War Related Illness and Injury Study Center
Current Veteran Exposure Cohorts
Complex Exposure Threats Center of Excellence (CETCE)
Veteran services at CETCE are focused on high-risk and high-need individuals within each cohort through clinical consultation, innovative research, targeted education, and health surveillance monitoring.
Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD)
Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) personnel encounter unique military occupational and environmental exposure health concerns due to complex exposures (blasts, toxic chemicals, heavy metals) with poorly understood outcomes, hazardous operations, and frequent high tempo combat deployments.
CETCE focuses on EOD Veterans who may present with complex and challenging health symptoms requiring specialized knowledge and expertise unavailable in traditional healthcare settings.
Anomalous Health Incidents (AHI)
CETCE works closely with Department of Defense (DOD) to improve VA's understanding of how poorly understood symptoms linked to Anomalous Health Incidents (AHI, or Havana Syndrome) may impact Veteran health.
The cause of AHI is unclear and symptoms may include dizziness, cognitive difficulties, and auditory disturbances. For this reason, CETCE in collaboration with DoD and academic institutions, is developing clinical and research programs to examine, diagnose, and develop treatments for Veterans with AHI symptoms.
Chemical Warfare Agent (CWA) Exposure
Veterans and service members have reported Chemical Warfare Agents (CWA) exposures, which include blister/mustard agents, nerve agents, chlorine, and other weaponized toxic industrial chemicals (TICs) or toxic industrial materials (TIMs)).
To monitor the health of this cohort, DoD and VA offered health evaluations to Service Members and Veterans reporting such exposures. In collaboration with VET-HOME, CETCE reviews data from post-deployment health screens, operational reports, or self-identifications of potential CWA exposure during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) or Operation New Dawn (OND) between March 19, 2003 to December 31, 2011. Future reports of CWA exposure will be considered for cohort inclusion.
Qarmat Ali Deployment Exposure Cohort
The Qarmat Ali Water Treatment Plant (WTP) in Iraq was contaminated with sodium dichromate, a corrosion control chemical. In 2003, Army personnel were exposed to sodium dichromate for an average of 18.5 days, with estimated exposure times ranging from 2 to 720 hours. CETCE monitors the overall health of Veterans at the WTP in Qarmat Ali and works closely with VET-HOME who have previously offered environmental health registry evaluations and military environmental exposure assessments for these exposed Veterans.
