Frightening levels of PFAS at Camp Lejeune
Who knew?
By Pat Elder
September 26, 2022
The New River Inlet on the Atlantic Ocean in North Carolina looks lovely, but Camp Lejeune
has contaminated the soil, groundwater, and surface water throughout the region.
The U.S. Marines have contaminated the Camp Lejeune region of North Carolina with extraordinarily high concentrations of per-and poly fluoroalkyl substances, (PFAS).
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We’ve all seen the ads on TV about water contamination at Camp Lejeune. The public is slowly accepting the notion that the military is poisoning us, especially after the Navy’s contamination of Hawaii’s water.
Thousands of activists over the last 40 years have been urging the DOD and the VA to do the right thing by taking care of the multitude of men, women, and children they’ve poisoned at Camp Lejeune. Still, the recent settlement neglects many. The settlement only covers a handful of diseases attributed to the use of a relatively small number of deadly chemicals and it only takes care of those who served at Camp Lejeune from August 1953 through December 1987. The process is laid out in the PACT Act, a veterans’ healthcare and benefits bill signed by President Biden on Aug. 10.
Veterans who are eligible for disability payouts and VA health care may lose access to those benefits if they sue the government and win. Coupled with potential attorney fees, that could end up costing individuals more than they receive.
Others who first stepped foot on the toxic soil of Lejeune after 1987 are dismissed, as are millions across the country and around the world who were stationed at toxic military installations. The settlement is limited and it is arbitrary, while the mass poisoning continues at Lejeune and everywhere else.
Plaintiffs' lawyers estimate as many as half a million who lived at Lejeune could file claims.
The Camp Lejeune Justice Act (CLJA) creates a limited 2-year window for victims to bring civil lawsuits against the government for injuries related to the Camp Lejeune water. All CLJA cases must be initiated by filing an administrative claim with the Navy JAG before August 22, 2024.
Just last month, fifty-one plaintiffs who say they were exposed to toxic chemicals at the former George Air Force Base in California and later suffered an array of medical problems - from cancer and heart disease to miscarriages and infertility - lost their bid to sue the government. The levels of contamination at George are akin to those at Lejeune.
The military likes to claim “sovereign immunity” in federal court cases. That means they believe they have the right to kill us with their cauldron of toxins. They typically cite national security.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Macbeth’s three witches chanting “double double toil and trouble.”
Millions have been sickened by the US military around the world. Germans eat poisoned fish. Japanese drink poisoned water because the U.S. military doesn’t give a damn about them either.
The Marine Corps has been forced to admit its careless actions have caused breast cancer, esophageal cancer, female infertility, hepatic steatosis, kidney cancer, leukemia, lung cancer, miscarriage, multiple myeloma, myelodysplastic syndromes, neurobehavioral effects, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, renal toxicity, and scleroderma. The Marines don’t admit that their careless actions continue to cause these diseases and many more around the world.
The following two figures show some of the areas where PFAS were released into the environment. They are taken from the Final Site Inspection for Per-and Poly Fluoroalkyl Substances, (PFAS) at Camp Lejeune released on January 1, 2022 by the engineering firm CHM2 Hill.
Each one of these PFAS release points west of the New River is an environmental disaster
Each one of these PFAS release points east of the New River is an environmental disaster. The soils, groundwater, and surface water are highly contaminated and may be forever.
PFOA was found in groundwater at 25,000 parts per trillion, (ppt) while PFOS was reported to contain concentrations up to 172,748 ppt at Camp Lejeune.
The EPA recently lowered its health advisory for PFOA to .004 ppt and PFOS to .02 ppt in drinking water and ground water. The EPA recognizes the compounds are lethal to humanity, although the military gets a pass. The EPA has failed to use its regulatory powers to protect our health.
For the PFOA, 25,000 / .004 = 6,250,000
For the PFOS, 172,748 / .02 = 8,673,400
The PFOA in Lejeune’s groundwater exceeds the federal limit 6.25 million times over while the PFOS is 8.67 million times over the threshold.
The Department of Defense dictates environmental policy in the United States of America. They can do whatever they want. It’s up to us to warn women who are pregnant or may become pregnant to protect themselves and their unborn babies from exposure to these chemicals. Sometimes we lose perspective of what is really important.
Everyone in the region is in danger while the state of North Carolina is content to look the other way, as it does with the coal ash and other environmental toxins.
Again, Camp Lejeune’s groundwater contains 172,748 ppt of PFOS and 25,000 ppt of PFOA. To provide a comparison, the groundwater at Seymour Johnson AFB in Goldsboro, NC contains 300,000 ppt of PFOS and 12,000 ppt of PFOA, although few are paying attention. The Air Force reported that surface water draining from Seymour Johnson into the Neuse River had concentrations of PFOS at 3,100 ppt and PFOA at 200 ppt.
You’d think EPA Administrator Michael Regan, who grew up in Goldsboro and is riding a wave of popularity surrounding his pronouncements to address “environmental justice” issues would be telling the African American subsistence fishermen on the Neuse River in Goldsboro that the fish are likely toxic. You’d think an earnest campaign to address environmental justice issues would start here.
You’d think.
We can expect surface waters to be similarly contaminated throughout the New River basin, so the seafood in the Camp Lejeune region is likely to be highly carcinogenic. The Navy’s site inspection of Camp Lejeune failed to include surface water results. The Navy is rushing toward that comfortable hiding place of non-transparency. They see the liability coming so they’re flipping the old etch-a-sketch and giving it a good shake.
