PACT Act in Motion: VA Launches Review of Toxic Exposures and Neurodegenerative Disease—Don’t Sit This Out

Matthew Feehan
1 day ago
3 min read

The Department of Veterans Affairs just opened a formal public comment period and announced its annual PACT Act listening session under 38 U.S.C. § 1172. This is the regulatory machinery that decides whether future veterans get presumptive service connection—or spend the rest of their lives fighting denials.

If you’ve ever said “VA never listens,” this is where that claim gets tested. The record is being built right now, and this is your chance to put lived experience, medical reality, and hard evidence on the record.

Under the PACT Act, VA is required to assess scientific literature and historical claims data to determine whether toxic military exposures are linked to serious neurodegenerative diseases. That assessment feeds directly into whether VA must recommend new presumptions of service connection. Presumptions are the difference between care and compensation now versus a decade of appeals.

This comment period closes April 13, 2026. The listening session is May 14, 2026. Miss it, and VA will still move forward—just without your voice on the record. Make your comment here: docket VA-2026-VACO-0001(regulations.gov)

VA and the National Academies of Sciences are reviewing:

• Parkinson’s disease

• Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias

• Motor neuron diseases (including primary lateral sclerosis)

• Myasthenia gravis

• Peripheral neuropathy

• Transverse myelitis

• Neuromyelitis optica

• Inclusion body myositis

If you or someone you care for is living with any of these—or treating them, studying them, or litigating them—your input matters. VA is examining links between neurodegenerative disease and exposures that were routine parts of military life:

• Burn pits and fine particulate matter

• Jet fuels and fuel vapors

• Industrial solvents and degreasers

• Pesticides and herbicides

• Heavy metals

• PFAS (“forever chemicals”)

This comment period matters because historical VA claims data is not neutral—it reflects decades of denial culture, shifting evidentiary standards, and long periods when toxic exposures and disease latency were poorly understood or simply ignored. VA is now proposing to rely on that same data as part of its assessment, which makes silence dangerous. If advocates, clinicians, attorneys, caregivers, and veterans do not speak up, there is a real risk that past adjudicative errors will be folded into future policy and labeled “evidence-based.” This is the moment to insist on transparency in how claims data is used, safeguards against legacy denial bias, proper treatment of delayed onset and latency, meaningful weight given to caregiver testimony and longitudinal medical records, and inclusion of non-deployed and stateside exposure cohorts. If those realities are not put on the record now, they effectively do not exist.

HOW TO TAKE ACTION

Submit a written public comment to VA under Docket No. VA-2026-VACO-0001 by April 13, 2026.
Register for the virtual listening session on May 14, 2026. Verbal comments are prioritized for those who register early.
Submit supporting materials—medical literature, case data, expert statements, or caregiver testimony—by April 30, 2026.

You don’t need perfect language. Keep it short and readable, and write with the understanding that a VA civil servant—another human being—is reviewing your comment on the record.

CVoA’s Position

Combat Veterans of America is registered to participate in VA’s virtual PACT Act listening session on May 14, 2026, from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. (ET). We are not attending to make general statements or trade slogans. We are showing up with a precise, process-driven concern that goes to the heart of whether this assessment produces justice—or quietly recycles past failure.

In advance of the session, CVoA has asked VA a direct question: how exactly the Department intends to operationalize “historical detailed claims data” in this assessment. Specifically, whether the Technical Working Group will disaggregate claims outcomes over time to account for changes in denial rationales, evidentiary standards, and latency assumptions—so that decades of adverse adjudication practices do not distort or suppress associations between military environmental exposures and neurodegenerative disease.

This matters because historical claims data is not neutral. It reflects periods when exposures were unrecognized, when latency was misunderstood, and when veterans were denied not because the science was wrong—but because VA policy lagged reality. If those artifacts are folded uncritically into a modern scientific assessment, the result runs the risk of not being truly 'evidence-based' policy.

CVoA’s position is simple: future presumptions cannot be built on uncorrected past error. If VA intends to rely on claims data, it must also acknowledge how that data was generated, under what standards, and at whose expense. Anything less risks repeating the same harm under a new statutory banner.

This listening session and comment period exist for one reason: to put these issues on the record before VA makes decisions that will govern veterans’ lives for decades. CVoA intends to do exactly that—and we encourage every advocate, clinician, attorney, caregiver, and veteran to do the same.

CVoA can be reached at media@combatvetsofamerica.org