CDC report shows danger at Camp Lejeune

The Virginian-Pilot
© December 11, 2013

 

The horror of Camp Lejeune, already one of the worst cases of drinking water contamination in American history, continues to grow. So does the shame of the U.S. Marine Corps.

Last week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed a long-suspected link between toxic chemicals in drinking water at the base and an increased risk of birth defects and childhood cancer.
The contamination stretches back decades, with exposure ending in 1987, when the Marine Corps closed the last of contaminated wells at the base.

Based on a survey of the parents of more than 12,000 children born at Lejeune between 1968 and 1985, the CDC concluded that pregnant women who drank tap water at the base were four times more likely to have babies with serious birth defects such as spina bifida. The study also found a slightly elevated risk for childhood cancers such as leukemia.

The study is limited in its findings. Researchers told The Associated Press that they were able to confirm only 52 cases of specific illnesses related to chemical exposure at Lejeune based on medical records. The cause can't be definitely shown for other birth defects and cancer diagnoses.

But the CDC study is the latest evidence of widespread health problems linked to leaks from a fuel depot at the base and a dry cleaner outside the base.

Although some of the contaminants were addressed in federal regulations dating to 1963, the Marine Corps repeatedly downplayed health problems at Lejeune over the years and didn't take action until 1985.

By that time, an estimated 1 million Marines and their families had been exposed.

Last year, President Barack Obama signed legislation expanding health care resources for those individuals. (Information on compensation claims for Lejeune veterans and their families can be found at the Department of Veterans Affairs website at http://goo.gl/D48rJS.)

The compensation covers 15 health problems, including multiple forms of cancer. More than 80 men with connections to Lejeune have been diagnosed with a rare form of breast cancer.

For the Marine Corps and the VA, the mission remains much as it was before last week's news. They need to expedite claims and continue reaching out to veterans and their families and to any civilians who may have been exposed to carcinogens at the base.

Research also should continue on the extent of contamination. Among other things, the government needs to delve deeper into reports of problems related to storage of DDT and other insecticides in a building later used as a day care.

The government also must explore further when the contamination began. The legislation covers exposure beginning in 1957, but some research indicates at least one carcinogen may have been present as early as 1948.

Last week's CDC report was difficult but welcome news for Lejeune veterans and family members who've fought many years for answers.

The Marine Corps, the VA, the president and Congress need to continue working to address those concerns.

The loss of human life and the suffering cannot be reversed. But the Marine Corps can ensure it doesn't leave behind the men and women whose health was damaged at Lejeune.

Birth Defects Linked To Contaminated Marine Base Water

Birth Defects Linked To Contaminated Marine Base Water

By Sara Jerome
Contaminated water at a U.S. Marine Corps base in North Carolina may be a cause of neural tube defects (NTDs) in some children, according to a long-awaited study.

The study from the Centers for Disease Control found "associations between TCE and benzene in Camp Lejeune drinking water and NTDs," the report said.

Survey participants reported "35 NTDs, 42 oral clefts, and 29 childhood hematopoietic cancers," the study said. CDC "made extensive efforts to obtain medical information from health providers to confirm reported cases.  ATSDR was able to confirm 15 NTDs, 24 oral clefts, and 13 cancers."

The effects were observed "in children born from 1968 to 1985 whose mothers were exposed to contaminated drinking water in their residences at Camp Lejeune."

The study also observed "weaker associations" between "first trimester exposure to PCE, vinyl chloride, and 1,2- DCE," and childhood hematopoietic cancers such as leukemia.

According to the Associated Press, "a prior CDC study cited a February 1985 level for trichloroethylene of 18,900 parts per billion in one Lejeune drinking water well — nearly 4,000 times today's maximum allowed health limit of 5 ppb. Testing also found high levels of benzene, a fuel additive."

The contamination was caused by "a leaky on-base fuel depot and an off-base dry cleaner," the report said.
In the nearly 30 years since the contamination was first publicly disclosed, "military officials have repeatedly issued public statements downplaying health risks from drinking the tainted water prior to the closure of the most contaminated wells," the AP said.

The base kept using the wells for years even after tainted water was discovered, the AP reported. "The most highly contaminated wells were closed in 1984 and 1985, after a round of more extensive testing found dangerous concentrations of toxins associated with degreasing solvents and gasoline."

Lejeune spokeswoman Captain Maureen Krebs said in a statement published by Reuters that the Marine Corps has supported attempts to study the effects of the tainted water.

"These results provide additional information in support of ongoing efforts to provide comprehensive science-based answers to the health questions that have been raised," she said.

A law passed last year attempted to help those affected by the water. The law provides "medical care to former Marines and their dependents who were exposed to the contaminated wells between 1957 and 1987. The law covers 15 conditions including miscarriage, female infertility, leukemia, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and several other forms of cancer," an editorial in Star News Online said.

