thedrifter
01-11-09, 08:46 AM
An invisible epidemic
The far-reaching, untold effects of contaminated water in Jacksonville, N.C.
By Jeremy Cox
Story updated at 2:23 AM on Sunday, Jan. 11, 2009
Doctors told Mike Partain in April 2007 that he had breast cancer, a rare diagnosis that the insurance claims representative initially attributed to the whims of genetics.
Joe Covella never was a heavy drinker or drug user, so he was mystified when he was diagnosed at 40 years old with a fatty liver, a condition that can severely damage the organ.
Rheumatoid arthritis cost Bonnie Anderson thousands of dollars in medical bills, both hips and years spent wondering whether there was something other than fate to blame for her affliction.
While all three live or have lived in Jacksonville, the key to their health problems was a town three states away with the same name: Jacksonville, N.C., home of the Marine Corps' Camp Lejeune.
Over four decades, an estimated 500,000 citizens and soldiers were exposed to drinking water tainted by chemicals used at a dry-cleaning establishment near the 246-square-mile training base.
The government has known about the water pollution for more than a quarter-century. But Partain, Covella, Anderson and many others impacted by the contamination have only become aware of Lejeune's problems during the past couple of years, usually from media reports or word of mouth.
The delay has triggered bitter congressional testimony and calls for reform. Pressure from lawmakers, coupled with legislation signed by President George W. Bush, have led to beefed-up efforts to notify veterans, their families and former civilian workers of Lejeune's former water troubles. (The contaminated wells were shut down in 1985.)
But health and military officials face an enormous task: Military bases like Lejeune are often little more than stepping stones for service members and their families. Many use the stones to get where they are going; few stay for long.
So officials have to track down the people who could have been affected. Also, because there was no comprehensive database of the base's inhabitants, officials have no way of knowing whether they have contacted everyone.
"They're all over the world," said Frank Bove, one of the lead investigators with the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). "With people moving all over the place, we have to find their current address. We have ways of doing that, but it's difficult."
Investigators, though, are certain of at least one thing: "We do know that a lot of Marines tend to retire to Florida," Bove said.
'They killed us'
Back in our Jacksonville, Rene and Cora Hernandez own a handsome ranch-style house in a quiet Mandarin subdivision.
"My dad died when he was 86," Rene Hernandez told a visitor over his kitchen table recently. "I'll probably go before him."
He's 56 years old, barrel-chested, no-nonsense. But that sturdy-looking frame belies fragile health. Among other illnesses, Hernandez said he suffers from diabetes, asthma, heart disease and Level 4 kidney disease (a level higher and he will need dialysis).
For years, the former Marine suspected his deteriorating health was linked to exposure to Agent Orange. He believes the powerful herbicide was stored in leaky drums at a magazine he guarded in the Philippines. The Department of Veterans Affairs, in rejecting one of Hernandez's disability claims, denied the existence of the drums.
A year ago, he learned from a longtime Marine buddy that he may have been exposed to other chemicals.
Hernandez was a lance corporal based at Camp Lejeune from 1969 to 1970. He lived in the barracks, where he unknowingly drank, showered in and brushed his teeth with contaminants from the Hadnot Point water system.
Years later, scientists would identify two main pollutants: the metal degreaser trichloroethylene (TCE) and the dry-cleaning agent tetrachloroethylene (PCE). Spilled or dumped onto the ground, the chemicals contaminated two drinking-water systems on the base between 1957 and 1985, according to federal records.
TCE and PCE have been linked to an array of cancers in adults. In addition, health problems seen in children exposed in the womb include leukemia, fetal death, major heart defects, abnormal neural tubes, cleft lip and eye problems.
"They killed us, every Marine that went through Camp Lejeune," Hernandez said. "We volunteered to serve our country, but we didn't volunteer to be contaminated by our country."
Many former marines here
A military town in the Sunshine State, the Jacksonville area has one of the nation's largest populations of veterans per capita - placing 22nd out of 279 metropolitan areas, according to census figures. About one-fourth are former Marines, said Harrison Conyers with the city's military affairs department, adding that exact numbers aren't kept by branch of service.
