Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina is one of America’s largest military training facilities in the country. It is also has a toxic history due to contaminated water that was found in the drinking supply. Nearly half a million people may have been exposed to contaminated water at the base during the last thirty years. Former residents of Camp Lejeune suffer from an abnormally high rate of cancer and various other diseases. Children born at Camp Lejeune also show signs of leukemia and brain cancer.
From the late 1950′s to around 1987, Marines and their families drank, bathed in and cooked with contaminated water. The families at Camp Lejeune were unknowingly consuming toxins with concentrations up to 240-3400 times permitted by federal safety standards. Lymphoma, lower intestinal disorders, still born births, birth defects, reproductive disorders have been mentioned in lawsuits related to the consumption of contaminated water at Camp Lejeune.
Perchloroethylene or PCE is thought to be the cause of the contamination. PCE is a deadly chemical found in dry cleaning facilities. In fact, the armed forces internally blamed the tainted water on an off-base dry cleaners. Scientists with the National Research Council confirmed that residents who lived on the base and consumed the water between the 1950′s and the 1980′s had most likely been exposed to PCE or tricholorethlene (TCE). A lawsuit filed last July states claims that the government knowingly exposed servicemen, civilians, and their families to dangerous chemicals while minimizing the effects exposure to the water could have on their health in a series of public statements riddled with misinformation. Similar lawsuits involving those whose health and lives have been affected by Camp Lejeune continue to pop up around the country. The military, however, claims that the results of the tests have been inconclusive making it impossible to the link the thousands of cancer cases with the water at Camp Lejeune.
