A final rule from the US Environmental Protection Agency banning a toxic chemical found in Camp Lejeune’s drinking water is set to take effect on Thursday, placing a focus on carcinogenic contaminants that are harmful to human health.
Trichloroethylene (TCE) is used in a variety of industrial, commercial, and consumer applications, including in industrial cleaning and degreasing, lubricants, adhesives and sealants, and paints. It is carcinogenic to humans by all routes of exposure and is known to cause liver cancer, kidney cancer, and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Over 500,000 claims for compensation were filed with the US Navy as of last summer from people impacted by Camp Lejeune’s contaminated water.
The EPA passed a final rule in December aiming to address the unreasonable risk of injury to health under the Toxic Substances Control Act. The EPA says anyone who manufactures, processes, distributes in commerce, uses, or disposes of TCE or products containing TCE may be impacted by the new regulation. The phase-out process will ban TCE manufacturing, processing, and distribution of TCE for most products within one year, with some exceptions. Under the new rule, a second toxic chemical, perchloroethylene (PCE), will also be phased out over three years for all consumer and many industrial uses.
“It’s simply unacceptable to continue to allow cancer-causing chemicals to be used for things like glue, dry cleaning or stain removers when safer alternatives exist,” said Michal Freedhoff, assistant EPA administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. “These rules are grounded in the best-available science that demonstrates the harmful impacts of PCE and TCE. EPA continues to deliver on actions that protect people, including workers and children, under the nation’s premier bipartisan chemical safety law.”
North Carolina’s Camp LeJeune
TCE and PCE were among the chemicals found in the drinking water at North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune military base in the 1980s in one of the worst cases of contaminted drinking water in US history. The base had been operating for more than three decades, potentially exposing over one million service members and their families, according to the CDC. Military members and their families began experiencing cancer and other illnesses at alarming rates, including a 47% higher risk of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, 50% higher risk of ALS, and 68% higher risk of multiple myeloma.
In 2022, President Biden signed the Honoring our PACT Act into law, legislation that included the Camp Lejeune Justice Act, allowing all victims to file for relief to seek restitution for disabilities and diseases caused by wrongful exposure at Camp Lejeune.
“The Camp Lejeune contaminated drinking water issue has dragged on over the better part of forty years ever since TCE, PCE and other organic solvents were first documented in the base’s drinking water supply in October 1980,” said Jerry M. Ensminger, Retired U.S. Marine Corps Master Sergeant. “My daughter, Janey, was conceived aboard Camp Lejeune during the drinking water contamination and died of leukemia in 1985, at the age of nine. I first began my fight for justice in 1997, and was later joined by Mike Partain in 2007, who was also conceived aboard the base and diagnosed with male breast cancer at the age of 39. Mike and I welcome this ban on TCE by the EPA and this is proof that our fight for justice at Camp Lejeune was not in vain.”
Dr. Emmanuel Obeng-Gyasi, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina Agriculture and Technical State University (NCA&T), supports the EPA’s recent ban on TCE and emphasized its long-term benefits for public health in an interview with the Carolina Journal.
“It’s something that’s definitely of concern and a public health challenge onto the fact that it’s an identified carcinogen and its environmental impact, among other things,” said Obeng-Gyasi. “So this ban, effective on the 16th, is something that was kind of a major milestones in my opinion.”
Obeng-Gyasi teaches courses in environmental health and safety and leads a lab researching environmental contaminants. With the bulk of his research focused on metals and PFAS, he said the human impact of toxic chemicals largely depends on the extent of exposure and the health state of the individual that’s exposed. Exposure could put an individual over the edge into a disease process if their already immunocompromised and have a lot of comorbidities, while a person that’s healthier could face less of an impact depending on the level of exposure.
SEE ALSO: Invisible Threats: PFAS and the push for policy reform in North Carolina
“Even if the exposure levels aren’t that high, the kind of chronic, low-level exposure in the context of other exposures – lifestyle factors and social difficulties in combination, can play a role in bringing forth or contributing to disease processes like kidney cancer, which is kind of the main cancer TCEs are known to contribute to in epidemiological and other studies,” explained Obeng-Gyasi. “But workers in areas like dry cleaning industries, degreasing, among other similar occupations, are at the highest risk of exposure to these chemicals.
In toxicology, everything is poisonous, it’s the dose that determines it,Obeng-Gyasi added. He suggested finding ways also to look at the prevention aspect going forward through personal protective equipment, administrative controls in the workplace, and legislative action to help decrease the proportion of disease burden that chemicals contribute.