Assistant Professor of sociology Eric Bonds recently published an article in the journal Environmental Politics on the U.S. military’s practice of burning its solid waste in open-air pits or trenches during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. While there is growing recognition that emissions from this waste have negatively impacted U.S. service members, Bonds used Google satellite images to show that civilians must have been negatively impacted as well. Bonds also conducted a content analysis of newspaper coverage of the burn-pit controversy, which shows that potential civilian impacts have been largely ignored in the mainstream news.
