Agent Orange & Personnel Who Served on Guam
Here is the bottom line with the PACT Act: Anyone stationed on Guam from January 9, 1962 through July 31, 1980 is now considered to have been exposed to Agent Orange.
This would even include members of an IG team that only visited for a couple of days. The technical term is boots on the ground. If you set foot on Guam during this period of time and can prove it through your service records it applies.
The regulation that covers this is 38 CFR 3.309 – Disease subject to presumptive service connection. Specifically, 38 CFR 3.309(e) – Disease associated with exposure to certain herbicide agents.
If a veteran was exposed to an herbicide agent during active military, naval, or air service, the following diseases shall be service-connected if the requirements of § 3.307(a)(6) are met even though there is no record of such disease during service, provided further that the rebuttable presumption provisions of § 3.307(d) are also satisfied:
- AL amyloidosis
- Chloracne or other acneform disease consistent with chloracne
- Type 2 diabetes (also known as Type II diabetes mellitus or adult-onset diabetes)
- Hodgkin's disease
- Ischemic heart disease
- including, but not limited to acute, subacute, and old myocardial infarction;
- Atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease including coronary artery disease (including coronary spasm) and
- Coronary bypass surgery; and
- Stable, unstable and Prinzmetal’s angina
- All chronic B-cell leukemias
- including, but not limited to, hairy-cell leukemia and chronic lymphocytic leukemia
- Multiple myeloma
- Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma
- Parkinson's disease
- Early-onset peripheral neuropathy
- Porphyria cutanea tarda
- Prostate cancer
- Respiratory cancers (cancer of the lung, bronchus, larynx, or trachea)
- Soft-tissue sarcoma
- Other than osteosarcoma, chondrosarcoma, Kaposi’s sarcoma, or mesothelioma
Soft-Tissue Sarcoma
Soft-tissue sarcoma includes the following:
- Adult fibrosarcoma
- Dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans
- Malignant fibrous histiocytoma
- Liposarcoma
- Leiomyosarcoma
- Epithelioid leiomyosarcoma (malignant leiomyoblastoma)
- Rhabdomyosarcoma
- Ectomesenchymoma
- Angiosarcoma (hemangiosarcoma and lymphangiosarcoma)
- Proliferating (systemic) angioendotheliomatosis
- Malignant glomus tumor
- Malignant hemangiopericytoma
- Synovial sarcoma (malignant synovioma)
- Malignant giant cell tumor of tendon sheath
- Malignant schwannoma, including malignant schwannoma with rhabdomyoblastic differentiation (malignant Triton tumor), glandular and epithelioid malignant schwannomas
- Malignant mesenchymoma
- Malignant granular cell tumor
- Alveolar soft part sarcoma
- Epithelioid sarcoma
- Clear cell sarcoma of tendons and aponeuroses
- Extraskeletal Ewing’s sarcoma
- Congenital and infantile fibrosarcoma
- Malignant ganglioneuroma
Ischemic Heart Disease
For purposes of this section, the term “ischemic heart disease” does not include hypertension or peripheral manifestations of arteriosclerosis such as peripheral vascular disease or stroke, or any other condition that does not qualify within the generally accepted medical definition of Ischemic heart disease.
The PACT Act added High Blood Pressure and Monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) to the Agent Orange presumptive list.