January 14, 2017
There's also a 54 min. audio program link at the website below that discusses this.
Jack
http://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/01/13/va-spent-years-ignoring-veterans-poisoned-by-toxic-water-theyre-finally-paying-up/
VA spent years ignoring veterans poisoned by toxic water, they’re finally paying up
Sarah Lee Jan 13, 2017 4:17 pm
Camp Lejeune, North Carolina (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Retired Master Sgt. James Kithcart was 17 when he enlisted in the Marines. In the two years he was stationed at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina, from 1980-82, he noticed, from about six months in, what he calls "extreme fatigue.â€
And it wasn’t just him – his fellow recruits were feeling the same.
In a December 2016 interview with Cleveland radio host Todd Allyn, Kithcart said he and the other enlistees were constantly taking naps.
"Here you’re talking about 17-, 18-, 19-, 20-year-old Marines that were always exhausted … you always felt like your battery was constantly drained … but you never knew what was going on,†he told Allyn.
According to Kithcart, Marines would go to the medical facilities on base where they were told that nothing was wrong with them and that they should fight what was probably dehydration by drinking water. This was before the days of bottled water, he noted. And so, being Marines, they did what they were told.
After retiring from active duty, and for the next 32 years, Kithcart suffered from sleep apnea, insomnia, constant joint pain, mysterious skin rashes and renal toxicity with one kidney the size of a 7-year-old’s, and the other the size of a gorilla’s.
Then, in September 2014, he received a letter from the Veterans Affairs Administration that indicated the dry cleaners on the base at Camp Lejeune had been pumping dirty water into a reservoir. Instead of that water going into a separator, it was going right back into the drinking supply. Kithcart, and what the VA is now admitting could be as many as 900,000 service members from a period between Aug. 1, 1953 and Dec. 31, 1987, were potentially exposed to the tainted water.
On Friday, a new rule was announced by the VA that "covers active duty, Reserve and National Guard members who developed one of eight diseases: adult leukemia, aplastic anemia, bladder cancer, kidney cancer, liver cancer, multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and Parkinson’s disease,†The Marine Corps Times reported. Those eligible can receive disability compensation beginning in March. They merely need submit evidence of their diagnoses and their service information proving 30 cumulative days on the base during the time period the water was contaminated.
The cash payouts will total more than $2 billion.
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