THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES OF SCIENCES, ENGINEERING, AND MEDICINE
Health and Medicine Division
Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice
Committee to Reassess the Department of Veterans Affairs Airborne Hazards
and Open Burn Pit Registry
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Congressional Briefing
Thursday, October 13, 2022 – 4:00 p.m.
via Zoom
on
Reassessment of the Department of Veterans Affairs Airborne Hazards
and Open Burn Pit Registry
In P.L. 112-260, the Dignified Burial and Other Veterans’ Benefits Improvement Act of 2012, Congress directed the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to establish and maintain the Airborne Hazards and Open Burn Pit (AH&OBP) Registry to "ascertain and monitor" the health effects of such exposures by eligible individuals who may have been exposed to toxic airborne chemicals and fumes caused by open burn pits.
This new report, from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, serves as a follow-up to an initial assessment of the AH&OBP Registry completed by an independent committee of the National Academies in 2017. This 2022 reassessment does not include any strength-of-the-evidence assessments of potential relationships between exposures to burn pits or airborne hazards and health effects. Rather, the report assesses the ability of the registry to fulfill the intended purposes that Congress and VA have specified for it.
This briefing was for members of Congress and congressional staff only. The report was publicly released on October 14, 2022 and can be found, in its entirety, on the Web site of the National Academies Press.