What barriers have you experienced at the VA due to exposure to burn pits or airborne toxins?

Besides the varied toxic material aspects, make sure you're up on where this is from a legal/liability perspective. We've already had a ruling from an Administrative Law Judge from Department of Labor that lung problems are connected to the pits. Good news is it's a ruling. Tough to predict if other Agencies will buy into it fully and later recognizing the full gamut of problems. More likely nowadays vs. Agent Orange and Mustard Gas Testing. VA ran and hid from the later so my dad was declared a case of tinnitus although his body was scorched. The Fed Appeals tossed the pile of suits against KBR which means deep pocket commercial is off the hook. It does more to put VA in the position that they can run but cannot hide. Problem is yes you get free care, whatever and how far you have to drive that is, and maybe up to $3400?/month tops. Like all the other cases in the past, it'll be too little, too late. But it is something and it is moving on, good, bad, or indifferent.

No barriers really, but a lack of info available on what level of exposure to the sites or operations should be a reasonable place to even start to be concerned.
For example:
-In the 2003 invasion of Iraq we built the pipeline from Kuwait to up past Tallil airbase about 220 miles. Each company had a base camp with it's own dump and burn pit as well as the burn out latrines. So should all our troops be concerned or no. I ask, I get a shrug.
-In the 05-07 rotation to Iraq we were DS to 4ID we had Soldiers tasked on a rotational basis to supervise and monitor the Victory base, dump and burn pits and our troops spread all over the Baghdad AO working in construction support roles. The Troops would live on the COPs , OPs, FOBs of whomever they were supporting and subsequently were subject to the smoke from those Dumps and burn pits. Also the diesel generators running day and night. Again same question.

So that's a unit that operated between 900 and 1200 Soldiers at any given time in theatre exposed to burning trash and feces. The unit deployed again largely intact on the heels of the 05-07 deployment after I left. Same basic support mission at nearly the same strength with basically the same exposures.

The answers I'd like are; who was at risk and what durations of exposure should be of concern. If the answer is "anyone who was exposed" then that's nearly every Service member deployed on the ground from our unit or about 1200 minimum. Imagine the number if you multiply that out by just units in similar circumstances and then by the duration of the War on Terror. The number pretty quickly becomes astronomical.

I registered and... it's "LIKE IT NEVER EVEN HAPPENED'.