NEWS RELEASE
Committee on Energy and Commerce Democrats
Congressman John D. Dingell, Ranking Member

Dingell Requests New Public Health
Assessment at Camp Lejeune

Washington, D.C. - Congressman John D. Dingell, Ranking Member of the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce, today asked the Agency of Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) to conduct a new Public Health Assessment for Camp Lejeune, a Marine base in North Carolina.

For at least five years, the military supplied residents of Camp Lejeune with water that was known to be contaminated with toxic Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). Water monitoring data showed that the tap water provided to military families contained at least five VOCs that are suspected or known to cause cancer in humans. Two of these VOCs, trichloroethylene (TCE) and tetrachloroethylene (PCE), are the same chemicals thought to have caused childhood leukemia in the children of Woburn, Massachusetts.

"We know that for years these people were provided water with terribly high levels of dangerous chemicals," said Dingell. "We owe the Marine families who lived on this base more than a quick glance over the facts to determine if anyone was hurt from drinking the tap water."

In order to evaluate whether families had been hurt by drinking this contaminated water, the ATSDR conducted a Public Health Assessment in 1997 at Camp Lejeune. The U.S. Marine Corps has cited the 1997 ATSDR study on their web site in support of its contention that adults who consumed the contaminated water at Camp Lejeune were not likely to experience adverse health affects. But, serious concerns have been raised about the assumptions used in the study and their current validity. For example, there is new scientific information about the adverse health effects of certain contaminants involved in the assessment. Further, the 1997 assessment used the assumption that the families at Camp Lejeune only turned on the water taps in their homes four out of seven days a week and that the longest anyone lived at Camp Lejeune was three years. The study also ignored the combined effects of the numerous toxic chemicals present in the drinking water.

As a result of the 1997 Public Health Assessment, the ATSDR is now conducting a full epidemiological study. However, the subjects of this study only include children whose mothers were pregnant with them while living on the base between 1968 and 1985. No follow-up activity appears to be ongoing with children or adults outside of that category who also lived on the base during the five-year period in question. Dingell is concerned that the scope of the ATSDR's current study is too narrow to make any conclusions about the estimated 50,000 to 200,000 people who may have been exposed to the contaminated water. Hundreds of people who were stationed at the base since the 1960s are reporting diseases and cancer. In addition, most Marine families who were stationed at Camp Lejeune do not even know that they were exposed to toxic chemicals.

"Military families who are already sacrificing so much for this country should not have to worry about potentially life-threatening toxins in the water they drink, cook with, and bathe in," said Dingell.

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