NC native honors father with site about toxic exposure at military bases
Calvin Shomaker, The (Jacksonville, N.C.) Daily News via AP
17 hours ago
CAPE CARTERET, N.C. — When his father passed away from acute leukemia in 2008, Carteret County native Gavin Smith didn’t suspect it was related to toxic exposure.
Five years later, he found out it likely was.
Smith’s father, a U.S. Army veteran, was exposed to contaminated drinking water at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, where he worked as a civilian for 25 years. In 2014, a government study found civilians who worked at Camp Lejeune during the exposure period had a higher likelihood of dying from leukemia than civilian workers at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton without exposure.
“I think had it not been for this, he’d still be here,” Smith said, who honors his father’s memory with a nonprofit he started in 2013 called Civilian Exposure, a reader-supported website dedicated to toxic exposure in the military.
https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2021/05/16/nc-native-honors-father-with-site-about-toxic-exposure-at-military-bases/
