The Devastating Effects of Burn Pit Exposure for Iraq War Veterans

One, these are bad decisions as we look back on history and we look at Iraq in particular and we look at the tens of thousands of service members that served in Iraq to include myself. I don't know if they want to be reminded of that section of our history on a regular basis either. So when we have amputees and we have health issues with the burn pits that really I think is our cause that we need to talk about as our Agent Orange is, I think John Stewart just recently brought it up and we're active in the Hunter Seven Foundation which does a lot of research in this. There's zero reason why the government is not funding to the tune of millions of dollars of research to figure out what's happening to the service members with their directly related lung and health issues from burn pits. There's zero reason because the only reason is because if they acknowledge that it's a problem they're going to have to pay for it. Can you explain burn pits to people? Yeah. It was essentially a big pit where you would put all of your garbage. Everything. Everything. So that's batteries, that's all the plastics. It's anything and everything that is required. It's fecal matter. Yeah. It's fecal matter. It's tires. Everything that is directly associated with your living condition in a war that you need to get rid of. You would shove it all into a pit and then it would burn 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Whoa. Yes. There you go. How close is this to where you guys were living? Every one of the fire bases I was at, four and a half years is how much time I have on the ground in Iraq. Every one of my fire bases there was a burn pit. Not only that, you're going to have young privates out there with sticks rolling it over in the smoke with probably some knitted fake mask that they're wearing that they got. They're the ones in there actually rotating the trash to burn it through completely so they're completely subjected to that environment from a very long time. Whose fucking idea was that? Really smart. Really, really smart officers and contractors. It was the same guys that decided that the invasion was going to be a really good idea of Iraq. They're the same people making those types of decisions in the way that obviously when we look at this now and we look back on it and we go, that's dumb as fuck. There was somebody in a series of people at that point in time in 2003 to 2009 in Iraq that were saying, this is a good idea. That type of mentality I think is the same type of mentality today that says this is a good idea for us not to fund the research to figure out what the fuck is going on so we can do something about it. When we talk about it, our voices are only so big, but I think if people knew what was happening with our generation of veterans because I'm 43, you're 33, 34. We've got all these guys that are coming up with strange cancers. One of the Jaco's friends and our friends, he just died of cancer. He's a Medal of Honor recipient, had a strange heart organ cancer or some kind of cancer in his back and he just died six months down the road. What's happening when we talk about the other foundations and people that are diving into some of this research is incredibly underfunded. They're starting to have this direct connection between the burn pits themselves and the chemicals that ultimately we're exposed to or we're exposed to. A lot of the cancers that guys are coming, when I say that, they're developing, I guess. Obviously. Yeah. There's no fucking way that's good for you. There's no fucking way. That's in the same camp? Yeah. Yes. We're right there on the farm. I would take a towel and I would wet it and then I would put it down underneath my door going into this little container, a little shipping container. I would put another one on the top just so I could sleep the rest of the evening because the smoke was so bad from the burn pits as it would move in. You couldn't sleep because you couldn't sleep without coughing. That was every day depending on your firebase. It was every day. It wasn't the fact that, hey man, I got all my fingers and toes. I survived seven years at war. I feel like a counter argument to that would be like, well, whatever idiots you signed up for it. That's not an argument. I know someone say that, but I think that if you're willing to spend $100,000 to a million dollars on a guy or a gal to train them up to do a specific job because you look at how much it costs to put them through training and school after school after school and then they get out and we're just like, have fun. Especially guys and gals, we're talking tier one units. I have friends that have done 16, 17, 18 deployments and it's an injustice because they're willing to sacrifice their life, limb and body and eyesight for, I guess, the politicians to send them to war, but then it's a moral obligation as our society that we have to look out for them when they come back. It's not happening. It's insane that this is prevalent, that they have these burn pits at every base. It's fucking insane. For the most part, most people don't. What is this, Jamie? In Afghanistan, at its peak, more than 400 tons of waste was disposed using burn pits daily. Jesus Christ. Yeah, but then the question is like, what else do you do? Like San Francisco fog. One soldier described the smoke as thick as San Francisco fog. Every day. Another called it like pollen dust. The color of smoke could be blue and black or yellow and orange. However, it's mostly black. Everyone inhaled and ingested it. It was absorbed by their skin. Fuck. Which is interesting because I think a lot of people that have deployed, if you said, hey, we got to get this trash burnt, we got to do it. We signed up for it. We got it. But then you got to give them the research and the medical clinicians that understand this going forward and after the fact to actually hopefully not die like this from cancer. