PFAS Chemicals Join Volatile Organic Compound In Polluting Camp Lejeune And Other Military Bases
Water contamination could have sickened millions of unsuspecting people that live and work on a US military installation
Tuesday, December 20, 2022 - Water contamination on many of the nation's military bases could be responsible for tens of thousands of instances of cancer and other life-threatening diseases. According to the Military Times, "Troops at two dozen bases exposed to toxic chemicals in drinking water." This report included Marine Base Camp Lejeune which has been the subject of thousands of lawsuits by servicemembers, civilian employees, and others who spent at least 30-days on the base sometime between 1953 and 1987. Experts are certain that more than one million people including women and children regularly drank contaminated water on the base during that time. Multiply that number by dozens and tens of millions of people's health may have been put at risk. The US military has been notoriously closed-mouthed when it comes to warning the public about the dangers of drinking tap water on the base and other sensitive subjects citing a risk to national security. Failing to warn the residents of military bases is needless, reckless, and negligent as innocent women and children are the ones who suffer the most. Thousands of women drank Camp Lejeune water during the entirety of their pregnancy and have ex[perienced miscarriages, birth defects, and stillbirths. Other children have developed blood cancer and died before their tenth birthday. The US Department of Defense has finally come around to admitting the military base's contaminated drinking water crisis and recently told MT, "An internal Defense Department study completed this year found that the drinking water at 24 installations exposes about 175,000 service members a year to dangerous levels of chemicals linked to cancer and other illnesses." That's more than a million people in total during the 1953 - 1987 duration of time in question when water wells were first discovered to be contaminated.
The Environmental Working Group study found highly elevated levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, better known as PFAS forever chemicals, in the drinking water on the two dozen bases they tested. PFAS chemicals are the toxic signature of firefighting foam that the military uses to train regularly to extinguish petroleum and jet-fuel fires. The EPA has set a guideline of one particle per trillion as being an acceptable level of PFAS chemicals in the water. The EWG tests found more than 70 particles per trillion in the water at Camp Lejeune and elsewhere. The Camp Lejeune Justice Act allows individuals that have developed cancer and lived or worked on the base the ability to file and claim and sue the government if it is denied. The discovery of PFAS forever chemicals polluting military bases opens the doors to suing the manufacturers of firefighting foam for failing to warn the military base about how toxic the product could be. Reuters explains that the North Carolina State Attorney General has filed two Camp Lejeune water lawsuits against 3M, DuPont, and dozens of other companies for their negligence in selling firefighting foam to the military. "North Carolina sued 3M Co, DuPont de Nemours Inc, and other manufacturers of firefighting foams Thursday over claims that the products contain toxic chemicals that contaminated the state's groundwaters. In separate lawsuits filed in three North Carolina counties, Attorney General Josh Stein alleged that the companies knew they were risking harm to the environment and human health by marketing and selling foam products containing perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS," according to Reuters.
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