VA disputes Yale-linked report, says no evidence Agent Orange was used on Guam

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The Department of Veterans Affairs is pushing back against a recent report that says veterans who served on Guam between 1962 and 1975 were likely exposed to the toxic herbicide Agent Orange.

The report — released May 11, by the National Veterans Legal Services Program and the Veterans Legal Services Clinic at Yale Law School — says those veterans meet the legal standard for exposure and may have valid claims to service-related disabilities.

The VA disputed the report’s findings in an email to Stars and Stripes on Tuesday.

“There is no evidence agent orange was ever used on Guam,” wrote VA press secretary Christina Noel.

She said the report’s authors failed to consider a 2018 Government Accountability Office report and a recent Department of Defense review on the subject.

“GAO reviewed DOD documents, other government records, and interviewed Veterans alleging Agent Orange exposure and concluded that there was no evidence of Agent Orange or other tactical herbicides, such as Agents White or Blue, on Guam,” she said.

Investigators found extensive use of approved commercial herbicides on Guam but no evidence of Agent Orange or other tactical herbicides, Noel said.

The VA believes Agent Orange causes several cancers, including leukemia, Hodgkin’s disease, multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and others, according to its website. The department also recognizes the herbicide as a cause in some cases of diabetes and diseases of the nervous system, skin and heart.

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Dow recovers from Midland flooding

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Dow has begun cleanup and recovery at its Midland, Michigan, chemical complex, following flooding from rain and dam failures.

On May 19, heavy rains caused the Tittabawassee River to crest above flood stage. That evening, two dams ruptured, contributing to flooding in the region. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer declared a state of emergency for Midland County, and more than 10,000 residents evacuated.

Dow’s manufacturing facility sits on the eastern bank of the Tittabawassee. The facility once made many Dow products, but due to restructuring and divestitures over the years, the company only makes silicones there now.

Other firms operate several former Dow plants on the site. For example, Corteva makes agrochemicals there, DuPont has a methylcellulose plant, Trinseo has latex and acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene units, and SK Saran produces specialty plastics.

Dow began shutting down operations at the facility even before the breach of the two dams. The day after the flooding, Dow acknowledged that “there were flood waters commingling with on-site containment ponds.” Its headquarters, at a separate Midland location, wasn’t impacted by the event, the company says.

In a May 22 appearance on the business news channel CNBC, Dow CEO Jim Fitterling said the containment ponds hold brine that the site uses for groundwater remediation and pose no chemical hazards. “To our knowledge, there’s nothing that’s been released,” he said.

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Lawmakers seek solutions for vets denied benefits after VA canceled exams amid COVID-19

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Veterans have been denied benefits during the coronavirus pandemic because their compensation and pension exams at the Department of Veterans Affairs have been canceled, advocates told Congress Wednesday.

A backlog of compensation and pension exams is growing -- with more than 230,000 delayed during the pandemic so far -- and VA has yet to communicate its plan to address that backlog, lawmakers and advocates said during an online forum held by the House Veterans Affairs Committee.

"The abrupt pause to the process has left some veterans to wonder when and how their claims will move forward," Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., said.

No one from VA was present for the forum, and lawmakers were critical of the department's absence.

"VA's insight is critical if we are to determine the best way forward on this issue," said Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill.

"VA needs to show leadership in the midst of this crisis by showing preparedness," said Committee Chairman Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., adding that the numbers of backlogged claims "are alarming, but that doesn't mean we can rush back to normal operations without a plan in place" and that plan should address the "mounting backlog without sacrificing quality."

Beginning in early April, VA began canceling compensation and pension (C&P) exams or transitioning them to telehealth by phone or online.

That was several weeks after President Donald Trump instituted a state of emergency for the COVID-19 pandemic, and followed state and local governments enacting stay-at-home orders. Some veterans already had canceled their exams for their safety or had their appointments canceled by contracted providers.

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Memorial Day 2020

Senators Request Unanimous Consent to Pass USS Frank E. Evans Act S. 849

U.S.S. FrankE. Evans Act

This bill requires the Department of Defense to authorize inclusion on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in the District of Columbia of the names of the 74 crew members of the USS Frank E. Evans killed on June 3, 1969.

