Biden suspects toxic exposure in Iraq killed Beau. He has a plan for ill veterans

[Dem2]

Joe Biden, like many other families of service members diagnosed with illnesses from overseas deployments, suspects toxic exposure may have been behind his son Beau’s brain cancer.

Beau Biden boarded a military aircraft for Iraq on Nov. 19, 2008, just days after his father became vice president-elect. He deployed with the Delaware Army National Guard to Balad Air Base, where the U.S. military burned an estimated 140 tons of waste a day in open air burn pits.

When he died in 2015, Beau Biden was 46.

In a 2019 speech to the Service Employees International Union, Biden said because of Beau’s “exposure to burn pits, in my view, I can’t prove it yet, he came back with stage four glioblastoma. Eighteen months he lived, knowing he was going to die.”

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https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/national-security/article247097347.html

[greenjar_01]

1. Burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan were horrible

DoD litigated this thing to death (including under Obama-Biden) but it would be really nice to have an administration come back to it and take it seriously. Sure, most of the data is on troubling but not fatal breathing issues, but there's little doubt that some of the FOB burn pits in Iraq created carcinogenic environments, even if that's tough to prove outside of the ongoing longitudinal studies.

[NewDayOranges]

2. Exposure to depleted uranium that is used to

Coat tank armour and armour-piercing munitions is very toxic to people and causes horrible birth defects.

Not only are many of our soldiers affected by it but many civilians that live near areas where spent munitions rest.