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Wednesday, March 2, 2022
VA will propose adding rare cancers to the presumed service-connected list as related to military environmental exposure
WASHINGTON — The Department of Veterans Affairs intends to propose adding certain rare respiratory cancers to the list of presumed service-connected disabilities in relation to military environmental exposure to particulate matter.
VA determined through a focused review of scientific and medical evidence there is biologic plausibility between airborne hazards, specifically particulate matter, and carcinogenesis of the respiratory tract, and that the unique circumstances of these rare cancers warrant a presumption of service connection.
Based on these findings, VA’s Secretary is proposing a rule that will add presumptive service connection for several rare respiratory cancers for certain Veterans. The cancers under consideration include:
- Squamous cell carcinoma of the larynx.
- Squamous cell carcinoma of the trachea.
- Adenocarcinoma of the trachea.
- Salivary gland-type tumors of the trachea.
- Adenosquamous carcinoma of the lung.
- Large cell carcinoma of the lung.
- Salivary gland-type tumors of the lung.
- Sarcomatoid carcinoma of the lung.
- Typical and atypical carcinoid of the lung.
“This is the right decision. The rarity and severity of these illnesses, and the reality that these conditions present a situation where it may not be possible to develop additional evidence prompted us to take this critical action,” said VA Secretary Denis McDonough. “We’ll continue to hold ourselves accountable to Veterans to provide more care, more benefits and more services to more Veterans than ever before.”
VA intends to focus its rule on the rare respiratory cancers above in Veterans who served any amount of time in the Southwest Asia theater of operations and other locations. VA will invite and consider public comments as part of this process.
Once rulemaking is complete, VA will conduct outreach to impacted veterans and survivors to inform them about potential eligibility.
Dioxin cleanup underway at Seabee Base in Gulfport
GULFPORT, Miss. (WLOX) - If you drive 28th Street in Gulfport, you probably have wondered what has been going on in the northwest corner of the Seabee Base.
The area, known as Site 7, is being cleared and cleaned to
remove any remaining Dioxin. It’s a dangerous chemical found in Agent Orange, a
tactical herbicide used during the Vietnam War that has since been linked to
certain cancers and other illnesses.
From 1968 to 1977, the Air Force stored more than 15,000
drums of the herbicide on the Seabee Base. Some of the drums leaked over time,
contaminating surrounding areas.
Gulfport was actually the largest storage area for the
chemical in the continental United States before it was shipped to Vietnam.
Over the years, the chemical has been removed from areas
outside the Seabee Base and brought to a containment site on base which has
been contained under one foot of concrete. That area is now used as a
mobilization site for Navy heavy equipment.
This 18-acre site, which was a landfill, had exposure from
low-level dioxin that was removed from surrounding ditches and placed there.
The overall cleanup has been going on for 40 years.
“This is a fairly substantial milestone for the
environmental restoration program on board NCBC Gulfport. That all of the sites
that were identified have been remediated and put into a long-term status with
not only the Navy, but also with the Mississippi Department of Environmental
Quality,” explained J.D. Spalding with Naval Facilities and Engineering Command
Southeast.
Spaulding called this phase of the cleanup, “the end of an
era” that was established in the 1980s.
What Lies Beneath - Vets worry polluted base left them ill
FORT ORD NATIONAL MONUMENT, Calif. (AP) — For nearly 80 years, recruits reporting to central California’s Fort Ord considered themselves the lucky ones, privileged to live and work amid sparkling seas, sandy dunes and sage-covered hills.
But there was an underside, the dirty work of soldiering.
Recruits tossed live grenades into the canyons of “Mortar Alley,” sprayed soapy
chemicals on burn pits of scrap metal and solvents, poured toxic substances
down drains and into leaky tanks they buried underground.
When it rained, poisons percolated into aquifers from which
they drew drinking water.
Through the years, soldiers and civilians who lived at the
U.S. Army base didn’t question whether their tap water was safe to drink.
But in 1990, four years before it began the process of
closing as an active military training base, Fort Ord was added to the
Environmental Protection Agency’s list of the most polluted places in the
nation. Included in that pollution were dozens of chemicals, some now known to
cause cancer, found in the base’s drinking water and soil.
Decades later, several Fort Ord veterans who were diagnosed
with cancers — especially rare blood disorders — took the question to Facebook:
Are there more of us?
