Veterans are suffering from lung diseases after deployment
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- On this Veterans Day, there's a renewed focus on medical issues many vets struggle with. Some of them who served in Iraq and Afghanistan now have lung disease.
Doctors say burn pits to dispose of waste in war zones caused smoke that carried a wide range of toxic substances inevitably causing lung damage.
Air Force veteran and retired tech sergeant John Sepulveda suffers from debilitating health problems related to his deployment in Afghanistan more than 10 years ago.
"I get flu-like symptoms every month. I have lots of body pain. I cough blood. Headaches now from all the coughing," Sepulveda said. "The scary part is I'm in my 40s and this happened to me in my 30s. What's going to happen down the road?"
Military service members can experience lung disease after harmful exposures from burn pits, desert dust and IED blasts.
"In some of our patients who are veterans with respiratory diseases from deployment, they may actually get worse," Dr. Cecile Rose from the Center for Deployment-Related Lung Disease said.
She aims to better understand and diagnose these injuries and develop treatments.
"Asthma is one of the diagnoses where we have something to offer," Dr. Rose said. "For the small airways disease or bronchiolitis, we are starting to look at some of the treatment possibilities as we understand the inflammation that causes this scarring."
The PACT Act is a new law that expands healthcare and benefits for veterans and adds to the list of health conditions that exposures can cause.
"The fact that these diseases are being recognized and the conditions are being accounted for is huge for anyone involved because it's a very frustrating process," Sepulveda said.