The Invisible War On American Soil, Topic, 29 July 17 Photographs by Nina Berman
War is a dirty, dirty business. Beyond the damage inflicted on the battlefields themselves, every part of a military operation marks the earth. From munitions factories to massive supply lines, collateral costs abound.GIVEN THE SIZE OF OUR DEFENSE BUDGETS, it should come as no surprise that the United States military is one of the planet’s most prolific and chronic polluters. Perhaps more surprising is that this impacts life within the U.S. as well as overseas. Vast stretches of the American landscape are contaminated by the business of war and armed aggression; it’s littered with unexploded ordnance, toxic chemicals, depleted uranium, radioactive particles, and more.
In this essay, we examine seven such sites of environmental damage wrought by the nation’s military and its weapons contractors. The places range from sites in New Mexico, where nuclear weapons have been produced, to the Passaic River in New Jersey, where dioxin from Agent Orange used during the Vietnam War has poisoned the riverbed. As the technology of warfare changes, so has its impact, with current contamination coming from the skies—such as on Whidbey Island, Washington, where Navy testing of EA-18G Growler planes might be making residents ill.
Acid Canyon; Los Alamos, New Mexico……
Trinity Site; White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico……
Haystack Mine; Haystack Mountain, New Mexico……
White Sands Missile Range Museum; New Mexico……
Luis Lopez Cemetery; New Mexico……
San Antonio, New Mexico…….
Fort Wingate, New Mexico …..
Whidbey Island, Washington…..
Big Oaks National Wildlife Refuge; Madison, Indiana…..
Near the Starmet Superfund site; Concord, Massachusetts…..
Passaic River; Lyndhurst, New Jersey…..
Tularosa, New Mexico….. https://www.topic.com/the-invisible-war-on-american-soil
