Did Camp Lejeune's Toxic Wells Sicken Kids?

May 9 -- Retired U.S. Marine Sgt. Jerry Ensminger is a proud Marine, but after his 9-year-old daughter died, he lost all respect for the Marine Corps leadership.

"Janey went through hell, and I went with her, and everybody who loved her went with her," Ensminger said.

The retired officer is convinced that his daughter's leukemia was caused by toxic chemicals in the drinking water at his former Marine base in Camp Lejeune, N.C. And he blames Marine officials.

"These people knew about these contaminants in the drinking water for over a year before Janie was diagnosed with leukemia," Ensminger said. "And they said nothing."

The contamination in the base's wells was first discovered in 1980. Three tests confirmed it in 1982. Janey was diagnosed with leukemia in 1983.

But Camp Lejeune officials didn't shut down the contaminated wells until almost two years later, in 1985, when they finally notified Marine families that "chemicals had been detected in the water."

The Ensmingers, who by that time had moved off-base, never got that notification.

Potential Childhood Cancer Risks

In fact, Jerry Ensminger did not learn of the contamination until more than a decade later, when he heard reports of a new federal study that found that the chemicals in the Camp Lejeune water — trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene — had been, by today's standards, quite toxic.

The study expressed special concern about children who might have been exposed in the womb when their mothers drank the contaminated water. Thousands of women fell into that category.

One of them is Mary Byron, who moved to the base with her husband Jeff, a former Marine air traffic controller, a few months after the 1982 tests. The couple had two daughters: Andrea, who was afflicted with a rare bone marrow disease, and Rachel, who was born with multiple birth defects.