Water contamination victim speaks out

McMurray expects VA case to reach full resolution in near future

September 02, 2012 11:12 AM

Spina bifida. Asperger’s syndrome. Tourette’s. Bipolar disorder. Organic brain dysfunction. These are just a few of the diseases William McMurray Jr. suffers from, ailments he says his doctors couldn’t explain for the first 20 years of his life — until they learned of water contamination aboard Camp Lejeune.

His is but one story in what many call the greatest case of contamination in U.S. history. A million Marines, sailors and their families drank, bathed, brushed their teeth, cooked, swam and washed their cars, clothes, dishes and pets in bad water at Lejeune for decades.

“I spent so long not knowing why I am the way I am,” McMurray, 29, said in telephone interviews last week from his Tyler, Texas, home. “When they finally found the conditions and why I was like this I was so ticked.”

The horrors of the contamination weren’t understood immediately. One base housing resident reported the unexplainable death of his dog. Another said goldfish always ended up floating at the top of the aquarium. More than 1,000 babies were stillborn or died in infancy aboard the base from 1947 to 1987, according to an exhaustive survey of death certificates filed at the Onslow County Register of Deeds.

The Department of the Navy recommended 50 years ago the regulation of many of the worst chemicals that found their way into Lejeune’s water supply, according to 1963’s Manual of Naval Preventive Medicine, which was just recently made public.

But throughout the 1960s and 70s, military and civilian employees poured oil into storm drains, improperly disposed of car batteries and tossed out used tires and countless other items around the base, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, which recorded an incident involving the burial of dog carcasses used in radiological testing.

By then, the wells that supplied the base’s potable water swirled with more than 70 toxic chemicals including trichloroethylene, tetrachloroethylene, benzene and vinyl chloride, according to EPA reports.

By 1980, military and civilian scientists were sounding alarms that Lejeune’s water was poisonous, but wells were not closed for another four years and only after state officials became involved, according to transcripts of Congressional hearings on the matter.

McMurray was born at the Naval Hospital on Oct. 24, 1982. His father, a hospital corpsman and Vietnam veteran, had moved his family into base housing in the year prior. By the time McMurray was born, his mother had already had one miscarriage and months spent drinking and using the polluted water in their Tarawa Terrace home.

McMurray was born in a specialized laboratory because of his multiple dysfunctions and doctors didn’t expect him to live long. Even if he did survive, they told his parents, he would never walk. McMurray proved them wrong, but not without consequence. As he grew his development stalled, and he was barely able to speak. It took years before he uttered his first words, and he spent most of his childhood in and out of hospitals undergoing tests for the myriad of conditions with which he has been diagnosed, he said.
Beginning in 1984, military officials began to point publicly to a small, off-base dry cleaner as the source of contamination without disclosing to environmental regulators that depot storage tanks at Hadnot Point aboard base had leaked around 1,500 gallons of fuel into the ground every month for years. When the contamination made headlines, the base’s commanding general assured his Marines and their families that their water was safe when chemical levels were among the highest ever seen in a public water system, according to a series of investigative reports published by newspapers in Florida, which is home to more than 12,000 veterans affected by water contamination — the most of any state except North Carolina.
Trichloroethylene was found at 1,400 parts per billion at Naval Hospital; 1,148 ppb at an elementary school; and 18,900 ppb in a water well — up to 280 times higher than what the EPA considers safe today, according to a review of hundreds of previously safe-guarded military documents made public by the Senate in July.

Lejeune was declared a Superfund site in 1989, giving the EPA authority to clean it up. For the next two decades, veterans fought for answers and help from the government with thousands dying of cancer. Military officials made it difficult for anyone, even federally-funded researchers, to obtain any pertinent information or documentation on the contamination, according to court records and archived reports.

The federal government in 2005 cleared the Marine Corps of any criminal conduct in handling the contamination. An EPA investigator later testified before Congress that he wanted to charge several Lejeune officers with obstruction of justice but had been overruled by a Justice Department counterpart.

When McMurray finally came to terms with his conditions in 2010, he took his case to Veteran’s Affairs, with whom he’s been fighting ever since. By 2011, good news for veterans and dependents like McMurray began to trickle out as the EPA officially ruled Lejeune water contaminant TCE to be a human carcinogen. The issue reached its tipping point in 2012 when lawmakers from North Carolina and Florida crossed the aisle to push through bipartisan legislation. The resulting Aug. 6 law requires Veteran’s Affairs to provide medical treatment to military members and — for the first time — dependents who spent at least a month aboard Lejeune from 1957 to 1987.

Total costs are estimated at $3.9 billion over 10 years. Civilian workers could be entitled to medical benefits under a different law, according to the U.S. Labor Department.

McMurray said his Veteran’s Affairs case is expected to reach full resolution within the next few weeks. Several lawsuits filed by other former Lejeune residents are still pending in federal court. A federal report on the number of diseases linked to the contamination is expected to be completed in 2014.