Respiratory Health Effects of Airborne Hazards Exposures in the Southwest Asia Theater of Military Operations (2020) / Chapter Skim
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1 Introduction
1 Introduction
Pages 11-22
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deployments to the theater, the laws that stimulated the National Academies involvement in studies of theater veterans' health, and the impetus for and conduct of the current study. It sets the stage for an evaluation of the available scientific and medical literature regarding the respiratory health effects of exposure to airborne hazards encountered during service in the Southwest Asia theater, which is presented in later chapters of the report.
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U.S. DEPLOYMENTS TO THE SOUTHWEST ASIA THEATER This section provides a brief overview of the deployments of U.S.
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N/A, not available; OEF, Operation Enduring Freedom; OIF, Operation Iraqi Freedom; OND, Operation New Dawn. a Total figures are lower than the sum across rows because some service members deployed with multiple components or ranks.
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In 1998 Congress passed two statutes: PL 105-277, the Persian Gulf War Veterans Act, and PL 105-368, the Veterans Programs Enhancement Act. These laws were intended to facilitate the identification of health outcomes that might result from exposure to environmental agents during deployment.
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, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010, prohibited the use of burn pits for medical waste disposal except in cases where there was no alternative.4 The act also required DoD to take several actions, including reporting to Congress regularly whenever burn pits were used, developing a plan for alternatives to burn pits, assessing existing medical surveillance programs of burn pits exposure and making recommendations to improve them, and studying the effects of burning plastics in open pits and evaluating the feasibility of prohibiting the burning of plastics. In 2009 congressional hearings on the proposed bill included testimony from both military officials and veterans groups and focused on the U.S.
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summarized the health effects associated with exposures to 51 pollutants that were detected in air samples taken at Joint Base Balad in Iraq in 2007–2009 or thought to be in emissions, as well as health-effects information on populations considered to be surrogates of military personnel exposed to combustion products from burn pits (firefighters, municipal incinerator workers, and veterans of the 1990–1991 Gulf War exposed to oil-well fire smoke) because there were few studies on post-9/11 veterans exposed to burn pit emissions.
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The committee that authored Assessment of the Department of Veterans Affairs Airborne Hazards and Open Burn Pit Registry (NASEM, 2017) was asked to analyze the data collected by a VA environmental health registry -- the Airborne Hazards and Open Burn Pit Registry -- created for military personnel who might have been exposed to airborne hazards generated by open burn pits, fumes, and other toxic chemicals during deployment to Southwest Asia from August 1990 onward.
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Background information on topics such as the use of military burn pits and the health effects of exposure to combustion products in general and burn pit emissions in particular has been 7 Chapter 3 includes a section that details the information presented at this workshop.
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and four appendixes. Chapter 2 provides a detailed description of airborne hazards in Southwest Asia, including regional environmental exposures, exposures associated with the operation of in-theater military sites, occupational exposures encountered by military personnel while deployed, and the exposure tracking performed by DoD.
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Chapter 5 describes the challenges and opportunities for advancing the understanding of respiratory health issues in theater veterans. It addresses the hazards associated with burn pit exposures and uses the results of its comprehensive literature review to fulfill the Statement of Task's directive to "identify knowledge gaps, research that could feasibly be conducted to inform the field and generate answers, newly emerging technologies that could aid in these efforts, and organizations that VA might partner with to accomplish this work." The report's appendixes present supplemental information on the conduct of the study.
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NASEM. 2017. Assessment of the Department of Veterans Affairs Airborne Hazards and Open Burn Pit Registry.
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