Soldiers in Iraq are breathing bad air, according to an Alaska researcher who for almost two years has monitored air quality in two camps in Baghdad. In addition to small particles blown into the air during sandstorms, soldiers at the camps are breathing in tiny lead particles, probably the result of burned leaded fuel.

“We exceed the U.S. ambient air quality lead standard almost all the time in Iraq,” said Cathy Cahill of University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute.

Every three weeks, Cahill receives in the mail samples coated with a sticky film that captures particles from the air at the Army camps. A few soldiers operate the air samplers for her, and she mails the clean films back with reindeer jerky and smoked salmon tucked in the boxes. Her study is a joint venture with the Army and Navy to see what soldiers are breathing in combat zones.

“It’s bad,” Cahill says. “There’s more dust in the fine (breathable) fraction than we thought, and there’s the airborne lead and manganese.”

Cahill’s goal with her studies is to identify hazards to keep soldiers—including her neighbors at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks—safer. With the help of the military, Cahill is expanding her efforts, setting up four more sampling stations at bases in Afghanistan, and beginning to monitor the air around military burn pits, where contractors burn the trash from the bases, sending inky black smoke into the sky...(more)