Agent Orange update, disability and VA health care, unemployment and more

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AGENT ORANGE PRESUMPTIVE UPDATE REMINDER

Bladder cancer, hypothyroidism and Parkinsonism were added to the Agent Orange Presumptive List when the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act was passed. Veterans who previously filed and were denied claims involving these conditions will be eligible for VA disability benefits. The VA was ordered under the Defense Authorization Act to locate and contact the veterans who were denied their claims for these conditions so that appropriate reconsideration by the VA could be conducted. If you are a veteran whose disability claim for any of these three new presumptives was denied and the VA has not contacted you, please contact your VSO (preferably the VSO who assisted in the filing of the original claim) to take further action on your claim.

SERVICE-CONNECTED DISABILITY AND VA HEALTH CARE

Are you a veteran who was denied VA health care because your income exceeded the means test for eligibility (your household income was above the VA income means test)? Medical conditions and their proven relationship with exposure change periodically as the VA gains more data. If you have been diagnosed with any medical condition or disease that has been determined to be caused by an exposure, you should file a claim for service-connected disability compensation regardless of how long you have been out of the military or how long ago you filed and were previously denied. If your claim is approved, this disability makes you eligible for VA health care and you should apply as soon as you get the approval of your disability claim.

VA INDIVIDUAL UNEMPLOYABILITY

A veteran who cannot work because of a disability related to their service in the military (a service-connected disability) may qualify for “individual unemployability.” Such a veteran may be able to get disability compensation or benefits at the same level as a veteran who has a 100% disability rating. If, 1) a veteran has at least one service-connected disability rated as 60% or more disabling, or 2) has two or more service-connected disabilities with at least one rated at 40% or more disabling and a combined rating of 70% or more AND the veteran cannot hold down a steady job that can support the veteran financially (known as substantially gainful employment) because of the service-connected disability.

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House Approves Bill to Automatically Enroll Vets in VA Health Care

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Eligible veterans would be automatically enrolled in the Department of Veterans Affairs health care system under a bill passed by the House on Thursday.

The House voted 265-163 to approve the Ensuring Veterans' Smooth Transition, or EVEST, Act. The vote fell largely along party lines, though 44 Republicans joined Democrats to support the bill.

Right now, veterans must proactively apply for health care benefits at the VA. The bill approved Thursday would require the department to instead automatically enroll veterans who meet existing eligibility criteria for VA health care. The VA would also have to provide a way for veterans to opt out of coverage.

The bill, which does not change who is eligible for VA health benefits, would apply retroactively to veterans discharged 90 days before it becomes law. The bill must still be voted on by the Senate before being sent to the president to be signed into law.

Supporters of the bill touted it as a common sense measure that will help ease the transition from the military to civilian life.

"We know that the months following transition out of the military can be very stressful and particularly risky for new veterans in terms of mental health," House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Mark Takano, D-Calif., who sponsored the bill, said Thursday on the House floor. "This helps simplify the process and prevents veterans from potentially missing out on lifesaving care. It also keeps veterans from having to opt-in to VA care later and attempt to navigate a new bureaucracy on their own."

The bill could affect about 58,000 veterans annually who might otherwise not enroll in VA health care, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, or CBO.

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Toxic air pollution in West Virginia

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Institute is a small town in West Virginia and one of two majority-Black census tracks in a state that is 94 percent white. It’s home to West Virginia State University, an HBCU whose alumni includes NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson (who was featured in the film “Hidden Figures”).

And nestled near Institute is the Union Carbide chemical manufacturing plant, owned by Dow Chemical. And while it’s been a source for jobs in the area for decades, many residents of Institute associate the plant with chemical leaks and fires.

Last year, a West Virginia state health department report found that the towns of Institute and South Charleston are seeing a spike in cancer related to ethylene oxide, a chemical produced at the Union Carbide plant.

In this edition of Local Spotlight, we talk to the reporter behind an investigation into the toxic air pollution in Institute, West Virginia, and explore how the town compares to other Black communities in the country that face disproportionate health risks from air pollution.

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Reminder: Midland and Tittabawassee River area still under dioxin advisory for livestock

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Area residents are being reminded to not eat eggs or meat from animals raised downstream from Midland along the Tittabawassee and Saginaw rivers due to possible dioxin contamination.

Representatives from Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE), the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS), and the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) gave an online presentation Tuesday night regarding dioxin contamination along the Tittabawassee River by Midland and the hazards that come from it. These groups advise against the raising of chickens and other livestock due to possible health risks from humans consuming too much dioxin.

The dioxin contamination is due to past Dow waste handling practices, said environmental engineer specialist at EGLE, Dan Dailey. This stemmed from burning dioxins or discharging them into the river, he said.

Dioxin chemicals can then spread from the river onto the land during flooding events when the water picks up sediments with dioxin and deposits them on land. Even though Dow no longer discharges dioxins, the chemical lingers for a long time, Dailey said. High amounts of dioxin have been measured in parts of Midland and along the Tittabawassee River.

When asked about the destructive 2020 flood in Midland, Arthur Ostaszewski, environmental quality analyst for EGLE, said EGLE did not see a spike in dioxin in the area after the flood.

