Confronted with the need to dispose of enormous quantities of war-related trash including batteries, pesticide containers, medical waste and even human body parts, but lacking proper incinerators, private contractors working for the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan came up with a simple solution.

They burned the trash in big, open pits.

But now soldiers, contractors and civilians have filed a series of class-action lawsuits against the companies behind the burning, saying the smoke from the pits -- which at times was so heavy it reduced visibility to only a few yards and filled soldiers' living quarters -- contained toxic chemicals that have left them with severe respiratory problems, chronic infections and even cancer.

The suits have been filed in 10 states against Houston-based KBR and former parent company Halliburton by Burke O'Neil, a law firm with offices in Washington, D.C. and Charlottesville, Va. Attorney Elizabeth Burke says her firm expects to file suit in 34 states where people are suffering problems they believe are linked to the burning.

Among the claims regarding a burn pit at Iraq's Balad Air Force Base from the suit filed in Maryland:

On at least one occasion, Defendants were attempting to improperly dispose of medical waste at the open air burn pit by backing a truck full of medical waste up to the pit and emptying the contents into the fire. The truck caught fire. Defendants' fraudulent actions were thereby discovered by the military.

Defendants burned medical waste that contained human body parts on the open air burn pit. Wild dogs in the area raided the burn pit and carried off human remains. The wild dogs could be seen roaming the base with body parts in their mouths, to the great distress of the U.S. forces.

One of the suits was recently moved from Texas state court to federal court in San Antonio. It was filed on behalf of six men including David McMenomy of Lampasas, Texas, who had a football-sized tumor removed from his hip that was suspected of being caused by the toxic fumes from a burn pit at Iraq's Camp Al Taji, the San Antonio Express-News reports:

"They took an enormous amount of taxpayer dollars and did shoddy work," Burke said of the contractors. "The work they did harmed the soldiers and hindered the military mission. In some bases with an Air Force presence, planes could not take off and land because of the smoke."

KBR denies any wrongdoing and says it followed U.S. military rules. Halliburton, which also has headquarters in Houston, questioned why it was named in the suits and denied any legal responsibility. The company, which until 2000 was headed by former Vice President Dick Cheney, spun off its KBR subsidiary in April 2007.

Last month a group of U.S. lawmakers asked the Government Accountability Office to review the Defense Department's safety testing of a burn pit at the Balad base, saying the tests may have "significant methodological problems," the Air Force Times reports.

U.S. Rep. Tim Bishop (D-N.Y.), Kerry Baker from Disabled American Veterans, and reporter Kelly Kennedy from Army Times have set up the Burn Pits Action Center website that offers information and personal stories from people affected by the burning.

The lawsuits over the burn pits is the latest controversy for war contractor KBR, which has also been in hot water over the electrocution deaths of U.S. soldiers due to faulty wiring, exposing troops to a deadly cancer-causing poison, inflating prices for imported gasoline, poor treatment of migrant workers, rapes of women employees in Iraq, and involvement in human trafficking.

(A version of this story originally appeared at Facing South.)

Related Links:

Toward a medically defensible energy policy

Ask Umbra on trash, toxics, and tots

Water, conflict, and security on the banks of the Hudson

Afghan poppy fields mysteriously sprayed with chemicals

Recently, planes have been flying over the poppy fields of Afghan farmers, spraying them -- along with houses, orchards, and perhaps even families -- with toxic chemicals apparently intended to kill poppy crops and keep them from being converted to heroin. Afghan President Hamid Karzai expressed shock at the spraying, which his government has vowed never to support, and called on U.S. and U.K. ambassadors to explain the abrogation of Afghan sovereignty. The U.S. recently announced that it will provide $780 million to battle illegal drug production in Afghanistan, it still has a substantial military presence in the country, and it has control over Afghan airspace (says provincial governor Hajji Din Muhammad, "not even a bird can fly without them knowing"). Nonetheless, both the U.S. and the U.K. denied involvement and claimed they didn't know who was responsible. What a puzzler!

