Sen. Brown holds roundtable in Tiffin

TIFFIN — U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, visited AMVETS Post 48 in Tiffin Friday to meet with members of the Seneca County Veteran Service Organization, local veterans and other community officials to discuss implementation of the SFC Heath Robinson Honoring Our PACT Act. In the six months following the time the bill was passed and signed into law by President Joe Biden, Brown has traveled throughout Ohio talking to constituents, community veterans and veteran service organizations about implementation and the use of resources provided by the new law. Among local veterans, other attendees included Tiffin Mayor Dawn Iannantuono, Tiffin police Chief David Pauly, faculty and staff from Tiffin and Heidelberg universities, Seneca County Veteran Service Organization Director Tara Balliet, members from the Mental Health and Recovery Services Board and Jeremy Parkins, founder of the Dress, Right, Dress veteran nonprofit. Attendee Chris Novak is in the graduate admissions office at Tiffin University. Novak served as an U.S. Army infantry combat veteran in Iraq in 2005. He was exposed to burn pits during his time in the army. "Honestly, it was 24-hour-a-day exposure. They were always going, always smoking. You could always smell it," Novak said. "Everything you could imagine was burned 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It's a nice toxic cocktail." The PACT Act provides critical health care coverage to veterans suffering from diseases and illnesses caused by burn pits maintained by the military. Burn pits are football field-sized open fire bits used to destroy anything and everything, ranging from medical waste and chemicals to weapons. The PACT Act was signed into law in August 2022. SFC Heath Robinson, the bill's namesake, was an Ohio National Guardsman who served in Kosovo and Iraq, next to the burn pits. Years after returning home, Robinson, once healthy and a distance runner, became sick with a rare cancer. In May 2020, Robinson passed away from a rare lung disease. He is survived by his wife, Danielle, and now 9-year-old daughter, Brielle. "This is the most wonderful thing that has passed in 19 years," Balliet said. "The only real kink I see with this is training with VA agents, getting them up to speed to do the claims, the level and influx of claims they're faced with. The backlog at the VA is just going to exponentially grow." Two Tiffin veterans in attendance, Jody O'Millian and Parkins, also discussed their exposure during their service in the Air Force. "I was never exposed directly to the burn pits," O'Millian said. "However, I was on the flight line for 21 years. I've got weird things going on with my eyes, weird things going with my skin." O'Millian has inhaled jet fumes — a mixture of diesel and kerosene — asbestos dust, oil, hydraulic fluid, Skydrol and glycol. "I got to thinking — is this part of my problem? Is that going to be addressed later? It recently dawned on me since this all came to life," he said. Parkins experienced the same thing, almost identically. He lifted the main landing gear brakes by himself. He inhaled gun cleaning oils, asbestos and other chemicals. "For years, I thought I had rheumatoid," he said. He said he has 17 nodules in his body and a lump on his thyroid that had not been biopsied. Parkins was later diagnosed with Gulf War Syndrome. "Think about all the chemicals every veteran was ever exposed to while they served in the military. And on the flight line, what happens when a jet comes in heavy? They dump fuel over the flight line," he said. "You don't have to be right next to the burn pits." As part of the bill, veterans — sick or not — can sign up through the VA. When a veteran presents with any one of the covered illnesses, they can go to the VA and get care and coverage, Brown said. As more illnesses are diagnosed and suspected to be linked to toxin exposure from military services, the list of covered diseases can grow. Brown, advocates of the PACT Act and veteran service organizations urge veterans of any age to sign up through the VA. "We're already seeing hundreds of thousands of veterans go in and sign up," Brown said. "I want to encourage all of you, including people in college, to make sure as many veterans as possible sign up." There is no cost to sign up and the process can be completed at va.gov/pact