Spc. Carissa Gillis developed a nagging cough within days of arriving in Iraq last November. For the next nine months of her deployment, it never quite went away.

In her mind, it wasn’t hard to figure out why.

Gillis, a member of the Washington National Guard’s 81st Brigade Combat Team, often drew the assignment of supervising Iraqi day laborers at a recycling plant on Joint Base Balad. About 100 yards away lay a massive burn pit, belching thick clouds of black smoke all day and night.

The Department of Defense says its studies don’t bear out that burn pit smoke causes chronic illnesses. But Congress isn’t so sure, having recently sent President Barack Obama a defense spending bill with provisions that restrict and monitor burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan. The president signed the bill Wednesday.

The Balad pit has been a flashpoint of controversy since U.S. service members arrived at the sprawling airbase 40 miles north of Baghdad shortly after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Thousands of Washington troops have rotated through Balad. About 1,100 members of the 81st Brigade served there during the 2008-09 deployment; about 1,200 of its soldiers also spent most of a year there in 2004-05. Service members from Fort Lewis and McChord Air Force Base also regularly serve at the base.

Over the course of their deployment, Gillis and her platoon mates saw all kinds of trash thrown into the burn pit, including Styrofoam and plastics. Workers tossed wooden pallets and scrap lumber into it to keep the flames going.

Near the end of a shift, Gillis could wipe her hand against her face and leave a black, oily smudge. The Snohomish resident talked about her concerns in a February interview in Balad.

“A lot of people are talking about it – about getting sick here, and about long-term effects,” she said. “I’m worried about it.”

Her husband, Sgt. Michael Gillis, had similar breathing problems during his deployment in Balad in 2004-05, and they cleared up shortly after he came home.

When he returned to Iraq with the 81st Brigade for its recent tour, the problems resurfaced and haven’t gone away.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” he said. “(The military) says it’s just the dust in the air that makes people sick. I don’t believe that.”

Burn pit exposure was a concern for at least one top leader of the Washington National Guard before the 81st Brigade returned to Iraq in 2008-09.

“My fear is that we are going to find out five or 20 years from now that the burn pit has affected our health and we have nothing to back it up,” Col. Duane Coffey wrote fellow officers in a 2008 e-mail obtained by The News Tribune, “and we know how timely the Army works (shades of Agent Orange, Gulf War Syndrome).”

Carissa Gillis didn’t have to wait years for her fears to be realized. She returned home this summer and received a surprising diagnosis: During her time in Iraq, she had developed asthma.

She started seeing doctors at the Seattle VA hospital last month.

“So I never have any breathing problems, I deploy and I get assigned to work next to the burn pit,” she said. “Now I have asthma. I’m not a doctor, but I’m pretty sure I know where it came from.”

PIT CLOSE TO TROOPS

The military has used burn pits since it arrived in Iraq and Afghanistan. Open-air burning was viewed as the only option to destroy huge volumes of waste generated by a force that at its maximum exceeded 180,000 service members in Iraq. The military needs to get rid of everything from disposable plates used in chow halls to pallets used in shipping.

The pit at Balad has garnered the most attention, likely because the base is larger than most others in Iraq. From the beginning of the war, military leaders made it their major logistics hub for supporting troops across the country. Also at Balad, trash is burned in close proximity to where troops live and work – closer than at many other bases.

The military has responded to a growing chorus of complaints about pit-related health worries in recent years. Recycle programs and the installation of four incinerators at Balad since 2007 have reduced the need for open-pit burning. As of late fall 2008, about 151 tons of trash was burned daily at Balad, including 54 tons at the pit, according to a Central Command spokesman. He said Thursday no current numbers were available.

Service members, including three from Washington state, have filed burn-pit lawsuits against defense contractor KBR in 22 states. (None has been filed in Washington.)

Activists have made comparisons to the military’s handling of Gulf War Syndrome and Agent Orange, the defoliant used in Vietnam that sickened American troops and Vietnamese civilians.

Obama said his office is tracking reports about the pits and promised that health concerns won’t evolve into another Agent Orange.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki spoke with reporters about burn pits in August, saying his department wants to avoid the missteps of the past.

“I can tell you, part of my frustration is dealing with the issues of Agent Orange 40 years after the last use of Agent Orange,” Shinseki said. “So my interest is, ‘How do we change what has been the 40-year journey of Agent Orange, the 20-year journey of Gulf War Illness, and prevent a similar journey for burn pit smoke?’ ”

The Pentagon, however, maintains that the Balad pit is mostly harmless and cites the most recent tests of the smoke plume as proof.

John Resta, a scientific adviser to the U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventative Medicine, told the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee in October that burn pit smoke can cause temporary irritations. But he said the military has no evidence of it leading to chronic health conditions.

