VA Department Expands Cancer Coverage for Veterans Exposed to Burn Pits

The Department of Veteran Affairs building in Washington on July 6, 2023. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has expanded access to benefits for veterans suffering from cancers possibly linked to burn pits used for waste disposal on military bases.

The VA said on Jan. 8 that it has added several types of cancers to its list of presumptive medical conditions. This means veterans no longer have to prove their cancer was caused by their military service to qualify for benefits. Instead, the VA automatically assumes a connection and provides benefits accordingly.

The expanded list applies to veterans who deployed to the Middle East and Central Asia during the Gulf War and after Sept. 11, 2001. It now includes acute and chronic leukemias, multiple myelomas, myelodysplastic syndromes, myelofibrosis, and cancers of the bladder and urinary tract.

Veterans whose claims for those cancers were previously denied should apply again, the department said.

“Adding these presumptives lowers the burden of proof for veterans to get the benefits they deserve for the conditions that followed them home from war,” VA Secretary Denis McDonough said in a statement. “We encourage veterans with these conditions—and all veterans—to apply today for the benefits they deserve today.”

The changes are part of the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act of 2022, addressing illnesses that may stem from exposures to harmful chemicals during military service, particularly Agent Orange in Vietnam, toxins from burn pits, and contaminated water. Under the act, the VA presumes that a veteran’s illness is service-connected if he or she served in a certain place at a certain time.

According to the VA, more than 1 million veterans and their survivors have received more than $6.8 billion in disability compensation benefits since the PACT Act was enacted.

“This law has been transformational and has enabled VA to serve more veterans more quickly than ever before,” President Joe Biden said in a statement on Jan. 8.

In 2018, Biden said he believed that the brain cancer that killed his son Beau had to do with exposure to burn pits while serving in Iraq.

Beau Biden, who died in 2015 at the age of 46, served in 2009 at Balad Air Force Base, 50 miles north of Baghdad, the Iraqi capital. The base’s burn pit burned around the clock, incinerating several hundred tons of waste a day.

“Science has recognized there are certain carcinogens when people are exposed to [burn pit smoke],” Biden said in an interview with PBS. “Depending on the quantities and the amount in the water and the air, [it] can have a carcinogenic impact on the body.”

Burn pits were commonly used at U.S. military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan to dispose of materials such as tires, paints, solvents, fabrics, batteries, and human waste, often with jet fuel as an accelerant. Use of burn pits declined after Congress passed legislation in 2009 limiting the practice.

Exposure to burn pit smoke is known to cause short-term health problems such as eye irritation, coughing, and breathing difficulties. Veteran advocacy groups, such as Burn Pits 360, also blame it for more severe conditions, ranging from respiratory problems to neurological disorders to cancer.

Earlier research has been inconclusive on the alleged connections. A 2011 study by a 15-member panel of experts at the National Academy of Sciences, commissioned by the VA, found “insufficient evidence” to link burn pit exposure with “cancer, respiratory disease, circulatory disease, neurologic disease, and adverse reproductive and developmental outcomes” among veterans. The panel did acknowledge that it lacked essential data on the composition of burn pit smoke to fully assess its health hazards.