Burn Pits 360

Burn Pits 360 Burn Pits 360's mission is to provide research, outreach and advocacy to our nation's veterans affected by toxic exposures during deployment.

Veterans Organization

Texas told a sick veteran he could not sue them. The Supreme Court disagreed, five to four.The attorney who argued it is...
09/05/2026

Texas told a sick veteran he could not sue them. The Supreme Court disagreed, five to four.

The attorney who argued it is coming to San Antonio in October.

Retired Lt. Col. Brian Lawler is a retired U.S. Marine Corps lieutenant colonel and a San Diego attorney at Pilot Law, P.C. He served as lead trial counsel for Captain Le Roy Torres in Torres v. Texas Department of Public Safety, and argued the case before the United States Supreme Court.

The backdrop: Captain Torres — co-founder of Burn Pits 360 — served 23 years in the U.S. Army Reserve and as a Texas State Trooper before being diagnosed with Constrictive Bronchiolitis and Toxic Brain Injury following his 2007 deployment to Balad, Iraq. When Texas refused to accommodate his service-related disability, the state raised sovereign immunity as a shield.

In 2022, the Court rejected that defense and ruled that Torres could sue under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act. The precedent did not stop at one family. It opened the door for disabled veterans and servicemembers nationwide to hold state employers accountable for violating their civilian reemployment rights.

The award that bears Captain Torres's name honors those who carry that same spirit of justice into the lives of veterans. It could not go to a more fitting first recipient.

Join us October 17 at the JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country. Tickets are $400 at galaofvalor.org — or buy a seat and give a veteran a night out.



Pilot Law, P.C.

When Le Roy Torres came home from Iraq too sick to work, his family was facing foreclosure on their house and repossessi...
09/05/2026

When Le Roy Torres came home from Iraq too sick to work, his family was facing foreclosure on their house and repossession of their vehicles.

Rick Kell and Troops First stepped in. That is the part of this story most people have never heard.

Rick Kell is co-founder and Executive Director of Feherty's Troops First Foundation, which he started in 2008 with Golf Channel broadcaster David Feherty. It grew out of a defining experience: after visiting combat-wounded OEF and OIF patients at Walter Reed, Rick built real friendships with recovering warriors and saw plainly where the care system was leaving them.

Rather than duplicate what already existed, he built what didn't. Operation Proper Exit takes wounded warfighters back to the battlespace where they were injured, so they can leave it on their own terms. Operation Warrior Call fights veteran su***de with something as simple and as difficult as a phone call. And 24/7 Battle Buddies matches combat-wounded veterans with service dogs.

It was that program that matched Le Roy with a service dog named Hope who ultimately saved Le Roy’s life from a su***de attempt.

Troops First was also the first organization to help build Burn Pits 360, opening doors for a fledgling nonprofit that had almost nothing but a conviction.

The Defenders of Valor Award honors those who stand in the breach against delay, denial, and obstruction. Rick has been standing there for eighteen years.

Join us October 17 at the JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country. Tickets are $400 at galaofvalor.org — or buy a seat and give a veteran a night out.



Troops First Foundation Feherty's Troops First Foundation

Twenty-five years ago today, Dr. David Prezant was at the World Trade Center, caring for FDNY firefighters and EMS worke...
09/04/2026

Twenty-five years ago today, Dr. David Prezant was at the World Trade Center, caring for FDNY firefighters and EMS workers through the collapse and everything that came after.

Years later, he wrote a letter that helped change the law for a different generation of people who breathed something they should never have breathed.

"It is more likely than not that soldiers exposed to burn pits and related airborne hazards of war may experience the same ailments we see among those from 9/11."

During our five-day firewatch on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, we hand-delivered that letter to every member of Congress who had flipped their vote from yes to no.

Dr. Prezant is the Chief Medical Officer of the New York City Fire Department and a Professor of Medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He has led the WTC Medical Monitoring Program for FDNY as principal investigator for the health outcomes of nearly 16,000 rescue workers. His team was the first to describe WTC Cough Syndrome, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2002. He has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed papers on what toxic exposure does to firefighters and first responders.

He understood, earlier than almost anyone, that the same story was about to repeat itself in a different uniform — and he put his name on the letter that said so.

On October 17 we present him with the Ground Zero Warfighter Legacy Award, which recognizes those who have given their careers to the health of warriors who ran toward danger.

Today, we remember.

Tickets are $400 at galaofvalor.org — or buy a seat and give a veteran a night out.