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Chemical defoliants sprayed on Amazon rainforest to facilitate deforestation in Brazil

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Chemicals created to kill agricultural pests are being sprayed by aircraft into native forest areas.

Glyphosate and 2,4-D, among others, cause the trees to defoliate, and end up weakened or dead in a process that takes months. Next criminals remove the remaining trees more easily and drop grass seeds by aircraft, consolidating deforestation.

Brazil’s environmental agency, IBAMA, discovered that in addition to land grabbers, cattle ranchers use the method in order to circumvent forest monitoring efforts.

Pesticides have been dropped from planes and even helicopters with the aim of evading IBAMA, the Brazilian environmental agency, for years as a method to clear remote and hard-to-reach areas of the Amazon rainforest. That practice — used more frequently since 2018 — takes longer than clear-cut deforestation (the removal of all existing vegetation using heavy machinery). On the other hand, pesticide use cannot be detected via real-time satellite imagery.

According to IBAMA, some pesticides work as defoliants. The dispersion of those chemicals over native forest is the initial stage of deforestation, causing the death of leaves — and a good part of the trees. The material is burned and surviving trees are  removed with chainsaws and tractors.

“Although human-induced forest degradation takes a few years to happen, the process is advantageous to criminals because chances of being caught are very low. We can only see the damage when the clearing is already formed,” notes an IBAMA official who spoke with Mongabay on the condition of anonymity. “A dead forest is easier to remove than a living one. Certain (not all of them) pesticides practically leave only big trees standing.”

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VA Tests New Automated System that Could Speed Up Claims Decisions

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Department of Veterans Affairs officials are hoping a new automated system that helps render decisions on disability claims will accelerate the process and decrease the backlog of claims applications.

The automated system being considered by the VA has proven to shorten the disability claims review process from 100 days to two under certain circumstances and conditions, according to the agency.

A pilot run of the VA Automated Benefits Delivery System, launched in December, looked at claims filed by veterans seeking upgrades to their disability ratings for hypertension and cut 98 days from the process for those with complete files.

VA officials said the program is part of a plan to address 260,000 current disability claims, including 59,000 that are older than 125 days and are considered backlogged.

"We saw an opportunity to look at our traditional disability claims process and see how we can better leverage the data we have ... to introduce business-process automation," explained Rob Reynolds, acting deputy undersecretary for the VA's Office of Automated Benefit Delivery, during a press conference with reporters Tuesday.

The system takes electronic or paper claims and uses algorithms to determine whether the file contains enough data and information to render a decision. It then weighs the information against the rules that govern disability claims and makes a recommendation whether to approve or disapprove the claim.

The system's recommendation is reviewed and validated by a rating veterans service representative. If at any time the system decides that more information is needed -- the veteran needs a comprehensive medical exam or more data is required to render a decision -- the claim is sent to a claims reviewer for traditional processing, Reynolds said.

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Exposed to Environmental Toxins in the Military? A House Committee Wants to Hear from You

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The House Veterans Affairs Committee wants to hear from troops and veterans about their environmental exposures while serving in the U.S. military.

Committee Chairman Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., has set up an online survey for veterans asking about what they've experienced as effects of toxic exposure.

The request for help gauging the impact of exposure was announced just before Takano's planned roundtable with veterans organizations Wednesday, titled "The True Cost of our Promise to Toxic Exposed Veterans."

The survey seeks info on the extent of exposure, health conditions possibly related to environmental pollutants, the VA's response and what lawmakers can do to help affected veterans.

"Your responses will help the Committee better understand veterans' experiences with toxic exposure and how Congress can help ensure these veterans receive the benefits they have earned and deserve," Takano wrote in an announcement last week.

Takano is the lead sponsor of the Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics, or PACT, Act, which would broadly expand affected veterans' access to health care disability benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The $282 billion proposed legislation would designate 23 diseases as presumed to be related to battlefield environmental exposures in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

It also would expand eligibility to veterans who have faced challenges applying for benefits, including those who served in Vietnam and have hypertension, as well as Vietnam-era veterans exposed to Agent Orange and other defoliants outside the war zone.

An unknown number of post-9/11, Persian Gulf War and Vietnam-era veterans are suffering from respiratory illnesses, cancer and other diseases that many believe are related to exposure to chemicals, radiation and heavy metals during their military service.

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Association between industrial pollutants including dioxins and dioxin-like compounds and hepatocellular carcinoma risk

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The incidence of the most common form of liver cancer (75-85%), hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), has increased since the 1970s. Internationally, liver cancer is the second most common cause of cancer-related death. HCC risk factors can include chronic hepatitis B and C virus infection, excessive alcohol consumption, aflatoxin exposure, tobacco use, and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Recent studies suggest that the incidence of HCC could be influenced by environmental exposures due to liver cancer’s geographic variation. Dioxin and dioxin-like compounds can be found in environmentally toxic emissions that could have adverse effects on the locally exposed human population. Dioxins and dioxin-like compounds include persistent organic pollutants [e.g., polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs), polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs), and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)] that are produced from industrial combustion processes including waste incineration.

