• Stacey Pereira, Calvin Apodaca, Kyle Slominski, Rachele K Lipsky, Cristian Coarfa, Cheryl L Walker, Amy L McGuire, Lea Steele, and Drew A Helmer.
• Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77063, USA.
• Mil Med. 2024 Sep 23.

IntroductionAfter the Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act in 2022, there has been a great interest in studying toxic exposures encountered during military service. Development of epigenomic biomarkers for exposures could facilitate understanding of exposure-related health effects, but such testing could also provide unwanted information.Materials And MethodsWe explored attitudes toward epigenomic biomarker research and the potential to test for past exposures using semistructured interviews with Veterans (n = 22) who experienced potentially harmful exposures.ResultsTwenty Veterans said they would hypothetically want to receive epigenomic information related to their toxic exposures and potential health impacts as part of a research study. Veterans identified 9 potential benefits, including promoting insights concerning intergenerational health, identification of early health interventions, and additional knowledge or explanation for their experiences. Sixteen participants noted potential risks, including psychological distress, receiving nonactionable, uncertain, or inaccurate results, and privacy and discrimination risks. Ten participants identified at least 1 condition in their children that they thought could be related to their exposure and most said they would be interested in receiving research results related to their children's and grandchildren's risk.ConclusionResults suggest that Veterans might welcome benefits of epigenomic research related to military exposures, yet have some concerns about potential negative impacts.© The Association of Military Surgeons of the United States 2024. All rights reserved. For commercial re-use, please contact reprints@oup.com for reprints and translation rights for reprints. All other permissions can be obtained through our RightsLink service via the Permissions link on the article page on our site–for further information please contact journals.permissions@oup.com.

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