civilian exposure

I’m a wife and caregiver to my now 82-year old Marine. My husband’s medical conditions NEVER STOP!! It all started in 1991, when he had blockages and ended up with 4 stents outside his heart. I was shocked when he started complaining of what felt like a toothache and even a heartburn episode. He went to his doctor where they told him to immediately go to the ER.

Moffett Naval Air Station in California is a 1,500-acre site located in Moffett Field, California. Moffett Field is located 35 miles south of San Francisco and approximately 1 mile south of San Francisco Bay in Santa Clara County, California. It was purchased in 1931 for one dollar, according to records, and was commissioned in 1933 as a naval air station to support a “lighter-than-air” (LTA) program (“Moffett Federal Airfield” – GlobalSecurity.org 2012). In 1991, Moffett Field was recommended for closure under the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process.  

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My dad was a Vietnam hospital corpsman exposed to Agent Orange. He has three of the 13 types of cancer possible from it. I struggled for the last 9 years to help his body heal itself.  As for me, I have MS, epilepsy, Parkinson’s, and a spinal injury in 2008, resulting in needing stem cell procedure. But because of the Camp Lejeune water and the inoculations they gave us, my stem cell injection failed.

The Naval Air Station Patuxent River in southern Maryland has continued to expand, contributing to rapid population growth in the surrounding area. There are approximately 17,500 military, civilian, contractors and nonappropriated fund personnel that work at the Naval Air Station on a normal day. But with expansion comes higher scrutiny on environmental impacts, and Patuxent River NAS has definitely made an impact.

In the late 1950’s, my father worked at APG. I’m not sure in what area or if it was when he was in the Army or while he was a civilian. In 1967, my father was killed at work in California and the autopsy showed he was in the beginning of cirrhosis of the liver. The electric company responsible for his death used that information to say that my father was an alcoholic, which he wasn’t.

My name is Audrey and I watch your news very often. I watched a report that was done on Camp Lejeune contaminated water. It mainly talked about the forgotten military veterans. What happened to the story on the forgotten babies that died?

The following is a personal story submitted to Civilian Exposure and published as part…

Enewetak is a large coral atoll of 40 islands in the Pacific Ocean and with its 850 people forms a legislative district of the Ralik Chain of the Marshall Islands. Its land area totals less than 5.85 square kilometres (2.26 sq mi), not higher than 5 metres and surrounding a deep central lagoon, 80 kilometres (50 mi) in circumference. It is the second-westernmost atoll of the Ralik Chain and is 305 kilometres (190 mi) west from Bikini Atoll. A total of 67 nuclear and atmospheric bombs were detonated on Enewetak and Bikini between 1946 and 1958. To put this in perspective, you would have to detonate 1.6 Hiroshima bombs every day for 12 years to match the explosive yield derived from these tests. The radioactivity left behind is palpable.

The primary mission of the 4,198-acre Luke Air Force Base (LAFB) site was to provide advanced flight training to fighter pilots. Discharges and waste disposal practices at LAFB resulted in soil and possible groundwater contamination. Thirty-two areas of the base were subject to further investigation. Soil was contaminated with waste oils and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) resulting from the diverse processes that have taken place at the site. Groundwater was potentially contaminated with waste oils and VOCs. Potential human health hazards include accidental ingestion or direct contact with contaminated materials.