Continued from page 42
While deployed, affected servicemembers routinely suffered from
“The Crud,” a colloquial term for flu-like symptoms. Today, over a
decade after returning, deployed veterans report respiratory disorders,
autoimmune disorders, and cancers at significantly higher rates than
non-deployed populations.
Determining these disabilities’ relationship with burn pit exposure is
difficult because they often lack a conclusive etiology or pathophysiology.
Many develop several years after exposure, so intervening factors
confound a cause-effect analysis. For others, medical testing indicates
few (if any) abnormalities, so doctors cannot pinpoint a clear cause.
Veterans seeking disability benefits from the U.S. Department of
Veterans Affairs (VA) face a steep uphill battle despite the relatively
low “as likely as not” legal standard of connecting their disabilities
to military service. The VA’s stance is that research does not adequately
link burn pit exposure to long-term health problems, so it denies 80
percent of burn-pit related claims, deeming the conditions are either
not diagnosed or not sufficiently connected to military service.
This scenario of toxic exposure, enigmatic disabilities, and high VA
denial rate parallels that of Vietnam War-era veterans exposed to Agent
Orange and other herbicides. They have been fighting for decades to
receive treatment and compensation for their herbicide-related disabilities.
Congressional action to ensure burn pit veterans receive VA benefits
has been slow. Every year, legislators eagerly announce bipartisan bills
that would press the VA to provide benefits to more burn pit veterans.
However, measures that would cost significant money fade away during
the budgeting process and end up as incremental measures rolled into
the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The 2019 NDAA
merely required DoD and VA coordination in understanding burn pit
effects and implementing a burn pit registry education campaign.
Similarly, the 2020 NDAA only required the VA to integrate its burn pit
registry into health records and required the DoD to disclose all burn pit
locations and make a plan to phase out burn pit use.
With VA stonewalling, and no effective legislation
to end it, Post-9/11 veterans’ fight for VA benefits will
likely continue for decades, as it has for Vietnam-era
veterans who were exposed to toxic herbicides more
than forty years ago and are still fighting for their
benefits to this day.
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Author: Ronald “Rocky” Roodhouse, LL.M. - Advocate
for Burn Pits 360
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