After months negotiating with Senate colleagues, the House
Veterans Affairs Committee voted unanimously on Tuesday to send to the full
House a bill likely to become the vehicle to qualify 90,000 ailing sea service
veterans for Agent Orange-related disability pay and health care from
Department of Veterans Affairs.
These former naval warriors of the Vietnam War, called “Blue
Water Navy Veterans,” have been pressuring Congress for decades to have their
illnesses recognized as being caused, as likely as not, by exposure to Agent
Orange and other herbicides sprayed on forests and jungle areas during that
long war.
The argument is that surely clouds of the toxin also reached
ships patrolling in territorial waters or contaminated water that, once
desalinated, was used by Sailors and Marines for showering and other purposes
while steaming off the coast.
Veterans who served on the ground in Vietnam or patrolled
its inland waters, even for a day, have been eligible for VA compensation and
care if diagnosed with one of 14 ailments associated with Agent Orange
exposure. But independent U.S. scientists who studied the issue
concluded in 2011 that they can’t find enough information to determine if Blue
Water Navy veterans were exposed.
As a result, VA refuses to presume their illnesses,
though on the Agent Orange presumptive list, were likely caused by service off
of Vietnam. A lone exception is allowed for Blue Water veterans with non-Hodgkin's
lymphoma.
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