Object 100: Iraq Burn Pit

Army Reserve Capt. Le Roy Torres first encountered a burn pit when he arrived at Joint Base Balad in Iraq for a year-long deployment in late 2007.  The open-air burn pit at Balad was the theater’s largest, encompassing more than 25 acres. It was used to dispose of 100-200 tons of solid waste on a daily basis. Everything from tires, batteries, and medical waste to uniforms, munitions, and vehicles were burned, often with the aid of jet fuel, in a low-temperature blaze that produced a toxic smog blanketing the surrounding area.

Torres developed an upper respiratory infection just four weeks into his deployment. As the months passed, he also suffered from abdominal pain, headaches, and additional respiratory infections. These problems persisted even after he returned to the United States, eventually leading to a diagnosis of constrictive bronchiolitis and toxic brain injury.

Like the thousands of other service members who had been exposed to burn pit emissions during their deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, Torres struggled to get redress for his illnesses from either the military or VA. In May 2008, while he was still in Iraq, a Department of Defense health risk assessment based on air samples collected at Balad concluded that the burn pit smoke posed no significant health or elevated cancer risks to military personnel stationed there. VA at the time also did not recognize a clear link between airborne hazards and chronic illnesses in post-9/11 Veterans, but the agency did ask the independent Institute of Medicine to complete a study on the issue.  

Instead of waiting for the results of the study and continuing to suffer in silence, Torres and his wife Rosie turned to public advocacy. In 2009, they founded the non-profit Burn Pits 360 to build national awareness of the harm inflicted on service members by their exposure to toxic substances. A year later, Burn Pits 360 established an independent registry to collect medical data from returning troops and monitor their health condition.

In recent decades, Veterans groups fighting to secure benefits for other types of exposure had won some significant legislative victories. In the 1980s, the government finally awarded restitution to the so-called Atomic Veterans who had been exposed to radiation during the occupation of Japan in 1945-46 and post-war atmospheric nuclear tests. In 1991, Congress also enacted the Agent Orange Act, which established a presumption of service connection for diseases linked to toxic herbicides in the Vietnam War. Later the same decade, lawmakers approved a pair of bills addressing the difficult-to-diagnose health problems experienced by Veterans of the 1991 Gulf War.  

The Torreses’ grassroots activism drew attention to the plight of Veterans whose health had been compromised by their exposure to burn pit smoke. In 2013, Congress ordered VA to launch its own Airborne Hazards and Open Burn Pit Registry to facilitate research on the health effects of toxic exposure. The registry opened in 2014 and within two years more than 90,000 Veterans had added their names to it. While VA slowly accumulated data, Burn Pits 360 and other Veterans organizations mounted an aggressive lobbying campaign in Washington. Le Roy Torres and representatives from such groups as Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and Veterans of Foreign Wars made repeated trips to Capitol Hill to testify in Congress. Towards the end of the decade, supportive politicians introduced multiple bills addressing toxic exposure among Veterans, including the Helping Veterans Exposed to Burn Pits Act (2017), the Burn Pits Accountability Act (2018), and the Airborne Hazards and Open Burn Pit Registry Improvement Act (2018).

None of these measures advanced. However, in 2019, the Torreses acquired a valuable ally in comedian-turned-political activist Jon Stewart. His recent advocacy on behalf of 9/11 first responders played a key role in convincing Congress to reauthorize the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund on a permanent basis. In 2019, Burn Pits 360 also joined forces with like-minded Veterans groups to form the 30-member Toxic Exposures in the American Military, or TEAM, Coalition. In January 2020, the coalition held a joint meeting with Stewart on Capitol Hill that drew a packed crowd of legislators and staffers.

Support for comprehensive legislation addressing toxic exposure gained momentum in 2021. In June, the chair of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, California Democrat Mark A. Takano, introduced a bill that would expand healthcare and benefits for Veterans exposed to burn pits and other airborne hazards. While it was still pending in early 2022, President Joseph R. Biden used his State of the Union address to urge Congress “to pass a law to make sure Veterans devastated by toxic exposure in Iraq and Afghanistan finally get the benefits and the comprehensive healthcare they deserve.” By June, Takano’s bill had cleared both the House and Senate.

Before it reached President Biden’s desk, however, a technical error in the text forced the Senate to take another vote. Due to some last-minute political jockeying, 25 Republicans decided to withdraw their support, blocking the bill’s passage. In response, Jon Stewart, Burns Pit 360, and numerous other Veterans groups staged a five-day, round-the-clock rally on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. Their high-profile protest worked and the bill made it through the Senate on a second vote. On August 10, 2022, Biden signed it into law.

The bill’s full name was the Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act of 2022, or PACT Act for short. A member of the Ohio Army National Guard, Robinson was exposed to burn pit smoke while deployed to Kosovo and Iraq. He was stricken with lung cancer in 2017 and died in 2020. Robinson and his family had lent their voices to the burn pit movement before his death, and his wife and daughter attended the White House signing ceremony alongside Le Roy and Rosie Torres.

The PACT Act represented the largest expansion of Veterans benefits since the 1944 GI Bill. The law was expected to impact millions of Veterans, including those who had served in the Vietnam and Gulf Wars. The bill’s most significant feature was the application of the presumptive designation to over 20 diseases linked to toxic exposures. This provision made it possible for Veterans with these conditions to qualify for disability compensation and health care without needing to prove their ailments were service connected.

VA marked the third anniversary of the PACT Act’s signing with a fact sheet summarizing what the bill had accomplished to date: $12 billion in benefits paid, 1 million new patients enrolled in VA health care, and more than 6 million screenings for toxic exposures completed. Over a decade of persistent advocacy by Burn Pits 360 and other organizations had indeed paid off.