This story, a part of a collection of investigative reporting tasks by Army.com on veterans well being, was supported by the Pulitzer Heart.
Julie Akey was simply 46 when she was identified with a number of myeloma, a blood most cancers that she describes as an “previous man’s illness,” sometimes identified in these 65 and older.
The information shocked the previous Army linguist. She had no household historical past of the comparatively unusual illness.
Whereas trying to find a possible trigger, Akey discovered {that a} location the place she as soon as lived, Fort Ord, California, was designated a Superfund web site in 1991 by the Environmental Safety Company for intensive contamination of its soil and groundwater. Even right now, elements of the previous set up are so polluted, they cannot be redeveloped.
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“I am not a scientist, however in my view, it was the [solvent trichloroethylene],” Akey mentioned, citing an industrial chemical used extensively by the Army that contaminates an aquifer beneath Fort Ord as the reason for her illness. “To today, there’s nonetheless a TCE plume within the water there.”
The issue shouldn’t be distinctive to Fort Ord. Throughout the nation and all over the world, environmental air pollution at lively and former U.S. army websites has created the specter of potential well being threats for former service members and their households who labored and lived in locations now identified to have been contaminated.
The listing of exposures and sicknesses amongst former army personnel appears countless: firefighters with testicular most cancers linked to the froth utilized by the Protection Division; army aviation crews with greater charges of mind and nervous system cancers than is regular; missileers with non-Hodgkin lymphoma; feminine troops with a 40% greater probability of growing breast most cancers than their civilian counterparts; and post-9/11 veterans with twice the prognosis price of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, than the overall inhabitants.
The 2022 Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring Our Promise to Handle Complete Toxics, or PACT, Act offered a pathway for thousands and thousands of unwell veterans to acquire well being care and incapacity compensation for environmental exposures overseas, one of many largest expansions of Division of Veterans Affairs advantages within the historical past of the company.
However many veterans and their households who lived by potential exposures nearer to dwelling within the U.S. — like Fort Ord — weren’t included and face an arduous course of proving their sicknesses are tied to army life, typically with minimal help or steering from the VA.
Akey, who has amassed analysis linking TCE publicity to a number of myeloma and different blood cancers, has been denied twice for her situation.
“This summer time, I filed once more and it hasn’t been denied, nevertheless it’s come again and so they have requested me for thus many various issues. I really feel like they’re simply stringing me alongside. It is ‘wait, deny after which they die.’ I actually really feel like that,” Akey mentioned.
The VA has at all times had one thing of a two-tiered system for dealing with assist for these dealing with well being penalties from their lives in and across the army. Some circumstances are routinely accepted as tied to service, often called presumptive circumstances, permitting for a streamlined course for receiving advantages.
The PACT Act opened this path for veterans sickened by burn pits and different environmental pollution within the Center East, Afghanistan and elsewhere, making greater than 20 illness classifications eligible for expedited well being care and advantages.
However those that suspect their sicknesses have been attributable to contamination at U.S. installations elsewhere aren’t coated by the regulation, leaving them to show by way of intensive paperwork that their sicknesses are “service related” — a monumental job, they are saying, particularly for illnesses like most cancers which are sluggish to develop, leaving years between publicity and penalties.
Roughly 2,300 miles away from Fort Ord lies one other closed Army put up, Fort McClellan, Alabama, as soon as dwelling to the service’s Chemical Corps College, the Army Improvement Command Chemical/Organic/Radiological Company, the Army Army Police College and extra.
Whereas the bottom shouldn’t be a delegated Superfund web site, the previous set up was probably contaminated with radioactive compounds and chemical warfare brokers, based on the VA.
One other potential supply of poisonous publicity for these assigned to or who educated at Fort McClellan was a Monsanto plant in close by Anniston that was compelled to pay the residents of the city a $700 million settlement in 2003 for allegedly dispersing polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, for many years within the area. The chemical compounds are linked to beginning defects, weakened immune methods and sure varieties of most cancers.
Service members assigned to Fort McClellan weren’t a part of that settlement.
“I can solely say with a level of certainty that there are 1000’s and 1000’s of Fort McClellan veterans affected by all kinds of uncommon and never so uncommon cancers and hostile well being circumstances that might in any other case be presumptive in the event that they served in Vietnam or Camp Lejeune [North Carolina],” mentioned Invoice Bonk, a former Army officer who educated on the base within the early Eighties and wrote a ebook about contamination on the set up.