Soon, the group grew to hundreds of people who had lived or
served at Fort Ord and were concerned that their health problems might be tied
to the chemicals there.
The Associated Press interviewed nearly two dozen of these
veterans for this story and identified many more. The AP also reviewed
thousands of pages of documents, and interviewed military, medical and
environmental scientists.
There is rarely a way to directly connect toxic exposure to
a specific individual’s medical condition. Indeed, the concentrations of the
toxics are tiny, measured in parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels
of an immediate poisoning. Local utilities, the Defense Department and some in
the Department of Veterans Affairs insist Fort Ord’s water is safe and always
has been.
Thursday, February 17, 2022
Scaled-Down Toxic Exposure Bill Passed by Senate
The bill was a pared-down version of legislation that had
been introduced in both the House and Senate, legislation that would have dramatically
expanded benefits for toxic exposure victims but was deemed too pricey by some
critics due to projected costs of more than $200 billion. The scaled-down bill
was approved by unanimous consent, meaning no one objected when Senate Veterans
Affairs Committee Chairman Jon Tester, D-Mont., asked on the Senate floor for
the bill to pass.
But even though no one objected Wednesday, the bill has
garnered criticism from some Democratic lawmakers and advocates who say it does
not go far enough to help veterans now suffering from fatal diseases after
breathing in toxins during their time in the military.
The bill, which was negotiated by Tester and Senate Veterans
Affairs Committee ranking member Jerry Moran, R-Kan., and introduced just two
weeks ago, would create a one-year enrollment period for VA medical care for
post-9/11 combat veterans who served after 1998 and never enrolled. It would
also extend the enrollment period for all formerly deployed post-9/11 combat
vets from five years to 10.
The bill would also mandate that the VA screen patients for
potential exposure to toxic substances during their military services.
VA to Overhaul Disability Evaluations for Mental Health, Other Conditions
The Department of Veterans Affairs will change its disability ratings criteria for mental health conditions, sleep apnea and tinnitus, part of a major overhaul of the review process to ensure that compensation matches veterans' medical conditions and needs, department officials say.
The VA plans to update its Schedule for Rating Disabilities
-- its guide for determining how it evaluates and provides benefits for
service-connected disabilities -- for mental health conditions, to include
their impact on veterans' lives, and abolish the "0%" disability
rating for any service-connected mental health diagnosis in favor of a 10%
minimum, according to a notice published Tuesday in the Federal Register.
For tinnitus, the department will get rid of its stand-alone
rating and consider the condition a symptom of whatever underlying disease is
its cause.
As for sleep apnea, ratings will be assessed based on the
effectiveness of treatment and the condition's impact on "earning
impairment," according to the notice.
Previously, most conditions were assessed on the number and
severity of symptoms, but VA officials said the consideration of lost wages or
productivity is needed to ensure that the department compensates veterans
appropriately.
Drug Strategy Could Help the Brain After Exposure to Toxic Pollutant
New research shows that exposure to the industrial byproduct TCDD in utero could cause the brain’s immune system to go array later in life, damaging important brain circuits, and potentially giving rise to neurodevelopmental disorders, such as autism and ADHD. TCDD is primarily released into the environment by vehicle exhaust and burning wood and low levels of the toxin are found in air, soil, and food. The most common way people are exposed is through meat, dairy, and fish.
In the same study, recently published in the journal Brain,
Behavior, and Immunity, researchers also found that pharmacological
manipulation could restore the function of microglia, important cells in the
brain’s immune system. “This suggests that defects in microglia function
resulting from prenatal exposures can be reversed later in life, indicating a
possible additional therapeutic avenue for neurodevelopmental disorders,” said
Rebecca Lowery, Ph.D., assistant research professor in the Del Monte Institute
for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester, and co-first author of the
study.
The research, which was conducted in mice, showed that when
the brains of males were exposed to TCDD in utero, it caused inflammation which
cause microglia to go array when responding to injury. While the microglia
themselves appeared healthy, the cells became over activated while responding
to injury in a way that could damage important brain circuits. But
investigators found that by using the drug Pexidartinib (PLX3397) they could
‘shut-off’ the hyper-responsive microglia and those were replaced by new
microglia that functioned normally.
