The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced Thursday that it will begin mailing letters within two weeks to thousands of veterans and military workers exposed to toxic chemicals during World War II and will invite them to seek disability benefits......
The VA announcement follows a Free Press series in November that revealed how the agency had not delivered on a 1993 promise to Congress to contact World War II veterans involved in secret chemical testing, warn them of known health risks and invite them to file claims.
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Renee Szybala, director of the VA's compensation and pension service, said Thursday that the agency is culling a U.S. Department of Defense database of about 4,500 veterans who took part in secret chemical tests beginning in 1942. The database also includes the names of 1,800 civilian and contract workers exposed to toxins in the manufacturing or transportation of chemical weapons, a list the VA said it will pass on to the U.S. Department of Labor to handle any benefit claims.
The Defense Department database was first provided to the VA in 1997 and then apparently disappeared, for reasons that nobody at the VA has been able to explain. Szybala, who was not working on the project then, conceded Thursday, "We lost a lot of records."
http://www.freep.com/news/nw/vets18e_20050218.htm
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