Midway internationally, additionally within the Eighties, Betty Seaman and her husband, Navy Capt. Jim Seaman, lived at Naval Air Facility Atsugi, Japan, the place they thought nothing of a neighboring business incinerator that ceaselessly belched black smoke throughout the bottom.
In his later years, Seaman, an A-6 Intruder pilot, was an avid bike owner who appreciated to paddleboard and kayak, and he constructed his dream retirement dwelling in Hollywood, Maryland, close to Naval Air Station Patuxent River. However three months after shifting into the home, Seaman was identified with lung most cancers. He died 5 months later at age 61.
Seaman was by no means a smoker. His widow Betty thinks Atsugi could also be responsible.
“We simply assumed if [the incinerator] was one thing horrible, they’d have instructed us,” mentioned Betty, who has turn into an advocate for households of pilots and people assigned to Atsugi who’ve developed most cancers. “Three out of 4 of us have had most cancers in my household.”
‘Wait, Deny and Then They Die’
It’s troublesome to immediately join an environmental publicity to an individual’s medical situation even when analysis exhibits a trigger and impact as a result of there could also be no paperwork on the extent or particular kind of a person’s publicity.
Analysis by numerous arms of the federal authorities, together with the VA, the Army and the Navy, has mentioned that nobody at Fort Ord consumed unsafe water, that there isn’t a elevated most cancers danger amongst residents at Atsugi or excessive ranges of poisonous publicity at Fort McClellan.
It will possibly take many years for sicknesses tied to publicity to floor, and infrequently many years additional for the VA to determine any presumptive circumstances for an publicity. Herbicides utilized in Vietnam, which did not see relevant laws till 1991, contaminated water consumed by residents of Camp Lejeune for 30 years earlier than lastly being formally acknowledged in 2017. Burn pits have been acknowledged as a explanation for sickness by the PACT Act 16 years after an Air Pressure colonel warned of their potential to trigger persistent well being circumstances.
Within the interim durations, the federal authorities typically denied any connection between a contaminant and an sickness, contracted research to disprove a connection, prevented the disclosure of paperwork on identified environmental hazards, or ignored professional recommendation on potential penalties.
It occurred with Vietnam veterans and Agent Orange, with Persian Gulf Warfare veterans cleansing a water therapy facility or destroying a chemical storage facility, with service members and households at Camp Lejeune, and with troops and contractors dwelling and dealing alongside burn pits.
It is comprehensible, mentioned Shane Liermann, a former Marine who serves as nationwide deputy legislative director for Disabled American Veterans, that affected veterans are indignant.
“[The federal government] missed the chance in lots of situations to do the suitable factor,” Liermann mentioned. “We won’t simply ignore every of those [exposures] or all of those for one more 30 years. Too many veterans should not going to have entry to what they should survive.”
The VA has the flexibility to determine presumptive circumstances with out congressional enter or research from exterior sources.
Even earlier than passage of the PACT Act, the VA designated three circumstances — rhinitis, sinusitis and bronchial asthma — in addition to 9 uncommon respiratory cancers as linked to service within the Persian Gulf area and elsewhere.
Liermann mentioned he wish to see the VA use that authority to broaden the listing of presumptive circumstances or discover a strategy to “upfront, make it simpler to get service connection for a situation earlier than it turns into a presumptive.”
“I do know everybody likes to say the phrase ‘veteran-centric,’ however this actually must be ‘life-centric.’ The longer we wait, veterans are having extra well being issues and dropping their high quality of life. They might be dropping relations. We have to take faster motion,” Liermann mentioned.
At practically each alternative he will get, VA Secretary Denis McDonough tells former service members they need to file claims for any damage or sickness they imagine is service-connected even when it isn’t a longtime presumptive situation.
“Veterans who didn’t serve in Central Command [in the Middle East] however who’ve been uncovered to toxins, we urge them to file a declare, after which we’ll work by with them establishing a service connection,” McDonough mentioned throughout a press convention in July.
With out the presumptive connection to service for a medical situation, nonetheless, the pathway to receiving VA incapacity is a gigantic problem.
