Vietnam war veterans were expecting an appeal to be filed by the Office of Veteran Affairs over the January win for Blue Water Veterans.  A week before the Vietnam Veteran 50th Anniversary Commencement, VA officials announced that they were unlikely to appeal the decision.

Blue Water Veterans were an overlooked group of veterans that served in the Vietnam War but never stepped into a declared war zone, therefore disallowing them to qualify for the pension due to the “feet on the ground” rule for Vietnam Veterans.  Blue Water Veterans will now qualify for pension under the presumption that all veterans that were stationed off the coast of Vietnam during the Vietnam War would have been exposed to agent orange.  Studies have indicated that agent orange stayed in the air and water for an extended amount of time making the water pumped up into coastal ships contaminated along with the surrounding air.

According to the CDC the military personal that handled the toxin were more at risk that soldiers on the ground.  Some of the illness caused by agent orange include but are not limited to:

acute/chronic leukemia, Hodgkin’s lymphoma and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, throat cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer, colon cancer, Ischemic heart disease, soft tissue sarcoma and liver cancer.

The decision in favor of the Blue Water Veterans gives Burn Pit Veterans hope that their claims will soon be approved as well.