VETERANS BENEFITS FOR USAF RESERVISTS & ANG WITH TINNITUS AND HEARING LOSS

Are you ineligible for VA benefits because you're a "traditional reservist?"

If hearing injuries resulting from flight or aircraft maintenance duties might qualify you for VA compensation and other benefits. Here's how.

Traditional reservists aren't eligible for most VA benefits because our "active duty for training" doesn't count towards true veteran status. Regardless of how long one's initial active duty for basic and technical school might be, the law doesn't recognize that as "active service." VA recognizes completion of an active duty enlistment, or active duty during wartime to qualify a servicemember for benefits, but UTAs, annual tour, active duty for basic and other training are grouped into ineligible "active duty for training." No bennies.

BUT – there'a a big exception to that for any disabling injury or disease you might experience.

Tinnitus is just one such injury. That ringing in the ears, or wind noise or low hum is caused by loud noises. Noises like a C-123 or C-130 makes. Noises like an M-16 makes at 154dB.

Flyers, tank crews, infantry, artillery and others around loud noises in a military setting often suffer tinnitus, and VA recognizes that as a frequent disability - in fact, it is the most common disability veterans have.

And if you have tinnitus you might be entitled to VA care and compensation for that disability, and if you are, that makes you a veteran with all the benefits that wartime veterans receive.

I got into this recently to help an army reservist who had tinnitus from his time in basic training when he fired the M-14 rifle and did not have any ear protection. Noises of 85 dB and above can cause permanent hearing loss and tinnitus, and our aircraft are far noisier than that: The cockpit is steady at over 112 dB. The noise is worse in the rear!

After my altitude chamber ride at Edwards AFB I started flying in 1974. I recall that by 1975 or so we received the yellow foam earplugs and they provided some protection from noise hazards. But there was still significant noise reaching the inner ear to cause damage. This kind of damage is permanent and cumulative and can evidence itself in tinnitus and/or hearing loss even years later.

Here is my point in the VA's own words: “When a claim for service connection is based on a period of active duty for training, there must be evidence that the individual concerned became disabled as a result of a disease or injury incurred or aggravated in the line of duty during the period of active duty for training.“

That is per 38 U.S.C. § 1131 (see also 38 U.S.C. § 1110; 38 C.F.R. § 3.303(a). See CAVC Hensley v. Brown – “claimant may establish direct service connection for a hearing disability initially manifest several years after separation from service on the basis of evidence showing that the current hearing loss is causally related to injury or disease suffered in service.”( 5 Vet. App. 155, 164 (1993).” Also see VA Training Letter 10-02 at 15 (rescinded re: incorporation into VBA Adjudication Procedures Manual (M21-1), pt. III, subpt. iv, ch. 4, § D.1-3)

VA compensation for a tinnitus disability is a modest $144 per month, but the real importance here is that a hearing injury establishes legal veteran status with all the benefits that attach to being a wartime veteran (we've been in a period of war ever since Desert Storm.) Sometimes there are secondary issues to hearing loss like depression or hypertension. Rarely, there have been vets getting up to 50% disability ($995/month) based on hearing loss and complications.

You might not need them now, but benefits include pension rights, medical and pharmacy (perhaps with modest co-payments,) rehab, hearing aids, VA home loan, e

VFW National Commander Demands VA Provide C-123 Vets Full Care & Benefits

JOHN W. STROUD 

COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF

VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS OF THE UNITED STATES 

BEFORE THE JOINT HEARING OF 

THE COMMITTEES ON VETERANS AFFAIRS

UNITED STATES SENATE AND UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES  

C-123 Veterans: During the Vietnam War, C-123 aircraft were utilized to spray toxic herbicides throughout Vietnam. After the Vietnam War, those same C-123 aircraft were repurposed and reassigned to Air Force Reserve units throughout the country, where they were used by Air Force reservists for training, military airlifts, and medical and cargo transportation, as well as mosquito abatement spraying. Many of these veterans now suffer from many of the conditions that have been linked to exposure to Agent Orange. 

However, VA has vehemently opposed any notion that these veterans were exposed to enough Agent Orange during their duties aboard the previously exposed aircraft to cause adverse health effects. 