According to the US Navy Awards file, Frank E. Evans served in the waters off Vietnam for 12 days from July to September 1965. Evans was again in the vicinity of Vietnam for 61 days from August to November 1966. Evans returned to Vietnam and served there for 66 days from October 1967 to 20 February 1968. During the Tet Offensive, on 3 February 1968, Frank E. Evans provided naval gunfire support to the 101st Airborne Division near Phan Thiết against the 840th VC Battalion. Evans also spent an additional 14 days in 1969 in the Vietnam war zone.

Collision with HMAS Melbourne

USS Frank E. Evans post collision

At around 3:00 a.m. on 3 June 1969, between Vietnam and Spratly Island, Frank E. Evans was operating with the Royal Navy, Royal Australian Navy and Royal New Zealand Navy in company with the aircraft carrier Melbourne which was in the process of going to flying stations and all ships in the formation were running without lights. Melbourne radioed Evans, then to port of the carrier, to take up the rescue destroyer position. The logical movement would be to turn to port and make a circle taking up station on the carrier's port quarter. However, since the conning officer on Evans misunderstood the formation's base course and believed they were starboard of Melbourne, they turned to starboard, cutting across the carrier's bow twice in the process. Frank E. Evans was struck at a point around 92 feet from her bow on her port side and was cut in two. Her bow drifted off to the port side of Melbourne and sank in less than five minutes taking 73 of her crew with it. One body was recovered from the water, making a total of 74 dead. The stern scraped along the starboard side of Melbourne and lines were able to be attached by the crew of Melbourne. Around 60–100 men were also rescued from the water.
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Parkinson’s Foundation, VA Join to Help US Veterans Manage Disease

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The Parkinson’s Foundation and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) are collaborating on an effort to improve the health and life quality of veterans with Parkinson’s disease.

The two want to provide people who served in the U.S. Armed Forces with better resources and ways to manage Parkinson’s, a disease that affects nearly 1 million people in the country and about 110,000 veterans, half of whom are at least 65. Globally, nearly 10 million people are living with this disease.

“VA and the Foundation are working to increase access to information about Parkinson’s disease,” John L. Lehr, president and CEO of the Parkinson’s Foundation, said in a press release. “Educating and training VA staff on disease management and therapies, along with improving veterans’ access to direct health services related to the disease is a paramount objective.”

The nonprofit organization currently offers information of help in managing Parkinson’s, with topics including diet and nutrition, emotional wellness, advice for the newly diagnosed, activities of daily living, dental health, sexual health, living alone, and talking to children about the disease.

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Plan to remove toxins from pits takes shape

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Design work for the removal of toxic waste from the San Jacinto River Waste Pits Superfund Site is nearing the 30% mark, according to Jackie Young-Medcalf, executive director of the Texas Health and Environmental Alliance.

That milestone is significant because it will show the broad shape of plans for the remediation of the site.

The San Jacinto Waste Pits Superfund site is a former landfill area north of the Interstate 10 bridge over the San Jacinto River that has high levels of dioxin.

The Environmental Protection Agency is ordering the responsible parties to remove the contaminated soil—a project complicated by the location under a flood-prone river and adjacent to a major bridge that is expected to be replaced within a few years.

She said the 30% design package for the southern impoundment area was submitted to the EPA in April, and the 30% design package for the northern impoundment is expected May 30.

“Once you get to the 30% design in the engineering and construction world you can become that much more confident about the direction that the process is going to take,” she said.

“It’s critical that we remain engaged through this process to ensure that remediation is planned as safely and effectively as possible.”

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CORONAVIRUS CAUSE FOR CONCERN AMONG BURN PIT VETERANS

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For veteran Megan Kingston, the coronavirus presented extra danger due to her exposure to the smoke that emanated day and night from the burn pits near her barracks at Camp Liberty in Iraq.

"It was quite a fight. Double pneumonia.

 The fever for multiple days. The body aches. 

The bloody noses. Even my eyeballs were in pain."

"The odds were not in my favor," Kingston, of Northern Virginia, says to Fox News regarding her recent exposure to COVID-19. "We were all kind of like going, how did I even pull this one off? It's a miracle for sure."