Such findings were met with skepticism by dozens of 81st Brigade soldiers interviewed by The News Tribune earlier this year in Iraq and when they returned home.

Cpl. Miles Manchester, a Longview resident serving with the brigade’s 1st Battalion, 161st Infantry Regiment, said almost everyone in his unit was dealing with sinus and respiratory issues throughout the 2008-09 deployment.

“Almost everyone has been sick,” he said in Balad in February, “and a lot of us think it’s the burn pit.”

NUMEROUS COMPLAINTS

For one platoon of the Washington National Guard’s 181st Brigade Support Battalion, the smoke from the pit was a daily concern. The unit’s 31 soldiers were responsible for supervising Iraqi laborers working at the nearby recycling yard, several hundred yards from the pit.

The winds that often swept across the base pushed the plume over the soldiers’ work area. Sgt. 1st Class Chris Lucena, the platoon sergeant, said the smoke was often so bad, it would completely engulf where his soldiers worked.

“Were there complaints? Yeah, there were complaints,” he said. “Every single one of them complained.”

Lucena, a Selah resident, said the Air Force officials overseeing daily operations at the burn pit had little sympathy for soldiers who worked near the site and complained about its effects.

“(The Guardsmen) will ask if they can leave if it gets too bad,” he said. “We can’t let them. Guidance from the Air Force (noncommissioned officer in charge) is to move from the path of the smoke. But sometimes it’s everywhere. I can’t say I agree with it.”

The 81st Brigade soldiers often found refuge in one of the single-wide trailers stationed next to the recycle yard, sitting in plastic chairs and watching Iraqis through the windows. It might not have been the most effective way to monitor the laborers, many conceded, but it was better than breathing dirty air.

Staff Sgt. Christopher Roath was watching a group of about 10 laborers pick through metal scraps one day in February.

The temperature inside the trailer was getting uncomfortably warm even though it was a relatively cool day outside. Even so, he and two others on duty chose not to open windows to cool off.

Roath, a squad leader from Arlington, has dealt with sinus issues for years. But he said shortness of breath and coughing fits arose after working near the pit.

“It comes up every time someone has to work at the recycle yard,” he said, adding that at nights, when more burning happened, he could smell it from as far as his housing unit about a half-mile away.

One day in February, an Army specialist knocked on the door to the trailer. He was driving a truck with a bed full of garbage. He was going to drop off the recyclable metal but didn’t know where to dump the rest of the stuff.

“Where do we throw all the sandbags and trash?” he asked.

The three Washington National Guardsmen pointed to their right, in the direction of the plume.

“The burn pit,” Spc. Ryan Hector of Bonney Lake told him. “It all goes in there, apparently.”

‘A HUGE CONCERN’

Col. Duane Coffey, then the Washington Army National Guard’s director of operations, had a lot on his mind in the months leading up to the 81st Brigade’s second deployment.

Among his concerns was that the troops would have to breathe harmful fumes, and that some soldiers would be exposed for a second time.

“The Balad burn pit was a huge concern for the 81st during the first rotation,” Coffey wrote in an e-mail obtained by The News Tribune. “It was not unusual to spend days/weeks breathing in toxic chemicals.”

Coffey addressed the e-mail, which he wrote in January 2008, to a pair of lieutenant colonels who work in medical specialties for the National Guard. Coffey suggested voicing Camp Murray’s concerns through the U.S. Army Medical Department, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of the Army, the National Guard Bureau, elected officials or to reporters.

Coffey did suggest in the e-mail that the Air Force was “doing the right thing” by ensuring a possible exposure is recorded in airmen’s medical records.

The Washington National Guard declined to make Coffey, now the Washington Army National Guard’s construction and facilities management officer, available for an interview to ask if he stands by his e-mail. A phone message left at Coffey’s home in Puyallup last week was not returned.

Guard spokesman Lt. Keith Kosik said no soldiers formally complained about exposure to the burn pit. But, in a statement, Kosik said senior leadership at Camp Murray south of Tacoma is aware of the pit and “we take seriously the accounts of those who have been near it.” Maj. Gen. Timothy Lowenberg, the adjutant general of the Washington National Guard, could not be reached for comment last week.

On their way home from Iraq this summer, the 81st Brigade’s 3,500 soldiers were asked about all physical or psychological problems during a weeklong demobilization at Fort McCoy, Wis.

“We will ensure that any soldier who believes they are experiencing negative impacts from the burn pit, or any other source of concern, receives medical evaluations to assess these things,” Kosik said.

The Guard also is talking to the Pentagon about any new health findings related to the burn pit, Kosik said.

CONGRESSIONAL LIMITS

The issue has received enough attention that Congress has acted to restrict the military’s ability to use burn pits.

Among other provisions related to the pits, the 2010 defense authorization bill requires the Pentagon to report to Congress every six months about whether burn pits are in use, and to justify their continued use.

