Marine who dumped carcinogenic chemical trichloroethylene felt illness was payback – ‘We used to go through 55 gallons in less than a month’
By Allen G. Breed, with additional contributions by Martha Waggoner in Raleigh, N.C.
18 May 2013 CAMP LEJEUNE, North Carolina (AP) – Ron Poirier couldn’t escape the feeling that his cancer was somehow a punishment. As a young Marine electronics technician at Camp Lejeune in the mid-1970s, the Massachusetts man figured he’d dumped hundreds of gallons of toxic solvents onto the ground. It would be decades before he realized that he had unknowingly contributed to the worst drinking water contamination in the country’s history — and, perhaps, to his own premature death. “It’s just a terrible thing,” the 58-year-old veteran told The Associated Press shortly before succumbing to esophageal cancer at a Cape Cod nursing facility on May 3. “Once I found out, it’s like, ‘God! I added to the contamination.'” The cancer that killed Poirier is one of more than a dozen diseases and conditions with recognized links to a toxic soup brewing beneath the sprawling coastal base between the 1950s and mid-1980s, when officials finally ordered tainted drinking-water wells closed. As many as a million Marines, family members and civilian employees are believed to have been exposed to several cancer-causing chemicals. In the final weeks of his life, it was not just cancer that was gnawing at Poirier. The Brewster, Mass., man was with the 8th Communications Battalion at Lejeune from 1974 to 1976, working in a shop installing and repairing top-secret radio components. The shop was located just south of the Hadnot Point Industrial Area, right in the middle of a cluster of drinking water wells serving one of the base’s main residential sections. There was plenty of suspicion about the possible health effects of handling and ingesting trichloroethylene, or TCE. But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had not yet established regulations for limiting exposure levels. In a mid-March telephone interview from his home, Poirier said one of his jobs was to recondition circuit boards and other components. Working in a space with little or no ventilation, he used his bare hands to bathe the components in a pan of the TCE-laced cleaner or spray them down with an aerosolized version. “It was also a great degreaser,” he said in halting tones, stopping often to catch his breath. “And it would leave the circuit boards absolutely clean.” And it was cheap. According to the manufacturer, the chemicals were to be used only once. Poirier chuckled when he recalled orders not to dump the stuff down the toilet, “because it would kill the bacteria” in the base’s septic system. The only warning he could remember was not to dispose of the product beside buildings. So when he and his colleagues had filled a drum with used cleaner, they carried it across the parking lot and dumped it in the woods. “Over the two years, how much did I dispose of?” he asked. “Christ. We used to go through 55 gallons in less than a month. So, you know, if I had to say a rough guess would be 100 gallons a month. … It was probably more. That’s a conservative figure.” A civilian worker from Lejeune told a federal fact-finding group that there was “no guideline, policy, or program in place for base personnel handling or disposing of any chemical until the mid-1980s.Until that time, said the worker, whose name was redacted from the group’s report, PCB-laden transformer oil was spread onto roads “to keep the dust down,” and everything else “was either dumped on the ground or they just dug a hole and poured the chemicals into the ground.” [more]
