The fastest verified route is the VA's own Toxic Exposure Screening (TES) resource pages and the Veterans Health Administration's Exposure Ed app, which staff reach through VA intranet SharePoint and the VA App Store rather than the public internet. Staff should treat the VA Office of Veterans Affairs' Environmental Health Registry and the War Related Illness and Injury Study Center (WRIISC) as the two authoritative hubs, because those offices own the exposure content that TES training points to. The condition that matters: many of these links sit behind VA network authentication, so a personal phone or home browser will often show a login wall instead of the resource.
Which VA Office Owns the TES Training and Resource Library
The Veterans Health Administration's Office of Primary Care runs the TES program itself, and that office publishes the clinical training modules, the screening tool script, and the staff-facing FAQ on the VA intranet. According to VA's VHA Directive 1301 series on toxic exposure screening, every VA facility must designate a TES champion who maintains the local resource folder. That champion is the single most reliable human contact for staff who cannot find a link.
The public-facing mirror of those materials lives under VA's "Environmental Exposures" health topic pages at va.gov, which duplicate roughly 80% of the clinical content without the intranet navigation. Staff who only need background reading, not the training completion tracking, can use the public pages without authentication. The intranet copy is the one that counts for competency documentation.
Losing the bookmark is the most common failure. VA's intranet search indexes SharePoint by title, not by URL, so staff who search "TES resources" often land on an old 2022 slide deck instead of the current folder. The fix is to search the exact folder name "Toxic Exposure Screening" and filter by modified date, not to search the acronym.
One practical marker: current TES clinical materials are dated by fiscal year, so a folder labeled FY2026 is the version aligned to the reporting period that began October 1, 2025. Anything labeled FY2023 or earlier predates the most recent screening question revisions and should not be used for training new staff.
The Five Screens That Route Staff to Exposure Content
The TES screening instrument asks about five exposure categories, and each answer maps to a specific VA resource page rather than a single generic handout. Knowing that mapping cuts search time dramatically for staff who are answering veteran questions at the point of care.
| Screening domain | Where the linked resource lives | What staff typically need from it |
|---|---|---|
| Airborne hazards (burn pits, dust, fumes) | VA Airborne Hazards and Open Burn Pit Registry pages | Registry eligibility rules and the questionnaire |
| Water contamination (Camp Lejeune) | VA Camp Lejeune health page and VA claims guidance | Covered dates and presumptive conditions |
| Radiation exposure | VA radiation-exposed veterans page | Service-era eligibility and registry enrollment |
| Agent Orange and herbicides | VA herbicide exposure page | Location and date lists and presumptive conditions |
| Gulf War and other specific service | WRIISC and Gulf War illness pages | Research summaries and clinical guidance |
Each domain page carries a "for health care providers" subsection that the veteran-facing page does not surface prominently. Staff who bookmark only the top-level page will miss the clinician PDFs, which include the exposure history-taking worksheet and the referral criteria to environmental health registries.
The registry pages are not interchangeable with the screening tool. Screening identifies exposure; registries enroll the veteran in a longitudinal health study with its own consent process. Handing a veteran a registry link without explaining that distinction creates the most frequent complaint WRIISC staff report.
One dated boundary worth memorizing: the PACT Act expanded presumptive conditions across multiple eras, and VA's exposure pages were rewritten around that expansion. Any printed handout older than the PACT Act signing in August 2022 is out of date for presumptive condition lists, even if the exposure science has not changed.
How to Install and Use the Exposure Ed App on a VA Device
Exposure Ed is VA's mobile app for clinicians and staff, delivering short modules on military environmental exposures with continuing education credit in some tracks. It is distributed through VA's internal app catalog for staff devices, and the public app store listing carries a separate, reduced feature set. Install it from the VA-approved catalog on a government-furnished device to get the full module library.
1: Open the VA internal app catalog on your government-furnished device and search "Exposure Ed." 2: Confirm the publisher line reads Veterans Health Administration before installing. 3: Sign in with your PIV credentials when the app prompts for authentication. 4: Download the exposure module set for your clinical area rather than the full library, which saves device storage. 5: Check the "last updated" date on each module and skip any module older than the current fiscal year.
If the catalog shows no results, your device profile likely lacks the clinical apps entitlement and your local IT service desk must add it. If installation succeeds but modules fail to download, the app is usually trying to reach an internal content server from off-network, so reconnect to the VA network and retry before filing a ticket.