Related Links:

Toward a medically defensible energy policy

Ask Umbra on trash, toxics, and tots

Ask Umbra on shower caps, computers, and junk mail

Snow Leopards Threatened by Increased Hunting in Afghanistan

The ouster of the Taliban from Afghanistan undoubtedly had many salutary side effects -- but not for the region's snow leopards, according to a new report by three conservation organizations. One of the most endangered big cat species in the world, the snow leopard dwells in the mountains of central and southern Asia, an inhospitable region with few natural predators. But with the regime change in Afghanistan, a market opened up for leopard skins, and illegal hunting has increased sharply. "Every pelt offered for sale is another nail in the snow leopards' coffin, especially if it's from a breeding female. That's why this report is so disturbing," said Stuart Chapman of the World Wildlife Fund. Habitat loss and fragmentation also threaten the snow leopards.

Related Links:

Top 25 reasons to give a damn about climate change

Tweet for the bees

James Bond calls for more marine protected areas

Afghanistan's most significant wetland area is now almost as dry as a bone, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. Satellite imagery shows that 99 percent of the Sistan wetlands, which stretch into Iran, have dried out since 1998. The main source of water to the wetlands, the Helmand River, has been flowing at far below normal levels. Ahmad Yusuf Nuristani, Afghanistan's minister of irrigation, water resources, and the environment, said today that he hoped to have $20 million to spend on environmental work this year after the country finalizes its first national budget next month. Alluding to Afghanistan's many years of war and violence, Nuristani said research by UNEP "makes it clear how conflict causes environmental destruction." He added that "continued environmental depletion and scarcity of natural resources will cause further conflict" unless stronger systems of environmental management are put into place.

Related Links:

U.N. deputy says Copenhagen deal may take two stage approach

Congressional watchdog issues update on coal ash regulation efforts

Rich countries halt Barcelona climate talks with inaction; Africa walks out

Twenty years of war in Afghanistan have not only taken an appalling human toll; they've laid waste to the nation's environment, according to a survey just completed by the United Nations Environment Programme. The survey found that more than 50 percent of the forests in three Afghan provinces have been destroyed in the last quarter-century, and wildlife such as otters, wild boar, Bactrian deer and birds of prey are all suffering from environmental degradation. Furthermore, as few as 12 percent of the country's citizens have safe drinking water; solid-waste-management problems are rampant; poorly maintained oil refiners and other factories pose grave human and environmental health risks; and medical waste from hospitals is being disposed of into streets and wells. UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer said the findings showed that restoring the environment will be critical to rebuilding Afghanistan.

Related Links:

Is there a tradeoff between economics and the environment?

‘Heretic’ battles straw man

Top 25 reasons to give a damn about climate change

War can be hell on the environment, but in the case of Afghanistan, no one knows just how hellish. Under the auspices of the United Nations, five teams of foreign and local scientists are examining the impact of almost 30 years of fighting on the country's natural resources. By December, the teams hope to identify urban pollution hotspots and immediate and long-term threats to vulnerable areas. They also hope to generate ideas for restoring sites where damage has occurred and to train Afghan experts to carry out environmental work in the future. According to former Finnish Environment Minister Pekka Haavisto, who is chairing the U.N. effort, less than 1 percent of Afghanistan's land is currently protected. He said that deforestation (some 30 percent of the country's forests have been lost since 1979) and threats to biodiversity were among the scientists' top concerns.

Related Links:

KBR, Halliburton sued over war-zone’s toxic burn pits

Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Poison Spray

Hit Below the Pelt

A dense blanket of pollution that is hovering over South Asia could cause millions of deaths in the region and pose a threat to the world at large, a group of 200 scientists announced today. Known as the "Asian Brown Cloud," the smog is an estimated two miles thick and covers the entire Indian subcontinent, from Sri Lanka to Afghanistan. The cloud is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths from respiratory disease every year, and is also altering the regional climate by trapping heat and blocking sunlight. The cloud is composed of aerosols, ash, soot, and other particles, and stems from forest fires, vegetation clearing, fossil fuels, and industrial pollution. A U.N. report found that the smog blanket could cut rainfall in the region by up to 40 percent and travel halfway around the world in just one week. If there's a silver lining to this particular cloud, it's that it could disappear relatively quickly with the use of more efficient technologies and cleaner energy sources, scientists said.

