First published in the Arizona Daily Independent
August 28, 2028
Op-ed by Former Arizona State Representative, Mark Cardenas, U.S. Army Veteran
Some people describe military deployments like scenes from an action movie. Hollywood tends to glorify war and service. That was never my experience serving in the Middle East.
When we volunteer to serve our country, we understand there are risks. What many of us did not understand were the hidden dangers we would carry home long after our deployments ended. I remember the massive garbage dump on base where everything was thrown and constantly burned. Most days there was no wind, and the smoke rose straight into the sky. But when the wind shifted, thick black smoke covered the entire base. Your eyes burned. Your nose stung. Your lungs felt like they were on fire. At the time, none of us understood what those toxic chemicals were doing to our bodies or what they would eventually cost so many veterans and their families.
After returning home, the Department of Veterans Affairs diagnosed me with asthma connected to my time in service. Today, I rely on multiple inhalers and daily medications just to breathe normally. Even simple things many people take for granted can become difficult when your lungs no longer function the way they once did. For many veterans exposed to toxic chemicals overseas, these health problems are lifelong.
The bonds formed during military service are unbreakable. We swear an oath to defend the Constitution and protect this country. In the military, we are taught never to leave anyone behind. Yet for many veterans suffering from toxic exposure, it felt for years as though our country had forgotten us.
I have struggled to breathe and have been rushed to the emergency room more times than I can count. But my story is not the worst one. Too many veterans I served alongside developed life-threatening illnesses connected to toxic exposure from burn pits. Too many are no longer here.
What drives me most, however, is not only my own experience — it is what happened to my father.
My father spent more than twenty years harvesting crops throughout the Southwestern United States. He was a hardworking man who took pride in providing for his family. He often ate lunch surrounded by chemicals on the crops and PFAS in the ground without realizing the danger they posed.
Then he developed stomach cancer.
His oncologist told our family that stomach cancer is caused by environmental factors virtually 100 percent of the time, and that prolonged exposure to the toxic chemical mix in the ground and in those fields almost certainly caused his illness. My father died in his fifties from the profession he loved. He never had a chance to protect himself because nobody warned him that the toxic chemical mix, which included PFAS, was poisoning him. That experience changed my understanding of environmental justice forever.
Before the Toxic Substances Chemical Act (TSCA) was strengthened in 2016, assessing risks and exposures to chemicals was largely overlooked in the U.S.
Too many working-class families, communities of color, veterans, and agricultural workers are forced to live and work in environments filled with toxic exposure. People of color are significantly more likely to live near industrial facilities, landfills, transportation routes, military bases, and contaminated groundwater sources. While some progress has been made in recent years, environmental protections are now under attack, and I fear we are moving backward.
Corporations should never be allowed to prioritize profits over human life. Weakening environmental protections and rolling back regulations will only lead to more cancer, more respiratory disease, and more preventable deaths.
Today there are proposals to weaken TSCA. My story is evidence as to why strong chemical safety laws are critical. We must move forward, not backward.
Arizona has already seen the devastating consequences of chemical contamination. Communities near military installations have faced dangerous PFAS contamination in their drinking water and groundwater supplies. Near Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson and other military facilities, toxic firefighting foam contaminated water sources used by surrounding communities. Residents experienced elevated rates of prostate cancer, bladder cancer, and other serious illnesses.
These are not isolated incidents. They are warnings.
As a country, we have a moral responsibility to protect people from preventable harm. Allowing Americans to be exposed to dangerous chemicals — whether veterans overseas, farmworkers in the fields, or families living near contaminated sites — is negligent, irresponsible, and morally wrong.
We need stronger environmental protections, stronger accountability for polluters, and strong laws to keep toxic chemicals like PFAS out of our land, water, and communities. No family should have to endure what mine did. No child should watch a parent die because corporations and government agencies failed to put human health before profit.