New York City Fire Department (FDNY)

The largest expansion of VA health care and benefits in decades did not begin in a committee room. It began with a group...
09/04/2026

The largest expansion of VA health care and benefits in decades did not begin in a committee room. It began with a group of sick veterans, a comedian who would not let it go, and a room full of 9/11 first responders who already knew exactly how this story goes.

Congressman Mark Takano of California entered the fight for toxic-exposed veterans after Burn Pits 360 partnered with Jon Stewart, and members of the 9/11 first-responder community brought the case directly to the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs.

As Chairman of that Committee, he authored and led passage of the Honoring our PACT Act. He introduced the legislation in 2021, carried it through committee markup and a bipartisan House vote, and kept pressing — alongside Stewart and veteran advocates — until President Biden signed it into law in August 2022.

What that law does is simple to say and took more than a decade to win: it extends health care and benefits to millions of veterans exposed to burn pits and other toxins, and it treats that exposure as a cost of war rather than a barrier to earned care.

We are honoring him with the SFC Heath Robinson PACT Act Service Award, which salutes the elected officials whose legislative leadership made the PACT Act the law of the land.

Join us October 17 at the JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country. Tickets are $400 at galaofvalor.org — or buy a seat and give a veteran a night out.

Congressman Juan Ciscomani of Arizona, a member of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs GOP, co-authored the AIR CAR...
09/02/2026

Congressman Juan Ciscomani of Arizona, a member of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs GOP, co-authored the AIR CARE for Vets Act alongside Rep. Chris Pappas.

The bill would direct the VA to establish a pilot program using advanced 4D lung imaging to diagnose service-related respiratory conditions — asthma, COPD, lung cancer — with particular attention to veterans who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and came home breathing differently than they left. It authorizes $5 million a year from fiscal 2027 through 2031 to put that technology inside VA medical facilities nationwide.

Rep. Ciscomani has made the case plainly: better imaging means a better rate of diagnosis, and a better rate of diagnosis catches things like lung cancer while there is still time to act.

We are honoring him with the Burn Pits 360 Congressional Advocacy Award for Veterans Health, an award reserved for leaders whose actions make a lasting difference in the health and future of the veteran community. The AIR CARE for Vets Act is precisely the kind of forward-thinking, bipartisan work that deserves national recognition.

Join us October 17 at the JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country for the Gala of Valor. Tickets are $400 at galaofvalor.org — or buy a seat and give a veteran a night out.

For years, the only way to confirm what burn pits had done to a veteran's lungs was to cut into them.That is no longer t...
09/02/2026

For years, the only way to confirm what burn pits had done to a veteran's lungs was to cut into them.

That is no longer true, and one of the reasons is coming to the Gala of Valor.

Dr. Andreas Fouras is the founder and CEO of , the company behind XV Technology — the world's first FDA-cleared respiratory imaging software that turns X-ray sequences into four-dimensional quantitative data, showing in real time how air actually moves through a breathing lung. It began at Monash University in 2005 and took more than fifteen years of clinical research to refine.

What it changes is the thing veterans have been fighting about for two decades: proof. Working with the VA and leading medical centers including Vanderbilt, this technology allows veterans sickened by burn pits to be screened safely, accurately, and without an invasive biopsy. An objective, earlier diagnosis is also a stronger claim — fewer denials, faster treatment, and an invisible wound finally made visible.

Dr. Fouras and 4DMedical have partnered with Burn Pits 360 on national symposia and clinical research to advance this work. It reflects what our co-founder Rosie Torres calls the Trifecta Model: cutting-edge research, transformative technology, and unwavering advocacy, working together.

We are proud to present him with the PACT Act Veterans Champion Award.

October 17, JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country.
Tickets are $400 at galaofvalor.org — or buy a seat and give a veteran a night out.

Rosie Torres and Capt. Le Roy Torres have been named to the Mighty 25: 2026, We Are The Mighty's annual list of the peop...
09/01/2026

Rosie Torres and Capt. Le Roy Torres have been named to the Mighty 25: 2026, We Are The Mighty's annual list of the people shaping the military and veteran community.

The recognition traces a fight that started at a kitchen table in Robstown, Texas.

Le Roy deployed to Iraq in 2007 as an U.S. Army Reserve logistics officer, stationed beside one of the largest burn pits in the country — roughly ten acres. He came home sick. It took years, and an invasive lung biopsy, to get a name for it: constrictive bronchiolitis with peribronchiolar fibrosis.

When he asked the Texas Department of Public Safety for work he could physically do, he was forced to resign instead.

There was no place to report what was happening to him.

So Rosie built one — a registry on VistaPrint that became the Burn Pits 360 registry, and the evidence base that made it impossible for Congress to call thousands of identical illnesses a coincidence.