Depending upon the species of fish and environmental factors, PFOS may bioaccumulate in fish at 7,000 times the ambient water concentrations, sometimes resulting in fish near military bases containing up to ten million parts per trillion of the cancer causing compound. This is the greatest threat posed by these chemicals. The message from the EPA is that we shouldn’t drink water with more than one part per trillion of PFAS but is OK the eat the fish with astronomical levels of the carcinogens.
The New River drainage area forms a large estuary before entering the ocean. Major sub-drainage areas at Lejeune include Northeast Creek, Southwest Creek, Wallace Creek, and French Creek. They are all likely to be heavily contaminated with PFOS which bioaccumulates in fish. The state is not in a hurry to test the waters or the fish.
Meanwhile, there are no PFAS fish consumption advisories for the New River and no advisories for Onslow County for PFAS or any other toxin. They likely know what’s out there. They just aren’t telling us.
The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) says it is aware of several communities in NC where high levels of PFAS are a known or suspected. They specifically point to GenX, a particular kind of PFAS in the Cape Fear River Basin. The state also identifies Greensboro as a PFAS problem area, but there is no mention of Camp Lejeune, Seymour Johnson, or Fort Bragg, another problem area for PFAS in the state. They’ll go after Chemours but they don’t want to tangle with the DOD. Why is that?
NCDHHS says, “The Department of Navy is investigating potential PFAS contamination on or near several bases in North Carolina. NCDHHS assists the Department of Navy and other government agencies with health education and outreach for sites in North Carolina. More information about the Department of Navy’s investigation into possible PFAS groundwater contamination is available here.”
The page leads to a Navy report that says the Marine Corps tested 12 drinking wells off base and none of them had results above .02 ppt for PFOS and .004 for PFOA. The Marines report that 31 of the 80 wells they tested on base have results over the EPA’s limit, but that is all we “know.”
Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put it this way:
There are known knowns; there are things we know we know.
We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know
there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown
unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.
It’s like that with PFAS and other deadly toxins on military installations.
We know they are poisoning us. We know the EPA and the DOD are emphasizing the threat PFAS poses to our drinking water while public discussion of PFAS centers around the drinking water rather than the food. We also know that contaminated food, especially seafood, generally poses a greater threat to public health than the drinking water.
Brief History
At various sites throughout the base flammable liquids including used oils, solvents, and jet fuels have been burned during fire training exercises that used aqueous film-forming foam, (AFFF). AFFF contains high concentrations of PFAS. P-19 firetrucks were brought to the site, parked near the pit, and the AFFF spray systems were activated to extinguish the fires.
The Oshkosh P-19R
The P-19 Truck, Airport Rescue Fire Fighting (ARFF) is designed to be the first response vehicle on the scene of an aircraft fire emergency to rapidly extinguish aircraft fires.
This insanity has been going on for 50 years, although the DOD called a halt to the practice of using the carcinogens in training exercises a few years ago.
Concrete fire pits were unlined and the PFAS-laden foams were allowed to seep into the groundwater and surface water. Some of the toxic liquids flowed into the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) which empties untreated PFAS in the New River. The Marine Corps and the state of North Carolina have failed to test the effluent or the sludge for PFAS. This is believed to be a major source of carcinogenic toxicity in the region.
The Camp Lejeune wastewater treatment plant on the banks of the New River.
On October 29, 2018, a failure in one of the AFFF suppression systems in a building on base resulted in a release of 1,000 gallons of AFFF concentrate to the sanitary sewer via the floor drain. Foam was observed exiting the Douglas Street lift station and eventually discharged to the WWTP.
The former WWTP at Lejeune was completely under foam at one time. There was so much foam that the building was not visible. There was a release at MCAS New River area that caused the manhole covers to pop up. It’s not uncommon on naval installations worldwide.
The military also exposes service members and contractors through the process of electroplating. PFAS are used during the chromium electroplating process as a surfactant in chromic acid baths. As a surfactant, PFAS lowers the surface tension (adhesion of materials) by creating a thin, foamy layer on the surface of the chrome bath for mist suppression. This mist-suppressant reduces the formation of airborne chromium aerosols during the plating process, which is known to be carcinogenic. You can ask Erin Brockovich about that.
The Landfill at Camp Lejeune receives hazardous waste generated throughout the base, including waste streams from operational areas (such as machine shops and electroplating operations), housing areas, and waste from WWTPs and/or homeported ships. These waste streams contain PFAS constituents that may leach out of the landfill.
The sludge generated by the WWTP is applied to 1,992 acres on base. The sewer effluent that drains into the New River contains PFAS. We don’t know how much, although we should.
The Site Inspection sates, “ Because the land application areas are specifically permitted and actively used as part of the Base wastewater treatment system, further evaluation as part of the SI is not currently recommended.”
This means the Marine Corps has decided we shouldn’t know anything more about this particular source of the deathly venom. They make the rules and they decide what they want us to know and how they want us to think about these toxins.
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PFAS is also used as an engine degreaser and cleaner on base.
Soon after these remarkable chemicals were discovered by DuPont chemists in 1938, scientists realized PFAS cleans grease, repels water, and puts out fire better than anything. We’ve been in trouble since because the compounds are used in thousands of products, cause cancer, take nearly forever to break down, and bioaccumulate in living things.
Chemist Roy Plunkett (right) and others re-enact the discovery of fluorocarbon polymers. - Hagley Museum and Library