One million Marines and family members who served our country at Camp Lejeune, NC, between 1953 and 1987 (including me) were given contaminated water to drink, cook, and wash in. Benzene, vinyl chloride, PCE - even diesel fuel leaked into our wells and gave many Marines horrible cancer! Dan Rather called it "the worst example of water contamination this country has ever seen."
Our Marines and military families deserve better! Congress passed a limited bill in 2012 to try and help these Americans, but the law didn't go nearly far enough. Please sign this petition to send your member of Congress a letter asking them to:
- Compensate Marine families who lost a loved one to Lejeune's toxic water (that's right - our government accidentally killed Marines with toxic water, but Congress hasn't given a dime to their families!)
- Provide retroactive payments for medical care given before the bill passed
- Add oral cancer to the list of covered diseases
The law covers 15 types of diseases, but is far too vague. For example, esophageal cancer is covered but oral cancer isn't - even though water has to touch your tongue to get to your throat! I have oral cancer thanks to Lejeune's poison and had part of my neck removed, but the law doesn't give me the help I need.
I'm not the only veteran you'll help by signing this petition - one million vets and family members spent time at Lejeune when the water was contaminated. Please stand with sick veterans and sign my petition to Congress today!
Dear Representative,
From 1953 to 1987, between 500,000 and one million Marines and their family members served our country at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina. As you may know, their drinking water was contaminated with benzene, vinyl chloride, PCE, and even diesel fuel. This is not the way we should have treated our Marines - but unfortunately, we are still not taking care of them!
I am aware that Congress took steps to rectify this problem with the Caring for Camp Lejeune Families Act of 2012, but the law didn't go nearly far enough. I am calling on you to take the following additional steps:
-- Compensate Marine families who lost a loved one to Lejeune's toxic water (it's hard for me to believe that our government accidentally killed Marines with toxic water, yet Congress hasn't given a dime to their families!)
-- Provide retroactive payments for medical care given before the bill passed
-- Add oral cancer to the list of covered diseases
One of your most sacred duties as a member of Congress is to take care of our armed forces, our veterans, and their families. A failure to take these further steps for the veterans and victims of Camp Lejeune would be a national embarrassment. We're all counting on you to set aside politics and partisanship and get this job done.
Thank you.