In its recent report, “Post-Vietnam Dioxin Exposure in Agent Orange Contaminated C-123 Aircraft,” IOM estimated that up to 2,100 Air Force Reservists worked on C-123 aircraft that had been previously used to spray herbicides during the Vietnam War. After diligently considering relevant evidence, available sample data, and the current body of work on the health effects associated with exposure to Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin (TCDD), the Committee determined that Air Force Reservists who worked on previously exposed C-123 aircraft “were exposed (in the technical sense of the word of having bodily contact with the chemicals) to the components of [Agent Orange] to some extent.” 

VA has acknowledged that this IOM report contradicts its stance on whether C-123 veterans were exposed to enough TCDD to cause adverse health effects.  In response to the IOM report, VA has established a workgroup to review IOM’s report and make recommendations. On January 31, 2015, the VFW sent a letter to VA Secretary McDonald urging him to extend Agent Orange presumptive authority to the aircrews of these aircraft.   

The VFW will not accept any action short of granting C-123 veterans the care and benefits they deserve. This includes amending VA regulations so veterans who served as pilots and aircrews on these contaminated aircraft receive equitable treatment when applying for VA disability compensation.

Thank you, Commander Stroud!

VA Has Submitted Rule Covering C-123 Vets to Office of Management & Budget for Analysis

On May 13, Secretary McDonald submitted to the Office of Management and Budget VA's proposed rule to cover C-123 exposures. When approved, this will be effected via Presidential Executive Order.

Now, we're all awaiting OMB's action to move things forward. The current state is "interim final rule" and is titled "Presumption of Herbicide Exposure and Presumption of Disability During Service For Reservists Presumed Exposed to Herbicide"

How it works:

Following the submission to VA of the C-123 report from IOM, a working group is convened, consisting of representatives from several different parts of the VA. Based on the IOM study findings, review of other relevant academic literature, and possible input from various stakeholders, the working group determines whether there is sufficient scientific evidence to support giving any disease(s) special consideration with respect to disability presumptions.

Following deliberations, the working group generates a report, which makes recommendations to an internal VA Task Force based on pre-established legal standards by which the VA Secretary’s final decision is bound. The VA internal review Task Force typically consists of high-level officials who report directly to the Secretary. The Task Force reviews the findings of the Working Group and may provide a separate, but similar, report to the VA Secretary based on the Working Group’s recommendations.

If the Task Force recommends that a new disability presumption be established, and the Secretary concurs, the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) will submit a cost estimate and draft regulations for the presumption(s) to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review. If approved by OMB, the proposed rule is then published in the Federal Register. After the allotted period for public comment, the VBA will then prepare a final rule to be submitted to the Federal Register.

Dayton, Ohio: Reservists Push VA For Agent Orange Benefits (Dayton Daily News)

Reservists push VA for benefits

C-123 ‘spray planes’ linked to Agent Orange-related illnesses

By Barrie Barber - Staff Writer, MORAINE OHIO —

Robert A. Potts most remembers the smell on many of the C-123 cargo planes that had sprayed the defoliant Agent Orange over Vietnam.

The 73-year-old Moraine man never rode the planes over southeast Asia. The former Air Force reservist who was stationed at Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base near Columbus still has hand-written meticulous flight logs he said show he spent hundreds of hours flying in the former “spray birds” for eight years over the United States.

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TY GREENLEES

Some Air Force 

Years later, working as a Russian translator at the Foreign Technology Division at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, he said he was diagnosed with Type II diabetes, a condition he suspects was caused from his exposure to the Agent Orange residue on the planes.

“You could smell the chemical when we first got them,” he said. “That stuff, I guess, had seeped into the floor of the airplane. I had a friend of mine, he would come home (and) his flight suit smelled so bad his wife would put it in the garage,” said Potts, who flew on the planes as a loadmaster between 1972 to 1980.

“We knew when we got those airplanes, because they stank so bad, we knew they were former spray birds. But of course, we never thought of it being dangerous at the time. They were just airplanes that we flew on.”

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This C-123 ‘Provi

Potts’ Agent Orange disability claim was rejected by the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2002 on grounds that he didn’t serve in Vietnam. But a report issued earlier this year gave new life to a cause championed by him and others.

The January report by the Institute of Medicine concludes that some reservists who never went to Vietnam still encountered exposures to Agent Orange-related dioxins at levels in excess of international guidelines.

Report: Health ‘adversely affected’

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Robert A. Potts i

An estimated 1,500 to 2,100 reservists may have flown on the C-123 spray planes in the United States, according to the report by the institute, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences that was commissioned by the VA to report on the reservists’ Agent Orange exposure.

