Trichloroethylene

Your listeners know that water is made up of three atoms, H2O.

Trichloroethylene is made up of a whopping six, two carbons in black, one hydrogen in white, and three chlorines in blue, hence its name, trichloroethylene.

It has a cousin called perchloroethylene that has one additional chlorine atom.

Both chemicals have been widely used in dry cleaning.

Trichloroethylene, according to the EPA, is carcinogenic by all routes of exposure, meaning it causes cancer.

And it's been around for over 100 years.

You and your listeners might be familiar with Camp Lejeune, this marine base in North Carolina, which you might be hearing ads for.

Dry cleaning chemicals probably weren't even mentioned in medical school, even though this chemical trichloroethylene has been around for 100 years.

How can they impact human health?

So yes, TCE and PCE, they are basically chemicals that are used as solvents to degrease metals in manufacturing.

And they're highly cancerous.

So PCE can cause liver, bladder, and kidney cancer, multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, TCE.

causes reproductive toxicity, including congenital birth defects, spontaneous abortions, meaning miscarriages, and also could have small birth weights in children or low sperm count in men.

So, yeah, quite serious issues.

573-746-8020.

What is the chemical at the Modine plant? TCE.

That was it.

Trichloroethylene thylene.

The TCE.

The primary.

Okay.

And so... here's the deal.

For decades, different water systems at Camp Lejeune were contaminated with industrial solvents and other chemicals.

At Hadnot Point, TCE was measured as high as 1,400 parts per billion, about 280 times today's federal drinking water limit.

The contamination existed for years before the Marine Corps identified specific, volatile organic compounds in the drinking water in the early 1980s.

Even after that discovery, the response and notification were painfully slow.