Local utilities, the Defense Department and some in the Department of Veterans Affairs insist Fort Ord’s water is safe and always has been.īut that conclusion was made based on limited data, and before medical science understood the relationship between some of these chemicals and cancer. Indeed, the concentrations of the toxics are tiny, measured in parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of an immediate poisoning. There is rarely a way to directly connect toxic exposure to a specific individual’s medical condition. The AP also reviewed thousands of pages of documents, and interviewed military, medical and environmental scientists. The Associated Press interviewed nearly two dozen of these veterans for this story and identified many more. Soon, the group grew to hundreds of people who had lived or served at Fort Ord and were concerned that their health problems might be tied to the chemicals there. Included in that pollution were dozens of chemicals, some now known to cause cancer, found in the base’s drinking water and soil.ĭecades later, several Fort Ord veterans who were diagnosed with cancers - especially rare blood disorders - took the question to Facebook: Are there more of us?
But in 1990, four years before it began the process of closing as an active military training base, Fort Ord was added to the Environmental Protection Agency’s list of the most polluted places in the nation.
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