WWII Veterans Still FIghting Congress For Exposure to Mustard Gas

Can The Agent Orange Act Help Veterans Exposed To Mustard Gas?
NPR
Caitlin Dickerson
JULY 16, 2015

NPR reported that some of the few World War II veterans who are still alive — now in their late 80s and early 90s — are still fighting for disability benefits because the VA says they don't have enough proof.

To understand the predicament of World War II veterans exposed to mustard gas, take a look at what happened to another set of American veterans who were exposed to a different toxic chemical.

Last month, NPR reported that some of those World War II vets are still fighting for disability benefits from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs because the agency says they don't have enough proof to substantiate their claims.

Alan Oates says that's the same response Vietnam War veterans started receiving from the VA in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

As a young Army private during the war, Oates was providing security for an engineering outfit in the jungle when he first noticed three planes flying overhead spraying something.

"I asked the engineers: What are they doing?" Oates says. "And [one] said: They're spraying herbicides to kill the vegetation, so that the enemy couldn't hide in it."
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