
Children poisoned by lead on U.S. Army bases - petethomas
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-military-housing/
======
dx87
Stuff like this is pretty common in the military. When I was stationed at Camp
Lejeune NC, my wife worked as a reporter for a local paper. One of her
assignments was interviewing people at a town hall style meeting regarding
chemicals in the base water supply. Children of people that lived in base
housing had an abnormally high cancer rate, but the military denied that any
of the contaminated water was leaking into the drinking water.

I also remember the barracks I lived in had old asbestos floor tiles and the
walls were covered in lead paint. They eventually renovated the barracks, and
instead of getting rid of the lead paint, they just painted over it. The
asbestos tiles weren't dealt with, and all they said was "just don't use a
floor buffer and you'll be fine". There was also a cleaning station where we'd
clean our rifles, no safety warnings or instructions were given, and we
thought it was just a cleaning solution. Later we saw a warning sticker on it
that said to use full eyes, face, and hand protection because the cleaning
solution could cause neurological damage. Just waiting for health probelms to
crop up once I'm older :/

~~~
jfim
> instead of getting rid of the lead paint, they just painted over it

This is actually one of the correct ways to deal with lead paint, assuming the
"paint" is actually a proper encapsulant. See for example
[https://www.health.ny.gov/environmental/lead/renovation_repa...](https://www.health.ny.gov/environmental/lead/renovation_repair_painting/encapsulants.htm)

~~~
userbinator
Ditto for the asbestos --- if it's not in a state where fibers of it can
easily flake off and float around to be inhaled (technical term is "friable"),
it won't do any harm.

~~~
iopuy
Where is the source for this claim? I've always had a conspiracy theory that
this is not true and that the "do not disturb and you'll be fine" theory was
put forth to save all the home owners who would otherwise be told their homes
are worthless or extremely expensive to properly fix. Even if the suggested
reasoning is true, who is there to gurantee that a pervious owner did not
improperly disturb the asbestos. My real estate agent toward me in all his
years of experience in only one case did another ever admit to knowing of a
problem where signing off on the proper lead paint/radon/asbestos warnings.

~~~
userbinator
_Where is the source for this claim?_

The EPA, for one.

[https://www.epa.gov/asbestos/protect-your-family-
exposures-a...](https://www.epa.gov/asbestos/protect-your-family-exposures-
asbestos)

The problem is inhalation of fibers, so if the fibers are not in the air and
inhalable, they pose no risk.

~~~
metaphor
OSHA also conveniently provides references[1] to various relevant publications
by EPA, NIOSH, DHHS, NCI, et al.

[1]
[https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/asbestos/hazards.html](https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/asbestos/hazards.html)

------
drblast
Former Navy officer here. The "privatized" housing was a complete farce.
There's a natural monopoly on military base housing and turning that over to a
for-profit private company nearly guarantees they're going to cut costs at
every opportunity.

We lived on base for a number of years but after a while it seemed like a scam
to siphon the service members' entire housing allowance. Maintenance was
horrible, conditions were horrible, there were waiting lists just to get into
the housing, and heavy penalties if you broke your lease early with no
opportunity to negotiate out, even if the wait list was a mile long.

We ended up renting houses near the base out in town that were much cheaper
and not infested with mice and cockroaches. Most people I knew who thought
living in base housing was convenient and cheaper came to the same conclusion.

~~~
freedomben
This was my experience as well. Not to mention, when you do move out, they are
extremely anal with inspections and make you pay for "damage" even if you can
prove that it was there before you (pictures, etc).

And not to mention the weekly inspections. There was a sergeant that used to
come around the neighborhood with a ruler, measuring people's grass to ensure
it was within regulated length. A friend of mine got in trouble with the first
sergeant for not cutting his lawn often enough.

