Military and civilian personnel who lived and worked at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina in the mid-1970s and ’80s are more likely to be diagnosed with certain cancers compared with those stationed at a similar military base in California during the same period, a highly anticipated new government study shows.

The study could lead to an expanded list of conditions for which veterans and civilians who worked on the base can receive government compensation.

Drinking water at Camp Lejeune was heavily contaminated with a number of cancer-causing industrial chemicals including trichloroethylene, or TCE, vinyl chloride and benzene, from 1953 to 1985. Hundreds of thousands of service members in the Marines and Navy as well as civilians employed at the base were unwittingly exposed to the chemicals when they drank the water, inhaled steam in the shower and even simply washed their hands.

Previous studies have shown that people exposed to the contaminated water there were more likely to die of certain blood and organ cancers and about 70% more likely to get Parkinson’s disease. There have also been questions about birth defects and infertility in people who were exposed.

The landmark new research was launched by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2015. It looked at the risk of developing cancer more than a decade after serving on the base.

The study was the subject of a court fight last year after attorneys for people who believe they were harmed by Camp Lejeune’s water asked a federal judge to compel the government to release the study findings.

Research runs up against a legal deadline

The clock was ticking. Under a federal law passed in 2022, people who believe they’ve been harmed by contaminated drinking water at Camp Lejeune have until August 10, 2024, to file a claim with the government for compensation. So far, more than 160,000 claims have been filed.

“We were scared that this study was going to kind of languish within the CDC until after all the litigation took place, so this should help out the families quite a bit,” said Michael Partain, 56, who was born on the base at Camp Lejeune in 1968.

The judges overseeing the case declined to force the release of the study and the plaintiffs dropped an appeal of that decision earlier this month after assurances from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a division of the CDC known as ATSDR, that the findings would be released by the end of the month.

In a news briefing on the study on Tuesday, Dr. Aaron Bernstein, director of the ATSDR, defended the agency’s timeline for the release of the study.

“I’m well aware that there are many legal issues surrounding Camp Lejeune. But our purpose at CDC in this work and ATSDR is to ensure that we’re doing the best possible science, and I know that we have done exactly as our process at CDC would have us do to ensure that this piece of science went through the routine processes of internal review as well as external peer review,” Bernstein said.

The study was released on Partain’s birthday. It made for a pretty good gift, he said.

“It is fitting,” Partain said. “This has been a dogfight with the government for decades.”

Partain and a veteran, Jerry Ensminger, 71, have spent years working to get the government to recognize and compensate sick veterans who served at Camp Lejeune. Ensminger’s wife lived on the base when she was pregnant with their second daughter, Janey, who developed leukemia at age 6 and later died.

Partain was diagnosed with male breast cancer when he was just 39 years old. He believes his cancer was connected to his exposure to toxins in the womb.

A link between male breast cancer and the chemical contamination at Camp Lejeune has been suspected for years. The new study showed this rare type of cancer was indeed significantly more common in people who lived and worked on the base compared with those who served or worked at a different base where the water was not contaminated.

Connecting toxic chemicals to cancers

To date, the Department of Justice officially recognizes nine health conditions as being related to the contaminated water at Camp Lejeune — kidney cancer, liver cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, leukemias, bladder cancer, multiple myeloma, Parkinson’s disease, kidney disease and systemic sclerosis. This list comes from research by ATSDR into the health effects of chemicals dumped into the water supply there. The US Department of Veterans Affairs also uses this research to determine eligibility criteria for health care and other benefits.

For years, advocates for the estimated million people exposed to the water at Camp Lejeune between 1953 and 1985 have argued that the government needed to expand its list of conditions recognized as being conclusively linked to the dumped chemicals.

“This is yet more evidence that the water at Camp Lejeune affected our health,” Partain said. “And this is just another big piece of that puzzle. It does draw a line to say, ‘Hey these people were impacted, and they need to be taken care of.’ ”

In addition to male breast cancer, the study also identified several other cancers that had not previously been shown to be connected to the contamination there. Those included all myeloid cancers including a type of blood cancer called polycythemia vera, myelodysplastic and myeloproliferative syndromes — a group of disorders caused by blood cells that aren’t formed properly or don’t work right, and cancers of the esophagus, voice box, thyroid, and soft tissue, marginal B-cell lymphoma, and some types of lung cancer. The study found military personnel who served at Camp Lejeune, had at least a 20% greater risk of developing those types of cancer compared to those at Camp Pendleton in California.

The study showed slightly different risks for civilians, perhaps because there were fewer total cancers in this group, and perhaps because of their different patterns of exposure. The study found those who worked or lived at Camp Lejeune over the study period had at least a 20% higher risk of all myeloid cancers including polycythemia vera, certain kinds of lung cancer and female ductal breast cancer. There was an elevated trend for oral cancers, thyroid cancer, acute myelogenous leukemia, disorders of the blood, B-cell lymphomas, and a certain kind of bladder cancer called non-papillary transitional cell bladder carcinoma.

The sweeping study tracked the fates of more than 400,000 service members and others who were stationed at either Camp Lejeune or Camp Pendleton between October 1972 and December 1985 and known to be alive in 1996. The water at Camp Pendleton wasn’t known to be contaminated during the years of the study.

Comparing the fates of military members on two different bases gave the researchers an apples-to-apples comparison group because it addressed a bias called the “healthy veteran effect.” Service members tend to be healthier and get more physicals and checkups than members of the general population.

People in the study were, on average, about 35 years of age at the time they were living on the bases and around 57 years old when the study’s follow-up ended. People were followed for about 20 years, on average.

Researchers used the prevalence of other non-cancer conditions, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, and chronic liver disease, to tease out the effects of two habits that contribute to the risk of cancer – smoking and drinking – in their data.

Another factor that makes the study especially strong is that the researchers were able to get permission from cancer registries in all states and territories to share their data — something they believe has never been done before.

“This cancer study is remarkable in in many ways, including that it is one of the largest cancer incidence cohort studies in the United States, having relied on cancer registry data from all 50 states,” Bernstein said.

In addition to its utility for people connected to Camp Lejeune, researchers said the data would shed light on the cancer risk related to exposure to these chemicals in other contexts, too.

Bernstein said the study underscores the importance for people who spent time at Camp Lejeune during the years of contamination to be aware of their exposure and get regular cancer screenings.

“I think they need to make sure that they have routine visits with their medical providers and do appropriate screenings,” Bernstein said.