After they were returned from Vietnam, the C-123 “Providers,” as they were nicknamed, were assigned to cargo and aeromedical evacuation units in the Air Force Reserve at Rickenbacker, Westover Air Reserve Base in Massachusetts and the Pittsburgh IAP Reserve Station in Pennsylvania.

“The available information supports the expectation that the health of some of the personnel was adversely affected by their service in the C-123s that had earlier been used to spray herbicides in Vietnam,” the institute’s report concludes.

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Robert A. Potts h

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has considered former C-123 reservists’ Agent Orange residue claims on a case-by-case basis. Claimants point out that the health risks are well documented yet airmen who flew in the United States were not given the same “presumptive” exposure eligibility for VA benefits that Vietnam veterans have for serving on the ground or inland waterways during the war.

VA announcements on the issue were scheduled most recently this month, but then postponed without explanation from the VA.

But at a press conference Friday at the Dayton VA Medical Center, VA Secretary Robert McDonald said an announcement was “imminent” and “very soon” in response to a question from this newspaper.

“The issue frankly is how to execute once the announcement is made,” he said. “For whatever reasons, it’s very hard to find the people who worked on or flew those C-123s and we want to make sure when we announce we can have perfect clarity on the next steps for those veterans who served with C-123s that sprayed Agent Orange.”

The Institute of Medicine report backed up others that found long-term concerns about the approximately 30 spray planes brought back to the United States after they were flown in the defoliant program Operation Ranch Hand in Vietnam. In 2012, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry concluded swab samples taken on some C-123s in 1994 were 182 times higher for dioxin than guidelines set by the Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine, according to the publication Military Times.

One clue to the level of contamination aboard the planes was culled from inside a C-123K, nicknamed Patches, on display at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, records show. The plane was decontaminated before it was displayed inside the museum beginning in 2003.

A push for benefits

Wesley T. Carter, president of the C-123 Veterans Association, has led the push for four years to get the VA to provide benefits to C-123 reservists. The retired Air Force major and former C-123 medical services officer viewed the Institute of Medicine report as a victory for the former airmen in their battle with the VA.

“The (VA) secretary is called on by the Agent Orange Act to recognize and care for veterans exposed to

“The issue is how to execute..."”

this deadly toxin,” he said in an interview. “The VA has known of this situation for many years, has had all of the scientific and medical information necessary to reach the decision they’re obliged to reach by the Agent Orange Act, but for some reason has failed us yet again.

“How many years must men and women who are already ill wait?”

Under the Agent Orange Act of 1991, veterans who served anywhere in Vietnam were presumed to have exposure to herbicides. Under VA guidelines, they may qualify for disability compensation for diseases related to Agent Orange, such as diabetes, heart disease, Parkinson’s disease and prostate and respiratory cancers, among other ailments.

Carter, 68, was initially encouraged by the announcement the VA would address the issue, but has been disappointed with the federal agency’s repeated postponements.

“It’s a very confusing situation with mixed signals,” he said. “As it stands right now, those veterans are still outside the VA hospital with their fingers on the doorbell and the door’s still locked. A delay of weeks and months is still unacceptable and painful.”

The former reservist who flew aboard the planes at Westover Air Reserve Base said he filed an Agent Orange-related claim with the VA in 2011, and was denied. He has appealed.

Carter receives full VA disability benefits because he suffered spinal injuries in the first Gulf War when he fell off a truck on a flight line. He said he filed the Agent Orange claim to determine what was happening to his fellow airmen.

“We’ve identified a number of deaths from folks who put in claims and were denied,” said Carter, who lives in Fort Collins, Colo.

Carter, who has cancer and heart disease, can’t say for sure his exposure to Agent Orange residue on the planes caused his medical problems, but he noted the increased risk of health ailments caused from exposure.

The VA has not tracked how many former C-123 reservists have applied for disability benefits, VA spokeswoman Meagan Lutz said in an email, “but we are aware of a few claims that have been decided on a case-by-case basis.”

One former reservist, Lt. Col. Paul A. Bailey, a close friend to Carter’s, was granted VA benefits for exposure to Agent Orange residue aboard the planes in August 2013, The Washington Post has reported. Bailey died of cancer in October 2013.

Lawmakers want changes