Re: Tainted Water in the Land of Semper Fi

[Stella Bourassa <Stellalogic@cfl.rr.com>]

How does one measure the 'worth' of their sick child or themselves?  I know
that question all too well personally.  How much time is and will continue
to be wasted at finger pointing and 'potential, possible, probable, etc.
health impact' arguments and debates while innocent families continue to
suffer?  That last sentence may sound melodramatic to some but I doubt it
does to families like the Bryon's.

I wonder if major media stations would broadcast a type of SOS to those who
lived on or near Camp LeJeune, N.C. sharing the contents of this posting and
asking them to contact the Washington Post and the commander of this
installation sharing their illnesses and stories.  The point of such an
exercise would be to turn from 'possible health impacts' to 'actual health
impacts'.  I do not need to state any further what 'actual health impacts'
would imply.

Stella
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "CPEO Moderator" <cpeo@cpeo.org>
To: <cpeo-military@igc.topica.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2004 10:52 AM
Subject: Tainted Water in the Land of Semper Fi


> North Carolina
> WASHINGTON POST
> Tainted Water in the Land of Semper Fi
> Marines Want to Know Why Base Did Not Close Wells When Toxins Were Found
>
> By Manuel Roig-Franzia and Catharine Skipp
> Wednesday, January 28, 2004; Page A03
>
> CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. --
>
> A military engineer assigned in 1980 to test the drinking water at this
> sprawling Marine Corps base punctuated his findings with a handwritten
> exclamation point.
>
> "WATER HIGHLY CONTAMINATED WITH . . . CHLORINATED HYDROCARBONS
> (SOLVENTS)!" William C. Neal wrote in capital letters on one of his
> surveillance reports in early 1981.
>
> A private firm followed up with tests the next year. One of its samples
> showed an astonishing result: 1,400 parts per billion -- 280 times the
> level now considered safe for drinking water -- of trichloroethylene, a
> likely cancer-causing chemical used for degreasing machinery that can
> impair the development of fetuses, weaken the immune system, and damage
> kidneys and livers. Other samples showed as little as 1 part per billion
> to as many as 104 parts per billion -- more than 20 times the level now
> considered safe -- of tetrachloroethylene, a toxic dry-cleaning chemical
> that can seep into body fat and slowly release cancer-causing compounds.
>
> The number of people who may have drunk the tainted water, bathed in it,
> had water fights with it is staggering: The Marine Corps estimates
> 50,000 Marines and their families lived in base housing areas that may
> have been fed by the wells before they were closed in 1985. Victim
> advocacy groups place the figure even higher, at 200,000, which would
> make Camp Lejeune one of the largest contaminated-water cases in U.S.
> history.
>
> Already, more than 270 tort claims have been filed with the Navy's judge
> advocate general's office by former residents, who are required by law
> to file claims with the military before proceeding with any possible
> action in civilian courts.
>
> One of those claims was filed by a Marine air traffic controller named
> Jeff Byron. Within months of the 1982 tests, Byron moved his family into
> base housing at Lejeune, grateful to leave behind a rickety mobile home
> in favor of a modest townhouse with a postage-stamp back yard. Byron and
> his wife, Mary, were not told about the water-sampling results, and
> nearly two decades would pass before they would find out about them. Now
> he wakes up thinking about all the frozen lemonade and apple juice he
> mixed with tap water for Andrea, who was born three months before he
> moved on base, and for Rachel, who was born two years after.
>
> Both of his girls have been beset with a lifetime of ailments: Rachel,
> who is developmentally disabled, was born with a cleft palate and needed
> leg braces as a child. She has spina bifida; a gangly, arachnoid cyst on
> her spine that cannot be removed; and brittle, rotting teeth. Andrea had
> a rare bone marrow syndrome known as aplastic anemia and has been told
> by her doctors that the disease could recur if she becomes pregnant.
>
> "I find myself asking, 'What if I hadn't joined the Marine Corps?' "
> said Byron, who left the military for the private sector in 1985.
>
> No one knows for sure whether the water at Lejeune made Byron's children
> ill or whether it sickened thousands of other former residents -- both
> Marines and civilians living on base -- hundreds of whom have organized
> into a lobbying group known as Water Survivors. The group's members
> blame the contamination for a variety of ills, from chronic headaches to
> virulent cancers, from infertility to the incurable leukemia that
> claimed their children's lives.
>
> This article can be viewed at:
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54143-2004Jan27.html
>
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