From Truthdig. Relevant chunks:
“The Pentagon recently announced that it was refusing to carry a new book by journalist (and veteran) Joseph Hickman in the stores on U.S. military bases. It’s called The Burn Pits: The Poisoning of America’s Soldiers.
Burn pits, NPR reports, are “acres-wide mounds of waste near bases” containing “everything from batteries to vehicle scraps to amputated body parts.” These refuse piles, once set aflame with jet fuel, can burn for 24 hours a day. They expose our troops and other personnel to deadly toxic fumes…
…Hickman’s Burn Pits exposes a link between military service near burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan and serious maladies, including everything from respiratory illnesses to rare brain cancers. Indeed, Hickman says, Vice President Joe Biden’s son Beau died of one of these rare brain cancers after serving in Iraq.”
