Tuesday’s other Wikileak: Army memo on soldiers’ exposure to toxic trash

Wikileaks: They’re not just for revealing how Norm Coleman stores unprotected, unencrypted donor data anymore.

We mentioned yesterday the varied mix of leaked documents that the Wikileaks.org Web site posts, including a U.S. Army memo on soldiers’ exposure to toxins. Today that Army memo and the Wikileaks site share center stage in a Duluth News Tribune story (via), along with a member of the 148th Air National Guard in Duluth who was one of thousands exposed to a toxic heap of burning trash in Iraq.

Here’s an excerpt:

Retired Chief Master Sgt. Ken McDonald of the 148th Air National Guard in Duluth said there was no way to avoid exposure to the massive open-air burn pit at the Balad air base in Iraq.

“We drove by it every day,” he said. “It was pretty nasty.”

McDonald, along with thousands of other troops who have served at Balad, may have been exposed to toxic waste from the pit, according to an Air Force memo that was leaked Tuesday on Wikileaks, a Web site that receives documents from anonymous sources to help expose government misdeeds.

“In my professional opinion, the known carcinogens and respiratory sensitizers released into the atmosphere by the burn pit present both an acute and chronic health hazard to our troops and local population,” Lt. Col. James R. Elliott, the chief of aeromedical services, wrote in the memo.

The memo, written in December 2006, said the pit had been identified as a health concern for several years, with one assessor calling it “the worst environmental site I have personally visited” in 10 years.