VA Press Secretary Terrence Hayes mentioned the division doesn’t monitor particular army exposures aside from what is roofed underneath the PACT Act, nor does it have “site-specific information that we will hyperlink to claimed circumstances.”
“VA continues to additional discover and examine the results of all poisonous exposures regarding veterans and observe the science in the case of treating these circumstances and granting service connection for disabilities as applicable,” Hayes wrote in a press release to Army.com. “Whereas these research are ongoing, service-connected disabilities should not a requirement to obtain care at VA, and we encourage all eligible veterans to join care at VA.”
Akey maintains a spreadsheet of practically 1,300 former residents of Fort Ord who’re sick, together with 149 with a number of myeloma and tons of of others with blood cancers. She has a six-page letter from her physician testifying that her sickness was attributable to publicity to TCE.
But her VA declare has been denied and she or he is conscious of only one veteran whose colon most cancers declare citing per- and polyfluoroalkyl chemical compounds, or PFAS, contamination at Fort Ord was authorised.
Bonk mentioned that some veterans have had their claims authorised and posted their elation on Fort McClellan social media teams that he belongs to, with success charges seemingly ticking up following the passage of the PACT Act, however “there are nonetheless scores denied.”
Betty Seaman, who’s involved with pilots affected by most cancers and relations who lived at Atsugi, mentioned the trail to claims is “very restrictive” relating to places underneath the PACT Act.
“Each particular person I’ve ever handled [at the VA] has been dedicated and honest in wanting to assist,” she mentioned. “However if you’ve simply been hit with a most cancers prognosis, cannot get the VA to acknowledge it and get therapy, you do not see that.”
The PACT Act Highlight
The army providers, Protection Division and VA are conducting or planning to launch research on potential exposures at numerous places the place veterans have already reported issues.
The Air Pressure is working to find out whether or not 14 varieties of most cancers are extra frequent in active-duty personnel and veterans who labored on nuclear missile bases after a former missileer raised issues over doable most cancers clusters in December 2022.
The VA was required, underneath the PACT Act, to conduct an epidemiological examine of Fort McClellan and has employed a contractor, Prometheus Federal Companies, to conduct the analysis, with the examine design anticipated to be launched in late 2024.
The Division of Protection launched an investigation in 2017 to find out the extent of PFAS contamination at 714 army installations. Thus far, it has discovered that 359 former and lively army websites would require cleanup, whereas one other 248 are nonetheless within the testing section. The remaining 107 do not require additional remediation work, based on the division.
PFAS chemical compounds have been utilized by the DoD for many years in firefighting foam used for coaching and response to aviation mishaps and shipboard fires. The person-made substances, dubbed “endlessly chemical compounds” as a result of they do not break down within the atmosphere, have been tied to testicular and kidney most cancers, in addition to low sperm counts, preeclampsia in pregnant girls and diminished vaccine response in youngsters.
The VA has a analysis examine within the works that can examine PFAS ranges in army firefighters and development staff and take a look at any correlations between these ranges and cardiometabolic ailments corresponding to coronary heart assault, stroke and insulin resistance.
The outcomes of that examine are anticipated in 2026, based on McDonough.
The DoD was additionally ordered by Congress to check army firefighters’ PFAS ranges.
Every of those efforts is welcomed by veterans and veterans service organizations, mentioned Liermann, who penned a white paper for the DAV on Fort McClellan urging Congress to determine a concession of publicity for all veterans who served there. However the outcomes cannot come quick sufficient for affected veterans, he added.
“The PACT Act has raised a degree of consciousness that we have by no means seen earlier than, which is nice as a result of veterans who’re getting ailments related to these exposures, even domestically, we won’t simply ignore … for one more 30 years,” Liermann mentioned.
The VA is within the strategy of contemplating including a number of varieties of blood cancers to the listing of presumptives underneath the PACT Act, together with a number of myeloma that originates beneath the neck.
But it surely will not assist folks like Akey, who by no means deployed to an space listed within the laws.
“They’re simply stringing me alongside, simply ready until I am simply too sick or too drained, too fed as much as maintain going with this darn VA declare,” she mentioned. “I feel it is as a result of in the event that they approve mine — and that is why I am preventing so arduous — then I’ll set a precedent for different folks, for all these different people who find themselves sick and have been denied as effectively.”
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