Hundreds of Laurel Bay residents hear from MCAS over health concerns

Hundreds of Laurel Bay residents gathered at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort this week for two town hall meetings addressing health concerns related to the military housing community.

MCAS commanding officer Col. Peter Buck told attendees he would act if a health risk is identified by an ongoing study at Laurel Bay by Navy health officials. Nothing yet links living in Laurel Bay to increased health risks, he said.

The town hall meetings were closed to the public. A synopsis of Buck’s comments was provided by a Marine Corps spokeswoman.

“I spoke with the commanding officer of Navy Marine Corps Public Health Center, and he assured me that, if there is an indication of an immediate health risk, he will inform me, and I will take action,” Buck said. “I promise you, it will be the easiest decision as a commander: to act.”

The meetings were called this week in response to concerns after a Marine wife’s video about her daughter’s leukemia diagnosis gained widespread attention. About 300 attended a meeting Tuesday at a MCAS Beaufort theater and another 200 met to hear from Buck on Wednesday, Marine Corps Capt. Sharon Hyland Sisbarro said.

The Navy Marine Corps Public Health Center is conducting an epidemiological study and environmental analysis in response to families’ concerns, a process that began in June 2015.

State environmental and health officials said they learned of the study last week and offered federal officials their cancer data for Laurel Bay’s ZIP code. Under state law, cancer diagnoses and cancer-related deaths must be reported to the Department of Health and Environmental Control’s cancer registry.

The data DHEC gave Navy health officials included reported cancer cases from 1996 through 2013 for people with addresses in the 29906 ZIP code.

During that period, 1,115 cancer cases were reported, of an expected 1,308. There were 33 cases of leukemia — the diagnosis received by two children whose families helped spur the ongoing health study — of an expected 37.

DHEC regularly provides the data for researchers and doctors conducting public health studies, spokeswoman Jennifer Read said. The agency doesn’t draw conclusions from the numbers, she said, only using them to inform.

“Any time we’re concerned about ‘Is there an area or a group of people that have more cancer than expected?’ this is a way to start beginning an investigation,” said Dr. Lilian Peake, DHEC’s director of health services. “This is not a study. This is just a beginning of looking at the numbers and trying to make sense of them.”

At issue in the concerns of a possible link to Laurel Bay and cancer cases were heating oil tanks that had been buried underground in Laurel Bay.

The Marine Corps said all of the 1,251 known tanks have been removed as of September 2015.

DHEC investigated each of the tank removal sites and found that the majority required no further investigation, DHEC waste management director David Scaturo said. Only one of the sites had to be cleaned up due to possible contamination, he said.

Hundreds of monitoring wells were installed to test the tank sites, with another 43 expected to be installed this spring, the Marine Corps said.

The Public Health Center’s study is expected to be complete this spring.

This story was originally published January 20, 2017 at 2:32 PM with the headline "Hundreds of Laurel Bay residents hear from MCAS over health concerns."