WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) participated in a Washington Post Live discussion on the health care challenges veterans face after their service. Senator Tillis spoke on his bipartisan legislative efforts to help veterans exposed to toxic chemicals and burn pits.

Since taking office, Senator Tillis has been an advocate for providing justice for the victims of Camp Lejeune toxic contamination, working to advance bipartisan legislation. In 2019, he co-introduced The Janey Ensminger Act to ensure individuals with diseases scientifically linked to toxic chemical exposure at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina receive proper medical care from the Veterans Administration (VA). Senator Tillis also co-led efforts to help veterans exposed to toxic burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2018, Senators Tillis and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) introduced and successfully passed legislation that would create a Center of Excellence in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) focused on researching the health effects associated with burn pits and treating veterans who become sick after exposure. 

Watch the discussion HERE.

Senator Tillis on how he got involved in helping veterans exposed to toxic burn pits:

“When I got to Washington, the data was very compelling that we had a number of operators in the Middle East who after they moved into an area, the standard operating procedure was to burn computers, disk drives, and equipment before they left to make sure they weren’t salvageable. Now we know that those materials have toxic substances that we think are related to diseases that men and women in Afghanistan and throughout the Middle East could have been exposed to. I wrote an op-ed with Senator Klobuchar basically saying this could be this generations Agent Orange, and we need to get ahead of it and accelerate care operations for people actively serving and those in veterans status. We don’t want to have the years-long struggle to make the presumptions right so they can get the health care they deserve.”

Senator Tillis on being proactive to help veterans exposed to toxic chemicals:

“This is very personal to me, my wife’s uncle died from Agent Orange exposure after he was in combat in Vietnam. It took decades to get to the point that we were providing proper care and support for veterans from the Vietnam War. We cannot afford to take decades, and the technology, science, and information we have access to means this is something we should be able to get done very quickly. We only got a lot of the presumptive illnesses for toxic substances at Camp Lejeune approved back in 2017. That was after I spent about 3 years in the U.S. Senate trying to get done what Senator Burr and others had been working on for years. We have to get ahead of it, and that is why we need an independent agency to really understand the nature of the exposures and they can give us guidance on the population that was affected. This is something we should talk about getting done in this Congress or the next Congress. With the right information and getting ahead of this, I believe some of the more acute conditions can be avoided if care is given sooner.”

Senator Tillis on identifying potential risks earlier:

“Whether it’s exposure to toxic substances or repeated exposure to low-level concussive events that have been linked to traumatic brain injury and PTS, these are the things that we need to get right in soldiers’ health record so we have the data to predict a risk for the soldier, servicemen, or veteran before they would even expect that they’re at risk. It’s not only making sure when you come to a VA facility or a DoD hospital that we have the presumption to provide you with care, but I also want to move it further up in the life-cycle and try and find accelerated ways to identify and intervene long before these complications affect the servicemember.” 

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