VA ‘presumption’ regulation could help up to 15K Camp Lejeune veterans

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By Tom Philpott

The Department of Veterans Affairs expects up to 15,000 seriously ill veterans who served at Camp Lejeune, N.C., before 1988, when base drinking water was contaminated, to be helped by a faster-track compensation process proposed last month.

But the promised acceleration in VA disability awards can’t begin until the proposed regulation becomes final, which could take at least another year to complete, VA officials said in a phone interview Tuesday.

In this case, time is money. Every month that passes before a final regulation takes effect is a month of compensation lost to ailing veterans of an older generation, most of them Marines.hire vets

VA Secretary Bob McDonald announced in mid-December that eight medical conditions afflicting vets who served at Lejeune from Aug. 1, 1953, through Dec. 31, 1987, are to be presumed the result of exposure to carcinogens and other harmful chemicals that fouled base water systems.

The proposed “presumptive” diseases are: kidney cancer, liver cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, leukemia, multiple myeloma, scleroderma, Parkinson’s disease and aplastic anemia/myelodysplastic syndromes.

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