TAMPA — Robert Shuster of Hudson stood up Saturday at a public
meeting with the Department of Veterans Affairs and federal scientists
studying the health effects of polluted drinking at Camp Lejeune, N.C.
He held up two pieces of paper. One was the surgical pathology report
Shuster sent to the VA that diagnosed him with sarcoma. The other
document was a letter from the VA denying his claim for benefits, saying
in stilted language the disease did not exist in him — he didn't have a
malignancy.
"How can it not exist?" Shuster, 54, asked plaintively.
About 150 Marine Corps veterans and family members crowded a room at
the Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay for a town hall meeting to hear VA officials
and federal scientists provide an update on work studying contamination
at the North Carolina base.
The VA representatives heard great frustration from veterans about
their difficulties in getting the agency to provide benefits for those
who were sickened by the water.
Up to a million veterans were exposed to what scientists consider one
of the nation's worst episodes of water contamination. Drinking water
at the base was tainted with a stew of industrial solvents and
components of gasoline for at least 30 years ending in the 1980s.
Tens of thousands of those veterans and their family members now live
in Florida, the state with the second-highest number of potential
victims behind North Carolina, federal figures show.
The meeting included epidemiologists at the Agency for Toxic
Substances and Disease Registry, the lead agency studying health
effects. The agency has concluded through a number of studies that
contaminated water created a variety of health effects, from birth
defects to some types of cancer.
But for veterans who came to the meeting, most of their concern was directed at the VA.
"You're not helping us, you're hurting us," said Camp Lejeune veteran
Paul Maslow, 64, of Daytona Beach, who said he has inoperable tumors on
his spine and elsewhere in his body. "The more you delay, the more of
us who are going to die. And we thank you very much for that."
Some expressed pointed anger at the VA "subject-matter experts" who
often weigh in on claims, they said, without seeming to pay particular
attention to the evidence veterans submit to get benefits.
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