Twelve years later: a Supreme Court ruling in Torres v. Texas Department of Public Safety establishing that servicemembers can hold state employers accountable under USERRA, and the Honoring our PACT Act — the largest expansion of care for toxic-exposed veterans in more than three decades.

The names on that first registry belonged to people who mostly never made it to a microphone or a hearing room. They are the reason any of this exists.

Our thanks to We Are The Mighty and Jessica Manfre for telling our story.

Read the full feature: https://bit.ly/45Ws5Ql

Come for the night. Stay for the weekend.We've held a block of rooms at the JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country Resort ...
09/01/2026

Come for the night. Stay for the weekend.

We've held a block of rooms at the JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country Resort & Spa for Gala of Valor guests — Friday and Saturday nights, October 16 through 18 — so that when the evening ends, you can take the elevator instead of the highway.

And then wake up somewhere worth waking up. An 1,100-foot lazy river at the River Bluff Water Experience. The Lantana Spa. Two championship courses at TPC San Antonio. Eight restaurants without leaving the property. Fourteen miles from the airport for anyone flying in.

Honorees and their families are traveling in from across the country for October 17. If you're coming any distance at all — from the Valley, from Houston, from out of state — the block is the easiest way to make a long night an easy one.

Room block rates are discounted until they are sold out.

🏨 Reserve your room: https://bit.ly/3UDHNxa > Venue
🎟️ Tickets are $400 at https://bit.ly/3UDHNxa — or buy a seat and give a veteran a night out.
📍 JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country · Saturday, October 17, 2026

08/29/2026

On April 23, Captain Le Roy Torres and Rosie Lopez Torres, founders of Burn Pits 360, donated eleven objects to the National Museum of the American Latino where they are preserved in the museum's permanent collection.

The megaphone. The official permit from the Fire Watch sit-in at the U.S. Capitol. Six Fire Watch campaign posters. Framed copies of the Honoring Our PACT Act and the Airborne Hazards Open Burn Pit Registry Act. Advocacy apparel featuring movement slogans.

Eleven objects documenting more than a decade of veterans' advocacy — from a kitchen-table effort that grew into a movement and helped secure passage of the SFC Heath Robinson Honoring Our PACT Act.

"This donation represents far more than objects in a display case," said Rosie Lopez Torres. "It represents the strength of our ancestors, every veteran we lost, and every family who refused to stay silent."

As Rosie said, it's the people this represents.

Those families are still with us — and so is the work. Veterans and loved ones are still navigating care, claims and recognition every day.

On October 17, many of them will be together in one room in San Antonio: the veterans, the families, the researchers and the advocates who have carried this for fifteen years. We'd be glad to have you with us.

🎟️ Tickets are $400 at https://bit.ly/3UDHNxa — or buy a seat and give a veteran a night out.
💼 Sponsorships also at https://bit.ly/3UDHNxa.
📍 JW Marriott San Antonio · Saturday, October 17, 2026







Twenty-five years ago, John Feal was a demolition supervisor at Ground Zero.Five days into the cleanup, an 8,000-pound b...
08/27/2026

Twenty-five years ago, John Feal was a demolition supervisor at Ground Zero.

Five days into the cleanup, an 8,000-pound beam crushed his left foot. He lost part of it. He went broke paying the medical bills.

Then he spent the next two decades making sure nobody else would have to fight alone.

He built the FealGood Foundation. He lobbied Congress into passing the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act. He has put 19 pieces of legislation across the finish line.

And when the fight moved from Ground Zero to military burn pits, he took it up again — championing the PACT Act, the bill Rosie and Le Roy Torres had already spent more than a decade fighting for. In November 2022, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand recommended all four of them — Capt. Le Roy Torres, Rosie Torres, Jon Stewart and John Feal — for the Presidential Medal of Freedom, for "their advocacy that secured lifesaving care and benefits for our nation's first responders and veterans."

On October 17, we're honoring John Feal at the Gala of Valor.

He'll be there in person.
You can shake his hand.

His book — I Will Follow You Anywhere: The True Story of the 9/11 Responders Who Took On Congress, foreword by Jon Stewart — is out this September, and he'll be signing copies.

Twenty-five years after 9/11, the same fight is still being fought. Come stand in the room with the people still fighting it.

🎟️ Tickets: https://bit.ly/4xoMGJ5
📍 JW Marriott San Antonio · Saturday, October 17, 2026

Address

201 N. 4th Street
Robstown, TX
78380

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

Telephone

+18006853983

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Burn Pits 360 posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Organization

Send a message to Burn Pits 360:

Shortcuts

Share

Category