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You got to not do that. No, I agree. But I'm saying. But there's no way you would say, hey, let's let these guys breathe in this shit and then take care of them. No, you should not burn that shit. You should. They've got to figure out another way to get rid of it. Agreed. I mean, but even the landfills are fucking terrible. One of the things they're finding out in these, when they're doing these satellite overviews is that methane, like methane, they're trying to find the largest sources of methane and what's contributing to greenhouse gases. It's fucking landfills. Right. Landfills where you take all your food, they pour it into the ground, they just cover it up with dirt and it's just leaking methane into the atmosphere. It's fucking terrible. Like, I don't know what the solution is, but the solution is definitely not burn it right where the soldiers are sleeping. No. And I think that now that as we continue to evolve, hopefully as a society and we look at the way that we deploy service members overseas, we've at least identified this as a problem. But the big thing that I see is we have to continue to look at the problem, fund the research and look at the direct connection between these types of activities, meaning burn pits. We're looking at burn pit and I'm saying that's burn pit, but it's also, I know Tim, obviously he's been on the podcast. He's SF guy. I'm an SF guy. But when we look at the long-term effects of, we'll call it the special operations community, because I'm obviously from that subculture, but sleep deprivation, anti-inflammatories, anti-malarials, burn pits, multiple rotations, PTS, this is a holistic health issue for most of these guys returning. If they don't have direct or visible combat wounds, they have some type of residual. They've been affected by the war in a long-term residual way. And I think what happens is as the VA continues to evolve, at least past these wars, we have to look at it as a collective and say, how do we turn everybody's attention within the VA system to directly take care of these guys in a very positive and impactful way so we don't have people like Mary Dagg that get denied a full-time service caregiver because How's that stand now? Is it still the way it is right now? That was like five days ago. I haven't talked to her since I'm actually gonna call her after. But yeah, at least give the resources and the funding necessary because I'm sure VA as an organization wants to do good and wants to do great things. I think that when people just say the VA sucks, it's the wrong way to look at us. It's the way it's how do we critically think and solve the problem and put in process in a plan to go, here's the resources you need so we can fix the issues that are right in front of her face. Yeah, I couldn't imagine being a VA bean counter or being someone who works for a VA bean counter who gets the call that you have to like cut the budget by X amount. So figure out where you're gonna slash these benefits like and then you have to look at these people that you're talking to either on the phone or through email. You can't even look at them as a human. You got to look at them as a number on a ledger. It's crazy. It's crazy. You have incredible giving nation that backfills that need through nonprofit organizations. I guess my only intent in that conversation is I think the government needs to do a much better job of leading the conversation than being towed around by the entire conversation. They need to get out in front of it. They have to take responsibility for it. I think that's the big one, which is taking responsibility for war just in general and then taking responsibility for the after effects of the individual soldiers, sailors, marines, post-war. That just seems to me the thing to do. I think most people if they realize these things were happening, I think the last time I tried to schedule a VA appointment, it was gonna take me 200 plus days to get in to see a physician about a shoulder injury. Really? Yeah. 200 days. 200 days to get on the list. I'm gonna be special. I'm not missing anything. There are a lot of people that have been directly affected by this that need care. Now we have the ability, I think, based on the current administration to go see a primary care provider outside of the VA, which I think was a huge step. There's still a lot to do. For us, having this company and what we're doing with it, it's a big part of the mission. Of how we run the company, what we're doing with the company. Episodes of the Joe Rogan Experience are now free on Spotify. That's right, they're free from September 1st to December 1st. They're gonna be available everywhere, but after December 1st, they will only be available on Spotify, but they will be free. That includes the video. The video will also be there. It'll also be free. That's all we're asking. Just go download Spotify. Much love. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.