Research shows burn pits can lead to deadly illnesses

July 22, 2011

men and women in the armed forces are coming back from war with mysterious illnesses. large pits -- where a variety of hazardous materials are burned -- have long been blamed for a rare lung disease. now new research backs that up. one new mexico soldier has come forward talking about the battle since his return. heather mills sat down with him and has more. master sargent jessey baca says the burn pits in iraq are killing him.. he says each day is progressively worse: master sargent jessey baca looks normal. but he's suffering... a lot. "it's a cough that never goes away, your sinuses are burning, your eyes are burning, all of a sudden you get a fever." then cold sweats .. swollen and painful lymph nodes in grape- like clusters.. then tumors. baca calls it the new agent orange.. the burn pits in iraq and afghanistan. "the most.. the air.. putrid, smelliest smell you've ever smelled in your life. it burns your nose. it burns your eyes constantly and it never goes away." baca served two tours in iraq.. both times he was stationed at balad airbase.. the site of one of the largest burn pits... he says it was about 10-acres. "anything that can be thrown away, is thrown away, whetr it's tires, vehicles or destroyed equipment." that includes hospital waste and human waste. baca first started feeling sick after his first tour. "everywhere you turn, "i don't know, we don't know. we can't figure it out. we don't know what to do.'" "you tell them all your symptoms they look at you kind of strangely." baca visited dozens of doctors in new mexico. he and his wife maria finally got answers at vanderbilt university medical center in nashville. he's been diagnosed with chemically induced asthma, constrictive bronchiolitis.. mesophelial hyperplasia.. among a long list of other things. "you know when he spits up blood, we don't even know what it is anymore, there's pieces of him coming out." faced with a stack of medical bills -- the baca family is focusing on jessey's bucket list.. and managing his symptoms. "yeah, my husband has both his limbs, he has his hands, he has his arms, he doesn't have hole coming out of his head, but try living with being eaten inside by poison." i spoke with a physician at the v-a hospital in albuquerque. she tells me more than two- miillion troops have been exposed to the burn pits.. she says constrictive bronchiolitis is terminal.. that the only possible treatment option -- right now -- is a lung transplant. she says it's a problem she expects to see much more of.