Three maps remind us of the horror of the Vietnam War
Two million Vietnam vets left
Losing the last living link to a war is an important moment
in the life of a nation. The death in 1956 of Albert Woolson (106), the last
undisputed veteran of the Civil War, was significant enough to be acknowledged
by President Eisenhower himself. For Vietnam, the “Woolson moment” is still far
off. Of the 2.7 million Americans who served in Vietnam, just under two
million* are still alive. But as many are now in their late 70s, their numbers
will start to decline rapidly.
For most other Americans, “Vietnam” is ancient history.
Heck, even Rambo is 40 years old. The nearest intimation anybody under 50 has
of what the war must have felt like, came last year, with the chaotic U.S.
evacuation of Kabul. As some with long memories said, it was so eerily reminiscent
of the Fall of Saigon in 1975.
But mostly, the Vietnam War has fallen off the radar.
Perhaps, this is not so surprising. The martial appetite of those vast legions
of armchair generals is sated by an endless stream of content about World War
II. As for Vietnam: Communism, which Americans went there to stop from
spreading, is no longer a geopolitical threat. Vietnam itself is now an exotic
holiday destination for Americans, even a potential ally against China.
Yet there are still doors in time that open directly from
here and now into the horror of what the Vietnamese call “the American War.”
Pictures, mainly — of that Buddhist monk, self-immolating in anti-war protest,
or of that girl, naked and crying because of the napalm that flattened her
village and burned her skin.
Nearly 4,000 More 9/11 Vets Have Died in the Past 20 Years Than Anticipated, Study Finds
Post-9/11 veterans are dying at higher rates than Americans overall, particularly through accidents, suicide and homicide, new research has found. The numbers are even higher for veterans who have suffered a traumatic brain injury.
Veterans who have served since Sept. 11, 2001, are dying via
suicide at twice the rate of Americans overall, with homicide claiming retired
service members at one-and-a-half times the rate of the general population.
They also had slightly higher rates of accidental deaths,
according to a study published Friday in JAMA Network Open.
The death rates were significantly higher for those with a
history of traumatic brain injury: Veterans who experienced a mild traumatic
brain injury died at nearly twice the general rate for accidents from 2002 to
2018 and three times the rate by suicide, while those with moderate to severe
brain injuries were five times as likely to die by suicide and faced a
threefold risk of being murdered or dying in an accident.
The study is the first to look at "excess deaths"
among veterans who have served since Sept. 11, 2001, examining the number of
deaths over and above what normally would have been expected during the 17-year
study period.
The researchers, led by Jeffrey Howard, an associate
professor of public health at the University of Texas at San Antonio, reviewed
records of more than 2.5 million post-9/11 veterans to catalog their long-term
health outcomes with a focus on those with a history of a brain injury.
WEED-KILLING CHEMICAL USED IN DEADLY AGENT ORANGE TOXIN FOUND IN 1 IN 3 AMERICANS
Researchers have found that as many as one in three Americans have a relatively high amount of a toxic weed-killing chemical in their bodies.
In a paper published in the journal Environmental Health,
the team explored the prevalence of 2,4-D, a chemical frequently used as an
herbicide to control weed growth.
The researchers found that nearly 33 percent of the urine
samples collected from 14,395 study participants had detectable amounts of the
chemical in their bodies.
“Our study suggests human exposures to 2,4-D have gone up
significantly and they are predicted to rise even more in the future,” Marlaina
Freisthler, PhD student and researcher at the George Washington University and
co-author of the study, said in a press release.
Dublin VA warns 4,600 veterans they may have been exposed to HIV, Hep. B or Hep. C
The Carl Vinson VA Medical Center in Dublin had to stop all medical procedures and operations for two days last month due to concerns over reused medical equipment.
On Jan. 12-14 the VA halted all procedures and related
operations after an internal review found not all steps were followed to ensure
safe cleaning or sterilization between patients, according to a press release.
The VA notified all veterans potentially impacted by this
and explained the potential risks, including transmission of Hepatitis B,
Hepatitis C and HIV. Officials offered any patients who may have been exposed
free testing for blood-borne pathogens. Testing is not required but anyone with
concerns may come in for the testing.
The VA is offering testing through Feb. 25 at specified
sites, but testing will continue after that date at the VA so every veteran has
the opportunity to be tested.
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