Joe Covella is a former commandant with the Jacksonville Marine Corps League Detachment. He spent three stints at Lejeune - once as the son of an infantryman and twice as an infantryman himself. But the first time he heard about the contamination was last summer during a statewide detachment meeting in Orlando.
The speaker was Mike Partain.
Partain was born on the base in January 1968. His family moved the following May. That was long enough, he said, for the chemicals to wreak havoc on his body and lay the foundation for the cancer that attacked his right breast.
But what really bothers him is that the government knew he had been exposed long before his cancer diagnosis. He knows this because the ATSDR launched a study in 1999 into what happened to the children born at the base's hospital starting, as it happens, in the year 1968.
"It's like something out of a science-fiction novel," said Partain, who lived in Jacksonville for several months last fall, handling post-Tropical Storm Fay insurance claims with State Farm Insurance. His main residence is in Tallahassee. "The government has been studying me for a chemical I was exposed to before I was born."
Marine Corps spokeswoman Capt. Amy Malugani said officials have done their best to get the word out. For years, "best" meant going through the media.
"You use papers and TV; the Internet wasn't what it is today," Malugani said. "A lot of people were informed, but unfortunately it didn't penetrate all those small towns or places those people moved to."
In 2007, Congress mandated that the Marines reach out directly to individuals. With the help of the Internal Revenue Service, the Corps is sending letters to people who can be identified as former base residents.
For the rest, the Marines have created a Web site, https://clnr.hqi.usmc.mil/clsurvey, seeking people to register for future notifications. As of Dec. 30, the online registry had swollen to more than 113,000 names.
One man's mission
For Partain, anger evolved into action.
After his cancer went into remission, he got involved with a Camp Lejeune advocacy group calling itself The Few, The Proud, The Forgotten - a caustic twist on the Corps' slogan, "The few, the proud, the Marines." He papered the Corps with a flurry of information requests as part of his own mission to create an "accurate" timeline of events, now posted on the group's Web site.
Also, he was appointed to the volunteer panel that advises the ATSDR on its Camp Lejeune investigation.
Partain said that his main goal is to make sure other former Camp Lejeune residents don't find out about the pollution the way he did.
"I want to find families because it's a matter of life and death," he said.
jeremy.cox@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4083
Ellie
The far-reaching, untold effects of contaminated water in Jacksonville, N.C.
By Jeremy Cox
Story updated at 2:23 AM on Sunday, Jan. 11, 2009
Doctors told Mike Partain in April 2007 that he had breast cancer, a rare diagnosis that the insurance claims representative initially attributed to the whims of genetics.
Joe Covella never was a heavy drinker or drug user, so he was mystified when he was diagnosed at 40 years old with a fatty liver, a condition that can severely damage the organ.
Rheumatoid arthritis cost Bonnie Anderson thousands of dollars in medical bills, both hips and years spent wondering whether there was something other than fate to blame for her affliction.
While all three live or have lived in Jacksonville, the key to their health problems was a town three states away with the same name: Jacksonville, N.C., home of the Marine Corps' Camp Lejeune.
Over four decades, an estimated 500,000 citizens and soldiers were exposed to drinking water tainted by chemicals used at a dry-cleaning establishment near the 246-square-mile training base.
The government has known about the water pollution for more than a quarter-century. But Partain, Covella, Anderson and many others impacted by the contamination have only become aware of Lejeune's problems during the past couple of years, usually from media reports or word of mouth.
The delay has triggered bitter congressional testimony and calls for reform. Pressure from lawmakers, coupled with legislation signed by President George W. Bush, have led to beefed-up efforts to notify veterans, their families and former civilian workers of Lejeune's former water troubles. (The contaminated wells were shut down in 1985.)
But health and military officials face an enormous task: Military bases like Lejeune are often little more than stepping stones for service members and their families. Many use the stones to get where they are going; few stay for long.
So officials have to track down the people who could have been affected. Also, because there was no comprehensive database of the base's inhabitants, officials have no way of knowing whether they have contacted everyone.
"They're all over the world," said Frank Bove, one of the lead investigators with the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). "With people moving all over the place, we have to find their current address. We have ways of doing that, but it's difficult."
Investigators, though, are certain of at least one thing: "We do know that a lot of Marines tend to retire to Florida," Bove said.
