Marine Corps' camp may have cancer link for Bay area vets

In the beginning of 2007, Andrew Przenkop woke up with "a bit of pain" in his back.

A Polk County detention deputy, he shrugged it off as a byproduct of his job.

"I thought it was fatigue," Przenkop said. "In jail, you get a lot of hands-on with the inmates. They are always acting up."

Przenkop lived with the pain, but one morning in 2009, he began urinating blood. A short while later, he learned the pain had nothing to do with inmates.

"In March 2009, I found out I had kidney cancer," he says.

For the former Marine, who spent 11 months at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, finding out about the cancer was only the opening salvo in a battle for his life. In July, a friend told him about studies that show drinking water at two of the eight wells at Lejeune were contaminated with chemicals like perchloroethylene and trichloroethylene and that some people think those chemicals are linked to his cancer.

Saturday, Przenkop will be joined by scores of other Marines, their spouses and children at a meeting in Tampa of those searching for answers to what caused their health problems and what, if any, compensation is available from the Corps or the Veterans Administration.

Many tell a similar story. They served - or were born - at Lejeune, contracted cancer and found out through family or friends about the contamination.

"If you came to my house, and I gave you poisoned water, I am responsible," says Przenkop, 48, whose cancer has since migrated to his lung. "The Marine Corps has to make that analogy."

Camp Lejeune opened in 1941 and covers 156,000 acres, including 11 miles of beach. Its mission is "to maintain combat-ready units for expeditionary deployment," according to the base website. About 180,000 people - active duty, dependent, retiree and civilian employees - call the area home.

In 1982, the Marine Corps discovered "volatile organic compounds" in the drinking water provided by two of the eight water treatment plants on base, according to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a federal public health agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Water from the Tarawa Terrace Treatment Plant had 40 times the federal acceptable level of perchloroethylenes, or PCEs, according to the agency. The source of the contamination was the waste disposal practices at an off-base dry cleaning firm, according to the agency.

The water at the Hadnot Point Treatment Plant was contaminated primarily by trichloroethylene, or TCEs from underground storage tanks, industrial area spills and waste disposal sites, according to the agency. The TCE level was 280 times more than the accepted level.

The contamination dates back to the late 1950s, according to the agency, and the worst contaminated wells were not shut down until 1985, potentially exposing about 1 million Marines, spouses and children who lived on the base over that time.

Agency studies show that those who drank water contaminated with PCEs and TCEs have reported non-Hodgkins lymphoma, bladder cancer, breast cancer and lung cancer. Children born to mothers who were exposed to the chemicals reported leukemia, low birth rate, fetal death, major heart defects, neural tube defects, oral cleft defects, nasal passages blocked with bone and eye defects.

Lejeune officials began to investigate when reports the chemicals first appeared, according to the Marine Corps. In late 1984, the base began receiving the results of the first round of sampling, and base officials quickly shut down the wells.

"As soon as it was discovered that the chemicals were moving into the wells, the wells were taken out of service," the Marine Corps website states.

The Marine Corps says it has developed an outreach response using multiple forms of communication and media. The IRS used its database to mail an estimated 150,000 letters from Aug. 1 to Oct. 1, 2008.

The Veterans Administration says it considers each claim on a case-by-case basis.

In a memo issued Tuesday, the Veterans Administration announced it was consolidating all Lejeune claims because they "involve potentially complex issues of exposure and causation, and VA remains concerned about the potential for harmful effects associated with past exposure to the contaminated water supply."

Though they don't all know each other, Joe Moser, 71, of Riverview, Ralph Burkeen, 59, of Bradenton, Tom Gervasi, 74, of Sarasota and Terrance Torney, 68, of Palm Harbor, have a lot in common.

They now live in Florida. They served at Camp Lejeune during the years when the water was contaminated.

They all have breast cancer.

They plan on attending Saturday's meeting - sponsored by a law firm filing claims about Lejeune - to find out more about what caused their cancer and what can be done to seek benefits from the VA and compensation from the Marines.

Each one thanks a Winter Haven native named Mike Partain for dedicating his life to spreading the word out about the contamination and for setting up the meeting.

"I am one of 67 men with male breast cancer, who share unique commonality of being on the base at some point in life," Partain, 42, offers as a reason for taking on the Marine Corps and the VA in addition to his disease.

Like many of those who say they are suffering as a result of the chemicals, Partain never served at Lejeune. He was conceived and born there and says his health problems started as a child.

In April, 2007, Partain says his wife gave him a hug that changed his life.

"She felt a lump," he says.

A short while later, he was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Partain's father told him about a CNN story on the contamination, and after chemotherapy, he dove into research. He dug up so much information that he now helps run The Few, The Proud, The Forgotten - Camp Lejeune Water Contamination (TFTPTF.com), an online clearinghouse for everything pertaining to the contaminated water at Lejeune.

Partain says the goal of Saturday's meeting is to inform.

"We are doing these meetings to show people what is going on," he says. "It is not just us saying what we think or speculating. We show the documents."

In addition to those affected, the meeting will be attended by representatives from the office of Congressman Gus Bilirakis, who sits on the House Committee on Veterans Affairs.

The meeting is sponsored by the Bell Legal Group, a Georgetown, South Carolina firm representing about 700 people - including about 100 from Florida - it says are suffering from exposure to the toxins at Lejeune and are seeking compensation from the government.

These will be tough cases to prove, according to John Kiluk, an oncologist at the Moffett Cancer Center.

"It is really hard to make that link," says Kiluk, who has treated a couple of those who say their cancer developed at Lejeune. "The thing that I always like to remind people, we don't know what causes cancer in general.''