The Marine Corp Admits Discovering Volatile Organic Compounds In Drinking Water Way Back In 1980

Camp Lejeune officials did the bare minimum to alert residents of Camp Lejeune and most never got the message

Monday, August 8, 2022 - The Camp Lejeune Justice Act, awaiting the signature of the President of the United States to become law, will enable Marines who lived on the Camp Lejeune Marine Base during any 30-day period from 1953 to 1987, the ability to file a Camp Lejeune Justice Act claim and to seek lump-sum monetary compensation for their injuries and wrongful death. Dozens of conditions including but not limited to cancer and Parkinsons disease are presumed by the Veterans Administration to have been caused by drinking local tap water. It may also be assumed that thousands of cases of cancer and deaths may have been prevented had the Marine Corp done their job and alerted the local population of the problem.

Forty-five years have passed since the US Marine Corp first admitted that dump sites at the Camp Lejeune Marine Base leached toxic, carcinogenic chemicals into the local water table supplying the drinking water for every Marine and civilian employee living and working there. Millions of US Marines, their families, and civilian employees have passed through the base and have been exposed to levels of carcinogens thousands of times greater than what is now believed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to be safe. Many are seeking justice and hiring a Camp Lejeune water attorney. Since 1980, millions of people have drank contaminated tap water, hundreds of thousands have been sickened with cancer and other illnesses too numerous to list, and thousands of people including children have died. Marine Corp spokespersons told ABC News in a 2004 interview that once they discovered the high levels of volatile organic compounds in the tap water they traced the contamination back to waste disposal areas (burn pits) on the base as being the source of the water poisoning. The Marine Corp responded to ABC News telling them in a statement noting, that "there were no regulatory standards established" for the chemicals back in the 1980s, the Marine commandant has "convened an independent panel to review the decisions that followed the 1980 discovery of chemicals in Camp Lejeune's water." The Marine statement also said that the current Camp Lejeune water supply is safe," ABC News reported.

Rather than alert local families living on the base, the Marine Corp decided to keep quiet and do as little as deemed necessary to warn the local population. Most people including Mary Byron whose husband was a Camp Lejeune Air Traffic Controller in the early 1908s told local news sources that they were not informed of the Camp Lejeune water contamination problem for more than a decade after they left the base. According to ABC News, " The Marine Corps acknowledges the chemicals leaked into the water from a number of dumpsites, both on and off the Marine base. The Byrons are furious over the way the Corps handled the contamination, particularly after seeing documents that show some Camp Lejeune officials, in the past, trying to delay the questionnaires that would alert more families to the problem. They also refer to Marines seeking more information as disgruntled prior Marines."

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