Senior Airman Frances Gavalis, a 332nd Expeditionary Logistics Readiness Squadron equipment manager, tosses unserviceable uniform items into a burn pit in Balad, Iraq, in 2008. (Julianne Showalter/U.S. Air Force)

WASHINGTON — Veterans now have until Monday to submit a claim to get backdated benefits for an illness related to toxic exposure because of technical issues with the Department of Veterans Affairs’ website, the agency announced.

Veterans originally had until Wednesday to file a claim, or submit their intent to file a claim, to have their benefits backdated to Aug. 10, 2022, when Biden signed the Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act of 2022, or PACT Act, into law. Thursday marks the one-year anniversary of the law.

Due to the high volume of claims and technical issues on the VA website, people filing for the benefits were sent error messages. Therefore, the VA extended the deadline to Aug. 14 at 11:59 p.m.

“Despite these messages, VA has successfully logged every one of these intends to file — meaning that every veteran or survivor who has received an error message while applying for PACT Act benefits can consider their intent to file complete,” the department said in a statement. “Most importantly, no veteran or survivor will miss out on a single day of benefits due to this issue.”

The PACT Act seeks to provide an easier path to health care and benefits for veterans who served near open-air burn pits, which were used throughout the 1990s and the post-9/11 wars to burn garbage, jet fuel and other materials. Veterans diagnosed with cancer, respiratory issues and lung disease at young ages have blamed exposure to the toxic fumes from these pits, but the VA contended for years that there wasn’t sufficient evidence to support their claims.

Additionally, the PACT Act expanded health care eligibility to post-9/11 combat veterans and added 23 conditions related to burn pits and other toxic exposures to the VA’s list of service presumptions.

The VA announced July 25 that it will review whether three more types of cancers will be added to the list of conditions presumed to be caused by exposure to toxins from military burn pits. The department said it will conduct new studies to determine whether veterans with acute leukemias, chronic leukemias and multiple myeloma outside of the head and neck could have resulted from military service in Iraq, Afghanistan and Southwest Asia.

Since the PACT Act became law, the VA has processed more than 458,000 claims out of more than 843,000 submitted and provided more than $1.85 billion in benefits to veterans and their survivors.