The Veterans Administration claims that the new burn pit registry “is a significant improvement in making data available in a way that better serves all those who were exposed to burn pits and other hazards.”
The registry is a secure database of health information provided by veterans and service members to help the VA better understand, research, and improve treatment for certain health challenges veterans experience following exposure to airborne hazards and burn pits during their military service.
According to the VA, no medical information will be stored in the registry, and veteran and service member data will be accessible only to select VA epidemiologists and researchers, as well as institutional review board-approved researchers. It will be used to conduct research on the cohort over a period of time. The results will inform the policy decision-making efforts of VA executive leaders, including those related to presumptive conditions.
The VA first developed the Burn Pit Registry in 2014 to help service members and veterans document potential exposure to airborne hazards while deployed overseas.
The new version of the registry incorporates extensive veteran feedback, expands participation criteria, automatically includes participants in the registry, and simplifies participation requirements. It paves the way for further research in the coming years.
About Burn Pits
Essentially, a burn pit is like throwing your trash onto a campfire. When two or three people throw trash onto a campfire before they hike further down the trail, the chances of serious injury are almost nil, although the smoke is toxic.
However, when several thousand people throw their trash onto the campfire, do not break camp, and do the same thing every day for weeks or months, that’s different. These people continually breathe smoke that’s laced with:
- Particulate Matter: The haze on a hot day is usually PM. This form of PM is usually not harmful, except to people like pregnant women and children. Direct and long-term exposure could cause premature death among people with heart or lung disease, nonfatal heart attacks, aggravated asthma, impaired lung function, irregular heartbeat, and increased respiratory symptoms, such as irritation of the airways, coughing, or difficulty breathing.
- Dioxins: Organic waste, one of the largest components of burn pit trash, usually releases dioxins. Dioxins are highly toxic and can cause cancer, reproductive and developmental problems, damage to the immune system, and interfere with hormones. Furthermore, dioxins are POPs (persistent organic pollutants) that hardly ever break down.
- Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons: These organic compounds are often created by the incomplete combustion of carbon fuels like coal or petroleum. PAHs have been linked to skin, lung, bladder, liver, and stomach cancers in well-established animal model studies.
- Volatile Organic Compounds: VOCs are chemicals that can easily transition into a gas, often at room temperature. Exposure to VOCs can cause health issues like eye, nose, and throat irritation, breathing difficulties, nausea, and damage to the central nervous system and other organs. Some VOCs also cause cancer.
The DoD has allowed troops to use burn pits for decades. For armies on the move, they are a convenient and mostly sanitary way to dispose of trash. Just throw it on the campfire, which in this case is an open-air pit filled with garbage, doused with jet fuel, and ignited.
Recent burn pit use dates back to the ill-fated 1990 campaign in Ethiopia and Djibouti. Because many burn pit-related illnesses have such long latency periods, many contractors exposed to burn pit smoke in the Horn of Africa are just now showing illness symptoms. The military used burn pits throughout southwest Asia until 2021.
Burn Pit Injuries
Because of the aforementioned latency period, burn pit injuries involve diagnosis and treatment issues. Not all doctors are qualified to spot these illnesses. So, if you were a contractor between 1990 and 2021, especially a Southwest Asia contractor, before you have any symptoms, do not call a doctor. Instead, call a Defense Base Act lawyer who will connect you with a doctor properly qualified to diagnose and treat these injuries.
Obliterative Bronchiolitis (a/k/a Constrictive Bronchiolitis) is a good example. Burn pit toxic smoke causes inflammation that blocks certain airways in the lungs. As a result, the victims have trouble breathing even while sleeping or otherwise resting.
Young people who are generally healthy, such as contractor veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, hardly ever develop OB. When symptoms appear, most doctors blame something else. As a result, the early treatment window then closes. Come-from-behind wins are common in baseball games and rare in OB treatment cases.
Speaking of blaming something else, for many years, the VA blamed environmental particulate matter for deployment-related lung diseases and bad luck for deployment-related cancer cases. The 2022 PACT Act opened the door for military veterans to obtain compensation for deployment-related lung disease and other such maladies, but VA lawyers often block the door. In contrast, the Department of Labor, which administers the Defense Base Act, recognized the connection between burn pit smoke and serious illness well before the PACT Act. Since so many injured contractors have obtained benefits, DBA lawyers have precedent on their side.
Injury Compensation Available
Available injury compensation not only includes money for medical treatment. It also includes lost wage replacement. This benefit is critical for families who live hand to mouth. Financial problems cause stress that makes physical illness recovery more difficult; lost wage replacement benefits have the opposite effect. These benefits are available for:
- Temporary Disabilities: Burn pit injuries are normally permanent, which means the victims are entitled to different benefits, as outlined below. Most falls, gunshot wounds, and other trauma injuries cause temporary disabilities. These victims usually receive two-thirds of their AWW (average weekly wage) for the duration of their temporary disabilities.
- Permanent Partial Disabilities: Many lung disease victims are PPD victims. They cannot work full-time anymore. So, the DBA pays two-thirds of their anticipated lost future earnings. Usually, a DBA lawyer partners with an accountant or another outside professional to determine a fair amount of lost wages in these cases.
- Permanent Total Disabilities: In most cases, cancer is totally disabling or fatal. The cancer survival rate has improved significantly since the 1990s. However, since these victims face continual rounds of surgery, chemotherapy, and/or radiation treatments, working is usually out of the question. Once again, the Defense Base Act compensates these victims for their future lost wages.
“Disability” is not just a medical term. Some injuries are disabling for some people but not others. A chronic lung disease may not be totally disabling for office workers who sit most of the day. But this illness is totally disabling for contractors who are on the go most of the day.
For more information about the DBA process, contact Barnett, Lerner, Karsen, Frankel & Castro, P.A.