Air and Water News Report

Waukesha – John Hartung thought something was wrong with the water while he was stationed at Camp Lejeune.

John Hartung unfurls a Marine Corps flag at his Waukesha home Tuesday. A Marine stationed at Camp Lejeune, N.C., in the 1970s, Hartung attributes a number of ailments to exposure to toxic chemicals in the drinking water there. Photo: William J. Lizdas

The Milwaukee native joined the Marines in 1977 and spent six months at the Marine Corps base in North Carolina. He drank from the bubblers and the water tanks brought out to troops training in the field, brushed his teeth, ate in the chow halls and swam in the pool.

Unfortunately for Hartung, his suspicions would not be confirmed for decades.

“I said, ‘This water tastes funny.’ They said, ‘That’s how it tastes down here,’?” said Hartung, who got cysts on his neck and was sent to the infirmary. “I saw others with boils and rashes, and they didn’t know why.”

Something was very wrong with the drinking water at Camp Lejeune. Before wells were closed at the base in 1984 and 1985, tests showed drinking water was contaminated by toxic chemicals, including very high concentrations – more than 40 times the current EPA limit – of industrial solvents trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene.

Hartung didn’t find out until a few years ago about the high incidence of cancers in people who worked and lived at Camp Lejeune, and of birth defects and illnesses of children born at the base. Now he’s trying to get the word out to Marines living in Wisconsin who spent time at Camp Lejeune from 1957 to 1987, the years the government has identified as the period when toxic chemicals tainted the drinking water.

Hartung, who now lives in Waukesha, has started a Web site - lifeaftercamplejeune.com - to alert others about the problem.

“I want to see people get their benefits and to say, ‘I was poisoned, but at least they took care of me and my family,’?” said Hartung, 49, who has chronic fatigue as well as other ailments and can no longer work.

Under a law signed last year by President George W. Bush, the Marines are required to notify those who may have been exposed to contaminated water at Camp Lejeune. The military says an off-base dry cleaning business, now closed, was to blame, as well as chemicals leaking from underground storage tanks and unsafe disposal practices at the base.

Tracking toxic exposure

The Marines encourage anyone who served at Lejeune or worked there during that time to participate in a registry. Studies are under way by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry to determine if there’s a link between the health problems of those who drank the tainted water.

Women who were in their first trimester of pregnancy when exposed seem to have been affected more than others, said Jeff Dimond, health communications specialist with the agency.

Tracking as many people as possible “is a task the complexity of which gets more and more difficult every day. Understand that problems with the dry cleaner dumping the (trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene) into the ground and contaminating the groundwater happened at the height of the Vietnam War,” Dimond said. “The good thing, if there is such a thing, is that the population was transient at the time, so they weren’t exposed as much. But the bad thing was they were exposed.”

Allen Menard got a letter from the military last year. It was the first he had heard of water problems at the base, where he spent three years in the early 1980s.

The Green Bay man was diagnosed in 2001 with mycosis fungoides, a rare skin cancer. And his wife suffered a miscarriage in 1984, losing their daughter’s twin, while Menard was stationed at Lejeune and the couple lived near the base.

“I started looking at what the heck we were exposed to. I looked at the chemicals and I thought, ‘Oh my God, that’s where I got my skin cancer from.’ It’s very rare for someone my age,” said Menard, 45.

Joe Alexander spent most of 1978 at Lejeune serving with the 6th Marines. He didn’t suffer any health problems until 2000, when a cyst was discovered on his pancreas. He was hospitalized for a year, followed by several months in a nursing home to relearn how to walk, swallow and talk.

Alexander, 50, learned last year about the water he drank at Lejeune.

“I worked for Wisconsin Electric for almost 17 years, and I’m familiar with trichloroethylene and I know how hazardous it can be,” said Alexander, of Milwaukee. “It’s used to strip paint off metal. I can imagine what it will do to your insides.”

It’s unknown just how many people drank the tainted water, but a Marines spokeswoman said the military estimates it could be as many as half a million. When finally finished, Dimond said, the registry will be the largest in the history of the U.S. government.

The Marines hope to reach as many people as possible through a Web site and call center, direct mailings, contacting local and national media and notifying veterans groups.

“More probably could have been done in the past. Fortunately, today we have a lot more resources to get the word out and notify people,” said Marine Capt. Amy Malugani.

Those who think they were affected by the tainted water can file a claim by going to www.marines.mil and clicking on “Camp Lejeune Water Study” under links.

For Menard, Alexander and Hartung, efforts by the Marines to reach out to them are too late.

“The Marine Corps motto is semper fi. That means always faithful,” said Menard. “They’re not being faithful. They knew this back in the ’80s. They finally got ahold of us in 2008? That’s a joke.”

Posted from Source: http://www.jsonline.com/news/waukesha/41407067.html