Two local veterans have joined a growing rank of soldiers that have sued civilian defense contractors that used open-air pits to burn waste at U.S. military installations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

They claim their health was harmed by toxic smoke and fumes from the pits.

In their lawsuit against Texas-based contractors KBR Inc. and Halliburton, along with Turkish contractor ERKA Ltd., retired Army Lt. Col. Michael Foth, of Lodi, and former senior airman Brett Mazzara, of Verona, say that health problems they have had since their deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan were caused by smoke from the pits.

According to the lawsuit, which seeks class action status, the pits were used to burn all kinds of waste, including vehicles and vehicle parts, batteries, building materials, animal carcasses, medical supplies, and even human corpses.

When he was at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, Mazzara said in an interview Thursday, he and fellow aircraft mechanics joked about the thick smoke from the burn pit that often blew in and how it would affect their health down the road.

But now Mazzara, 26, said he gets winded climbing stairs. At a stateside base he was diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea after his girlfriend at the time noticed he was snoring more loudly and would gasp for breath in his sleep, and he developed a cough that still persists, he said.

When the wind blew toward the north end of the runway where he worked at Bagram, Mazzara said, it would be thick and last for days. When ash mixed in, he said, "it almost looked like snow in the fog."

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Madison, brings to 34 the number of similar lawsuits pending across the United States, said Susan Burke, a Washington, D.C., lawyer representing the soldiers, including Mazzara and Foth. A first wave of lawsuits filed earlier this year have been merged for pretrial proceedings in Greenbelt, Md., she said.

According to the lawsuit, Foth was deployed to Iraq from May 2004 to March 2005 and was at Balad Air Base, Talil Air Base, Camp Speicher and Forward Operating Base Ridgeway. Exposure to thick smoke from the burn pits has led to sleep apnea, the suit claims.

In a statement, KBR said it has never operated or provided support services for the burn pit at Balad. The company also said the Army, not KBR, decides where to locate and how to operate a burn pit. It also said it does not place human body parts in burn pits.

Halliburton has said it has been improperly named in the lawsuits and expects to be dismissed from them.