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AIR FORCE ADMITS AGENT ORANGE SPRAYING IN FLORIDA IN 1962-70

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In the 1960s, Ernie Rivers taught Navy flight students at the Pensacola Naval Air Station how to live off the land if their plane was downed. He was the officer in charge of the survival unit, overseeing 30 to 35

instructors, who taught more than 100 men a week how to survive with only a compass, map, and a hunting knife. Every week groups of students would camp for three days, using different sites on Eglin Air Force Base Reservation in Florida.

When the winds and clouds were right, Rivers and his men would watch planes pass overhead, clouds of spray coming from them. Several times he and his men were sprayed. “I’d say, ‘At least we don’t have to use bug repellant,’” he noted, laughing, during an interview. That was a big plus, they thought, for them as well as Army Rangers who were also training out in the bayous of the Florida panhandle, where mosquitoes and other bugs could make life miserable.

Rivers and the students thought they were watching the Air Force spray DDT to kill mosquitoes. What was actually being sprayed, he said, was Agent Orange. Documents show that gallons of the defoliants Agent

Orange, Agent Purple, and Agent White were sprayed at Eglin. In fact, according to officials overseeing the program, the Air Force sprayed a test area on the base with more dioxin than any similar area in Vietnam. The fact that Agent Orange was sprayed in Florida for eight years was not widely known then or even today. Only in the last several years has the documentation on the spraying been made publicly available by Alvin Young, an Air Force scientist for more than 15 years at Eglin. Young oversaw a huge research project evaluating how massive spraying of Agent Orange at the Florida air force base affected its soil, water, plants, fish, and animals.

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Residents speak out after high levels of dioxins found in west Eugene

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EUGENE, Ore. – Residents are speaking out after soil testing revealed high levels of dioxins at six properties in one west Eugene neighborhood.

The samples were collected from yards north of Roosevelt Boulevard, across the street from the wood preserving facility J.H. Baxter & Co.

"It makes me wonder if a few years down the line, I come up with a positive cancer test, will it be because of the factory that I'm living next to?" said Rose Mead, who lives in the neighborhood.

Soil from her yard was tested. According to the department of environmental quality, the concentration of dioxins found could potentially pose heath risks to children six and younger who are exposed to the soil for at least a year.

According to Mead who has lived in the neighborhood for about two years, there have been ongoing issues with the J.H. Baxter & Co. facility.

"It started just being at nighttime, like somehow we wouldn't notice the clouds of smoke go up and bad smelling air at night when we're trying to sleep," Mead said.

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EPA Reapproves Enlist One, Enlist Duo Pesticides With New Protections for Endangered Species

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WASHINGTON— The Environmental Protection Agency today issued seven-year reapprovals for both Enlist Duo and Enlist One for use on conventional and genetically engineered corn, cotton and soybeans.

Enlist Duo is an herbicide cocktail containing the active ingredients 2,4-D and glyphosate; Enlist One contains only 2,4-D. Both products are widely used on crops genetically altered to withstand what would normally be a fatal dose of the chemicals.

The agency also announced that for the first time it had evaluated the pesticides’ impacts on endangered wildlife and was putting in place measures to protect dozens of protected species from harm.

“It’s good that the EPA is finally putting at least some on-the-ground measures in place to protect the nation’s most endangered species from these highly toxic products,” said Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “But we’re deeply concerned that the agency failed to complete consultation with the Fish and Wildlife Service during this process, and we hope that the Service will step in quickly to ensure that the nation’s most endangered plants and animals are adequately protected.”

The new measures to protect endangered species represent a sharp departure from the previous registration of Enlist Duo in 2014. At that time the EPA declared, without engaging in formal Endangered Species Act consultation, that the chemical cocktail would cause no harm to any endangered species.

Key protective measures include prohibiting use of the products where they may harm or kill endangered species in the field. That change effectively bans their use on about 3% of corn acreage, 8% of cotton acreage and 2% of soybean acreage.

However, the EPA has made its determinations about how to protect endangered species without the legally required final input from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the nation’s expert wildlife agency.

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Young and Dying: Veterans Are Getting Brain Cancer and Struggling to Get Benefits

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The mesh cap that Noah Feehan wore nearly all day, every day, contained 18 terminals that delivered electrical pulses to his brain and the deadly tumor growing inside it.

Diagnosed with a form of cancer called glioblastoma in December 2020, Feehan, a 38-year-old Minnesota Air National Guard master sergeant, had vowed to do whatever it took to battle his illness even if it meant that, in addition to radiation and chemotherapy, he would wear the device 18 hours a day, sometimes enduring shocks so painful they forced him to his knees.

But the treatment triggered more than momentary pain. He stopped eating -- and smiling.

At a baseball game last summer, Noah’s wife of 13 years leaned in and asked him whether he wanted to take off the cap permanently, even if it meant abandoning an experimental weapon on which the family’s hopes rested.

"He goes, 'Can I?'" Jenny Feehan said. “I said, ‘Of course, you can.' I never saw him happier. It was like a light switch went on."

No one knows for certain why Feehan, who serves as an avionics technician, developed a rare brain cancer with an average life expectancy of 12 to 18 months that usually afflicts those in their 60s or older.

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