Related Links:

The U.S.-India climate ‘partnership’

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Ask Umbra on trash, toxics, and tots

Soviet-era chemical agents; a pond full of sewage that children use as a play area; highly radioactive material -- these are just a few of the environmental and health hazards found so far in Kabul, Afghanistan, by U.N. peacekeepers and a team of U.N. scientists that began an environmental assessment of the country last week. The situation outside of the capital city is no better. About half of the nation's forests (which at their peak covered just 3 percent of the country) have been logged, leading to desertification. Water is in very short supply after a four-year drought, and what little remains is frequently contaminated; rates of water-borne diseases such as cholera and diarrhea are high. Still, despite war, poverty, drought, and desperation, Henrik Slotte, who heads the U.N. Environment Programme's assessment unit, found room for optimism: "This is exactly the moment when you can turn the page and start over," he said.

Related Links:

Toward a medically defensible energy policy

Ask Umbra on trash, toxics, and tots

Top 25 reasons to give a damn about climate change

Nineteenth century labor conditions and 21st century technology are clashing in impoverished areas of Asia, where millions of tons of obsolete high-tech gear are shipped from the U.S. to be stripped of valuable parts. The practice, which is highly dangerous for both workers and the environment, is documented in a new report released today by the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition of San Jose and the Seattle-based Basel Action Network. The report documents unsafe practices ranging from tending coal-fires to melt lead solder off of circuit boards to using nitric and hydrochloric acids to extract gold from computer chips. Most workers wear no protective gear whatsoever, the sludge produced by the extraction processes is dumped into rivers and irrigation ditches, and black ash from coal and chemical fires coats entire villages. The U.S. is one of only three countries (the others are Haiti and Afghanistan!) that hasn't ratified the 1989 Basel Convention to regulate international trade in toxic material.

Related Links:

Obama administration may (finally) offer greenhouse-gas targets

Toward a medically defensible energy policy

Ask Umbra on trash, toxics, and tots

Here's another possible casualty of the war on terrorism: migrating birds. An Indian ornithologist announced today that more than 200 species of birds that migrate from central Asia to India every year could be adversely affected by chemicals in the bombs exploding in Afghanistan. Such birds, including the Siberian crane, the shoveller duck, the crested poacher, and the Arctic tern, begin their roughly 4,000 mile journey in late October or early November and stop at many wetlands in Afghanistan. Abrar Ahmed, a senior program officer with India's chapter of the World Wildlife Fund, said chemicals in the bombs may enter the birds' bodies, where they could disrupt breeding cycles, make egg shells thin and susceptible to early breakage, and affect the birds' ability to weather the long return trip in the spring.

Related Links:

The U.S.-India climate ‘partnership’

Top 25 reasons to give a damn about climate change

Tweet for the bees

Talk about unimaginative. After the radically unconventional attacks on Sept. 11, the United States government strikes back in the most predictable way possible, by bombing Afghanistan from the air. Instead of studying an obsolete military playbook to plan the U.S. response, we might turn to the steady principles of ecology: After all, organisms have been living with each other on Earth for more than 3 billion years, about 300,000 times longer than humans have been living in fortified cities.

The creatures that preceded us on this planet encountered plenty of threats to their survival: ice ages, new predators, and the disappearance of their accustomed prey, to name a few. Depending on how well they could adapt, some species persisted; others died off.

Human beings, of course, are also subject to evolutionary forces. But humans don't rely only on biological selection; we can direct our own cultural and political evolution to improve our odds of survival. In the wake of last month's attacks, that process will challenge us to reflect on our society's weaknesses and strengths, and to consider our assailants' capabilities and motivations just as though they were other organisms sharing our habitat -- which, in fact, they are.

A koala-ty life: cute and well-adapted.

Take, for example, the process by which plants and plant-eaters evolve in step with each other. Herbivores begin to munch on tender plants, and plants respond by developing defenses -- poisons secreted in their flesh, thorns on their stems, tall trunks that bear their foliage beyond the reach of deer. But the herbivores don't let the grass grow under their feet. The same evolutionary mechanism allows them to circumvent the plants' defenses. Some browsing animals, like koalas, use their claws to climb high into the canopy and graze uninterrupted on eucalyptus leaves. The monarch butterfly larva has learned to tolerate the toxic sap of the milkweed plant, even storing the plant's bitter glycosides in its own tissues as a deterrent to predatory birds.

