By Holly Zachariah
The Columbus Dispatch • Saturday May 2, 2015
As a young man, Ralph DeSanto Jr. took apart the valves in front of him, valves that had come from C-123 aircraft that had repeatedly sprayed Agent Orange over Vietnam.
Each time he popped a rubber seal, he said, a tiny plume of red dust rose up. Inside each valve was the crystallized chemical from the herbicide that was widely deployed to kill the vegetation that concealed the enemy in the jungles and forests during the Vietnam War.
DeSanto never once thought that he should be worried, that he may be putting himself in danger, that with every touch of those airplane parts or with any swipe of residue he might have been increasing his risk for diseases.
But pressure is increasing by the day for the Veterans Administration to heed its own commissioned report released in January by the Institute of Medicine that said flight and maintenance crews such as the one that DeSanto was part of were exposed to high levels of dioxin. Advocates say the VA should expand the list of those eligible to receive benefits and care for Agent Orange-related claims to include them.
Until now, because those crew members were Air Force reservists and not classified as active-duty personnel, the VA has denied them veteran status and has not allowed their claims to any Agent Orange-related illnesses.
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and six other senators last week sent a bipartisan letter to VA Secretary Robert A. McDonald, urging him to immediately use his executive authority to clear the way for the reservists’ claims.
“The VA’s position has been disappointing,” the letter reads. “It is our desire to see that C-123 veterans who suffer today because of service-related exposure to Agent Orange receive the help they need.”
Such a move could include as many as 2,100 former Air Force reservists from three bases, including perhaps as many as 1,200 who worked at Rickenbacker from 1972 to the mid-1980s, when the last C-123 that had been used to spray the chemical left the base.
