More than 1 million people may have been exposed to contaminated drinking water aboard Camp Lejeune between 1953 and 1987, and a law passed in 2022 allows those that were sickened by the toxic water to sue the federal government for damages. The window to file a claim closed just over a year ago, and more than 400,000 claims were filed, but nearly all of their cases remain unheard.
Darlene Brooks lives in Midland, just outside of Charlotte. She is the widow of James Brady Brooks, Jr., a father of five who died from male breast cancer in 2011. He was stationed at Camp Lejeune in 1970. The couple share five grandchildren
She says Jim was not only a former Marine, but a construction worker – and the illness that appeared in his 50s devastated him.
"Battling breast cancer was very difficult,” she said, “For one thing, Jim did was kind of embarrassed that it was breast cancer. And you know, like we didn't hear men having breast cancer.”
A male breast cancer diagnosis is rare, but Jim’s doctors told the couple it’s more common among veterans than the general population.
“Most men do not get breast cancer unless they're in their later years,” Darlene said. “Over 80 is what was told to us and Jim was in his 50s --and they said that about 70% of them were Marines.”
According to a study published in the National Library of Medicine, only about one percent of all breast cancer cases are diagnosed in men. An Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry study suggested possible associations between exposure to PCE, DCE, and vinyl chloride at Camp Lejeune and male breast cancer.
Jim had a mastectomy soon after the stage 4 cancer was discovered, and then endured 38 rounds of radiation. For about ten months, Darlene said things began to level out…and then the cancer returned in his lungs and hips.
The diagnosis, treatments, and trying to navigate day to day derailed the family's lives. Darlene said, “It was just constant doctors, medications, one procedure, this going on he had lost his income trying to get on disability.”
The treatments and Jim’s inability to work took a toll on their finances as well. “That pretty much drained a lot of our IRA,” Darlene said, “And then when Jim passed, I wasn't 60, so I couldn't draw with Social Security. When he passed, I lost my insurance and I lost the income that we had. There I was, 59, trying to find a job.”
Doctors began a course of chemotherapy after the cancer returned, but Jim wasn’t able to tolerate some of the medications given to counteract the nausea brought on by the treatment. Eventually he had a surgery meant to prevent his lung from filling with fluid, and Darlene said he died of a heart attack just two days later.
Darlene is angry – angry at the federal government and the Department of the Navy for waiting so long to tell people that served aboard the base about the water contamination. She said, “They knew about this issue for so many years, and they could have told him ‘don't drink the water.’”
She’s hopeful that the Ensuring Justice for Camp Lejeune Victims Act will be signed into law. It was introduced by Congresswoman Deborah Ross and cosponsored by a bipartisan group of North Carolina lawmakers, and makes changes to the original legislation that would do just that – ensure justice, for Jim, for their family, and for the thousands of other victims that have filed suit by clarifying the right to jury trials.
“What it does is it gives us back that right.,” Darlene said, “It also caps the amount that our lawyers can make off of us, so it helps us out, it brings it from them getting 40% of what we get. Some of them are taking as much as that, down to like 20%. That's a big difference. And then it also gives us more judges, because right now only that 4th Circuit in North Carolina can hear it, so that's only four judges, and there's 500,000 people.”
Congressman Greg Murphy, Congressman Richard Hudson, Congressman Don Davis, and Congressman Brad Knott cosponsored the legislation. North Carolina U.S. Senator Thom Tillis introduced companion legislation in the Senate, also with bipartisan support.
The pace at which cases are – or, more accurately, are not -- moving forward is also a source of frustration for Darlene. “When you consider that there hasn't been not one trial and that act was signed in ‘22, and now it's three years later, we just feel like they're just waiting on them all to die,” she said, and she’s not alone in that sentiment.
“Every day on our little website that we have for Facebook there's somebody saying, ‘I think my husband's not going to make it before we finish up.’ Or my daughter.” She said, “There's children that have disabilities because they were first raised there or born there and had that water to start off their life.”
In part three of PRE’s series examining the impact of the toxic water on those who served aboard the base, Congressman Greg Murphy will talk about the technical corrections bill and the impact it could have on getting exposed Camp Lejeune veterans justice the way the original legislation intended. That’s Wednesday on Morning Edition and All Things Considered on Public Radio East.
Background:
In 1982, Camp Lejeune’s water supplies were formally tested and found to be contaminated, but the worst of Camp Lejeune’s drinking water wells remained open until 1985. Camp Lejeune residents were first notified about water contamination in June 1984 via a base newsletter, which downplayed the extent of exposure. More specific notifications about contaminated wells being shut down followed later in 1984 and 1985, but many people didn't learn the full truth until news reports in the late 1990s. The U.S. Marine Corps officially began notifying past residents in 1999 as part of a federal health study.
The contaminants at Camp Lejeune came from leaking underground storage tanks, waste disposal sites, industrial area spills and an off-base dry-cleaning firm – and testing found that three of the base’s eight water treatment facilities contained contaminants – including those that supplied water to barracks and family housing at several locations.
A study published in Environmental Health in 2014 reported samples taken at Camp Lejeune between 1980-1985 primarily contained tetrachloroethylene, trichloroethylene and their breakdown products, trans-1,2-dichloroethyline and vinyl chloride. Benzene was also found in the water but at officially safe concentrations.
According to the CDC, studies in animals have shown that long-term exposure to tetrachloroethylene can cause cancers of the liver, kidney, and blood systems, and changes in brain chemistry.
More than one million people may have been exposed at the base near Jacksonville.
Enacted 40 years after the government testing showed drinking water contamination aboard the base, the Camp Lejeune Justice Act of 2022 allows people who lived, worked, or were exposed to the toxic water for at least 30 days between 1953 and 1987 to sue the U.S. government for harm caused by that exposure.
Part of the Honoring Our PACT Act, the law removed previous barriers to lawsuits and established a lower standard of proof, requiring plaintiffs to show the contaminated water was at least "as likely as not" the cause of their illness.
Victims had two years from the date President Joe Biden signed the act to sue the federal government for compensation for illnesses caused by the water contamination – a window that closed last fall.
Currently, there are more than 400,000 pending claims with the Department of the Navy, but despite that overwhelming number, not a single case has gone to trial and there have been just a few settlements.
