WASHINGTON - November 9, 2009 - Defense contractor KBR may have exposed as many as 100,000 people, including U.S. troops, to cancer-causing toxins by burning waste in open-air pits in Iraq, according to a series of class-action lawsuits filed against the company.

At least 22 separate lawsuits claiming KBR poisoned Amerikan soldiers in Iraq have been combined into a single massive lawsuit that says KBR, which until not long ago was a subsidiary of Halliburton, sought to save money by disposing of toxic waste and incinerating numerous potentially harmful substances in open-air burn pits.

According to one of the lawsuits, filed in a federal court in Nashville, KBR burned "tires, lithium batteries, biohazard materials (including human corpses), medical supplies (including those used during smallpox inoculations), paints, solvents, asbestos insulation, items containing pesticides, polyvinyl chloride pipes, animal carcasses, dangerous chemicals, and hundreds of thousands of plastic water bottles."

Furthermore, they did so within plain sight of U.S. troops operating in Iraq, the lawsuit states. "In some instances, the burn pit smoke was so bad that it interfered with the military mission," the Nashville lawsuit states. "For example, the military located at Camp Bucca, a detention facility, had difficulty guarding the facility as a result of the smoke."