Camp Lejeune water contamination tied to range of cancers, CDC study finds

[Leroy N. Soetoro]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/camp-lejeune-water-contamination-cancers-cdc-
study/

Military personnel stationed at Camp Lejeune from 1975 to 1985 had at
least a 20% higher risk for a number of cancers than those stationed
elsewhere, federal health officials said Wednesday in a long-awaited study
about the North Carolina base's contaminated drinking water.

Federal health officials called the research one the largest ever done in
the United States to assess cancer risk by comparing a group who live and
worked in a polluted environment to a similar group that did not.

The study found military personnel stationed at U.S. Marine Corps Base
Camp Lejeune were at higher risk for some types of leukemia and lymphoma
and cancers of the lung, breast, throat, esophagus and thyroid. Civilians
who worked at the base also were at a higher risk for a shorter list of
cancers.

The study is "quite impressive," but cannot count as final proof that the
tainted drinking water caused the cancers, said David Savitz, a Brown
University disease researcher who is consulting for plaintiffs' attorneys
in Camp Lejeune-related litigation.

"This is not something we're going to be able to resolve definitively," he
said. "We are talking about exposures that happened (decades ago) that
were not well documented."

But he said the new research will add weight to arguments made on behalf
of people who got sick after living and working at the base.

Camp Lejeune was built in a sandy pine forest along the North Carolina
coast in the early 1940s. Its drinking water was contaminated with
industrial solvents from the early 1950s to 1985. The contamination -
detected in the early 1980s - was blamed on a poorly maintained fuel depot
and indiscriminate dumping on the base, as well as from an off-base dry
cleaner.

Before wells were shut down, contaminated water was piped to barracks,
offices, housing for enlisted families, schools and the base's hospital.
Military personnel and families drank it, cooked with it and bathed in it.

The contamination has spawned a wave of litigation by law firms who have
aggressively sought out clients with TV ads.

People who got sick after being at Camp Lejeune have accused the Marine
Corps of failing to protect the health of its personnel and criticized the
federal government for being slow to investigate. Marine Corps officials
have repeatedly said that federal environmental regulations for these
cancer-causing chemicals were not finalized until 1989, after the wells
were shut down.

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, or ATSDR, an
Atlanta-based sister agency to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, has done about a half-dozen studies focused on health problems
in people at Camp Lejeune. Those studies were smaller than the new one,
and had varied focuses, including male breast cancer rates and birth
defects in children born to base personnel.

The earlier studies pointed out health risks, but the new work "more fully
establishes the scope," said Richard Clapp, a Boston University emeritus
public health professor who has been involved in past Camp Lejeune
research.

Dr. Aaron Bernstein, the head of the ATSDR and CDC's environmental health
programs, called the new study "remarkable" for being bigger and more
rigorous than past research.

In the new paper, the ATSDR investigated cancer in about 211,000 people
who were stationed at or worked at Camp Lejeune between 1975 and 1985 and
compared them to about 224,000 people at California's Camp Pendleton -
which was not known to have polluted groundwater - during the same time
period.

Frank Bove, a senior epidemiologist, has led the agency's Camp Lejeune
research for many years and was in charge of the latest study. He relied
on staff at Battelle Memorial Institute and others to comb through cancer
registries across the country to look for cases tied to either base.

They found a similar number of malignant cancers in each group, about
12,000. But the numbers - and the relative risks calculated from those
numbers - were higher in the Camp Lejeune population for a number of
specific types of cancer. That list included some that weren't clearly
identified in some earlier studies, most notably thyroid cancer, Clapp
said.

A federal law signed by President Joe Biden in August 2022 included
language to address concerns of people who developed certain health
problems they believe were linked to Camp Lejeune water contamination. It
gave them a two-year window to file claims.

The new study may lead to inclusion of thyroid cancer to be added to the
list of diseases for which Camp Lejeune personnel and their families might
one day be compensated, Clapp said.

The paper, which underwent external peer review, is being submitted for
publication, agency officials said.


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