Kim Brooks knows she’ll never get back her husband, Army Lt. Col. Timothy Brooks.
He died of brain cancer in 2004 after serving at Karshi-Khanabad Air Base in Uzbekistan — an initial staging ground for the war in Afghanistan — but she serves as an anguished voice for other veterans who were exposed to toxins there.
“Tim has been gone for so long, but I loved that man with all my heart, and he would want me to fight,” the Norwood mother of their four children said as she wept. “He’s not here to do that for other veterans. So I fight for them in his name.”
Bay State U.S. Rep. Stephen F. Lynch on Thursday introduced a bipartisan bill that would require the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide health care and benefits to veterans who served at Karshi-Khanabad Air Base and have since been diagnosed with toxic exposure-related illnesses and diseases.
The K2 Veterans Care Act, which was introduced with Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., and Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., would establish a “presumption of service connection” for the veterans who were diagnosed with cancer and other diseases after serving at Karshi-Khanabad, where jet fuel and other contaminants were discovered.
“Almost two decades ago, our K2 heroes and their families risked everything to defend our country following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks,” said Lynch, whose House Oversight and Reform Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security investigation led to the release of declassified Department of Defense documents detailing K2 veterans’ exposure to toxins.
“Despite clear evidence uncovered by the National Security Subcommittee that K2 veterans were exposed to cancer-causing hazards, the VA continues to reject their claims for service-connected disability benefits,” Lynch said in a statement. “Our veterans and their families deserve better.”
As many as 15,000 U.S. service members were deployed to K2 Air Base — a former Soviet military site leased to the U.S. by the Uzbek government between 2001 and 2005— to support military operations in northern Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Declassified DOD documents showed that K2 service members were exposed to multiple cancer-causing toxic chemicals and radiological hazards, including depleted uranium.
The U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine found that “the potential for daily contact with radiation exists for up to 100% of the assigned units” at the K2 base, according to a September 2004 health assessment.
The VA could not immediately be reached for comment. Last April, it announced that it would study cancers and other illnesses among K2 veterans, but results from the study are not expected for at least 18 months.
