military

From 1985 to 2001, personnel at Naval Air Facility (NAF) Atsugi in Atsugi, Japan may have been exposed to environmental contaminants from off-base waste incinerators. The incinerators were shut down in May 2001.

The 13,164-acre Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station site is located in Havelock, North Carolina, and includes an active U.S. Marine Corps installation – Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Cherry Point. It opened in 1942. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency placed the site on the Superfund program’s National Priorities List (NPL) in 1994 because of contaminated groundwater, soil, sediment and surface water resulting from the installation’s operations. More recently, nearby private residential water wells have tested positive for PFAS, prompting the beginning of an extensive investigation into the root cause at the base in 2018.

The 2,807-acre Alameda Naval Air Station is a closed Navy installation located on Alameda Island, adjacent to the city of Alameda. Solid wastes generated at the site were disposed of in two on-base landfills. In addition, various wells have recently tested at extremely high levels for PFAS contamination.

In the 1960s, researchers from the U.S. Navy Research Laboratory began testing a new class of firefighting foam that could rapidly extinguish fuel fires. The foams, dubbed aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF), were a boon to firefighters. Special perfluorinated chemicals gave AFFF unique hydrophobic and surfactant properties, allowing it to rapidly seal over burning fuel and prevent reignition once a blaze had been extinguished. By the 1970s, AFFF was in use at most military bases, airports, refineries, and many civilian fire departments around the world.

Orange County, California water districts are considering a massive lawsuit over PFAS contamination of the water supply, although they’re not likely to target the largest polluter – the US military. Instead, they’ll probably go after 3M and DuPont and a handful of other companies that manufacture PFAS products. The municipal water folks, who have been serving PFAS-tainted water to the public for years, are now faced with a $1 billion clean-up bill and they are looking for someone to pay for it.

We wore gloves but no masks. I’m glad we worked outside under a canopy. I don’t know what affect the toluene had on me. I breathed it in all day for almost a year.

This article has two parts. The first examines how the Patuxent River Naval Air Station (Pax River) used toxic firefighting foam in fire-fighting exercises near the beach at Hog Point for years that resulted in PFAS poisoning oysters in the Chesapeake Bay. The second part addresses the state’s response to recent citizen concerns regarding contamination by the Navy and plans by the Maryland Department of the Environment to test oysters near Pax River and its Webster Field Annex in St. Inigoes, Maryland.

Our dad, Joseph, along with Robert Kennedy, Jr., exposed a toxic military dumpsite buried in the 60’s (which included Agent Orange) at Stewart Air Force Base in Newburgh, New York. It is a site that has been covered up by our government, the EPA and DEC for the past 40 years. As a result, this contamination has poisoned the community for over 40 years by leeching into Washington Lake Drinking Water Resevoir, which is right across the street from the Air Force base that serves 10’s of thousands of civilians.

In 2014 I was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma. It all started with severe back…

The Army has revealed that two highly toxic chemicals, PFOS and PFOA were recently found in the groundwater at the old Fort Ord, near Salinas, California at 560 parts per trillion, (ppt), which is 8 times higher than the EPA’s advisory level of 70 ppt. The chemicals are known to contribute to testicular, liver, breast, and kidney cancers, as well as a host of childhood diseases and abnormalities in the developing fetus.