Camp Lejeune Contamination

In most discussions in the media regarding Camp Lejeune water contamination, often the focus is given only to 4 core chemicals – TCE, PCE, benzene and vinyl chloride. While these were prevalent in extraordinary amounts in the groundwater and soil for decades at Lejeune, they are not the only chemicals that were found.  According to the EPA, there were many more (at varying levels) determined as site contaminants and published as part of the original EPA Superfund listing. 

If you served at the United States Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune or Marine…

Indeed, personal medical records management can be a bit exhausting. We’ll offer some tips on how to make that easier. In addition, we think this is also a great opportunity to offer a refresher on the claims process as it pertains to Camp Lejeune contamination (many of the steps for other locations through the VA should be similar).

As of March 14, the recent VA Rule to establish presumptive status for 8 illnesses for military service members exposed at Lejeune went into effect.

Watch: Gavin P. Smith, Executive Director and Founder of Civilian Exposure, is asked to comment on the recent VA decision on Camp Lejeune Toxic Water Contamination.

Congratulations to those that may receive it. We are not sure how this $2billion will spread around in terms of total compensation available on an average per claimant basis. This may be a low payout given the volume of exposed at Lejeune. Given the history of this issue and the actions of government agencies involved, we remain cautiously optimistic. Time will tell as to the sufficiency of this payout.

A new article on water-modeling used to support epidemiological studies at Camp Lejeune has been published in the international peer-reviewed journal WATER. The title of the article is: “Reconstructing Historical VOC Concentrations in Drinking Water for Epidemiological Studies at a U.S. Military Base,” by M.L. Maslia, M.M. Aral, P.Z. Ruckart, and F. J. Bove.

Since 2012 and the passage of a law related to Camp Lejeune contamination, few claims have been approved for care regarding Camp Lejeune toxic water contamination. Last year, the VA admitted that the denial rate was above 95% for all Camp Lejeune claims processed through the VA.  While that rate may be softening a bit, complaints continue.

If you ask the VA or military, they will simply use that number to claim that the impact on families at Lejeune must be negligible at best. Unfortunately, we know all too well about the lack of outreach and information sharing from the military since the 1980s, including delays and denials of information and data in the early 80s.

As promised, we recently received the results of this FOIA inquiry from one of our subscribers.  At their request, we have redacted their name and contact information from the first page of this document. Any redaction after page 1 was already part of the document received from the DOD IG.