Kingston served as an Army medic from 2005 to 2009 when she was stationed in Baghdad and then joined the federal government as a counterterrorism officer and served another eight years there until she developed constrictive bronchiolitis in 2018 and was forced to retire. Like scores of other veterans who served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, she draws a direct connection from burn pits to her illness. Burn pits are a crude method of incineration in which virtually every piece of waste was burned, including plastics, batteries, appliances, medicine, dead animals and even human waste.

The items often were set ablaze with jet fuel as the accelerant, and the pits burned more than 1,000 different chemical compounds day and night. Most service members breathed in toxic fumes with no protection. Kingston says the pit near her barracks at Camp Liberty was the largest in the country.

"I figured something was going to happen to us eventually," she says. "As a medic, looking at all that [smoke], I knew it was toxic. A firefighter knows that you put on a breathing apparatus when you see smoke like that and you don't even go into the building unless you're on air. And we were next to that, breathing it in all the time."

Many veterans like Kingston have developed a myriad of respiratory issues and other serious ailments believed to be a result of burn pit exposure. Many are immuno-compromised and face an increased vulnerability to COVID-19.

CORONAVIRUS CAUSE FOR CONCERN AMONG BURN PIT VETERANS

“If you had burn pit-exposed lungs and you have more respiratory inflammation on a normal day, you have more vulnerability to the virus once it hits your lungs. So it's a very good time to avoid, avoid, avoid getting infected,” Dr. Nancy Klimas, director of Institute for Neuro-Immune Medicine at Florida’s Nova Southeastern University, said to Fox News in a March 25 report on the dangers burn pits veterans face with the coronavirus. “Once infected, they have a greater risk of having a more serious form of the illness."

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NVLSP And Yale Veterans Clinic Issue White Paper That Confirms Veterans Who Served in Guam from 1962-1975 Were Likely Exposed to Dioxin Herbicide Agents Including Agent Orange

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Introduction

The National Veterans Legal Services Program (“NVLSP”) partnered with the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization of Yale Law School (“LSO”) to evaluate whether existing evidence satisfies the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (“VA”) legal standard to establish that veterans who served on Guam from 1962 to 1975 were exposed to Agent Orange and other dioxin-containing herbicide agents.

The relevant VA standard of proof is whether it is “as likely as not” that these veterans were exposed to herbicide agents. We are pleased to share this white paper with the VA and veterans of Guam seeking service-connection for illnesses associated with Agent Orange exposure.

We conclude that existing evidence establishes that it is, at the very least, “as likely as not” that veterans who served in Guam from 1962 to 1975 were exposed to Agent Orange and other dioxincontaining herbicides. Official government accounts and credible veteran testimony demonstrate significant dioxin exposure pathways among Guam veterans as a result of spraying, mishandling, and disposal in documented areas. Widespread dioxin exposure is further supported by scientific evidence of dioxin contamination from Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) and the Department of Defense (“DoD”) testing at these sites during the 1980s and 1990s. Accordingly, these veterans are presumptively entitled to disability compensation for any diseases that the Secretary has associated with exposure based on findings from the Health and Medicine Division of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Below, we explain in depth the evidence and legal basis for our conclusion. This white paper is accompanied by an appendix of selected relevant sources to document veterans’ claims of service connection for illnesses associated with dioxin exposure.

The weight of the evidence strongly shows that veterans who served on Guam from 1962 to 1975 were exposed to herbicides containing dioxin.

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Tele-town hall meetings new norm for Veterans Affairs

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The Veterans Benefits Administration aims to talk to hundreds of thousands of veterans in a series of town hall meetings, telephonic town hall meetings. They’ve been taking place every few days since last week with more to follow. VA Undersecretary for Benefits Paul Lawrence joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin to describe what he’s hearing and telling the veterans.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: Dr. Lawrence, it’s good to have you back.

Paul Lawrence: Hey, great, Tom, thanks for having me back.

Tom Temin: How many people have you had engaged so far in these calls?

Paul Lawrence: I’ve done them in 13 states and it’s over 350,000 veterans. So it’s really surprisingly popular and get a lot of good questions. I enjoy talking to veterans because they pose the questions live. Hearing their issues, trying to solve them and then quite frankly, as leaders, trying to figure out how they happened to prevent that from happening again.

Tom Temin: So these, for them then, are places they call in by telephone, it’s not a video conference.

