Thanks to the hard workers at WaterSurvivors.com (THE STAND), spite personal issues, like cancer surgery, have taken the time to write a letter we all can share and send to our state representatives. Even if you are not effected directly by the contamination at Camp Lejeune, NC, you certainly know someone who is.
Send this letter along with your personal stories to as many representatives as you can.
You are not alone. There are millions of us, we just have to work together and spread the news, write letters, and keep advocating for water survivors to those who have the power to help us.
And as always-
Vote 2010--incumbents out--Patriots in!Letter To Send To Representatives Listing Our Expectations As Survivors.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WaterSurvivors.com
Outline of Expectations
1. Health Care and Compensation (at government expense) for Camp Lejeune’s sick survivors (veterans and their dependents and civilian support personnel and their dependents).
A. Health screenings, at government expense, for Camp Lejeune’s victims.
B. If health issues (as documented by a doctor or through health screenings) are found to exist in any Camp Lejeune Veteran (no matter his/her discharge status), his/her VA Claim should be accepted under VA Presumptive Disability.
In the words of the ATSDR, Vinyl Chloride “can be formed when other substances such as TCE, trichloroethylene, and tetrachloroethylene are broken down."
Vinyl Chloride causes behavioral changes in humans. Vinyl Chloride causes “sensory- motor polyneuropathy; pyramidal, extrapyramidal, and cerebellar abnormalities; neuropsychiatric symptoms such as sleep disorders, loss of libido, headaches, and irritability...”
As you can see, Vinyl Chloride causes damage to the brain. One might say that it causes traumatic brain injury. It also causes behavioral changes.
2. The men and women who served at Camp Lejeune followed orders, when they were required to clean (while wearing no protective gear) their equipment with full strength TCE. By its nature, TCE would have begun to break down into Vinyl Chloride, when used to clean the surfaces of jeeps, trucks and fork lifts which had been heated by the sun. By their devotion to duty and through no fault of their own, they were exposed to full strength TCE and its breakdown components.
By the nature of Vinyl Chloride, behavioral changes were to be expected.
In a highly structured atmosphere such as the United States Marine Corps, Vinyl Chloride induced behavioral changes are not well tolerated by superiors.
The behavioral changes exhibited by contaminated Marines are, once TCE and Vinyl Chloride are considered into the equation, the result of COMMAND FAILURE.
If illness (as documented by a doctor or through the health screenings mentioned in section 2) is found to be present in any civilian support personnel, their children or grandchildren of military personnel who were aboard Camp Lejeune, Presumptive Social Security Disability should be provided.
The medical community should be informed by the CDC that contamination at Camp Lejeune is real.
3. Medical professionals should not be allowed to refuse treatment to survivors of Camp Lejeune and places like it.
4. Qualified professionals should train doctors (at government expense) in proper treatment methods for victims of severe contamination.
5. A call center, staffed (at government expense) by trained toxicologists and other appropriate qualified experts, should be established and operated 24 hours a day seven days a week. Contact information for the call center (including a toll free phone number) should be provided to all health care professionals (the AMA, IRS, Medicare and Medicaid should help with that effort).
The call center should be accessible to all health care providers at all times, in the event that they need advise on properly treating survivors of Camp Lejeune and places like it.
The experts who staff the call center should (with one exception, Dr. Gerald LeBlanc) have no connection to the DoD, the Department of the Navy, the United States Marine Corps, the EPA, the CDC, the ATSDR (which is part of the EPA and whose Camp Lejeune budget is funded by the DoD) or the State of North Carolina.
The Poisoned Patriots of Camp Lejeune would be pleased to have Dr. LeBlanc involved with the call center.
6. Qualified experts (who have no connection to the agencies listed in section 8) should be required to end the backlog of risk assessments now bogging down the Integrated Risk Assessment System (IRIS).
According to Congressman Sensenbrenner, at the IRIS Hearing in June 2008, IRIS is assessing chemicals at a rate of 2 per year. With 70 chemicals on the list to be assessed, that is a 35 year backlog.
If a chemical were put on the IRIS list today, it would take about 35 ½ years to complete the assessment. Many more people could be contaminated in that time.
7. Bonuses for VA personnel should be (if they haven’t already been) suspended until the backlog of VA Claims is reduced and claims are paid. Shredding claims should not be an acceptable method of reducing claims.
8. Independent qualified experts (who have no connection to the agencies listed in section 8) should, at government expense, test all NEW WELLS in the nation for the presence of COCs.
If contamination is found, the home should be connected to the public water supply, if that public water supply contains fewer parts per billion of COCs than the homeowner’s water sample. Because the EPA and other government agencies which were supposed to protect the public from COCs failed to do so, municipal water system connection fees should be paid by the EPA.
If an existing well is found to be contaminated with COCs, the home should be connected (at EPA expense) to the municipal water supply, if that municipal water supply contains fewer parts per billion of COCs than the homeowner’s water sample.
9. An investigation should be launched into the agreement (concerning Camp Lejeune, North Carolina’s contamination) which was reached by the EPA, the Department of the Navy and the State of North Carolina. That investigation should determine what the agreement says and whether the agreement impacts the way the EPA, other federal agencies, state agencies and local agencies across the nation respond to contamination cases.
The fact that The Department of the Navy and the State of North Carolina involved the EPA in an agreement concerning Camp Lejeune’s COCs potentially impacts all Americans.
The EPA is a federal agency which is charged with protecting all Americans and the environment in which they live. If the agreement was not intended to influence the way the EPA responds to contamination issues (enforcement and remediation in particular), then there would have been no reason to involve the EPA in the agreement.
Is it acceptable for the State of North Carolina, the EPA and the Department of the Navy to enter into an agreement (which has the potential to influence EPA policy and remediation procedures) without consulting those who represent all Americans?
Is it possible that The Department of the Navy, the EPA and the State of North Carolina have set EPA policy which harms all Americans?
The bottom line is that all Americans have a right to know, if that agreement impacts enforcement and remediation of their contamination issues.
10. After decades of watching Camp Lejeune’s Survivors struggle with “lost” military records, “lost” studies, delayed studies, delayed funding of studies, denied claims, inaccurate information, inadequate medical treatment and generalized apathy, Congress can make a decision to pay the tort claims of Camp Lejeune’s Survivors.
11. Presumptive Disability should cover cancers (all males & females), lymphomas, tumors, skin disorders, thyroid and parathyroid disease, cysts, miscarriages, anxiety disorders, neurological, spastic colon, fibromyalgia, gastric antrial vascular estasia, adrenal cortial carcinoma, muscle deterioration, bone deterioration, kidney disease, heart disease/ cardiac, lupus, bowel disorder, teeth deterioration, reproductive disorders, ADD, ADHD, urinary disorders, learning disabilities, lung diseases, spasams, gall bladder, club foot, spinal bifida, scoliosis, diabetes, fibroid disease, parkinsons disease, anemia, migraines, endometriosis, and bladder and other numerous illnesses and diseases not mentioned which have been a common thread among the survivors of Camp Lejeune.
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