The Camp Lejeune Justice Act was passed because the federal government was forced to confront a hard truth: for decades, Marines and their families at Camp Lejeune drank, cooked with, and bathed in water contaminated with trichloroethylene (TCE) and other toxic chemicals. After years of denial, stonewalling, and suffering, Congress finally acknowledged the harm and created presumptive service connection for those exposed through drinking water.

That acknowledgment was necessary — but it was also incomplete.

The current presumptives are narrowly focused on ingestion of contaminated drinking water at one specific base. While this was a serious exposure route, it does not represent the full scope of TCE exposure across the military. For decades, thousands of service members — particularly mechanics, motor pool personnel, and recovery vehicle operators as well as those who worked on ships and aircraft — were exposed to TCE in a far more direct and concentrated manner than most people who simply drank the water at Camp Lejeune.

These veterans did not just live near contaminated water. They worked with TCE every single day as part of their assigned military duties. They used it in open vats to clean cosmoline from equipment, degrease parts, and maintain vehicles. They inhaled the vapors, absorbed it through their skin, and often brought it home on their clothing and boots, exposing their families. In many cases, they were also drinking TCE-contaminated water because of improper disposal practices at bases like Fort Lewis, which contaminated the aquifer supplying Lakewood, Washington.

The government has formally recognized that TCE exposure is dangerous enough to warrant presumptive service connection. Yet it has largely limited that recognition to those exposed through drinking water at Camp Lejeune (with limited exceptions at a few other sites). Veterans who handled TCE directly as part of their jobs — often for years — have been left behind. Their families, exposed through take-home contamination and contaminated base housing water, have been left behind.

This is not a minor oversight. This is a systemic failure.

The TCE Effect did not stop at the fence line of Camp Lejeune. It affected thousands of veterans across multiple bases who were required to work with this chemical as part of their military occupational specialties. Many of these veterans are now suffering from the same types of conditions seen at Camp Lejeune — cancers, autoimmune diseases, neurological disorders, and accelerated degenerative conditions — yet they have no presumptive path to care or compensation.

How many more veterans and their families must suffer before Congress corrects this double standard? How many more must be forced to fight the VA for decades, only to be told their exposure “doesn’t count” because they didn’t drink the water at one specific base?

The time for narrow, limited recognition is over. Veterans who were exposed to TCE through their military duties deserve the same presumptive consideration as those exposed through drinking water. Their families deserve recognition for secondary exposure. And the manufacturers who supplied this chemical to the military, knowing its dangers, must be held accountable.

This is not just about one veteran. This is about thousands of veterans and their families who were exposed, harmed, and then ignored.