We have observed some of these adaptations in our own time. As farmers have applied insecticides to their crops, they have inadvertently selected for bugs that are resistant to these chemical poisons. To preserve the effectiveness of chemical sprays, agricultural companies must stay a step ahead of the insects' adaptations to toxins being used against them. Similar cycles have bred strains of bacteria that resist antibiotics.

In the geopolitical arena, the same processes are writ large. During the decades following World War II, the United States established itself as the world's preeminent military power, able to subdue any nation on the battlefield. In response, its opponents adapted by choosing other arenas for confrontation. In Vietnam, for instance, the Viet Cong showed that they could defend their homeland against a superior military force by using guerrilla war techniques.

Anyone wanting to mount an offensive against the United States, however, would need different tactics. A frontal military attack against U.S. forces would be futile, and would guarantee overwhelming retaliation. But the smaller, more easily concealed attack cells used by the Sept. 11 terrorists are much harder to repel. Moreover, it is difficult to determine with certainty where terrorist attacks originate, making it harder to retaliate effectively against them.

Ticked off.

Photo: Art Wolfe, Inc.

In part, strength and vulnerability are a matter of scale. A grizzly bear is less likely to be crippled by competing carnivores like the fox and weasel than by disease-carrying parasites such as lice and ticks, against which its sharp claws carve no defense. Likewise, the bombings that began this week may determine whether the U.S. military machine is any more effective against these terrorists than a .22 against a cloud of buzzing tsetse flies.

We can also anticipate that new defensive measures will breed new countermeasures. A month ago, the suicidal diversion of commercial jetliners proved to be a hideously effective way to spread destruction and panic in the U.S., as the terrorists apparently wanted to do. Today, that tactic might not be as successful. But much like pests adjusting to the application of a new insecticide, terrorists can steer clear of invigorated airport security measures and adopt other tactics. When air traffic becomes more secure, terrorists may direct their assaults at other spots on our country's soft underbelly -- nuclear power plants, public water supplies, subway ventilation systems. A modern Maginot Line of security guards at airports won't defend us against any such strikes.

If ecology teaches that each of our parries will in turn invite a new strike, does that mean that more terrorist strikes are inevitable? First, we must realize that more players are involved than just the United States and its terrorist foes. In ecosystems, any species is affected not just by its own interactions with its fellows, but also by their interactions with each other. Sea urchins eat kelp, but otters devour urchins. Thus, the presence of a healthy otter population makes possible the proliferation of vast kelp forests and the schools of fish that inhabit them.

Similarly, our security doesn't depend only on our police apparatus, but also on the needs and motives of the other people with whom we share this planet. American citizens may be ignorant bystanders to conflict within the Muslim world, but we are not exempt from its fallout. Severe imbalances of economic and political power across the globe -- while in no way justifying the attacks -- can breed acts of desperation against which military defense is difficult if not impossible.

Not a landing strip.

Now that the events of Sept. 11 have alerted us to these dangers, our society can attempt to evolve and become fitter in the face of the terrorist threat. Two decades ago, the Pentagon commissioned Amory and Hunter Lovins to study U.S. vulnerability to attack on centralized energy facilities such as pipelines and power plants; their conclusions were published in 1981 as Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security. Had the United States followed those recommendations to reduce our dependence on nuclear energy and fossil fuels, the American heartland would present fewer tempting targets. The United States might also have felt less pressure to intervene in the oil-rich Persian Gulf in 1991, a move that reportedly turned Osama bin Laden against his former American allies.

In contrast, other measures may actually reduce our fitness to survive. Oil-drilling on the Arctic frontier would draw one more supply line across the thinly patrolled Alaskan hinterland, leaving more of our energy supply vulnerable to terrorist attack. Those who propose to curtail civil liberties -- expanding police powers for surveillance, search and seizure -- make us vulnerable to a different kind of crisis by threatening to undermine American values in a quest for stability. That path would turn society's defenses against itself, in a kind of auto-immune disorder of the body politic.

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, we must choose our next steps carefully, or risk extinction. American society may prove fit enough to survive, perish like the dinosaurs, or transform itself into a beast that bears little resemblance to the America we once knew. The survival of our society and perhaps even our species depends on the wisdom of our national response.

Related Links:

Obama administration may (finally) offer greenhouse-gas targets

Toward a medically defensible energy policy

Ask Umbra on trash, toxics, and tots