U.S. military bases in Afghanistan (the site of that war to the right of Iraq, just past Iran) generate a lot of trash—tons in fact. That trash is burned and generates a lot of smoke which is making U.S. service men and women as well as military rent-a-soldiers from big outsourcing companies ill. Those soldiers are now suing. The Washington Post reports:
In a lawsuit in federal court in Maryland, 241 people from 42 states are suing Houston-based contractor Kellogg Brown & Root, which has operated more than two dozen so-called burn pits in the two countries. The burn pits were used to dispose of plastic water bottles, Styrofoam food containers, mangled bits of metal, paint, solvent, medical waste, even dead animals. The garbage was tossed in, doused with fuel and set on fire.
For more details, such as lovely descriptions of the stuff the affected soldiers have been coughing up and other side effects of toxic exposure, click here. Be sure also to click through the haunting photo timeline beginning way back in 2001 and full of haunting images and once-familiar faces like Rummy and Powell.
via Newser
everydaytrash 