Marine Corps' camp may have cancer link for Bay area vets

Marine Corps' camp may have cancer link for Bay area vets

By HOWARD ALTMAN | The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 14, 2011
In the beginning of 2007, Andrew Przenkop woke up with "a bit of pain" in his back.

A Polk County detention deputy, he shrugged it off as a byproduct of his job.

"I thought it was fatigue," Przenkop said. "In jail, you get a lot of hands-on with the inmates. They are always acting up."

Przenkop lived with the pain, but one morning in 2009, he began urinating blood. A short while later, he learned the pain had nothing to do with inmates.

"In March 2009, I found out I had kidney cancer," he says.

For the former Marine, who spent 11 months at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, finding out about the cancer was only the opening salvo in a battle for his life. In July, a friend told him about studies that show drinking water at two of the eight wells at Lejeune were contaminated with chemicals like perchloroethylene and trichloroethylene and that some people think those chemicals are linked to his cancer.

Saturday, Przenkop will be joined by scores of other Marines, their spouses and children at a meeting in Tampa of those searching for answers to what caused their health problems and what, if any, compensation is available from the Corps or the Veterans Administration.
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