In response to a request by the Department of Veterans Affairs, the IOM established a committee to oversee the development and evaluation of a model of wartime herbicide exposure for use in studies of Vietnam veterans.  That committee provided scientific advice to a team of researchers from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health (Jeanne Mager Stellman, PhD, Principal Investigator), who were contracted to construct the model.

This report represents the committee’s review of the contractor’s modeling efforts.  Based on this review, the committee concludes that a valid exposure reconstruction model for wartime herbicide exposures of US veterans of Vietnam is feasible.  It therefore recommends that the Department of Veterans Affairs and other government agencies facilitate additional epidemiologic studies of veterans by non-governmental organizations and independent researchers.