• Photo credit: The Daily Green

The public can comment tonight at UNC Wilmington.

From East North Carolina Today:

Organizers are in the final stages of preparation for a public forum to be held this week in Wilmington to discuss a period of water contamination aboard Camp Lejeune that has been the focus of inquiry and investigation for more than a decade.

The first event of its kind in four years, Wednesday’s forum will be hosted by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and will follow a quarterly meeting of the agency’s community assistance panel, convened to study the contamination and its effects.

Experts believe that up to one million Lejeune residents may have been exposed to drinking water tainted by organic chemicals and solvents between the 1950s and 1980s, but most former residents did not learn of their exposure until the last 10 years. Advocates continue to work to prove a link between Lejeune contaminants TCE and PCE and a battery of serious illnesses, including kidney and lung cancer, non-Hodgkins lymphoma and male breast cancer, while ATSDR experts are completing a slate of congressionally mandated surveys and studies of the water and its effects on the former Camp Lejeune population.

The CAP meeting will be held from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at UNC Wilmington’s Burney Center, 601 S. College Road. To register for the event, visit Atsdr.cdc.gov/sites/lejeune.

According to releases, the public forum will be held from 7 to 9:30 p.m. at the same facility. Doors will open at 6 p.m. The meeting will be available for viewing via webcast the day of the meeting. Registration is not required.

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