Reps. Tim Bishop, D-N.Y., and Carol Shea-Porter, D-N.H., pushed legislation earlier this year that eventually led to the provisions in the larger bill. Among the original bill’s 23 cosponsors – and the only one from Washington – was Rep. Adam Smith, D-Tacoma.

The Senate version passed Oct. 22. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., sits on the Veterans Affairs Committee and is familiar with burn pit complaints.

“We’re hearing about it more and more, and I’m very, very concerned about this,” she said. “We’re hearing from service members who, six months or a year later, have chronic coughs, recurring illnesses. Some think it’s because of exposure. Others don’t know.”

One area that still concerns Murray is the lack of a permanent record in the medical files of service members working at or near burn pits.

“We need to be tracking right away and make sure something gets noted in every service member’s records,” she said.

Today that record-keeping differs from service to service, with the Air Force apparently taking the most pro-active stance.

The Army does not record potential exposure based on where a soldier served, said Department of the Army spokesman Wayne Hall, adding that medical information is recorded only when a soldier shares it with a health care professional.

“It’s just the same as when you visit your doctor,” he said.

“If you tell them something, they record it.”

PITS TARGET OF LAWSUITS

At least 22 lawsuits against defense contractor KBR and its former parent company, Halliburton, over the safety of burn pits in Iraq are pending in federal court. Both deny responsibility.

Elizabeth Burke, of the Virginia-based Burke O’Neil law firm, filed the suits, which represent 191 service members who worked near burn pits at bases across Iraq.

She said about 80 percent of the cases involve respiratory issues, ranging from shortness of breath to asthma to potentially fatal lung diseases.

For some, such a diagnosis can effectively end a career, she said.

The lawsuits cover health problems – from skin conditions to neurological disorders to cancer – allegedly stemming from burn pits at bases across Iraq.

The 22 cases are pending while federal judges decide whether to consolidate them into a single case. The discovery phase has yet to begin.

In an e-mailed statement, KBR spokeswoman Heather Browne said the company had no responsibility.

“KBR did not operate the burn pit at Balad in Iraq, as has been previously asserted,” she wrote. “It should also be noted that any burn pit operated in Iraq or Afghanistan is done pursuant to Army guidelines and regulations.

KBR was a subsidiary of Halliburton until April 2007. Spokeswoman Diana Gabriel disputes Halliburton’s responsibility in the suit.

“As these lawsuits are based on KBR activity in Iraq and Afghanistan, we believe that Halliburton is improperly named in these cases and, as such, we expect Halliburton to be dismissed from the suits,” Gabriel said in a statement.

ONE SOLDIER’S STORY

One of the plaintiffs suing KBR is Sgt. Dennis Gogel, a former Steilacoom resident who served in Balad in 2005-06 with Fort Lewis’ 5th Battalion, 5th Air Defense Artillery Regiment.

He lived a few hundred yards from the burn pit and would often jog past it. In the court filing, he blames the plume for recurring upper respiratory infections and said he was on antibiotics every few weeks while in Iraq.

Before he got sick, Gogel could often jog two miles in 10 minutes; after he returned home, it took 17 minutes, he said. As a medic with Charlie Company, he also treated soldiers at Balad with throat infections and respiratory problems.

The plume also caused severe gastrointestinal illness, he said in court documents. He said he dropped from 190 to 130 pounds.

The News Tribune could not track down Gogel for comment. His lawyer said he’s now serving in South Korea.

For other veterans, symptoms might not show up for years. Tom Tarantino, a legislative associate who helped draft the defense-appropriation legislation, said the burn-pit provisions might help prepare for an uncertain future.

“We don’t really know what the negative effects are,” said Tarantino, who works for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “No one’s done the pathology. No one’s done a study to know the long-term effects. But if we start asking questions now, in 15-20 years we won’t be scrambling to get care.”

Scott Fontaine: 253-320-4758

scott.fontaine@thenewstribune.com

blogs.thenewstribune.com/military

BURN PITS: WHAT CONGRESS DEMANDS

The 2010 defense authorization bill, signed by President Barack Obama last week, has the following provisions related to burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan:

 • Their use is prohibited for hazardous and medical waste, unless the secretary of defense says no alternative exists.

 • The Department of Defense must report to Congress every six months about whether they are in use and if so, to justify their continued use.

 • The military must develop a plan that lays out alternatives to pit burning, assesses medical programs related to burn-pit exposure and makes recommendations to improve them.

 • Another study must be done on the effects of burning plastics in open pits and evaluating the feasibility of prohibiting the burning of plastics. News Tribune military reporter Scott Fontaine interviewed soldiers and observed the Balad burn pit while he was embedded with 81st Brigade troops in Iraq for six weeks in early 2009. Information was gathered during and after his trip.