[VeteranIssues] Fw: Camp Lejeune
 

I thought I'd pass this on;

From: ColonelDan ColonelDan@worldnet.att.net

target=_blank eudora="autourl">http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news-...mp;ID=s1488348

----- Original Message -----
From: "RHBeeson" <rhbeeson@yahoo.com>
Sent: Monday, February 16, 2004 10:13 AM
Subject: Camp Lejeune, N.C. - Tainted drinking water (Veterans story)


> Monday, February 16, 2004
> Spokesman-Review,
> Spokane, WA
>
> Tainted memories...
>
> ``From his very short life, he's made an impact on a
> lot of people,'' says Anne Townsend of her infant son,
> Christopher, who died in 1967.
>
> Kevin Graman - Staff writer
>
> In January 2000, Tom Townsend was reading
> "Leatherneck," a journal for Marine retirees, when he
> stumbled upon a small article titled, "Did you drink
> Lejeune water during 1968 to 1985?"
>
> The article described a federal survey of women who
> were pregnant during that time at Camp Lejeune, N.C.
>
> Townsend's son Christopher died in 1967, three months
> after his birth, from a heart defect when the family
> lived at Lejeune, the largest Marine base on the East
> Coast.
>
> Townsend, a retired major from Moscow, Idaho, now
> believes contaminated drinking water on base caused
> Christopher's death. For the last four years, Townsend
> has been on a quest to force the Marine Corps to take
> responsibility for it and for the illnesses of
> potentially thousands of military personnel and their
> families who passed through Camp Lejeune.
>
> The Marine Corps, responding in writing to questions
> from The Spokesman-Review, said it "cares deeply about
> our current and former Marines and their families" and
> supports federal efforts to find out who might have
> been affected by contamination before there were
> federal drinking water standards.
>
> Townsend, 73, has been joined by a network of fellow
> retired Marines who believe the Corps has not done all
> it can to help them or identify potential victims of
> the contamination.
>
> "We have made life hell for the Marine Corps,"
> Townsend said, "and intend to continue doing so until
> we get some resolution or we die."
>
> Unanswered questions
>
> Though Christopher Townsend was not born premature, he
> was in trouble from the outset, the result of a
> malformed heart.
>
> After Christopher's birth, Townsend was sent to Camp
> Garcia at Vieques, Puerto Rico. He was there when he
> received a ham radio call from his wife, Anne, that
> their son was in serious trouble. She was desperate
> and asked him to come home to Camp Lejeune.
>
> "My son is in imminent danger of dying, and I think I
> should be there," he told commanding officers. But he
> was denied permission to leave.
>
> He said he left anyway, without orders, on a plane
> that brought a senior officer to Camp Garcia.
>
> "We'll talk about a court-martial later," he said when
> he was challenged at the air field. But no charges
> were brought against Townsend, who was the son of a
> U.S. Naval Academy graduate and veteran of the 1941
> attack on Pearl Harbor.
>
> Two days later, Christopher died at Bethesda Naval
> Hospital in Maryland. If it hadn't been his heart,
> Townsend said, it would have been something else. An
> autopsy showed virtually all of the baby's internal
> organs were damaged.
>
> "I sort of accepted it as God's will," Townsend said.
> But his wife blamed herself. "She always felt she did
> something wrong."
>
> After reading the "Leatherneck" article in 2000,
> Townsend began asking questions -- of the Department
> of the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Departments of
> Treasury and Justice, the Office of Management and
> Budget, the Environmental Protection Agency and
> several members of Congress.
>
> At a time when the Bush administration has backed a
> request by the Pentagon to exempt military bases from
> key environmental laws, Townsend hasn't stopped asking
> questions.
>
> "It's fairly obvious there was a conspiracy," he said.
> The Marine Corps recognized the potential size of the
> liability and "they have been trying to minimalize and
> marginalize the whole thing."
>
> Extent of contamination
>
> Tests done in 1982 of the groundwater beneath the base
> showed levels of trichloroethylene (TCE) as high as
> 1,400 parts per billion, 280 times the level now
> considered safe, according to the Agency for Toxic
> Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). The chemical
> degreaser was poured into the sandy soil and leaked
> from storage tanks buried on the base.
>
> Across the street from the main entrance to Camp
> Lejeune, a dry-cleaning business dumped
> tetrachloroethylene (PCE) into the ground. ATSDR
> reported PCE levels at Camp Lejeune as high as 43
> times what is now considered safe.
>
> These compounds, and other chlorinated hydrocarbons
> found at Camp Lejeune, have been linked to birth
> defects, stunted growth, damaged kidneys and livers,
