Advocates Continue the Fight for Veterans Exposed to Toxic Burn Pits

Le Roy Torres remembers the air at Joint Base Balad in Iraq smelled like burning rubber. It felt as though he were “breathing in charcoal” while he was deployed there with the U.S. Army Reserve between 2007 and 2008.

The acrid fumes emerged from the vast garbage pit burning near his living quarters. Daily, the pit incinerated tons of waste, belching dark smoke over the military installation.

Torres began suffering from a dry cough, headaches and a severe upper respiratory infection while he was stationed there. After he returned home from the war, he was diagnosed with lung disease and a toxic brain injury. He calls what he and other veterans have experienced from their deployments a “huge invisible enemy that followed us home.”

“I noticed my lung capacity wasn’t the same when I came back. The red flags went up,” said Torres, a retired captain who completed much of his military training in Georgia at Fort Moore, then called Fort Benning.