Fellow Missileers:

ILER Rollout — Progress Driven by the ICBM Community, but Gaps Remain

The Military Health System has launched the Individual Longitudinal Exposure Record (ILER), a web-based system designed to link service members and veterans to occupational and environmental exposures and improve health care, claims decisions, and long-term outcomes.

ILER has been in development since 2013 under DoD/DoW and White House direction to better track deployment and occupational exposures. It consolidates data from multiple systems, connects individuals to exposure events, and provides clinicians, claims adjudicators, and policymakers with actionable information on exposure-related conditions.

It currently includes over 1.5 million exposure-related records and is designed to:

•   Support clinical care and preventive health

•   Inform VA claims and benefits decisions

•   Enable research, cohort analysis, and policy development

•   Reduce the burden on veterans to prove exposure

Initial access is now available for current service members, with veterans expected to follow.

Why now: While ILER has existed as a requirement for over a decade, its urgency and rollout were accelerated by the ICBM community and the growing number of cancer cases and losses that could no longer be ignored.  The Torchlight Initiative and advocacy from groups like AAFM helped accelerate expanding ILER to address concerns over exposures to those who serve the nuclear deterrence mission.

What it shows: ILER links missile community service (including Launch Control Centers) to documented exposure data.

Important clarification: ILER does not publish a single “list” of hazards. Exposures appear within individual records based on available data.

Those records are already reflecting known LCC hazards such as:

•   PCBs, VOCs, and industrial solvents

•   Diesel fuel and combustion byproducts

•   Benzene, formaldehyde, and other carcinogens

•   Radon, particulates, and heavy metals

The challenges: ILER is only as good as the data entered.

For decades, these hazards were not consistently documented in systems like DOEHRS. That failure is likely a contributing factor to where we are today:

•   Delayed diagnoses

•   Poor risk communication

•   Barriers to VA care, service connection to ailments/conditions and benefits

•   Continued exposure risk due to incomplete awareness of hazards

ILER is not a complete/consistent record. Missile community members should expect gaps, inconsistencies, and missing exposures. If it wasn’t documented, it won’t appear.  Individuals must review and correct their records, but ILER is a welcomed start to correcting the issues we have been communicating over the last 5 years.

What to do now:

•   Access and review your ILER

•   Expect gaps and fix them

•   Add missing exposures and locations

•   Continue supporting independent data efforts

What about Maintainers, Defenders, Chefs, Other Career Fields and ICBM Facilities?

Torchlight Initiative and AAFM will continue to advocate for expansion of hazards encountered at LFs, on-base facilities, back shops and training locations for all career fields serving the ICBM mission.

Bottom line: ILER is real progress—and has the potential to change care, research, and accountability for the current active-duty force.  It does not account for decades of missing documentation on its own. 

ILER Factsheet.pdf

Sincerely,

Jim 

James F. Warner

Executive Director