In a statement, the defense department said it provides civilians with advisers to help navigate the injury compensation process but acknowledged their health is more difficult to track because they use private medical providers for most of their care.
Environmental racism has been rising because of globalization and capitalism, which encourage people whose businesses create pollution to accumulate financial profit at the expense of disenfranchised communities' health. However, a lesser-known contributor to environmental racism is the military. The very people who pledged to defend our country and the safety of our citizens have made some reckless decisions, one of the most recent being the clandestine incineration of over 20 million pounds of AFFF waste.
The chemical tetrachloroethylene or PCE is carcinogenic. This potentially life-threatening effect was discovered after a study found that people who had lived near a dry cleaning facility while they were growing up had double the odds of developing cancer. Now, many are trying to determine if PCE can cause cancer in humans as well. The answer is yes and no, depending on where you live and what you do with the chemical.
The VA plans to start screening patients for environmental exposures during service in the armed forces, including the Gulf War and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. McLain said this screening will happen periodically as part of a veteran’s regular annual screening.
The PACT Act is one of the largest health and benefit expansions in American history. It recognizes toxic exposure as a “cost of war” by addressing the full range of issues affecting toxic-exposed veterans, ensuring generations of veterans who suffer from toxic exposure-related conditions get the benefits and care they’ve earned. This new law also expands and extends eligibility for VA health care for veterans with toxic exposures and veterans of the Vietnam era, Gulf War era, and post-9/11 era.