Report: No clear link between Lejeune water, diseases

[thedrifter]

Report: No clear link between Lejeune water, diseases
By Estes Thompson - The Associated Press
Posted : Saturday Jun 13, 2009 12:39:44 EDT

RALEIGH, N.C. — Contaminated drinking water at a North Carolina Marine Corps base can’t definitively be linked to health problems among people who lived there over a three-decade span, according to a congressionally ordered report released Saturday by the National Research Council.

The report, by the working arm of the National Academy of Sciences, says there is evidence people who lived and worked at Camp Lejeune in eastern North Carolina between the 1950s and 1985 were exposed to the industrial solvents tricholorethylene (TCE) or perchloroethylene (PCE) through tainted well water.

But the 341-page report, which reviews past studies of the base’s water and health issues there, said there are severe scientific barriers to connecting contaminants to any birth defects, cancer and many other ailments suffered by people who lived and worked on base.

It “cannot be determined reliably whether diseases and disorders experienced by former residents and workers at Camp Lejuene are associated with their exposure to contaminants in the water supply,” the report states.

“Even with scientific advances, the complex nature of the Camp Lejeune contamination and the limited data on the concentrations in water supplies allow for only crude estimates of exposure,” David Savitz, chairman of the committee that wrote the report, said in a statement.

The study does say the Marines and Navy shouldn’t wait for more scientific studies before deciding how to deal with health problems reported by former base residents. But it calls into question the value of further studies.

“It would be extremely difficult to conduct direct epidemiologic studies of sufficient quality and scope to make a substantial contribution to resolving the health concerns of former Camp Lejeune residents. Conduct of research that is deficient in those respects not only would waste resources but has the potential to do harm by generating misleading results that erroneously implicate or exonerate the exposures of concern,” it states.

A Marine Corps spokesman, 1st Lt. Brian Block, said the service would study the report before making a statement.

“After a thorough review of the report, we will determine what the next appropriate steps are,” he said.

One longtime critic of the military’s handling of the issue said he wanted to question the study panel, which he said didn’t have all the information it needed about contaminants.

“This is a whitewash of the facts,” said Jerry Ensminger, a retired Marine whose daughter was conceived on Camp Lejeune and died of childhood leukemia in 1985 at age 9.

Water was contaminated by dry cleaning solvents and other sources at the base’s major family housing areas — Tarawa Terrace and Hadnot Point, the report said. Health officials believe as many as 1 million people may have been exposed to toxins before the wells were closed 22 years ago.

The sizeable number of people in those housing areas did not suffer more than “common diseases or disorders,” the study said.

“The lowest doses at which adverse health effects have been seen in animal or clinical studies are many times higher than the worst-case (highest) assumed exposures at Camp Lejeune. However, that does not rule out the possibility that other, more subtle health effects that have not been well studied could occur, although it somewhat diminishes their likelihood,” it states.

North Carolina’s senators have said they will seek details about the contamination from the military. Calls to the offices of Senators Kay Hagan, D-N.C., and Richard Burr, R-N.C., were not immediately returned Saturday.

Hagan said last month she and Burr were asking the Navy for details about gaps in information.

Federal health officials withdrew a 1997 assessment of health effects from the contamination at Camp Lejeune because of omissions and scientific inaccuracy. The assessment said the chemicals posed little or no cancer risk to adults who were exposed to the past water contamination at Camp Lejeune.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Tainted water's harm elusive
Lejeune reporthas no answer
BY MARTHA QUILLIN, Staff Writer
It may be impossible to know whether contaminants in drinking water at Camp Lejeune through the mid-1980s harmed the health of people who lived and worked on the Marine base, or harmed children born to mothers who did, according to a report released Saturday by the National Research Council.

The report, commissioned by the U.S. Navy at the direction of Congress, surveyed studies that have been done on the effects of two chemical solvents and other chemicals, including benzene, that made their way into two major water wells on the base. As many as a million people may have used the water for drinking, bathing, cleaning or swimming from the 1950s, when the chemicals likely first reached the water, until 1985, when the Marine Corps closed the wells.

Following discovery of the contamination, 1,548 claims seeking $33.9 billion in compensation have been filed with the Navy's Judge Advocate General's Office. None has been paid.

The study released Saturday is one of two the Navy was awaiting to determine whether exposure to the water could be linked definitively to birth defects, childhood leukemia and adult illnesses such as liver damage and breast cancer.

"On the one hand, several lines of scientific reasoning suggest such effects are unlikely to have occurred ... " the report concludes. "On the other hand, the possibility that health effects have been produced by the contaminant exposures at Camp Lejeune cannot be ruled out."

The other study, designed to estimate the extent of exposure to the tainted water, is expected this year or in 2010.

The study released Saturday notes that members of the panel that created it disagreed as to the risk the contaminated water posed. But the members were in general agreement, it says, that with so many years having gone by, and with incomplete information about who used the water how often and for how long, the Navy should not expect to get better answers from more research.

"The committee concludes that there is no scientific justification for the Navy and Marine Corps to wait for the results of additional health studies before making decisions about how to follow up on the evident solvent exposures on the base and their possible health consequences," the report concludes. "The services should undertake the assessments they deem appropriate to determine how to respond in light of the available information."

Historically, the Veterans Administration has denied medical benefits to Marines who served at Lejeune and who sought treatment for problems they believed were caused by exposure to the contaminated water.

Jerry Ensminger, whose daughter died with childhood leukemia he believes was the result of in-utero exposure to solvents in the water, was appalled at the report's conclusions.

"They take the liberty of shooting down almost any health effects to people who would have been exposed," Ensminger said of the panel. "It's a known fact that there were actionable levels of these contaminants in the supply wells."

If such levels of chemicals can be considered safe, he said, "Why do we even have the standards? Why do we have a Safe Drinking Water Act? Why do we have an EPA?"

First Lt. Brian Block, spokesman for Marine Corps Headquarters in Quantico, Va., said officials there were reviewing the report.

"We do welcome the fact that this has come out," Block said. "We funded the report in order to get a better idea of what possible health effects may have come out of the Camp Lejeune water contamination, and we're happy that the report has been completed and that we can move forward from here."

martha.quillin@newsobserver.com or 919-829-8989

Ellie