Dole: Notify Marines of Toxic Exposure

Thursday July 19, 2007

Military officials should directly inform hundreds of thousands of Marine families and workers that they drank and washed in toxin-contaminated water at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina

Dole, R-N.C., wants to force the secretary of the Navy to locate and notify Marines and civilians who were exposed to the water up until the mid-1980s when the base shut down contaminated wells.

Marine officials raised the prospect Wednesday that the same contaminants may endanger residents in the form of vapors that can be inhaled.

The base is testing to see if vapors are seeping through soil into homes and buildings from a groundwater plume.

``We're not saying there's a problem. We're saying there's a potential problem and we're happy the Marines are going in there and sampling,'' said Frank Bove, a senior epidemiologist at the health agency.

Studies have linked the chemicals to leukemia, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, birth defects and several other can