The exposures
Chemicals many MOSs put you around
- Benzene — found in fuels and petroleum products. Common if you did aircraft maintenance,
vehicle mechanics, ship engineering, or handled fuel. Linked to blood disorders and certain cancers.
- Trichloroethylene (TCE) — used in aircraft and vehicle degreasers, weapons cleaning, and
metal parts cleaning. Linked to cancer, kidney disease, liver disease and neurological disorders.
- Perchloroethylene (PCE / PERC) — used in military dry-cleaning and textile maintenance. If
you were a dry-cleaning or laundry specialist, this was likely part of your job. Linked to neurological
effects, liver and kidney effects, and certain cancers.
- Heavy metals — lead, chromium and cadmium. Common in battery maintenance, ammunition
handling and shipyard work.
- Industrial solvents — paints, paint strippers, adhesives, hydraulic fluids, cleaning agents
and degreasers. Common in maintenance shops.
★ These aren't just deployment exposures. They're job exposures.
Why it matters
Not every exposed Veteran gets sick — but some do, years later
- Long-term exposure to these substances has been associated with an increased risk of certain
cancers, kidney disease, liver disease, neurological disorders, blood disorders, respiratory illnesses
and other chronic health conditions.
- Not every exposed Veteran will develop an illness. But some illnesses don't show up until years, or
even decades, after you left the service.
- Tell your VA health care provider your MOS, your duty stations, your deployments, and the
chemicals or materials you worked around — at every visit, not just the first one.
★ Symptoms today can trace back to a job from decades ago.
Screening
Get a VA Toxic Exposure Screening
- Every Veteran enrolled in VA health care is eligible for an initial screening, and VA repeats it at
least once every 5 years. If you answer "I don't know" to a screening question, VA rescreens you one
year later.
- How to get one: ask at any VA appointment, ask for your facility's Toxic Exposure Screening
Navigator, or call 1-800-MyVA411 and press 8.
- Cost: VA does not publish a flat cost statement for the screening itself. What VA does say — its
health registry evaluation is a "free, voluntary medical assessment," and its VET-HOME telehealth
exposure evaluations are free for enrolled Veterans.
Not enrolled in VA health care? You can still get the free registry evaluation. VA says you do
not need to enroll to take part. Ask your local VA Environmental Health Coordinator, or call
877-222-8387.
VET-HOME (Veterans Exposure Team) offers a free telehealth exposure assessment anywhere in the U.S. or
its territories — 833-633-8846 (833-633-VTHM).
★ You don't have to be sick to ask for this.
Build your record
Document your exposure now
- Write down your MOS, your work duties, your locations, and roughly when you were exposed.
- Keep copies of your service treatment records, personnel records, military evaluations, and any
civilian medical records.
- If your condition is hard to diagnose or hard to connect to your service, ask your provider about
the War Related Illness and Injury Study Center (WRIISC) — VA's program built for exactly that.
A word of caution. DoD is building the Individual Longitudinal Exposure Record (ILER) to track
exposures automatically. As of September 2026, Veterans still can't access it directly — DoD forecasts
VA-facilitated access starting Fall 2026. Don't wait on it. Build your own file now.
★ Your paper trail is the evidence. Start it today.
Filing a claim
Read this before you file
These exposures are NOT presumptive. Unlike burn pits or Agent Orange, VA decides benzene, TCE,
PCE, solvent and heavy-metal claims case by case, one Veteran at a time.
- To win one, you need three things: a current diagnosis, evidence you were exposed in service (your
MOS, duty stations, dates, work duties), and a medical opinion linking the two — called a nexus
opinion. Ask your VA provider or a VSO about getting one before you file.
- Served at Camp Lejeune at least 30 cumulative days between 1 August 1953 and 31 December 1987? TCE
and PCE are the same chemicals that were in the water there. VA presumes service connection — no nexus
opinion needed — for 8 conditions: adult leukemia, aplastic anemia and other myelodysplastic syndromes,
bladder cancer, kidney cancer, liver cancer, multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and Parkinson's
disease. That VA claim route has no deadline. (A separate Camp Lejeune Justice Act lawsuit route
required claims by 10 August 2024 and is now closed — the VA disability path above is not.)
★ A claim on your MOS alone, with no nexus opinion, is a claim built to be denied.
Protect your date
Two forms that protect your money while you gather evidence
- File an Intent to File (VA Form 21-0966) the day you decide to pursue this. It locks in your
effective date and can preserve up to a year of retroactive, back-dated benefits while you gather
everything above.
- Already denied years ago for lack of evidence? File a Supplemental Claim (VA Form 20-0995)
with the exposure record you just built as your "new and relevant evidence." It has no deadline.
- If you disagree with a decision, a Higher-Level Review or a Board Appeal must be filed within one
year of that decision. A Supplemental Claim does not have that limit.
★ The form you file first can be worth a year of back pay.
Free help
Filing help you already paid for
- An accredited Veterans Service Organization (VSO) representative's help with your claim is always
free.
- An accredited attorney or claims agent can only charge a fee for work after VA issues its initial
decision on your claim — never for filing it. A fee up to 20% of past-due benefits is presumed
reasonable; above 33 1/3% is presumed unreasonable (38 CFR 14.636).
- Anyone asking you to pay to file your first claim is not doing it lawfully.
★ Free help exists. Use it before you pay anyone.