Most veterans assume that if an exposure is not on a presumptive list, there is no official record to point to. The military was measuring air, water, and soil at bases the whole time: POEMS site reports, the ILER exposure record, and VA's own Training Letter 10-03 fact sheets document what was present where you served, in the government's own words. A claim built on these records stops arguing about whether the hazard existed.
What these records are and why they matter
The military measured the air, water, and soil at bases and deployment sites around the world, across decades of operations, and wrote the results down. That monitoring did not stop in any one year, it runs from the 1990s through today and is still being added to. Separately, back in 2010, VA wrote a set of internal fact sheets about a handful of specific hazards, one dated example of a much larger and still growing official record. Most veterans never hear about any of it. If your condition is not on a presumptive list, these records can do real work in a claim, because they help show what you were actually around.
Three names to know:
- POEMS, the Periodic Occupational and Environmental Monitoring Summary, a public report card on the environmental conditions at a specific location and date range.
- ILER, the Individual Longitudinal Exposure Record, a DoD and VA system that ties your own deployments to exposure data.
- Training Letter 10-03, the 2010 VA guidance that told its own raters how to handle environmental hazard claims, with fact sheets on burn pits, a sulfur mine fire, hexavalent chromium, contaminated drinking water, and more.
POEMS: site-level environmental monitoring reports
A POEMS summarizes the occupational and environmental health monitoring done at a site during a date range, including air, water, and soil sampling. They are written by Army public health staff, today the Defense Centers for Public Health at Aberdeen, and many are cleared for public release.
Two things to understand about a POEMS:
- It describes the place, not you. It estimates population level health risk for everyone at the site, and it will not say what any one person breathed or touched.
- It is still powerful evidence of what was present. If a POEMS for your base and time frame documents particulate matter, burn pit smoke, or specific chemicals, that is an official record that the hazard existed where you served.
The library is not limited to one conflict or one year. Summaries cover hundreds of locations worldwide, from Southwest Asia to the Horn of Africa to the Balkans and beyond, with date ranges reaching back to the 1990s, and new ones are added as monitoring continues. If a site was monitored during any era of your service, there may be a POEMS for it.
You can search released summaries in the POEMS library maintained by the Defense Centers for Public Health. If your location is not posted, a VSO or accredited representative can ask for the monitoring data behind it.
Training Letter 10-03: VA's own exposure fact sheets
On April 26, 2010, the Veterans Benefits Administration sent Training Letter 10-03, "Environmental Hazards in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Military Installations," to its regional offices. It told raters how to develop and decide environmental hazard claims, and it attached fact sheets meant to be handed to C&P examiners. An archived copy of the letter is hosted by the National Veterans Legal Services Program.
What it covered:
- Burn pits in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Djibouti. Air sampling at Joint Base Balad from January to April 2007 detected particulate matter, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds such as benzene and toluene, and dioxins and furans.
- Particulate matter from dust storms and local industry across Iraq and Afghanistan.
- The Mishraq sulfur mine fire near Mosul, Iraq, which burned for roughly three weeks starting June 24, 2003 and released sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide. For veterans who served at Mosul Airfield or Q West during that window, the letter said a lay statement of exposure is sufficient.
- Hexavalent chromium from sodium dichromate at the Qarmat Ali water treatment plant near Basrah in 2003. The letter conceded exposure outright for National Guard members from Indiana, West Virginia, South Carolina, and Oregon who served there between April and September 2003.
- Camp Lejeune drinking water contaminated with TCE and PCE from the 1950s through the mid 1980s.
- The Atsugi waste incinerator in Japan, which burned industrial and medical waste near the naval air facility from 1985 to 2001.
Three instructions in the letter still matter today:
- For burn pits, a veteran's own statement of being near the pits is generally enough to establish the exposure when service records show service in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Djibouti.
- Raters were told to apply the benefit of the doubt and read these claims broadly and liberally.
