Veterans exposed to burn pits will get expanded health care support, White House says

Burn pits have been used to incinerate all types of waste, hazardous materials and chemical compounds at navy websites all through Iraq and Afghanistan. Eighty-six p.c of post-9/11 veterans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan say they have been uncovered to burn pits, in response to a 2020 survey by the nonprofit Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

They embody the creation of “presumptions of publicity” with a view to set up service connections for varied persistent circumstances and expanded incapacity advantages primarily based on “presumed publicity to particulate matter.” President Joe Biden has additionally directed the VA to finish a review of rare cancers and supply suggestions about new presumptions of service connections inside 90 days, in response to the very fact sheet.

Different new efforts introduced on Thursday embody a push to enhance information on particular person exposures and lift consciousness about veterans’ eligibility for advantages.

“On the similar time, the Administration will work with Congress on its encouraging ongoing efforts to make sure we’re capable of shortly and pretty acknowledge extra presumptions of service-connected disabilities, with a view to dwell as much as our sacred obligation to supply veterans the care they’ve earned,” the White Home stated within the reality sheet.

“Welcome to a different thrilling episode of ‘When is America going to begin appearing like the good nation we maintain telling ourselves we’re?'” a pissed off Stewart stated at a information convention on the time. “Our veterans lived 24 hours a day, seven days every week, subsequent to poisonous smoke, dioxins — every little thing.”

But it surely had already been on the legislative radar of the previous two presidents, together with payments signed into regulation that increase the info on publicity.

In 2013, then-President Barack Obama signed the burn pit registry into regulation in order that the VA might collect information on veterans’ publicity to burn pits — even when they weren’t experiencing well being points on the time. Excessive site visitors plagued the launch of the registry and regularly disrupted the early years of its service.

In 2019, then-President Donald Trump signed a regulation that, partially, will part out burn pits and require the Division of Protection to pinpoint the place they’ve been used, in order that info might be cross-referenced with the place sick veterans served.