Board of Veteran Appeals Uses Boilerplate Denial Language for C-123 Claims, IGNORING VA's own Institute of Medicine Report

The Board of Veterans Appeals regularly posts its most recent decisions on claims veterans appealed to that body. We note that as in months and years past, BVA continues to use its error-laden boilerplate language to deny veterans' claims. Cited below is a paragraph from an unfortunate veteran's decision.

Furthermore, the Department of Veterans Affairs did address residual Agent Orange exposure concerns by post-Vietnam crews that later flew C-123 aircraft that had previously sprayed Agent Orange. VA's Office of Public Health is noted to have reviewed all available scientific information regarding the exposure potential to residual amounts of herbicides on the C-123 aircraft surfaces. It was concluded that the potential exposure for the post-Vietnam crews that flew or maintained the aircraft was extremely low and therefore it was concluded that the risk of long-term health effects was minimal. See: http://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/agentorange

This citation references the Office of Public Health having "reviewed all available scientific information regarding the exposure potential to residual amounts of herbicides on the C-123 aircraft surfaces." What the citation avoids mentioning is the highly selective approach used by Public Health when they first listed their carefully selected references in 2011. Only references arguing against veterans' claims were permitted, and all references supporting C-123 exposures were ignored.

The March JSRRC report and the January 2015 Institute of Medicine report completely put to rest the above error-laden assertions...C-123 aircraft were indeed contaminated and the veterans were indeed exposed. Although VA has yet to react to this report done at their own expense, BVA and other VA bodies continue denying C-123 veterans' claims by repeating the same paragraph.

What was ignored by VA in its review of "all available scientific information?"
• CDC/Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry report to VA
• Concerned Scientists & Physicians Group Report to VA
• Oregon Health Sciences Perspective on C-123 Aircraft Exposures
• NIH/National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences report to VA "concluding exposures were plausible"
• All works of Dr. Jeanne Stellman