Local Army Veteran blames toxic environment for%

Описание: An Albany Army Veteran told CBS6 News that she and hundreds of other veterans who served at Fort McClellan in Alabama are sick and she believes the environment is to blame.
Sue Frasier leads the group The Fort McClellan Veterans Stakeholders Group. She just returned from Washington, DC where she said she met with a representative with the VA and shared her story.
Frasier said she traveled to Fort McClellan in Anniston, Alabama in 1970, for boot camp. It was a job she was anxious to start. Decades later, she is afraid her work made her sick.
Little by little, I was getting the idea that I was perhaps a toxic exposure medical patient, she said.
Fraiser said that shortly after she left the base, she started having asthma symptoms, stomach problems and worse. She said she left the Army in 1972 because of her health.
I was beginning to accept vomiting as a regular daily reality for me. And I was masking it, and trying to push through it.
Now, Frasier said she has found other veterans with similar stories. She said she thinks that can be attributed to a combination of environmental impacts on and around the base. According to EPA documents, water and soil contamination was found at the Anniston Army Depot nearby and PCB s were found in the soil in the Town of Anniston. The EPA has worked to clean that up.
Frasier said she wants her case and others like it, to be re-classified as toxic exposure, so their care is fast tracked. But she said the VA hasn t acted on that.
We're bewildered, we don't understand it, we're confused, said Fraiser.
Democratic Congressman Paul Tonko has introduced a bill that would create a registry for these veterans to explore the health concerns. He said it would allow the VA to track cases, study the links and decide what the causes may be. It has been stuck in committee.
I think it shows callousness. I don't think there's the respect that they deserve being shown, he said. I have not received any sound rationale as to why this should not be done.
We will continue to fight for legislation to provide for a response for these individuals who served their nation so well and they have been impacted health wise, said Congressman Tonko, from Amsterdam.
Just last week, Frasier traveled to DC to present her case to a VA representative again. She said she is hopeful new leadership there, will bring about change.
I m hopeful that something voluntary is going to happen so that we don t have to go through the ordeal of an Act of Congress for medical patients, said Frasier.
CBS6 did reach out to the VA, but have not heard back.