> weakened immune systems and childhood cancers,
> including leukemia.
>
> Marines and their families lived in base housing using
> this water until 1985, when the wells were closed five
> years after testing began.
>
> "None of us have ever been notified that anything
> happened yet," Townsend said.
>
> The Marine Corps told The Spokesman-Review it informed
> the state of North Carolina of the existence of
> volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in Lejeune water as
> early as December 1984 and told base residents,
> published press releases and a described water quality
> in its base newspaper.
>
> The Marine Corps also said it has assisted the Agency
> for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) in
> identifying potential participants in its studies of
> the health effects of Lejeune water contamination
> beginning in 1999.
>
> The only surveys that have been done, Townsend said,
> were by ATSDR, which interviewed women who were
> pregnant at the base between 1968 and 1985. That time
> period is arbitrary, he said, and only used because
> 1968 was the year North Carolina began putting birth
> records on a computerized database.
>
> "The base is a waste dump," Townsend said of Camp
> Lejeune, which was added to the Superfund list of the
> nation's most contaminated sites in 1989. "What I'm
> asking for today is that the Navy and ATSDR go back
> and look at everybody from 1958 on."
>
> He believes the toxic chemicals had been accumulating
> in Camp LeJeune groundwater since it was built in the
> early 1940s. He said he saw transmission fluid from
> tanks and amphibious vehicles drained into ditches dug
> for that purpose at Hadnot Point, the industrial area
> of Camp Lejeune and the site of the base's original
> water treatment facility.
>
> Townsend said, "all kinds of oils, lubricants,
> cleaners" were dumped into the groundwater through
> sandy soil. "No one was checking for that because
> there were no kind of EPA requirements to look for
> that stuff at the time."
>
> In its written response, the Marine Corps said that
> though it was aware of the presence of VOCs in Camp
> Lejeune water as early as 1980, "there were no
> regulatory standards established for these compounds
> at this time." The Environmental Protection Agency,
> however, did have suggested levels, and the Marine
> Corps said the base's water tested below these levels
> for TCE and only slightly above for PCE.
>
> Townsend's family drank this water while living on
> base from late 1965 until the summer of 1967. Anne
> Townsend asked to be included in the ATSDR survey and
> was denied because she was outside the time frame set
> for the study.
>
> So far, the study has identified 103 cases of birth
> defects or childhood cancers among nearly 12,600
> births, three to five times the normal rate, according
> to a recent report by the Washington Post.
>
> These cases are not confirmed, the Marine Corps told
> The Spokesman-Review.
>
> ATSDR concluded that "there may be an association
> between the drinking water and adverse pregnancy
> outcomes" and that additional studies were needed.
>
> Looking for answers
>
> What studies have been done, Townsend said, are
> "inconclusive by design."
>
> "If you don't know where the people lived, and you
> don't know when they lived there, and you don't know
> where the water came from, how the hell can you come
> up with a study about exposures?" Townsend asked.
>
> Along the way, Townsend was joined in his quest for
> answers by other retired Marines who spent time at
> Lejeune: a master sergeant who lost his child to
> leukemia, a base obstetrician who has leukemia, a
> lance corporal whose children have suffered a lifetime
> of ailments and developmental disabilities.
>
> Townsend calls his allies Rottweilers or Dobermans
> "because Marines are either big and mean or skinny and
> mean." Either way, they are tenacious in their
> hounding of the Corps.
>
> "I'd like the Marine Corps to admit that they are the
> cause of all this misery and notify all the young men
> and women that served their country that it is the
> cause of their exposure," Townsend said.
>
> He wants the government to help these people and
> consider them for disability compensation.
>
> Townsend said Christopher is buried at Arlington
> National Cemetery, waiting for his Marine father to
> end this last fight. Anne Townsend has already
> realized some satisfaction from her husband's research
> into the contamination at Camp Lejeune.
>
> "I'm very pleased to find out what it is that caused
> the demise of my child," she said, "because I always
> thought it was something I did. And what I did was
> drink water."
>
> target=_blank eudora="autourl">http://tinyurl.com/39uw2
>
> or:
>
> target=_blank eudora="autourl">http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news-...mp;ID=s1488348



Hope this helps.



Travis