A new study has found a close relationship between Agent Orange exposure during the Vietnam War and high blood pressure, a conclusion that could lead the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to dramatically expand the number of veterans eligible for compensation.
The study, published last in early NOV by VA researchers in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, found a higher rate of hypertension among members of the Army Chemical Corps who handled Agent Orange during the war compared to those who didn’t.
Corps members who served in Vietnam but did not spray the chemicals also had a higher rate of hypertension than their peers who served outside Vietnam. Both results were statistically significant and add to a body of evidence linking Agent Orange exposure and hypertension.
The findings come 41 years after the close of the Vietnam War and decades since the last supplies of Agent Orange were incinerated. Since then, veterans have become increasingly distrustful of the VA. They maintain that their exposure to Agent Orange, which contained the toxic chemical dioxin, has harmed their own health and has been passed on to their children.
A VA working group has been studying the latest scientific literature since March to determine if any illnesses should be added to the agency’s list of diseases for which vets are automatically entitled to compensation if they served in Vietnam.
Specifically, the group has been looking at new evidence linking bladder cancer, under-active thyroid, Parkinson’s-like symptoms and hypertension to Agent Orange exposure.
The VA had been expected to announce its decision this year, but officials now say that will be left to the administration of President-elect Donald Trump.
“For this administration, the deadline for proposing new rules for potential new presumptions (of service connection to herbicide) has passed, and this will become work for the new administration to take to completion,” VA officials said in a written statement first reported last week in the newspaper Stars and Stripes.
Hypertension is the most common ailment among veterans seeking health care at the VA — indeed it is one of the most common ailments among older adults generally.
Rick Weidman, legislative director of Vietnam Veterans of America, said the new report should add pressure to the VA to compensate vets for hypertension.
His group has been pressing the VA to add the condition to its list of Agent Orange-connected diseases ever since the advisory panel first noted evidence of a link. He can think of only one reason to explain the agency’s reluctance: “Money.” An estimate of the cost of offering compensation for Vietnam vets with hypertension was not available. (Source: ProPublica & The Virginian-Pilot | Charles Ornstein & Mike Hixenbaugh | November 15, 2016)