Interdisciplinary authors Kali Rubaii, Mark Griffiths, Ellen Wells, Aaron Specht, Ian Lindsay, Samira Alani, and Abdulqader Alrawi (Purdue University, Newcastle University, Fallujah Women and Children’s Hospital) conducted biological, environmental, and anthropological research in Fallujah, Iraq. They find that people who have returned to bombarded homes and neighborhoods may face increased risk of negative health impacts from heavy metal exposure, both for themselves and for future generations. 

Anthropologist and Costs of War Director Stephanie Savell (Senior Fellow, Brown University) examines how war’s destruction of economies, public services, infrastructure, and the environment leads to deaths that occur long after bombs drop and grow in scale over time. Dr. Savell reviews the latest research to examine the causal pathways that have led to an estimated 3.6-3.8 million indirect deaths in post-9/11 war zones, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. The total death toll in these war zones could be at least 4.5-4.7 million and counting, though the precise mortality figure remains unknown. Some people were killed in the fighting, but far more, especially children, have been killed by the reverberating effects of war, such as the spread of disease. 

Economist Miriam Pemberton (Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies) describes how, when the U.S. military budget decreased after the Cold War, military contractors initiated a strategy to protect their profits by more widely connecting jobs to military spending. They did this by spreading their subcontracting chains across the United States and creating an entrenched war economy. Perhaps the most infamous example: Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jet, which is built in 45 states.

According to environmental policy scholar Karen Bell (Senior Lecturer, University of Glasgow), with humanity now facing the possibility of catastrophic and irreversible climate change, the environmental costs of the world’s military industries are increasingly being recognized as a significant part of the problem. Dr. Bell's research demonstrates that this realization now even extends to the defense companies and weapons-exporting governments, themselves, who are currently in the process of discussing how to ‘green’ defense. How to do so is a topic of debate amongst industry officials, environmentalists, policy makers, and others.

The U.S. Department of Defense is the largest institutional consumer of fossil fuels in the world and
a key contributor to climate change.

The wartime initiative to restore Iraq’s southern marshes, according to American
media, the United Nations, and the Iraqi government, has been a resounding success. Behind the scenes, however, environmentalism in Iraq has created a political
opportunity for foreign corporations seeking a way into the country’s cache of natural
resources.

Inhalational exposures in Iraq and Afghanistan have received a lot of attention due
to the number of troops involved and a high incidence of respiratory complaints
linked to service.

With a focus on the example of cancer and oncology in Iraq, this
article provides windows into both the decline of health and health care and the ways in
which this decline has been contested, debated, and silenced.