CDC to Conduct Well being Research at Polluted Former Army Base

Federal well being officers are conducting a brand new examine to find out whether or not veterans as soon as stationed at a now-shuttered California navy base have been uncovered to dangerously excessive ranges of cancer-causing toxins.

The choice by the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention comes 9 months after an Related Press investigation discovered that ingesting water at Fort Ord contained poisonous chemical substances and that tons of of veterans who lived on the central California coast base within the Eighties and Nineteen Nineties later developed uncommon and terminal blood cancers.

In a letter final Friday to Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., the director of the CDC’s Company for Poisonous Substances and Illness Registry, Patrick Breysse, wrote that “there are adequate information and scientific causes for ATSDR to re-evaluate well being dangers associated to historic ingesting water exposures at Fort Ord.” Porter had requested for a brand new examine in February, two days after the AP printed its story.

The company didn’t instantly reply to a request looking for additional particulars concerning the new examine.

Army veteran Julie Akey, who lived at Fort Ord and was recognized in 2016 on the age of 46 with a number of myeloma, a uncommon blood most cancers, stated she is “assured that science will show our excessive fee of cancers and diseases will not be a coincidence.”

Akey began a Fb group for Fort Ord veterans with most cancers. The quantity has grown to just about 1,000.

In 1990, 4 years earlier than it started the method of closing as an lively navy base, Fort Ord was added to the Environmental Safety Company’s checklist of essentially the most polluted locations within the nation. Included in that air pollution have been dozens of chemical substances, some now recognized to trigger most cancers, that have been discovered within the base’s ingesting water and soil.

The AP’s overview of public paperwork confirmed the Army knew that chemical substances had been improperly dumped at Fort Ord for many years. Even after the contamination was documented, the Army performed down the dangers.

A type of chemical substances was trichloroethylene, or TCE, which was generally known as a miracle degreaser and was extensively used at Fort Ord. The Army discovered TCE in Fort Ord’s wells 43 separate instances from 1985 to 1994, and 18 of these exams confirmed TCE exceeded authorized security limits.

The brand new well being examine will replace one carried out greater than 25 years in the past. The earlier ATSDR public well being examine, printed in 1996, discovered that toxins within the soil and within the aquifers beneath Fort Ord weren’t prone to pose a previous, current or future menace to these residing there.

However that conclusion was based mostly on restricted information provided by the navy and earlier than medical science understood the connection between among the chemical exposures and most cancers, significantly TCE. 4 years after the ATSDR’s evaluation, in 2000, the Division of Well being and Human Providers added TCE to its roster of chemical substances recognized to trigger most cancers.

It’s unclear how lengthy and at what concentrations TCE might have been within the water earlier than 1985, when tons of of hundreds of individuals lived on the bottom. And TCE wasn’t the one drawback. The EPA recognized greater than 40 “chemical substances of concern” in soil and groundwater.

The Division of Veterans Affairs informed the AP earlier this 12 months that the contamination was “inside the allowable protected vary” in areas that offered ingesting water.

Veterans who lived at Fort Ord and have since tried to get medical care or incapacity advantages by the VA based mostly on their cancers have repeatedly been denied. Akey and others hope the brand new examine will discover a hyperlink between their cancers and their time at Fort Ord, permitting them to get care and advantages.

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