Claims for service connection due to Agent Orange exposure require two things. First, a veteran must be diagnosed with one of the fourteen illnesses listed in 38 CFR 3.309 (e) – (AL Amyloidosis, Chronic B-cell Leukemias, Chloracne, Diabetes Mellitus Type 2, Hodgkin's Disease, Ischemic Heart Disease, Multiple Myeloma, Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, Parkinson's Disease, Peripheral Neuropathy, Early-Onset, Porphyria Cutanea Tarda, Prostate Cancer, Respiratory Cancers, and Soft Tissue Sarcomas).
Secondly, veterans must meet certain geographic service requirements. Up until this year, veterans were required to prove they set foot in Vietnam or somewhere near the Korean Demilitarized Zone. Simply flying over Vietnam does not meet the service requirement.
However, the Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act of 2019 has expanded the area of possible exposure. The new law was signed on 6/25/2019, and takes effect on 1/1/2020. Per Public Law 116-23, veterans who served aboard a vessel on the inland waterways, or on a vessel operating not more than 12 nautical miles seaward from the demarcation line of the waters of Vietnam and Cambodia may be eligible for compensation benefits.
Eligible Navy veterans must provide evidence to support that they served on a ship that was in the specified territory waters. The needed information may be found by searching Navy Deck Logs and/or Carrier Reports. The National Archives has digitized a sizable number of deck logs for Navy ships. The digitized deck logs are available on this site: https://www.archives.gov/ research/military/logbooks/navy-online. The list of ships are presented in chronological order. Each ship can be selected in order to review more in depth historical information.
The Blue Water Navy Association has also prepared a series of reports presenting information on when Aircraft Carriers entered the territorial seas off Vietnam within the required 12 nautical miles of the baseline.
For any veterans that had their claim for an Agent Orange issue previously denied can file a new claim based on the recent change in the law. If the claim gets approved, some veterans may get a retropayment back to the date when the original claim was submitted. Since the law doesn’t go into effect until 1/1/2020, any Blue Water claims submitted before that date will be held by the VA. Contact your local NSO for any questions or to file a claim.