so
hello and welcome to cck live my name is jenna zellmer i am a partner here at cck
i work primarily at the u.s court of appeals for veterans claims representing veterans
in their appeals of board decisions and joining me today is nick briggs who is an accredited
claims agent and he represents veterans at the va in their attempts to obtain benefits from va
so today we are going to be breaking down the changes to va's disability presumption for
agent orange exposure now before we get into the actual changes and the presumption i want to give
a little bit of background information on what agent orange is so agent orange is one of several
what we call rainbow herbicides for the names of all the different colors that they're named after
and they were used by the us during the vietnam war era to deforest large areas of land in vietnam
in order to disrupt enemy supply lines and prevent ambushes and as such many veterans who
served during the vietnam war era were in direct contact with agent orange now agent orange itself
is composed of a mixture of a couple of kinds of different herbicide agents
and it produces a byproduct that's highly toxic and that is known as 2 3 7 8 tcd
and informally we sometimes call it just tcdd and now this dioxin often takes a lot of years
to break down once it's been released into the environment and it can cause a wide array of
health effects and so this agent orange exposure this exposure to the tcdd specifically has caused
many significant health conditions for veterans so with that background nick do you want to tell
us a little bit about why we care about agent orange what does it mean for vietnam era veterans
sure jenna so the first most important thing to know about these agent orange related claims is
that va and the government has established a presumption related to the exposure itself
and when we talk about presumption in this particular case we mean relating to one of the
elements of service connection which is showing an in-service injury which led to a current diagnosis
so when we talk about an ancient orange presumption what we mean is
that for veterans who served in certain locations at certain times they don't need to
prove the in-service element in order to establish service connection simply by virtue of being at a
particular place in a particular time va is going to assume that they were exposed to herbicides
the original creation of this presumption happened back in 1991 with the agent orange act of 91
and that has stem established presumptive service connection for veterans who served
largely in the republic of vietnam but since that time va has passed several law or
congress has passed several laws and va has added several additional presumptions
that cover veterans who served in other places including the blue water navy veterans act and
a few other different in the korean dmz for example however for our purposes and most
recently the honoring our promise to address comprehensive toxins act or the pact act
expanded presumptions related to agent orange to include a number of additional countries
beyond simply vietnam the korean dmz and places that we're used to so the big hitters which we're
already familiar with and have been in place for a long time are the republic of vietnam itself
including both brown water veterans and blue water navy veterans that's been established but the pact
act expands asian orange exposure to include thailand veterans who served from january 62 to
june 1976 at any u.s or thailand base regardless of what their mos was or where they served on base
which is a vast departure from current policy which usually requires that you show perimeter
service as long as you served in thailand during that window of time that i mentioned you're going
to get exposure conceited um based off of your agent orange exposure similar presumptions have
now been added for the period from 1965 to 1969 and laos there's also a brief window of time from
april in april of 1969 for cambodia specifically at niemot or crack kampung cham province um and
then additional exposure sites where can are were added in guam american samoa and johnston natal
so these are all new countries that weren't previously recognized as being
presumptive locations for herbicide exposure that are now covered by the pact act
thanks nick and as you mentioned before we want to think about this in the context of the elements of
service connection and so to your point you know if you are a veteran who served in any of these
locations you don't have to prove um an in-service exposure because by virtue of being in that
location you are presumed to be exposed but another element of service connection is having
a current disability and so another element of the va agent orange presumptions are listing
certain conditions that va considers presumptively related to agent orange um and this is kind of
like a double presumption so first you're presumed to have been exposed to agent orange and then if
you have one of these conditions your condition is presumed to be due to asian orange and so really
um it lessens the burden for demonstrating service connection
so prior to the pact act there were a number of conditions we've met we've had other cck live
videos and information on our blog about all the agent orange related conditions so these include
things like diabetes mellitus type 2 um a lot of different cancers and
um you know parkinson's disease and so the two new added ones are hypertension which
we've seen a lot of we have a ton of clients who are veterans who have been denied service
connection for hypertension in the past because it wasn't presumptively related to agent orange so
this is a big ad hypertension is now considered presumptive under va law and the other one is
monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance so that's the one that's a little bit rare
but if you do have hypertension or monoclonal gammothy you know you should take a look at our
website at our blog look at our other videos and definitely keep an eye on what's going on
with the packed act in its um in its promulgation so nick why don't you tell us a little bit about
if a veteran has one of these conditions how do they apply for va benefits
