Saturday, February 11, 2012

Burn Pits

Burn pits have left many veterans and contractors injured and sick and some have died as a result to the toxins exposed. Kelley B. Vlahos (Antiwar.com) notes:

We’ve been following the issue of toxic environmental exposure of U.S. servicemen and women here at Antiwar.com since 2009. Mounting evidence strongly suggests that the unregulated open-air burn pits used to incinerate everything from medical waste to batteries and rubber tires, has contributed to the fine particulate matter found carried in the dust, including metals and bacteria, and has something to do with the dramatically changed health of returning veterans.

“What makes healthy individuals who have never had asthma end up in wheelchairs on oxygen, or a 34-year-old non-smoker who has near-normal [physical fitness tests] but is short of breath and has lungs that are totally destroyed? These are the problems we are trying to solve,” exclaimed Dr. Anthony Szema, Stony Brook University Medical Center Assist Professor of Surgery, in a recent interview for the Army Times.

Szema recently wrote about a soldier serving both in Iraq and Kuwait who has lung tissue riddled with fine particles of titanium, iron and copper. He published his findings recently in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. It is part of his ongoing study of soldiers suffering from unexplained illnesses.

This particular soldier, according to the report, is suffering from nonspecific interstitial pneumonitis, a rare and dangerous type of pneumonia that afflicts people for no known reason, cannot be treated and is 60 percent fatal within the first six months of diagnosis, according to Wikipedia. What we know about the soldier is where he was stationed, and that he came into contact with “the laundry facility, improvised explosive device blasts, sandstorms, burn pits and the occasional cigar.”


Monday, the first ever Burn Pit Symposium takes place:


1st Annual Scientific Symposium on
Lung Health after Deplyoment to Iraq & Afghanistan
February 13, 2012


sponsored by
Office of Continuing Medical Education
School of Medicine
Stony Brook University


Location
Health Sciences Center, Level 3, Lecture Hall 5

Anthony M. Szema, M.D., Program Chair
Stony Brook
University
Medical Center



This program is made possible by support from the Sergeant Thomas Joseph Sullivan Center, Washington, D.C.



2 WAYS TO REGISTER FOR THE CONFERENCE

* Register with your credit card online at: http://www.stonybrookmedicalcenter.org/education/cme.cfm

* Download the registration form from:
http://www.stonybrookmedicalcenter.org/education/cme.cfm and
fax form to (631) 638-1211


For Information Email: cmeoffice@stonybrook.edu



1st Annual Scientific Symposium on
Lung Health after Deployment to Iraq & Afghanistan
Monday, February 13, 2012
Health Sciences Center
Level 3, Lecture Hall 5


Program Objective: Upon completion, participants should be able to recognize new-onset of lung disease after deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan.


8:00 - 9:00 a.m. Registration & Continental Breakfast (Honored Guest, Congressman
Tim Bishop


9:00 - 9:30 Peter Sullivan, J.D., Father of Marine from The Sergeant Thomas Joseph
Sullivan Center, Washington, D.C.


9:40 - 10:10 Overview of Exposures in Iraq, Anthony Szema, M.D., (Assistant
Professor of Medicine and Surgery, Stony Brook University)


10:10 - 10:40 Constrictive Bronchiolitis among Soldiers after Deployment, Matt
King, M.D. (Assistant Professor of Medicine, Meharry Medical College,
Nashville, TN)


10:40 - 11:10 BREAK


11:10 - 11:40 Denver Working Group Recommendations and Spirometry Study in
Iraq/Afghanistan, Richard Meehan, M.D., (Chief of Rheumatology and
Professor of Medicine, National Jewish Health, Denver, CO)


11:40 a.m. - Microbiological Analyses of Dust from Iraq and Afghanistan, Captain Mark

12:10 p.m. Lyles, D.M.D., Ph. D., (Vice Admiral Joel T. Boone Endowed Chair of
Health and Security Studies, U.S. Naval War College, Newport, RI)


12:10 - 12:20 Health Care Resource Utilization among Deployed Veterans at the White
River Junction VA, James Geiling, M.D., (Professor and Chief of Medicine,
Dartmouth Medical School, VA White River Junction, VT)


12:20 - 1:20 LUNCH AND EXHIBITS
Graduate students Millicent Schmidt and Andrea Harrington (Stony Brook
University) present Posters from Lung Studies Analyzed for Spatial
Resolution of Metals at Brookhaven National Laboratory's National
Synchrotron Light Source


1:20 - 1:40 Epidemiologic Survey Instrument on Exposures in Iraq and Afghanistan,
Joseph Abraham, Sc.D., Ph.D., (U.S. Army Public Health Command,
Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD)


1:40 - 2:10 Overview of the Issue Raised during Roundtable on Pulmonary Issues
and Deployment, Coleen Baird, M.D., M.P.H., (Program Manager
Environmental Medicine, U.S. Army Public Health Command)


2:10 - 2: 40 Reactive Oxygen Species from Iraqi Dust, Martin Schoonen, Ph.D.
(Director Sustainability Studies and Professor of Geochemistry, Stony
Brook University)


2:40 - 2:50 BREAK


2:50 - 3:15 Dust Wind Tunnel Studies, Terrence Sobecki, Ph.D. (Chief Environmental
Studies Branch, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Cold Regions Research
and Engineering Laboratory, Manchester, NH)


3:15 - 3:45 Toxicologically Relevant Characteristics of Desert Dust and Other
Atmospheric Particulate Matter, Geoffrey S. Plumlee, Ph.D. (Research
Geochemist, U.S. Geological Survey, Denver, CO)


3:44 - 4:15 In-situ Mineralogy of the Lung and Lymph Nodes, Gregory Meeker, M.S.
(Research Geochemist, U.S. Geological Survey, Denver, CO)




Continuing Medical Education Credits


The school of Medicine, State University of New York at Stony Brook, is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

The School of Medicine, State University of New York at Stony Brooke designates this live activity for a maximum of 6 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)TM. Physicians should only claim the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.


It'll be interesting to see which outlets note the symposium and which ignore it.

Violence continued today in Iraq. Trend reports a Jbala bombing injured a police chief and five other people. Sky News adds, "A roadside bomb at Amariyat al-Fallujah in Anbar province killed Sheikh Najem Mustafa al-Hafez, head of the Aweissat tribe, along with his brother, his wife and their two-year-old son, police lieutenant Jabbar Hamad said." Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) notes the death of the Sheikh as well and explains, "Sheikh Najim Abed Hafidh headed up an Awakening Council in the town of al-Hiramat, which is near Falluja" and that in addition, assailants "fatally shot Haider Shamkhi, the government official, while he was in his car on Mohammed al-Qassim highway in Iraq's capital, police officials told CNN." Reuters drops back to Friday to note an Abu Ghraib roadside bombing which left three Iraqi soldiers injured and 1 teacher shot dead in Khan Bani Saad.


The following community sites -- plus Susan's On Edge -- updated last night and today:





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