------
prions
Military bases are some of the most polluted sites in America. Lots of
soil/groundwater contamination from BTEX and other poorly handled chemicals.
However, Military bases provide a lot of research for remediation engineering.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Military_Superfund_si...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Military_Superfund_sites)

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016770120...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167701207002539)

~~~
gaahrdner
Yes, sadly this is not an anomaly:
[https://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/camp-
lejeune/](https://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/camp-lejeune/)

~~~
shrikant
Fuck me! The top comment as of now in this comments page is someone's personal
experience of Camp Lejeune!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18197954](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18197954)

~~~
gaahrdner
Well, it is a huge base! Hey, at least the VA can cover my out-of-pocket
cancer expenses?

------
dsfyu404ed
>The 80-year-old white stucco home...

Well there's your problem. Old houses have lead. It should be assumed to be
that way unless there's reason to believe otherwise.

It'll be another 50+yr before most lead paint is gone. The fact of the matter
is that labor is expensive in this country so lead paint is rarely dealt with
unless it's conveniently within the scope of other work.

I don't think this article very meaningful unless we have more data points. Is
base housing more or less likely to contain lead than similiar quality housing
in other cities?

~~~
crunchlibrarian
Sure, but when you're talking about a military house inside a military base
owned and maintained by the military you have to assume that the military
bears some responsibility for it.

Just waving your hands and walking away because it's old is a bit short
sighted.

~~~
craftyguy
I'm non sure why you are being downvoted, and in typical HN fashion no one
wants to take the time to explain why.

I don't think anyone would excuse an apartment building owner for renting
apartments to tenants with lead painted walls, so I'm not sure why folks here
think the US Army should get a free pass...

~~~
brohoolio
No one is getting a free pass. The article discusses private landlords.

------
hudibras
I see a few outdated comments here about the water at Camp Lejeune. In 2012, a
law (Camp Lejeune Families Act) was passed to pay for medical care for
servicemembers and their families who were affected by the water quality.
Additionally, veterans who were stationed at Lejeune during that time now
receive "presumptive service connection" for many ailments. This means they
automatically receive disability pensions and medical care if they develop one
of the ailments; they don't have to prove that they developed it as a result
of the water exposure.

[0][https://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/camp-
lejeune/index...](https://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/camp-
lejeune/index.asp)

------
clumsysmurf
ProPublica has a whole series about military bases and pollution, open burns,
etc:

[https://www.propublica.org/article/military-pollution-
open-b...](https://www.propublica.org/article/military-pollution-open-burns-
radford-virginia)

------
tachang
Where exactly in the link does it say the army discourages lead testing?

Reuters says "Yet it also “discourages” this type of lead-paint inspection" at
the link
[https://phc.amedd.army.mil/topics/workplacehealth/ih/Pages/L...](https://phc.amedd.army.mil/topics/workplacehealth/ih/Pages/Lead.aspx)

~~~
brohoolio
It doesn’t force remediation for lead paint, it indicates only deteriorating
paint is addressed.

------
Duladian
Former Army Vet here.

I've lived in buildings that were condemned a year before I was living in
them. I was then moved out of it because they were reclassified as condemned.
Less than a year later I was moved back into it because we ran short of living
space. All of this while there were huge patches of black mold on walls, in
vents, and on the bed mattress themselves.

The guidance we received was to bleach everything. I'm not sure if this was
done because of ignorance or more nefarious reasons. We ultimately took note
of the worse rooms and avoided using them when possible.

It almost always takes the local news agency breaking a story about these
condemned barracks before anything is actually done. Usually they just condemn
the building again and the cycle repeats.

This was located in GA where humidity is a problem and almost entirely
impossible to combat.

If I was hard pressed, I do have pictures of rooms I've lived in with patches
of mold on the walls.

------
gwbas1c
I keep seeing reclaimed wood with pretty peeling white paint in high end
places. Every time, I wonder if it's lead paint placed by a niave interior
decorator.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Most reclaimed wood doesn't have any character so much of it is enhanced with
faux aging treatments so they can charge more and have better uniformity.

------
hammock
Stupid question, but how is the danger from lead paint? Do you have to eat
paint chips? I see you can breathe in the dust- how much dust does it take?

~~~
Gibbon1
I don't know how much dust it takes, one can google 'lead oxide MSDS' though.
Occupational limits are 0.05mg/m3.

What I've read is lead is really bad for neurological development. Isn't as
bad for adult men. Acute toxicity isn't that bad. LD50 > 10000 mg/kg ( Rat ).

