Camp Lejeune contamination leaves Marines behind

Camp Lejeune was supposed to take care of the Marines and their families. They were supposed to actually care about their well being. It looks like no matter what Marines and their families were exposed to at Lejeune, they military will not accept responsibility for any of it.

If you know someone stationed at Camp Lejeune, pass this onto them and encourage them to file a claim if they are ill, contact their congressman and their local media. This cannot be dropped.

Ill veterans push for answers on Lejeune contamination
By Bruce Henderson - McClatchy Newspapers

Kidney cancer, Mike Edwards says, came so close to killing him five years ago that he saw a stairway to heaven and smelled the brimstone of hell.

Now, Edwards and thousands of other veterans are caught in a kind of purgatory. They believe decades of drinking-water contamination at North Carolina's Camp Lejeune Marine Corps base sickened them or their family members.

But they may never know the truth.

Federal officials acknowledge that, from the 1950s to 1985, up to 500,000 people at Lejeune might have been exposed to high doses of chemicals that probably cause cancer and other illnesses.

A new report offers little hope of answers. No amount of study, it said, is likely to conclusively prove the contamination made anybody sick.

So many people came and went from Lejeune over the years, said a June 13 report from the National Research Council, that it's unlikely many can be located. It's also hard to estimate the amount of chemicals they might have been exposed to so long ago, it said, and to separate that from toxic substances encountered elsewhere.

Those problems, the committee concluded, "cannot be overcome with additional study."

The Navy has received 1,583 claims for compensation, totaling $34 billion. None have been settled. The Veterans Administration says it offers no health benefits from the Lejeune contamination.
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