The Highwire with Del Bigtree - FALLOUT OF CAMP LEJEUNE

Episode Date: December 6, 2022

The highly publicized groundwater contamination at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, has brought broad awareness about contamination of this and hundreds of other American military bases with forever chemicals.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

If you're sitting there watching TV or listening to radio ads, you may hear an ad recently that's been running and wonder what the heck's going on. It sounds a little bit like this. Take a listen. Attention. Did you serve, live or work at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina between 1953 and 1987? Congress just passed the Camp Lejeune Justice Act to help compensate veterans exposed to polluted water at Marine Corps based Camp Lejeune. Exposure to the chemicals in the Camp Lejeune water led to an increasingly. risk of birth defects. Camp Lejeune babies in the study were four times more likely to have neural tube birth defects such as spinal bifida and oral cleft defects.

Parkinson's disease, leukemia, bladder cancer, kidney cancer, multilomal Aplastic Anemia, and non-Hodgkins lymphoma. You may be entitled to financial compensation. Your financial compensation may be substantial. You've served our country well. Get the justice you. you deserve. I'm glad you're going to finally bring some, you know, understanding this because my radio, I hear it all the time, the television, these ads suddenly came out of nowhere, and I'm like,

this is an issue that sort of ended in 1987, I think. So why am I hearing about it now? Right, right. Well, it's because President Biden signed an act recently, and this was what the act was called. This was the actual website. You can check it out if you want to read it. But it's the President Biden signs Camp Lejeune Justice Act into law. And this act allows military veterans really for the first time in this large of a basis to file civil lawsuits against the U.S. government from injuries that were caused by the water, drinking, basically drinking the water, bathing in the water at the largest Marine Corps base in Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. And the reason we can do this is the act precludes the U.S. government from asserting its sovereign immunity.

So if you have to sue the government in these instances, it has to allow you, to. So it's basically saying in this, what President Biden signed is saying, we're allowing civil lawsuits here. So this just open the floodgates for lawyers. That's why you're seeing all of these ads and that's what's happening. But this isn't, as you said, the first time this has really come about this conversation about Camp Lejeune. 10 years ago, President Obama signed an act that gave the people that were injured by this water, this contamination. President Obama signs the honoring America's veterans and caring for Camp Lejeune Families Act of 2012. And this was arguably spurred by a documentary a year before.

And this documentary really chronicled trying to get this information to the public, going on Capitol Hill, trying to get this information out. A 2011 movie documentary reveals how contaminated wire at the nation's largest marine-based damaged lives. And you can watch this. It's called Semperfi, Always Faithful. It's on Netflix, Amazon Prime. And it's just truly very interesting, sad, and empowering movies. because people are finally getting justice.

And now let's look at Camp Lejeune. So people are saying, what the heck is this camp? Why does this have to do with me? And we're going to connect this into a larger picture, which is very important, I think, to everybody watching here. So Camp Lejeune, this is on the Veterans Affairs.gov actual website. And you can see the coverage area. They actually designated a disability, disability benefits coverage area.

And you can see here Camp Lejeune military reservation. Everything in green is the benefit coverage. outside of that, that kind of white creamish color, no benefit coverage. And so you notice up at the top, Jacksonville, North Carolina. So if you're not a military veteran from this camp, you're a civilian and you're in Jacksonville or any other city just right next to this camp, you're not getting any benefits and you're not getting any, you know, disability payments if you were injured by this water. And obviously the water knows, there's no firewall to keep the water in the base that

it's going to be in the groundwater and the contamination. So that's really important. And there's three primary toxins, I guess you want to call them, that are in this Camp Lejeune, this contamination is benzene. Benzine was like a component of crude oil. Then we have trichloral ethylene and perchloral ethylene. Their degrecer was one of them. And the other one is basically a dry cleaning solvent.

So this is the stuff that has been leached into the water there. And so if you go to the Veteran Affairs website, this is one of the most shocking things I found in this research. And it says here, you can get care and coverage and your bills paid for your health bills. If you served at Camp Lejeune or MCAS New River for at least 30 cumulative days from August 1953 through December 1987, not 30 years, not 30 months, if you're on that base for 30 days and you serve there. I mean, that basically, if it's 30 cumulative days, that's like over 30 years, which is how this existed, one day a year, accumulating to 30 days, it's that toxic? Right, right. Several cancers, neurological disorders, et cetera.

But, you know, we're raising awareness here because we know viewers out there, the doctors, the lawyers, the researchers, military personnel, and even just regular people sitting on their couches are listening in their cars right now. You can do things proactively to protect yourself. And this is where we're going to expand the story out a little bit. So some of the main contaminants at military bases were the three I mentioned at Camp Lejeune, but also we have this other, this other contaminant coming into the picture. It's P-F-A-S. And these are called Forever Chemicals. And these are being found at military bases as well in large amounts. So this is one of the headlines, toxic forever chemicals found in groundwater near more U.S. military bases.

And again, this is the other common contaminant. And PFAS is kind of like an umbrella term. And there's an image here just to kind of give an idea. So it's per and polyfluoral alcohol. These are the substances. PFAS. That's the acronym. And then those are really just called forever chemicals. And under that umbrella are thousands of other chemicals. But if we take a look, This is a map from the environmental working group, and it shows the entire United States military bases, and it's broken up into two parts. Suspected military sites with known or suspected discharges and confirmed military sites with known discharges. We have 7008 total military sites, and you can find your state on there, find your location, and, you know, the confirmed ones, you really got to be careful there because there's no wiggle room on that, obviously. Suspected military sites, this list is growing.