'They killed us'
Back in our Jacksonville, Rene and Cora Hernandez own a handsome ranch-style house in a quiet Mandarin subdivision.
"My dad died when he was 86," Rene Hernandez told a visitor over his kitchen table recently. "I'll probably go before him."
He's 56 years old, barrel-chested, no-nonsense. But that sturdy-looking frame belies fragile health. Among other illnesses, Hernandez said he suffers from diabetes, asthma, heart disease and Level 4 kidney disease (a level higher and he will need dialysis).
For years, the former Marine suspected his deteriorating health was linked to exposure to Agent Orange. He believes the powerful herbicide was stored in leaky drums at a magazine he guarded in the Philippines. The Department of Veterans Affairs, in rejecting one of Hernandez's disability claims, denied the existence of the drums.
A year ago, he learned from a longtime Marine buddy that he may have been exposed to other chemicals.
Hernandez was a lance corporal based at Camp Lejeune from 1969 to 1970. He lived in the barracks, where he unknowingly drank, showered in and brushed his teeth with contaminants from the Hadnot Point water system.
Years later, scientists would identify two main pollutants: the metal degreaser trichloroethylene (TCE) and the dry-cleaning agent tetrachloroethylene (PCE). Spilled or dumped onto the ground, the chemicals contaminated two drinking-water systems on the base between 1957 and 1985, according to federal records.
TCE and PCE have been linked to an array of cancers in adults. In addition, health problems seen in children exposed in the womb include leukemia, fetal death, major heart defects, abnormal neural tubes, cleft lip and eye problems.
"They killed us, every Marine that went through Camp Lejeune," Hernandez said. "We volunteered to serve our country, but we didn't volunteer to be contaminated by our country."
Many former marines here
A military town in the Sunshine State, the Jacksonville area has one of the nation's largest populations of veterans per capita - placing 22nd out of 279 metropolitan areas, according to census figures. About one-fourth are former Marines, said Harrison Conyers with the city's military affairs department, adding that exact numbers aren't kept by branch of service.
Joe Covella is a former commandant with the Jacksonville Marine Corps League Detachment. He spent three stints at Lejeune - once as the son of an infantryman and twice as an infantryman himself. But the first time he heard about the contamination was last summer during a statewide detachment meeting in Orlando.
The speaker was Mike Partain.
Partain was born on the base in January 1968. His family moved the following May. That was long enough, he said, for the chemicals to wreak havoc on his body and lay the foundation for the cancer that attacked his right breast.
But what really bothers him is that the government knew he had been exposed long before his cancer diagnosis. He knows this because the ATSDR launched a study in 1999 into what happened to the children born at the base's hospital starting, as it happens, in the year 1968.
"It's like something out of a science-fiction novel," said Partain, who lived in Jacksonville for several months last fall, handling post-Tropical Storm Fay insurance claims with State Farm Insurance. His main residence is in Tallahassee. "The government has been studying me for a chemical I was exposed to before I was born."
Marine Corps spokeswoman Capt. Amy Malugani said officials have done their best to get the word out. For years, "best" meant going through the media.
"You use papers and TV; the Internet wasn't what it is today," Malugani said. "A lot of people were informed, but unfortunately it didn't penetrate all those small towns or places those people moved to."
In 2007, Congress mandated that the Marines reach out directly to individuals. With the help of the Internal Revenue Service, the Corps is sending letters to people who can be identified as former base residents.
For the rest, the Marines have created a Web site, https://clnr.hqi.usmc.mil/clsurvey, seeking people to register for future notifications. As of Dec. 30, the online registry had swollen to more than 113,000 names.
One man's mission
For Partain, anger evolved into action.
After his cancer went into remission, he got involved with a Camp Lejeune advocacy group calling itself The Few, The Proud, The Forgotten - a caustic twist on the Corps' slogan, "The few, the proud, the Marines." He papered the Corps with a flurry of information requests as part of his own mission to create an "accurate" timeline of events, now posted on the group's Web site.
Also, he was appointed to the volunteer panel that advises the ATSDR on its Camp Lejeune investigation.
Partain said that his main goal is to make sure other former Camp Lejeune residents don't find out about the pollution the way he did.
"I want to find families because it's a matter of life and death," he said.
jeremy.cox@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4083
Ellie