The Department of Veterans Affairs has overhauled its registry for veterans exposed to burn pits and other airborne hazards overseas, working with the Defense Department to include 4.7 million veterans who served in locations with potentially dangerous air quality.

The new Airborne Hazards and Open Burn Pit Registry includes basic information on veterans as well as deployment history. The new database is an important research tool that enables VA to identify and study health challenges of the veteran and service member population.

This is an update to the burn pit registry, which is a way for veterans to contribute to research that will help determine what new conditions should be considered as connected to burn pits in the future.

To create the new database, the VA and DoD pulled deployment data for millions of veter-ans who served in certain locations during specific time periods when they may have been exposed to toxic conditions, such as oil well fires, chemical plumes, burn pits, nerve agents and other hazardous materials.

The new registry is vastly different from the one created by the VA in 2014 after Congress required the department to establish a registry to monitor the health of veterans with potential exposure. That initiative was troubled from the start, with the VA opposing its creation, saying it had little value because the connection between burn pits and illnesses was unproven.

In 2022, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine concluded that the registry was 'not helpful' and suggested the resources spent on the database should be used for an improved patient surveillance system and research platform.

The panel also noted that the registry didn't allow for updating by the veterans, making it useless from a health surveillance standpoint for tracking individuals' health issues across their lifetime. And it was never used to guide policy decisions.

Following that report, the VA decided to revamp the registry, resulting in the new database that is now live. The database will include all veterans, living and deceased, who were determined by the DoD to have deployed to eligible locations.

The data included in the registry includes deployment locations, military personnel information, and demographics to include gender, race, and ethnicity. No medical information will be stored in the registry. Veteran and service member data will be accessible only to select VA epidemiologists and researchers and institutional review board-approved researchers. It will be used to conduct research on the cohort over a period of time. The results will inform the policy decision-making efforts of VA executive leaders, including those related to presumptive conditions.

The moves VA is making will assist in their efforts to identify more presumptive conditions into the future, and that obviously would lead to more benefits to more veterans.

Theredesignmassivelyexpands the registry and reduces the participation requirements for veterans, paving the way for critical research in the coming years. According to the VA, roughly 500,000 veterans were enrolled in the previous registry. That database will remain intact but will be completely separate from the new version.

The new registry will include veterans who served in the following campaigns or combat theaters, according to the VA and DoD:

• Desert Shield and Desert Storm; Iraqi Freedom; Enduring Freedom; and New Dawn.

• Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Djibouti, Gulf of Aden, Gulf of Oman, Oman, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, waters of the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, Red Sea, Syria, Uzbekistan and Egypt between Aug. 2, 1990, and Aug. 31, 2021.

• Somalia since Aug. 2, 1990. • The Southwest Asia theater of military operations and Egypt any time after Aug. 2, 1990.

• Afghanistan, Djibouti, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Uzbekistan or Yemen any time after Sept. 11, 2001.

• Associated airspaces with the countries listed above, as well as the waters of the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, Gulf of Aden, Gulf of Oman, and the Red Sea.

Veterans also can opt out of the registry by completing the online form at Airborne Hazards & Open Burn Pit Registry Opt Out · VET-HOME Portal (va.gov) The registry will have no impact on veterans' care or benefits. The department worked with veterans service organizations and affected veterans to create the new database. VA and DoD officials hope veterans will not opt out, given the potential for breakthrough research in the coming years.