The Department of Veterans Affairs plans to expand eli¬gibility for Agent Orange disability benefits to Vietnam-era veterans who served at 129 locations in the U.S. during spe¬cific time frames, as well as parts of Canada and India, of¬ficials announced. VA officials also said they plan to widen eligibility for veterans who were sickened by herbicides used after World War II in the Demilitarized Zone in Korea in the 1950s and in areas off the shores of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

The proposal would allow the VA to automatically extend presumptive status to veterans who develop an Agent Or¬ange-related health condition from assignment to a location named on the Defense Department’s list of areas where tac¬tical herbicides were tested, used or stored within specific dates. It adds locations in 12 states within the U.S., as well as Kumbla, India, in 1945 and 1946, and Gagetown, New Brunswick, in Canada, in June 1966 and June 1967 The states include Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, New York, Ten¬nessee, Texas and Utah, and dates that range from 1945 to 1977, depending on state and location.

The full list of the states and specific locations and times is available on the VA website, as is the list of overseas loca¬tions.

To access the list go to the VA website at www.publichealth.va.gov. If it brings up the Agent Orange Newsletter, click on list of locations online. If the newsletter does not appear, in the search block in the upper right corner type herbicide test and storage outside Vietnam. You should find a chart listing the states, locations and dates of exposure.

A presumption of exposure means that the VA automati¬cally accepts a condition as tied to military service, lower¬ing the requirement for the veteran to prove that their illness or injury is military related and allowing for a more stream¬lined course to receive benefits.

The new rule codifies and defines some of the requirements on presumptive conditions listed in the Blue Water Navy Act and the PACT Act, both of which expanded bene¬fits to veterans sickened by exposure to contaminants while deployed to combat operations.

It clarifies conditions that fall under the umbrella term of Parkinsonism, a health condition related to herbi¬cide exposure, to include progressive supranuclear palsy, multiple system atrophy, corticobasal degeneration, vascu¬lar Parkinsonism and dementia with Lewy bodies. According to the VA, the clarification is needed because claims processors may not understand that these conditions fall under the Parkinsonism condition.

The Defense Department bases its eligibility list on criteria that in¬cludes the existence of official records such as government reports, forms, unit histories, shipping logs, contracts, sci¬entific reports or photographs. The location must have been a DoD installation; land under control by the DoD; or a non-DoD location where service members were present during testing, application, transportation or storage.

Veterans interested in filing a claim for a herbi¬cide-related disability are encouraged to contact their local Veterans Service Officer, Jerry Seiner, at the Charles Mix County Courthouse at 605-487-7691 or 605-481-1338.