“In terms of documented contaminants, the levels are
absolutely outrageous...”
Kathy Keefer had no idea that Fort McClellan was adjacent
to one of the nation’s most contaminated communities when she returned
for her second Army stint in 1987 while pregnant with her eldest
daughter. She didn’t know that decades of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB)
pollution from the nearby Monsanto plant had permeated the tree bark in
Anniston, Ala., and turned domestic pigs into hazardous waste. Or that
the drinking water had been tainted by heavy metals, solvents and other
hazardous waste from the Anniston Army Depot, Fort McClellan and other
industrial sources.
She’s thought a lot about it in retrospect, given the
strange health problems visited upon herself, her husband – also a Fort
McClellan veteran – and her children, problems entirely at odds with
their family medical histories.
“If I had known that Fort McClellan was a potential hazard
for my unborn child, I would have found a way to stay off base and
petitioned not to have gone at all,” Keefer says.
That sentiment is shared by thousands of veterans who
suspect that a litany of cancers, autoimmune disorders and other
diseases are a result of toxic chemicals they were exposed to while
stationed at the base in northeastern Alabama.
“Fort McClellan is a powder keg of what was known,
suspected and found there,” says Joan Zakrocki, who earned her
bachelor’s degree in public health after leaving the Army and now
researches the former base’s environmental problems as an advocate for
Fort McClellan veterans and families. “Our time at Fort McClellan was
the single most important factor contributing to our health.”
Not only does Fort McClellan’s toxic résumé rival Camp
Lejeune, N.C., where trichloroethylene (TCE) and other pollutants
eventually forced VA to provide exposure-related health care to Marines,
formerly serving Marines and families. But the combination of toxic
chemicals from Monsanto, Fort McClellan and the Anniston Army Depot
makes it the most contaminated place in the United States, says David
Carpenter, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at
the State University of New York at Albany in Rensselaer.
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