The drinking water at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina was contaminated with four primary chemicals: trichloroethylene (TCE), tetrachloroethylene (PCE), vinyl chloride, and benzene. These volatile organic compounds seeped into the groundwater from a combination of on-base industrial operations, leaking fuel storage tanks, and an off-base dry cleaning business. The contamination lasted roughly three decades, from the 1950s through 1985, and exposed as many as a million military personnel, their families, and civilian workers to toxins at concentrations hundreds of times above safe limits.
The Four Chemicals in the Water
TCE is an industrial solvent used to clean and degrease metal parts. It was the most prevalent contaminant, reaching a peak concentration of 1,400 parts per billion in the Hadnot Point water system in May 1982. The current federal safety limit for TCE in drinking water is 5 parts per billion, meaning the water contained roughly 280 times the allowable level.
PCE is a solvent used in dry cleaning and metal degreasing. It was the dominant contaminant in a separate water system serving family housing at Tarawa Terrace. Both TCE and PCE break down in groundwater over time into vinyl chloride, which is itself a known carcinogen. Benzene, a component of gasoline and a building block for plastics and synthetic fibers, rounded out the list of primary contaminants. Fuel-related compounds like toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene were also detected in the groundwater near the Hadnot Point industrial area.
Where the Contamination Came From
The contamination had three main sources, each feeding different parts of the base’s water supply.
The Hadnot Point industrial area was the largest contributor. On-base maintenance shops and industrial facilities used TCE to clean metal equipment, and the solvent made its way into the soil and groundwater. Leaking above-ground and underground fuel storage tanks in the same area introduced benzene. The former Hadnot Point Fuel Farm and a building known as Building 1115 were the worst sites. Monitor wells near those locations recorded benzene concentrations as high as 43,000 micrograms per liter, while a nearby water supply well (HP-602) drew from that same contaminated groundwater and fed it into the Hadnot Point water treatment plant, which served 73 wells total.
The Tarawa Terrace water system, which supplied family housing, was contaminated primarily by an off-base business called ABC One-Hour Cleaners. This small, family-owned dry cleaning shop operated from 1964 to 2005 and used PCE as its cleaning solvent. The business improperly disposed of PCE through its septic tank system and also buried waste solvent in the soil outside one of its buildings. The chemical migrated through the ground into the aquifer that fed the base’s Tarawa Terrace wells.
A third system, the Holcomb Boulevard water treatment plant, also drew from contaminated groundwater in the Hadnot Point area and was affected by the same mix of industrial solvents and fuel byproducts.
How People Were Exposed
Drinking the water was the most direct route, but it was not the only one. TCE and PCE are volatile, meaning they easily evaporate from water into air. Anyone showering, bathing, or doing laundry with contaminated water would have inhaled these chemicals as vapor. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) has also investigated vapor intrusion, a process where volatile chemicals in shallow groundwater evaporate upward through the ground and seep into the indoor air of buildings sitting above the contamination. ATSDR evaluated 77 buildings on the base for this type of exposure and found sufficient indoor air data to conduct health assessments on 39 of them.
How Long It Went Undetected
The contamination likely began in the 1950s as industrial activity on the base ramped up, but nobody was testing for these chemicals at the time. Camp Lejeune started sampling its drinking water in 1980, ahead of new federal regulations on water quality. That October, lab results from the Hadnot Point system flagged the presence of unexpected volatile organic compounds, though the specific chemicals were not yet identified.
Additional testing in 1981 confirmed the anomalies, and by August 1982, lab analyses identified TCE and PCE by name in both the Hadnot Point and Tarawa Terrace systems. Despite these findings, the contaminated wells were not shut down immediately. It took until a systematic Navy-led sampling program in 1984 for the base to close ten water supply wells, with the last contaminated wells shut down in early 1985. The official exposure period recognized by the Department of Veterans Affairs runs from August 1, 1953, through December 31, 1987.
Health Effects Linked to the Contamination
ATSDR conducted extensive health studies on the specific chemicals found in the water. For TCE, the agency found sufficient evidence of causation for kidney cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and cardiac birth defects in children exposed in utero. For PCE, the evidence was strongest for bladder cancer.
The Camp Lejeune Justice Act, signed in 2022, established a legal framework for compensation claims. The law recognizes two tiers of qualifying conditions. Tier 1 includes kidney cancer, liver cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, leukemias, and bladder cancer. Tier 2 covers multiple myeloma, Parkinson’s disease, kidney disease (including end-stage renal disease), and systemic sclerosis. To be eligible, a person (or their mother during pregnancy) must have lived or worked at Camp Lejeune for at least 30 days between August 1, 1953, and December 31, 1987, and the condition must have been diagnosed at least two years after the first exposure and no more than 35 years after the last exposure.
Notably, cardiac birth defects are not included in the compensation tiers despite ATSDR’s determination that there was sufficient evidence linking them to TCE. The VA also treats several additional illnesses as presumptively connected to Camp Lejeune service, though these conditions require more case-specific investigation because the scientific evidence is less definitive.