When Jessey Baca returned from Balad Air Base in Iraq, he began experiencing strange health symptoms: fevers, chills, headaches, difficulty breathing. The VA tried to write off his condition as PTSD, but Jessey and his wife Maria would eventually learn that the likely cause was exposure to burn pits, where the military was incinerating trash with jet fuel. And they weren’t alone. Thousands of veterans were sick and dying from burn pit exposure. 

Featured in this episode:

Kelly Kennedy

Jessey and Maria Baca

Sources:

Kelly Kennedy’s reporting for The Military Times (https://www.militarytimes.com/) and The War Horse (https://thewarhorse.org/)

The New Republic’s “The Things They Burned”: https://newrepublic.com/article/138058/things-burned 

The New York Times’ “The Soldiers Came Home Sick. The Government Denied It Was Responsible”: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/11/magazine/military-burn-pits.html

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