And so this is why we're taking this time to really report on this story because this is information you need to know. Testing your tap water if you have the means for this. But at the very least, filtering your tap water. And this PFAS conversation is really growing and it's large. It's the military bases. And it's also going into the firefighters using this equipment. So we see here Massachusetts. Just before we get into the firefighters, there was a great movie that I watched.

It's called Dark Waters, I believe, with Mark Ruffalo. And it really points out the issue and the cover-up, right? I mean, I just feel like it's like Groundhog Day. I know as we dig into these stories, it's just the same cycle of cover-up. I'm sure we're going to find out there's, you know, government agencies, the military blocking the truth from getting out. But it's really scary stuff because, you know, it lasts forever and ever and ever. doesn't go away, right?

So, you know, people should really look out for it. So, but you're saying a carbon filter, you know, on my water tap is really what it takes to filter this out if I happen to have these contaminants near me? Right. In 19, as early as 1974, the military, the Air Force actually found that carbon filters were enough to filter most of this stuff, 75 plus percent of it out of the water.

But now with this two-stage filters or the other, the more advanced filtration systems, you can filter a lot of this stuff out. So I mean, it's a simple, really proactive technique that you can use to avoid, I mean, gigantic problems. And this is just an empowering piece of information. And then let me just, so let's just take this moment for those of you

that are new to this show. I have to imagine most of you watching the high wire now have some form of water filtration system or water delivery system that you're using. But if you're not, drinking your tap water is, I think crazy at this point. Given that, I mean, look how long these things take. Decades and decades for someone to admit there was ever a problem. How many problems are we going to find out 50 years from now that are happening right now that the lawsuits, you know, are beginning, but we won't hear

about for 50 years. So, you know, these are the types of things. We've got to just be taking these steps for our family, for our own health. There are cheap water filters out there. The pitcher ones that already do it for you or just under your sink doesn't necessarily have to be your whole house, but everybody, I really recommend that you would take these small steps that it takes to at least get rid of another environmental toxin. The one thing I want to say is I don't want people, I don't live in a world of paranoia. I get it. It's a toxic world.

I'm sure the food I just had for breakfast had something on it from somewhere. But I feel like if we just do what we can, where we can, at least we're limiting it. We're lowering it instead of just getting full exposure to everything because we've just throwing up our hands and giving up. Don't give up. I think that all these little things add up. And every single chemical you keep back or 75% of it is an advantage in the long run. All right. Right, right. Yeah, basically, filter your water and move on with your life. You don't need to deal with any of this stuff. And so even the firefighters, Massachusetts firefighters, firefighters from really all over the country are bringing lawsuits

against this chemical as well. Here's one of the headlines, Mass Firefighters, Sue 3M, that's the maker of this chemical. DuPont over chemicals in gear, they say the companies knew were dangerous. Three M has since stopped making this chemical. But it's been known by the military since 2000. So in these court cases, in these military documents, this come out. One particular was in 2000. This was an internal memo from the commanding officer of the Naval Research Laboratory. And he says this. And this was when 3M was phasing out this solution. So the aqueous film forming foam a f f f f f f f f f f f f f f f f f f f f f f f f f f fos has been identified by f f f f f f f f f f f fos has been identified by f f f f fos has been identified by epiarmine as

environmentally persistent bioaccumulative in blood and toxic to aquatic life and laboratory animals the degree varies by species so dod officials department of defense officials waited after that memo another decade to issue a risk alert to the service members. And they didn't phase it out till they didn't, they didn't replace it to 2015. And the foaming agent they're talking about is a firefighting agent. So this is mainly what it's been used for on military bases is it puts out fuel fires very effectively. So when you see these large foam shooting at the fires,

that's what this stuff is. And part of it is part of that foaming agent is this PFOS and PFAS. But the firefighters are suing, normal firefighters are suing, because it's been found that all three layers of their protective gear, their turnout gear, has this PFAS in it. So it's opening up a lot of lawsuits for these firefighters. But if you want to really get ahead of just the tapwater conversation in general, the environmental working group has a tapwater database. You can go to it. It searches millions of state water records.

All you do is enter your zip code and you can check it out in there and see what you're really dealing with. Maybe not so much for the viewer, but you have someone maybe part of your family, maybe your husband, your wife or your family members are saying, I like the taste of tap water. I'm not filtering this stuff. You can show them this printout and say, well, here's the list of what's going on in our county from our databases.

And this is what's in our water. And this is what it could possibly or potentially, you know, cause down the road as far as health benefits. So this would be a good conversation today on Thanksgiving as you're visiting relatives. Hey, everybody, let's gather around the computer and see how many toxic chemicals are in our drinking water? and maybe, just maybe, you'd like to put a homehouse filter on here.

It's important, I think, to point these things out and those types of visuals and those types of resources really help people recognize that there's ways to inform ourselves, which is what this is all about, right? The highway is all about learning to inform ourselves so we're making better decisions. That's a gift you can pass on today with that website. Absolutely. You know, the high wire viewers must be the most fun people at at a party. I got to say.