The app is not a substitute for the formal TES training module. Exposure Ed delivers exposure background; the TES training delivers the screening workflow, documentation requirements, and the scripting for the five questions. Staff sometimes assume completing one satisfies the other, and that assumption shows up in audit findings.
Storage is a real constraint on older devices. The full module library with video content runs well beyond what a base-model phone provisions for apps, so the selective download in step four is not optional for most staff.
What the Public VA Exposure Pages Actually Contain
VA's public environmental exposure pages carry a consistent six-part structure: an exposure overview, eligibility and service-era rules, presumptive conditions, registry enrollment, research summaries, and benefits links. Staff can predict what exists on any exposure page once they learn that structure, which makes finding a specific answer faster than scanning.
The weak spot for staff is the research summary section, which summarizes studies without linking to the underlying WRIISC publications, so clinicians who want primary literature have to search PubMed separately. Naming that gap matters because staff often promise veterans a "study" that the page only paraphrases.
Pages are organized by exposure rather than by symptom, so a veteran asking about a specific condition sends staff hunting across several exposure pages. The workaround is VA's presumptive conditions list, which is organized by condition and names the qualifying exposure beside each entry.
Accessibility varies by page age. Pages rewritten during the PACT Act rollout use consistent headings and provider sections; older pages such as some radiation subpages retain legacy formatting and lack the provider subsection entirely. Check the page's last-reviewed date before relying on its structure.
WRIISC and the Environmental Health Registries as Complementary Resources
The War Related Illness and Injury Study Center operates as VA's clinical research arm for deployment-related exposures, with three regional sites that accept provider consultations on complex exposure cases. Staff who face a veteran with overlapping exposures, or an exposure outside the five screening domains, can request a WRIISC consultation rather than guessing at guidance. That consultation pathway is the resource most often missing from local TES folders.
The environmental health registries, including the Airborne Hazards and Open Burn Pit Registry and the Agent Orange Registry, provide the enrollment pathway and the exposure questionnaire instrument. VA's registry pages state eligibility by service era and location, and the questionnaire itself is a useful clinical history tool even for veterans who decline enrollment.
Staff should know that registry enrollment does not create a disability claim and does not guarantee an examination. Veterans frequently conflate the two, and the resulting frustration lands on the screening nurse. Explain the separation at the point of screening.
WRIISC also publishes provider education materials that are more detailed than the app modules, including exposure assessment frameworks for clinicians without environmental medicine training. Those materials are the right referral for a provider who wants depth beyond the app.
How to Verify an Exposure Resource Is Current Before Using It
Staleness is the practical hazard with exposure content, because exposure science and VA policy both move. Three checks catch nearly every outdated resource: the last-reviewed date on the page, the fiscal year label on the training folder, and whether the presumptive conditions list reflects the PACT Act expansion of August 2022. A resource failing any of the three should not be used to answer a veteran's benefits question.
VA's public pages display a last-reviewed date near the page footer, and pages older than about two years warrant a cross-check against the current presumptive conditions list. Intranet training folders carry fiscal year labels in the folder name. The PACT Act check is simplest: if a handout lists presumptive conditions without mentioning burn pits or the expanded eras, it predates the law.
The most dangerous stale resource is a printed burn pit handout from before 2022 that lists a narrow set of presumptive conditions. Staff who hand that to a veteran can cause a veteran to abandon an eligible claim, which is a harm no amount of later correction fully undoes.
Verification is fast once it becomes habit. Fifteen seconds per resource, three checks, and the staff member knows whether to trust it or find the current version.
Where to Find the TES Screening Script and Documentation Guidance
The screening script and documentation templates live in the same intranet folder as the training modules, under a subfolder usually labeled "Clinical Tools" or "Point of Care." The script walks through the five questions with plain-language phrasing for veterans, and the documentation template maps each positive screen to the required follow-up note elements.
Documentation requirements matter for audit purposes. VA's TES reporting tracks whether a positive screen generated a follow-up action, so a screening note that records the exposure but no referral fails the reporting standard even though the conversation happened. The template exists to prevent exactly that failure.
Staff who work in community care or non-VA settings may not have intranet access at all, and for them the public pages plus the published directive are the available substitute. The directive text is publicly available and describes the required screening and follow-up elements without the internal templates.
Training completion is tracked separately from resource access, usually through VA's talent management system rather than the intranet folder. Staff who found the resources but cannot find their completion record are looking in the wrong system.