sure jenna so as always you want to start the process by filing a claim
and we want to do that on the correct forms va is always a stickler for its forms um so if
you've never filed for the claims condition before you should consider filing a 21-526
and if it's something that you filed for and were previously denied you'll want to file a
supplemental claim especially if you served in one of the locations that was newly added to
the list by the pact act but assuming you get that claim filed you do it on the proper forms
you'll also want to provide evidence of a medical diagnosis of any current conditions that you
are presumptively related to herbicide exposure and then if possible any evidence that you served
in a qualifying location during a qualifying time period now as part of va's duty to assist they're
going to request your service records and often times your service location and service period
are going to be included in those personnel records but if you have any of that information
up front it's helpful to provide it to va so that they can know where to look and what to request
it's also important to note however that even if you don't have a presumptive condition
you should still consider filing a claim if you believe your conditions related to agent orange
when we talk about conditions that are presumed to be related by agent orange that's something
that's determined by the national academy of sciences in coordination with va but just because
generally speaking there isn't a relationship between a given condition and herbicide exposure
doesn't mean that your particular cancer or your particular condition isn't related to it
oftentimes that's the one carcinogen you've really been exposed to in your life
and it could be the cause of your cancer or your other condition so in that circumstance you may
not get the presumption of nexus that 3.309 provides but you should still consider filing a
claim and providing evidence of both a diagnosis and evidence of your agent orange exposure
great yeah and i would encourage you to check out some other videos on the elements of service
connection particularly the threshold that you need to meet in order to get a medical exam in
the first place and then also what the standard is for demonstrating a nexus because you know
like you said nick um you can still demonstrate a nexus if um it's as likely as not related to
your agent orange exposure and that's a really low threshold and so um you know it's always worth a
shot if you think that your disability is related to service it's also important to note that there
are other diseases that result from one of these presumptive conditions that could be associated
with agent orange um and in that case you can file a claim for secondary service connection
so if you have a diagnosis of a disability and there's medical evidence showing a relationship
between the presumptive service connected condition and your secondary disability you can
you can get service connected for that so common examples of secondary conditions related to asian
orange exposure would be peripheral neuropathy secondary to diabetes mellitus so diabetes is
presumptively service connected and as long as you have a diagnosis of peripheral neurotherm
neuropathy that is related to that diabetes you can get service connected for that as well
nick why don't you tell us a little bit about the agent orange registry
sure so this sort of last concept is related to veterans who might not necessarily have
a diagnosed condition as of yet but they might have symptoms or they're starting to experience
problems that they didn't experience before and it's a way of va tracking you know what conditions
and what symptoms might be related to agent orange over time so veterans who serve during the vietnam
war era are eligible for and should consider completing this agent orange registry health exam
the exam is free of charge and again its purpose is to alert both the veterans themselves
and va to potential health problems that may be related to agent orange
that haven't been detected before um at the end of the day it's an ongoing
exposure that these people have had in the past and could cause conditions that we just don't know
about yet and by completing these exams it gives va additional data that they can use to sort of
track and potentially consider future presumptive conditions so with that in mind it's not a
compensation and pension exam it's not required to receive va benefits it's simply a registry health
exam that gives a veteran the opportunity to provide a recollection of their service
describe the level of agent orange exposure they may have had if it's beyond the norm
and then just providing their military records and their health information
va notes these exams they use them to help better understand agent orange and its effects generally
and it's an opportunity for veterans to get free lab tests and referrals for medical specialists
if they need it so it's a good thing for both parties yeah and i think you know seeing the
passage of the pact act and anecdotally seeing how many of our clients had you know claimed
hypertension due to agent orange it's nice to kind of see the system work and finally have that
hypertension recognized as presumptively connected and so you never know what more information these
registry exams might provide and so i think that's a really good point so just in closing um for more
information about the use and effects of agent orange you can visit our blog at cck dashlaw.com
blog and thank you so much for watching uh nick do you have any final closing thoughts
just the pact act is going to bring a lot of changes in a lot of different areas
so we have plenty of videos explaining some of the other exposures that it uh
um it affects as well so please consider that moving forward yes nba law in general
is a really complicated uh set of laws and so i would encourage you to reach out to
a veteran service officer or an attorney you trust if you have any questions or concerns because
it is a really complicated system to navigate on your own so thank you so much for watching
us today and please be sure to follow along by subscribing to our channel and liking this video