Regardless of which war they served in, the branch they served in or the era in which they served, military veterans’ stories of toxic exposure all sound similar.

Chris Burgess slept next to a burn pit for months after he arrived in Afghanistan in 2004 as a young marine.

Burn pits were ubiquitous on bases during the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. They were used to dispose of anything from human waste to chemicals to munitions. Only later were the fumes from those pits discovered to have had a severe impact on human health.

On July 2, 1969, Mike Brunk, of Cortez, was deployed to Phan Rang Air Base in Vietnam, where he repaired aircraft instruments. Many of the planes he worked on sprayed Agent Orange, a toxic herbicide used to remove foliage used for cover by the enemy. The substance was everywhere, he said, but the impact on the human body was unknown.

“Nobody talked about it back then, nobody knew anything about it,” Bunk said.

Melinda Michael spent 38 years in the Navy. She was aboard a ship coordinating the evacuation and response after the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan. Like nearly 70,000 other service members, Michael may have been exposed to radiation that is impacting her health.

All three veterans, and dozens more, attended a claims clinic Wednesday at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 4031 in Durango. The clinic brought the resources necessary to develop a disability claims – the kind of resource that can be hard to access for residents of rural Southwest Colorado – to the doorstep of the area’s veterans.

The clinic was designed to assist veterans in compiling claims for the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act – the PACT Act, signed on Aug. 10, 2022. The law was the single largest expansion of veterans benefits in the history of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Until the law’s passage, veterans had to prove a causal link between most health conditions and their service.

“If you got shot in Iraq, and there’s a record of you getting shot in Iraq by the enemy and you get a Purple Heart, there’s documentation around that, that’s really easy to connect (to health impacts),” said Mike Benton, the commander of VFW Post 4031. “It’s really hard to connect that you stood near a burn pit in Iraq, and that’s why you have asthma.”

Benton said the PACT Act makes it “significantly easier” for veterans to access benefits, now that a lengthy list of medical conditions are presumed to be linked to service in certain conflicts or regions.

When he returned from Iraq in 2007, Benton himself applied for disability benefits stemming from breathing problems he was having. He had served in Baghdad, where he was breathing the fumes from explosions and burn pits.

“They denied it over and over and over,” he said.

When the PACT Act was signed, Benton’s disability benefit immediately jumped to 30% (disability rates vary according to the number of dependents a veteran has; 30% disability equates to $508 to $708 per month).

It can take months for a veteran to compile all the necessary documentation to submit a claim. At Wednesday’s clinic, the goal was to complete the process in a single day.

A veteran could show up and check in with a Veterans Benefits Administration representative, who would locate or input their service record and any medical records. Several of the VA’s contractors brought mobile clinic units to the event, so that veterans could get medical evaluations to document any health issues.

“We try to target small areas like this that don’t have medical examination offices that are brick and mortar sites,” said Heather Osborne, a management analyst with the Medical Disability Examination Office.

Veterans Evaluation Services, one of the VA’s contractors, arrived with one of the company’s four mobile units. The bus has facilities to conduct general health, audiology and various vision exams, as well as dental X-rays.

For Brunk, the avionics technician who served in Vietnam, this is not his first go-round seeking benefits.

He has some health conditions that he suspects could be related to his exposure to Agent Orange. As other veterans at the clinic echoed, Brunk showed up Wednesday because “you never know.”

The airman is already receiving disability for his loss of hearing, but not for high blood pressure. The condition is now a presumed to be linked to Agent Orange exposure. The addition of hypertension as a presumptive condition means Brunk is likely to see a bump in his disability benefits.

Like Brunk, Burgess – the marine who slept next to a burn pit in Afghanistan – is receiving disability for only some of his injuries.

He receives 40% disability – about $730 each month – of which 10% is connected to hearing damage and 30% is connected to post-traumatic stress disorder.

But none of that is related to the burn pits.

Burgess says he has respiratory issues that may be related to his exposure to burn pits or dust particles. If he is diagnosed with asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or any number of other respiratory problems, the VA will presume that the cause was his service-related toxin exposure.

“I know we were all exposed to a lot of things, including what we breathed in. And that‘s just now starting to take effect,” he said. “Maybe we didn’t notice for the first five or 10 years, but now I’m noticing that we have a lot of things in common, we’re all experiencing a lot of the same issues.”

Veterans can file a disability claim on the VA’s website and may seek assistance from the La Plata County Veterans Service Officer by calling 759-0117.

rschafir@durangoherald.com