Common Reasons Staff Cannot Reach These Resources
Three failures account for most access problems: authentication walls, stale bookmarks, and misrouted searches. Each has a distinct fix, and troubleshooting in the wrong order wastes time.
| Symptom | Likely cause | First fix to try |
|---|---|---|
| Login page instead of content | Resource is intranet-only | Connect to VA network or VPN, then retry |
| Old slide deck instead of current folder | Intranet search returns stale results | Search exact folder name and sort by modified date |
| App catalog shows nothing | Missing clinical apps entitlement | Ask IT service desk to add entitlement to device profile |
| Module download stalls | Internal content server unreachable off-network | Reconnect to VA network and retry download |
| No completion record | Looking in intranet instead of talent management system | Check the learning management system record |
The stale bookmark failure deserves emphasis because it is invisible. A staff member with a saved link from three years ago will open a page that loads fine, shows plausible content, and is wrong. Nothing on the screen says "outdated" except the review date, which is why the verification habit in the previous section is the real defense.
Personal devices are the other routine trap. Staff who try to open an intranet resource from a home computer get an authentication wall and conclude the resource does not exist. It exists; it is network-gated.
How Facility TES Champions and Trainers Fit In
Every VA facility designates a TES champion under the directive, and that person maintains the local resource folder, answers staff questions, and receives updates from the national program office. For staff who cannot find a resource after trying the routes above, the champion is the escalation path, and the champion usually has the current links in a single saved collection.
Trainers who onboard new staff should build the resource orientation into TES training rather than assuming new hires will find the folder. The most common onboarding gap reported anecdotally is that new staff learn the screening questions but never learn where the linked resources live.
Champions also hold the local answer on which registry enrollment pathway works at that facility, since enrollment logistics occasionally vary by site. National guidance gives the rules; the champion gives the local practice.
If a facility's champion role is vacant, the national program office mailbox listed on the intranet TES page is the fallback contact. Route the question there rather than to a general IT ticket, which will not resolve a content question.
FAQ
Does the Exposure Ed app work on a personal phone?
No, the full module library requires VA authentication and internal content server access, so a personal device typically reaches only the reduced public listing. Install it on a government-furnished device through the VA app catalog for the complete set. If you must use a personal device, expect module downloads to fail off-network and plan around a VA-network device instead.
Is the burn pit registry the same as the toxic exposure screening?
They are separate: screening is a clinical conversation documented in the health record, while registry enrollment is a voluntary longitudinal study with its own consent. A veteran can screen positive without enrolling, and enrolling does not generate a disability claim. Keep the two distinct when explaining next steps.
How old is too old for an exposure handout?
Treat anything predating the August 2022 PACT Act as suspect for presumptive condition lists, and cross-check any page whose last-reviewed date is more than about two years old. Exposure science ages more slowly than benefits policy, so a 2019 research summary may still be accurate while a 2019 benefits handout is not. Check the review date every time.
Can I get WRIISC consultation for a veteran outside the five screening domains?
Yes, WRIISC accepts provider consultations on complex deployment-related exposure cases, including exposures the five screening questions do not cover. Route the request through the consultation pathway rather than trying to force the case into a screening domain. The consultation note templates are part of the WRIISC provider materials.
Why does my intranet search return a 2022 slide deck?
VA intranet search ranks by title match and does not weight recency, so older decks with the same title outrank current folders. Search the exact folder name and sort results by modified date, then open the fiscal-year-labeled folder. Bookmark the current folder so the next search is unnecessary.
Where is my TES training completion recorded?
Completion is tracked in VA's talent management system, not in the intranet resource folder, so a staff member who finished the module but sees no record is usually looking in the wrong system. Check the learning management system record first. If it is genuinely missing, the facility TES champion can confirm whether the module was assigned under the current catalog code.
What should I hand a veteran who screens positive but declines registry enrollment?
Give the public exposure page for that domain plus the presumptive conditions list, and document the referral offered even though enrollment was declined. The documentation of the offer matters for reporting, and the public pages give the veteran a route to enroll later without another visit. Do not substitute a printed handout older than the PACT Act.
This article is general educational information about locating VA resources for staff and is not a diagnosis, treatment plan, legal opinion, or benefits determination. Exposure science and VA policy change, so verify each resource against the current VA pages and your facility's TES champion before acting on it. Veterans with health concerns should consult a qualified VA clinician, and anyone in immediate danger should contact local emergency services or, in the United States, call or text 988 for crisis support.