The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has once again turned down an
effort by Navy veterans to get compensation for possible exposure to
Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.
In a document released
Friday, the VA said it would continue to limit benefits related to Agent
Orange exposure to only those veterans who set foot in Vietnam, where
the herbicide was sprayed, and to those who were on boats in inland
rivers.
The VA compensates these veterans for a litany of
associated illnesses, including diabetes, various cancers, Parkinson’s
disease, peripheral neuropathy and a type of heart disease.
Advocates
for some 90,000 so-called Blue Water Navy veterans who served off the
coast of Vietnam have been asking the VA for more than a decade to
broaden the policy to include them. They say they were exposed to Agent
Orange because their ships sucked in potentially contaminated water and
distilled it for showering, drinking, laundry and cooking. Experts have
said the distillation process could have actually concentrated the Agent
Orange, which contained the toxic chemical dioxin and was used to kill
vegetation and deny enemy cover.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for
Veterans Claims last April struck down VA rules that denied compensation
for sailors whose ships docked at certain harbors in South Vietnam,
including Da Nang. Those ports, the court determined, may have been in the Agent Orange spraying area. The court ordered the VA to review its policy.
On
Friday, the VA largely stood by its policy and again asserted that
there’s no scientific justification or legal requirement for covering
veterans who served off the coast.
“Environmental health experts
in VA’s Veterans Health Administration have reviewed the available
scientific information and concluded that it is not sufficient to
support a presumption that Blue Water Navy Veterans were exposed to
Agent Orange,” the VA said in a fact sheet.
U.S.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., the ranking member of the Senate
Veterans’ Affairs Committee, criticized the VA’s decision.
“Rather
than siding with veterans, VA is doubling down on an irrational and
inconsistent policy,” he said in a statement. “Veterans who served
offshore and in the harbors of Vietnam were exposed and deserve the
presumption of service connection for Agent Orange-related diseases.”
Blumenthal and others are seeking adoption of the Blue Water Navy
Vietnam Veterans Act, which would ensure that all vets exposed to Agent
Orange are compensated. The VA opposes the legislation, as it has
several previous iterations dating back to 2008.
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