Army base to be investigated after stationed soldiers develop terminal blood cancer

Federal health officials are conducting a new study to determine whether veterans once stationed at a now-closed military base in California have been exposed to dangerously high levels of cancer-causing toxins.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s decision comes nine months after an Associated Press investigation found that Fort Ord’s drinking water contained toxic chemicals and that hundreds of veterans who lived at the center California coast later developed a rare and incurable blood cancer in the 1980s and 1990s.

In a letter last Friday, Rep. Kathy Porter, D-Calif., director of the CDC Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry Patrick Breiss, wrote that “there is enough evidence and scientific reason for the ATSDR to overestimate the health risks associated with the historical exposure to fort drinking water.” Ord.” Porter requested a new study in February, two days after the AP published his article.

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The agency did not immediately respond to a request for more information about the new study.

army veteran Julie Aiki, who lived in Fort Ord and was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a rare blood cancer, in 2016 at the age of 46, said she was “confident that science will prove that our high rates of cancer and disease are not a coincidence.” .

Eiki created a Facebook group for Fort Ord veterans with cancer. Their number has grown to almost 1,000.

A sheet of warnings about asbestos and lead covers the rubble of the demolished barracks at Fort Ord on April 29, 2021 in California.

A sheet of warnings about asbestos and lead covers the rubble of the demolished barracks at Fort Ord on April 29, 2021 in California.
(AP Photo/Noah Berger, file)

In 1990, four years earlier, the closure process began as an active military baseFort Ord has been added by the Environmental Protection Agency to the list of the most polluted places in the country. Included in this contamination were dozens of chemicals, some now known to cause cancer, that were found in the base’s drinking water and soil.

An AP review of public documents found that the Army had known that chemicals had been illegally dumped at Fort Ord for decades. Even after the contamination was documented, the army played down the risks.

One such chemical was trichlorethylene, or TCE, which was known as a miracle degreaser and was widely used at Fort Ord. The Army found TCE in the wells of Fort Ord 43 times from 1985 to 1994, and 18 of those tests showed that TCE exceeded legal safety limits.

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The new health study will update a study done more than 25 years ago. A previous ATSDR public health study published in 1996 found that toxins in the soil and aquifers beneath Fort Ord were unlikely to pose a past, present, or future threat to those who live there.

But this conclusion was based on limited data provided by the military and before medical science understood the relationship between certain chemical exposures and cancer, especially TCE. Four years after the ATSDR evaluation, in 2000, the Department of Health and Human Services added TCE to its list of chemicals known to cause cancer.

It is unclear how long and at what concentrations TCE could have been in the water before 1985, when hundreds of thousands of people lived at the base. And TCE was not the only problem. The Environmental Protection Agency has identified more than 40 “Chemicals of Concern” in soil and groundwater.

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Earlier this year, the Department of Veterans Affairs told the AP that pollution is “within the acceptable safe range” in areas where potable water is available.

Veterans who lived in Fort Ord and have since attempted to receive medical care or disability benefits through the VA due to their cancer have been denied multiple times. Aiki and others are hoping the new study will find a link between their cancer and their time at Fort Ord, allowing them to receive care and benefits.

Former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta grew up near Fort Ord, received basic training at the base, and now runs a nonprofit institute there. He said the new health study is an important next step for veterans.

“They were willing to serve their country and risk their lives, and as a result of their willingness to serve, I think we really owe them,” he said.