Two problems with lead paint is, lead is an insidious poison. The body doesn't
clear lead that well and it has a long half life. So small repeated exposures
cause harm.

And small children will happily eat lead paint chips. Which is an issue since
lead is a neurotoxin and impairs brain development at very low levels.

~~~
ItsMe000001
> _Occupational limits are 0.05mg /m3._

A note on those limits: The _medical_ limit is zero, and that is not fear
mongering but the result of ever more results over decades of research. In a
little course I took from Tuft University about drinking water one of the four
weeks was dedicated to the topic "lead". Two professors, one an engineer and
one a medical professor taught the course. The medical professor made that
point over several lectures.

Also, from personal experience of having been diagnosed with chronic heavy
metal poisoning by lab data (university clinic, researcher specialist doctor)
as well as by unexpectedly amazing success of chelation treatment using DMPS
and DMSA, and continuing far beyond when excretion went way below "thresholds"
I too can tell you from my own experience that effects are there for extremely
small quantities, just as the often population-level and statistics based
research shows. My "on/off" experience for years of using chelators let me
have extremely uncommon experiences. First of all, this kind of stuff is
almost never diagnosed (only pretty high doses of acute poisoning are easy to
test for, what is stored in the body is inaccessible to tests unless you cut a
piece off of organs to send to the lab - forget blood tests, they only show
what's on the move outside cells _right now_ ). Second, when people get
chelators they stop when only little is excreted. From my experience that is
an error, treatment should continue until the patient says there are no
effects (of the treatment) any more. What remains stored in the body comes out
very very slowly. Chelators only have access to extracelluar space to begin
with. Something that happens to (heavy metal) chronic poisoning patients quite
often is that excretion levels at first remain pretty low, or they go down
quickly - but after a few months of chelation the suddenly go up, and the body
starts acting funny (it starts excreting on its own). Happened to me too,
after half a year of linear decrease of after-chelation measurements it
suddenly went up by a factor of three, and my body became very active, lots
and lots of stuff happening. For example - and I felt that because the
surrounding tissue was "active" for a few weeks - a nodule I had in an
enlarged thyroid as well as the enlargement itself completely disappeared. The
endocrinologist who just two years before had recommended surgery was left
stumbling "I'm amazed" again and again - after checking the thyroid _twice_
with ultrasound because he could not believe it. This phenomenon shows that
the body may not excrete on its own when the burden is too high.

So for me the whole discussion is quite personal, but ten years ago I would
have been like everybody else, I would not have taken this whole very abstract
issue seriously at all.

That there is a limit is because it is not technically possible to get to zero
when there are heavy metals, or for everybody to avoid it, so the government
sets a limit as a compromise between cost and what is achievable.

By the way, I had my two Italian espresso portafilter machines tested for
lead. The expensive one which had everything made of copper had no lead but
elevated copper (which is no big deal, copper is essential and the body has
pretty good transport mechanisms, see "ceruloplasmin"). The cheaper one with
brass though exceeded the drinking water limit many times! I had tested it
because I wanted to sell it. It was a Rancilio Sylvia, by the way.

What is also notable that several heavy metals at once may be far more (orders
of magnitude) toxic than just one. There was a lethal dose study decades ago
that tested lead and mercury individually. When they combined the two lethal
dose dropped to a thousandth, meaning it was a thousand times more toxic.
Mercury is in our environment, especially large predator fish, and in amalgam
fillings for teeth. So if somebody who is exposed to "a little bit" of mercury
is also exposed to lead you can forget those official thresholds even more.

~~~
adsfqwop
Very interesting story. Thanks for this. I've had good success with DMSA
myself, it was almost immediate relief when I started, but never got to this
dumping stage as you describe, and now it feels like the progress has
plateaued. Perhaps this is a similar situation.

I think I actually inhaled lead paint, which caused my particular problems.
Sanding old furniture without a mask, not a good idea at all. Many many years
ago. Young, and had no clue what I was doing :-/

I was wondering if you wouldn't mind helping with more details about your
protocol? If so can you e-mail me at adsfqwop@gmail.com. Thanks a lot.

------
dqpb
We are our own worst enemies