Paul Lawrence: That’s correct, it’s a toll free call and number and then we talked to the veterans. I speak for a few minutes about what’s going on. Then I open it up to questions. Try to get about 20 questions during these tele-town halls. Some I’ll answer because they’re general information. Many require follow up from our team because they’re case specific. We don’t want exchange personal information over the phone. So between us or the state Department of Veterans Affairs, we generally get in touch with the veteran literally within 24 hours and try to figure out how we can help them.

Tom Temin: And if you have hundreds of people on the phone line at one time, how do you know who to take a question from or who’s got a question?

Paul Lawrence: They identify what their question is, it’s screened and we try to pull them up on stuff that we think will be general interest. So for example, a lot of people would actually call and want to talk about their health care issues. I will be unable to you know, share much about that. So we try to pull those off and get them to our health care colleagues. But some that were very much interested in are some common questions about, you know, benefits, about the economic impact payments, the stimulus checks, right? About blue water Navy, stuff we know that’s on everyone’s mind, we try to do that. So if you don’t get through for questions, you at least get some information that will help you with your benefits.

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Changes to VA benefits operations forced by coronavirus could outlast the pandemic

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In a surprising twist, the forced closure of hundreds of Veterans Affairs benefits offices because of the coronavirus outbreak may actually be helping officials reach more veterans.

“(Since the closings) we’ve done tele-town halls for 12 states so far, and reached more than 350,000 veterans,” said VA Under Secretary for Benefits Paul Lawrence in an interview with Military Times this week.

“I talk for a little bit and then take questions. They’re good to hear, keep me apprised of what our veterans are talking about and what may have gone wrong so we can fix it.

“Ironically, they really have enabled me to touch a group of folks who aren’t on social media, print media, the places we usually go. It seems like we’re reaching an older generation of veterans, and telephone is the way they engage.”

Lawrence, who oversees the distribution of disability, education and other benefits to more than 7 million veterans and family members, said the success of the new telephone town halls have been a silver lining in the ongoing pandemic, which has forced about 97 percent of the Veterans Benefits Administration to work from home.

Department officials have seen an increase in worker productivity since that move, but Lawrence said he isn’t convinced that indicates a permanent change to off-site work would produce more efficiency.

“We’re seeing our employees’ availability and utilization at a higher percentage than usual, but that could be because they have no real (recreation) alternatives right now, and no one can go anywhere on vacation,” he said. “And they know our mission still matters, so these have been some of our more productive times.”

Lawrence said his staff has begun discussing whether they’ll keep using more remote-working options in the future, but dismissed the chances of large-scale changes away from brick-and-mortar benefits offices.

“Our veterans still need to come in there for some questions,” he said. “And for a lot of veterans, social isolation isn’t a good thing. So we want to be there.”

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Alaska Native veterans cut off from help struggle amid pandemic, chief says

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William Smith and his brother both served in Vietnam, his brother a few years before him.

Smith's brother died of Agent Orange exposure, lying in a hospital bed, fighting to breathe until the end.

The coronavirus pandemic has left Smith reliving his brother's last moments.

"When I look at this COVID-19 going on, I see my brother lying in that bed in the hospital," he said. "They weren't able to get him healthy enough to transfer to Seattle, so I just watched him pass away with a tube in his throat just gasping for every breath."

For Smith, 67, chief of the Valdez Native Tribe, his brother's fate stands as a stark reminder of the risk to veterans that the coronavirus poses, especially in the remote areas of the nation's largest state, where many are increasingly isolated and cut off from help. Smith is vice chairman of the Alaska Native Health Board and serves as vice-chairman and Alaska-area representative for the National Indian Health Board.

Native American and Native Alaskan veterans struggling to access adequate health care is not a new problem. It's a continuous battle, Smith said, and the Department of Veterans Affairs resources they do have were facing a backlog long before COVID-19 struck -- in rural and urban areas.

Native veterans are more likely to live far from VA facilities, tend to have lower personal incomes, higher unemployment and lack health insurance compared to their fellow veterans, according to the National Congress of American Indians. When they do receive care, they often face major cultural and language barriers. Native veterans also struggle to form tribal veterans service organizations, which could help navigate the sprawling bureaucracy of the VA and its claims system.

All this could place them at greater risk during the pandemic -- and not just from the virus.

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