welcome to another edition of cck live my name is Emma Peterson and today I'm joined by Michelle
dutori and Brandon paiva and we're going to be talking to you about the newly established
VA presumptions for burn pit exposure and for veterans that were exposed to burn pits
so military burn pits are large areas of land where the military and its contractors in Syria
incinerated all waste by military bases including Plastics medical waste rubber human waste and
other materials burn pits were standard part of the U.S military's waste disposal protocol
in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan in the post-9 11 era during operations Iraqi
and enduring freedom burn pits are dangerous due to the nature of the products being incinerated
the process of igniting waste in an open-air burn pit produces toxins more toxins burning
waste than in a controlled environment such as an incinerator additionally toxic smoke from
these pits gets carried for Miles impacting those serving on and around military bases
specifically burn pits emitted the following pollutants particulate matter polysilic aromatic
hydrocarbons or phas volatile organic compounds or vocs toxic organic halogenated dioxins and
furons including tcdd one of the major toxins in Agent Orange so Michelle can you tell us
a little bit more about burn put exposure and the new VA presumptions associated with
those exposures so until recently most spermint cases were a case-by-case basis and you usually
needed a very good medical opinion linking your medical condition to your exposure departments
there's usually a very lengthy process and it was just very difficult to get service connection
however in August 2021 we announced that claims for three respiratory conditions chronic asthma
rhinitis and sinusitis were starting to be processed on a presumptive thesis so they were
linking this to particulate matter and it extended to Veterans diagnosed with chronic asthma rhinitis
and sinitis within 10 years of a qualifying period of service in Southwest Asia and certain other
areas a portion of the particular matter popular pollution was produced by bird pits and which is
evident in the toxic chemicals found at the Joint Base and blood and other military bases themselves
West Asia theater of operation what's interesting is um blood I never realized until once looking up
it's actually 20 acres when it was usually at its Hotel 20 acres of burning various toxins so it's a
very large burn plant you can see kind of where the exposure is coming from so adding another
layer to this was the packed act so that's the promise to address comprehensive toxins which was
officially signed into law on August 10th 2022 so this is recent it included an additional 23
conditions for presumptive service connection and it is listed for this toxic exposure so I
won't read all 23 conditions too to bore you but um it's various cancers and respiratory conditions
and keep in mind just because these are the presumptive conditions it doesn't mean that other
conditions aren't necessarily applicable it's just the criteria for service connection would
be slightly different and we'll have a list of all those conditions available on our blog so please
be sure to check out the link below if you want to do some more reading about those conditions
um Brandon can you tell us more about who's covered under these new presumptions who's going
to get the benefit of these burn pit presumptions absolutely so that new list of 23 conditions is
sort of speaking to covered veterans the bill defines a covered veteran as one of the following
a covered veteran is a veteran who on or after August 2nd 1990 performed active military Naval
or air service while assigned to a duty station in and also including the airspace above Bahrain
Iraq Kuwait Oman Qatar Saudi Arabia Somalia and United Arab Emirates or UAE as well now
secondly a veteran who on or after September 11 2001 performed active military Naval or airspace
service while assigned to a duty station including the airspace above the following locations
Afghanistan Djibouti Egypt Jordan Lebanon and Syria also fall under the category of a covered
veteran now these are all effective August 10th of 2022. however just because this has taken effect
in August of this year say you have a pre-existing claim that has already been contested or you've
been I mean the appeal stage since prior to August of 2022 this doesn't mean that you should abandon
your claim at this just because these have only been effective January 10th of 2002 we
would typically encourage you to kind of keep that still on appeal and still pursue those cases just
because you have a case that pre-exists that date doesn't mean that you may not still be eligible
for some for all of these benefits absolutely and I think that's a really important point that it's
going to be effective the date this this bill was signed into law originally there was a planned
rollout a phase-in of different presumptions but the president and VA announced that all these 23
conditions were going to be presumptive effective the date the bill assigned into laws it's really
great news for veterans out there who've been suffering for a long time from these conditions
so if you think you were exposed to burn pits you know you were bone exposed to burn bits
and you want to seek service connection for one of these 23 conditions how should you go about
doing that you're going to want to fill out a VA form 21526 easy if you need to file a new claim
um same form that's used for all other initial claims and in addition to these new presumptive
conditions um uh well the addition of these new presumptive conditions it's
going to make it easier for veterans to get these conditions service connected you're no
longer going to need to provide that Nexus um or link the presumption will cover that
part of service connection for you as long as you meet all the other eligibility requirements
and this new this new presumption um really impacts numerous veterans and their family
members who might be seeking survivors benefits so for more information on The Pact act burn
pits and toxic exposure please visit our blog at cck-law.com blog please be sure to check out our
other YouTube videos and don't forget to subscribe to our Channel um Michelle Brandon any closing
thoughts I think like I always say in these videos if you've been exposed to these conditions file
the claim sooner rather than later because it might go back to the original date of claim so
if you believe that you should be entitled to these benefits you're better off filing sooner
rather than later yeah I would just Echo that we oftentimes see the effectivates get a little
washy so if you're not sure if the effective date that you're being assigned is correct um you know
appeal or you know reach out to an accredited representative or vso um to see assistance with
opening into whether or not great thank you both and thanks to all of you out there for tuning in