Where There’s Smoke, Is There Disease?
Occupational and Environmental Medicine, MPH Preceptor: William Daniell, MD Soldiers serving in Iraq are exposed to a variety of environmental hazards which they often cannot avoid and frequently lack personal protective equipment for. Sixteen percent of soldiers are currently reporting environmental exposure concerns in post deployment health screening. There have no reports in the literature of any study of the association of these reported exposures and documented respiratory disease in soldiers returning from Iraq. The post deployment health assessment (PDHA or DD Form 2796) was developed by the Department of Defense following the Gulf War. It is based in part on recommendations for surveillance programs that came out of a series of reports from the Institute of Medicine on the evidence for Gulf War Syndrome. Though the Institute of Medicine reviewed all published studies and could find no specific entity to account for Gulf War Syndrome, they did find the incidence of bronchitis a
