Toxic burn pits put the health of US veterans at risk. Can a new law help?

Joe Biden, whose son Beau's cancer may have been connected to exposure, has advocated for a better response

Joe Biden visited Texas last week. But it was no ordinary campaigning trip to a state Democrats hungrily eye as a target to flip from red to blue.

Instead the US president was speaking about an issue with personal resonance: burn pits. That is the catch-all term used to describe how American soldiers in foreign wars were exposed to toxic chemicals from incinerated military waste that years later causes debilitating disease and death to thousands of veterans.