- The fact sheets were supposed to go to the examiner and stay in the file, so the examiner understood the hazard before writing an opinion.
The letter is from 2010, so treat it as context rather than current policy. Much of its subject matter is now handled by the PACT Act presumptives and the current M21-1 manual. Its lasting value is simple: it shows VA has formally acknowledged these specific hazards, locations, and dates since 2010, in its own words.
ILER: the individual longitudinal exposure record
The Individual Longitudinal Exposure Record is a shared DoD and VA system that links your assignments and deployments to occupational and environmental monitoring data across your whole career. VA clinicians and claims staff can already use it, and direct self service access for veterans has been expanding.
You do not need to wait for a login. A VA provider can review exposure information during a Toxic Exposure Screening, and an accredited representative can request exposure records while developing your claim.
Where these fit in a claim
Work in this order:
- Check the presumptive lists first. If your condition is presumptive under the PACT Act or another rule, you generally do not need to prove the exposure caused it. Our toxic exposure guides cover what is included.
- If your condition is not presumptive, you can still pursue direct service connection. You need a current diagnosis, a credible in service exposure, and a medical opinion connecting the two. This is where the paper trail matters most.
- Use POEMS and the Training Letter 10-03 fact sheets as exposure evidence. They document what was in the air, water, or soil where you served, in the government's own words.
- Give copies to the person writing the medical opinion. A C&P examiner or private physician who can read exactly what was detected at your base writes a far stronger opinion than one working from memory. That is how VA intended its own fact sheets to be used.
How to get your records
- Search the POEMS library for each base or camp where you served, and save the PDF with your claim file.
- Ask your VA provider or accredited representative about your ILER record, and request a Toxic Exposure Screening if you have not had one.
- Download the archived Training Letter 10-03 if your claim involves burn pits, the 2003 sulfur fire, Qarmat Ali, Atsugi, or Camp Lejeune.
- Round out thin records with buddy statements, unit histories, and your own detailed statement of where you were and what you remember. The training letter itself told raters that lay evidence is acceptable for exposure events.
Conditions the training letter told raters to watch for
Training Letter 10-03 told rating staff which claims to look at closely for veterans with Southwest Asia service: respiratory, skin, autoimmune, neurological, and gastrointestinal conditions. Many veterans never connect these to a burn pit or a dust storm, so the letter told staff to review for exposure on their own and to give the benefit of the doubt to the veteran. If you have one of these conditions and you served in Iraq, Afghanistan, or nearby, it is worth naming the exposure in your claim even if you are not certain it is the cause.
For an undiagnosed illness or a cluster of symptoms with no clear cause after service in the Southwest Asia theater, a separate path under 38 CFR 3.317 may apply. That path does not ask you to prove the exact toxin, only qualifying service and a qualifying chronic disability.
What exposure records can and cannot do for a claim
Exposure by itself is not a disability, and VA said as much in the training letter. A claim still needs a current diagnosed condition. What these records do is connect the dots between your service and your diagnosis, using the government's own monitoring data. This page is an educational reference, not legal advice. If the records raise more questions than they answer, a VA accredited representative can help you put them to work.
Before your exposure claim goes in, ask
- Is the condition already presumptive under the PACT Act or another rule? If so, the exposure fight may be unnecessary.
- Has the POEMS library been searched for every base and camp where you served, with the PDFs saved to the claim file?
- Does Training Letter 10-03 cover your hazard (burn pits, the 2003 Mishraq sulfur fire, Qarmat Ali, Atsugi, Camp Lejeune), where lay evidence of the exposure may be enough?
- Has a Toxic Exposure Screening been requested so the exposure is flagged in your VA health record, and has ILER been reviewed?
- Did the person writing the medical opinion actually receive the monitoring data, so the nexus opinion cites what was detected rather than working from memory?
- For Southwest Asia service with an undiagnosed illness, has 38 CFR 3.317 been considered? That path does not require naming the exact toxin.