can be divided into domestic and expeditionary.

What I can term as “domestic toxic environment” would be a working environment where military personnel, even in peacetime, might encounter toxic chemicals that provide an environmental health threat. One merely needs to browse the pages of US veterans’ magazines to see advertisements for specialist law firms offering to help with claims and litigation over such hazards. On occasion, a ‘burn pit’ is known to have been operated in a domestic base setting, such as Radford, Virginia. Some of the more infamous examples of domestic toxic environments include prolific use of asbestos on naval vessels, domestic tap water contamination at the US Marine Corps’ Camp LeJeune, and numerous contamination sources at the similarly named but geographically distant former McClellan Air Force Base (California) and Fort McClellan (Alabama). Compensation claims and litigation continue, as well as government-funded schemes for recognition and recompense.

The rapid deployment of US personnel around the world in the post-9/11 ‘Global War on Terror’ saw American and allied personnel turn up in odd places around the world. Some of the bases occupied by Americans turned out to be environmental disasters that could be termed as ‘expeditionary toxic environments’. Health hazards were not properly investigated or, if identified, often ignored as part of expediency.

One of the best-documented examples is Karshi-Karnabad Air Base, often referred to as ‘K2’ in US circles, in Uzbekistan. US Air Force and US Army units used the base from late 2001 to the end of 2005 as a hub to support operations in nearby Afghanistan. Arriving personnel soon found odd substances and strange smells. There were numerous reports of insidious, foul-smelling ‘black goo’ oozing from the ground and pond that was an unnatural shade of green. Dozens of US servicemembers who served at the base have either died from cancer or have been diagnosed with serious cancers.

 

Previous organisational behaviour patterns also emerged with the K2 experience. Initial denials and obfuscation gave way to reports that early analysis by technical experts had identified numerous problems with the K2 location, but mitigations were apparently never implemented. Indeed, period photos on social media show warning signs in Russian identifying radiation hazards. Eventually, a litany of toxic woes was publicised. Extensive contamination of soil from leaky Soviet-era underground fuel storage and distribution infrastructure was a key culprit in the ‘black goo’. Old radiation sources were found. Widespread asbestos and processed uranium were documented. A burn pit at K2 complicates the toxic picture. Because of the burn pit situation identified above, the issues of existing toxic environments and ones created later by burn pits are inherently co-mingled. While K2 is one of the more prominent of these toxic base environments, others have been noted.

It should also be noted that situations like the K2 exposures almost certainly imply massive historic exposures to local populations and previous users of the bases beyond just US military and allied personnel. K2 is still in use with the Uzbek military, but older examples are numerous. Examples from previous decades include be air bases in Vietnam such as Da Nang, riddled with Agent Orange-related dioxins.

Political and economic legacy

Burn pits and other toxic legacies of warfare do point out a persistent issue of neglect of duty of care to military personnel that, in turn, spills over (both literally and figuratively) into a broad neglect of the civilian population. Economy and exigency often overrode safety and health concerns. Of course, warfighting is important. But if your war-fighters become sick, have to retire early, or die, their training and knowledge is lost to the war effort.

Some of the mitigations are, in the longer term, not actually that difficult or expensive. Sending refuse back up the logistical chain is a concept. Department stores do it for refrigerators, so perhaps armies can do it. The technology exists for better screening of possible toxic sites and the way forward is to actually listen to the existing environmental health specialists. If toxic environments are found, treating them as CBRN hazards, with CBRN PPE, is a mitigation. Much of the problems noted in previous decades could have been avoided with better attitudes and perspectives by bureaucrats and commanders.

Long-term unexpected medical consequences have political significance because they have serious economic consequences. The apparent short-term economy of some of the decisions made, such as ‘let’s use this old Soviet air base as it is much cheaper than building a new one’ and ‘burn the rubbish’ actually become false economies when a longer view is taken. The general pattern seems to be short-term gains that translate into financial outlays in form of disability pensions, legal expenses, and medical expenses. Economic damage is further compounded if veterans themselves are not able to work to their full potential following military service, or if people leave the work force to look after sick relatives. For example, direct fiscal outlays from the US government on Agent Orange-related compensation and assistance to Vietnam have amounted to well over 20 billion USD, and this does not account for many billions in indirect effects.

In democratic societies, the continued support of the population is needed for maintaining robust militaries. Goodwill is needed for volunteer forces and in countries reliant upon conscription and/or prolific re-call of reservists, mistreatment of military personnel can be seen to be mistreatment of the broader population. Litigation, lobbying, and NGO advocacy have all played a part in addressing the broader injustices in this area. In the USA, much advocacy and lobbying went into efforts such as the PACT Act (2022) to force recognition of the issue and provide better benefits to service member and veterans. In other parts of the world, one gets the sense that the issues are not always being addressed with candour and clarity. The false economies will continue to haunt budgets and economies.

 

Dan Kaszeta

Author: Dan Kaszeta is Managing Director at Strongpoint Security Ltd. and a regular contributor to ESD.