CAMP LEJEUNE, NC (CBS) — Nearly 100,000 claims have been filed with the Navy over potential exposure to toxic water at Camp Lejeune, a Marine Corps base in North Carolina.
But a year after key legislation was signed by President Biden, a CBS News investigation found the Navy has only begun processing fewer than a fifth of the almost 93,000 claims, and no settlements have been paid.
“The reality is we’re a year out from the passage of the bill and not one claim has been settled and not one offer for settlement has been made,” Mike Partain, a male breast cancer survivor who was born at Camp Lejeune, told CBS News.
“I mean, this is not what the president and Congress both intended when they passed the bill,” he said.
After decades of delay, the Camp Lejeune Justice Act, signed a year ago this week, was supposed to streamline the compensation process for possible victims of toxic water exposure. The U.S. government acknowledges that from 1953 to 1987, nearly 1 million veterans and civilians were potentially exposed to dangerous chemicals in the drinking water at the coastal North Carolina base. In some cases, levels of toxins were 400 times what safety standards allow.
Activists and lawmakers have credited CBS News’ Emmy-nominated investigative series “Decades of Exposure” with the passing of the Camp Lejeune Justice Act.
Partain says his suffering – part of an unusual cluster of male breast cancer cases — dates back to Jan. 30, 1968, the day he was born on the sprawling North Carolina base.
Reflecting on a picture of his mother, Lisette Partain, holding him in the base hospital, Partain said, “That’s supposed to be the happiest day of my life. My mom’s holding me the day I was born.”
But when the 55-year-old drew CBS News’ attention to one of his first bottles of powdered baby formula in the photo’s lower left corner, Partain was overcome.
“All made with contaminated water that was provided to us by the Marine Corps,” Partain said. “I mean, it’s haunting because you look at that and I’m in my mom’s arms, supposed to be the safest place in the world, and it wasn’t.”
Partain’s mother still remembers how he suffered unexplained cramps after feeding as a baby. “He was crying,” she said. “It was not a normal cry. It was a hurt cry.”
After chronic health problems as a child, Partain was diagnosed with male breast cancer at the age of 39. Asked how it changed his life, Partain said it “destroyed” his life and “It’s affected my family deeply.”
A government study suggests there are “possible associations between exposure to chemicals at Camp Lejeune and male breast cancer” and exposure could “accelerate the onset of male breast cancer.”
Partain said so many men came forward they made a calendar to help raise awareness, but not everyone is alive today.
“There’s over 130 men that I know of that have the single commonality of exposure to the contaminated drinking water at Camp Lejeune and male breast cancer,” Partain said.
With no settlement from the Navy for its Marine Corps veterans, Partain and about 1,100 other potential victims sued the U.S. government in North Carolina.
The Camp Lejeune Justice Act does establish several possible defenses to liability. Justice Department lawyers responded in some cases, including the one filed by Partain, with a series of potential defenses, including one that angered him.
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