A Cancer Cluster Is Tough to Prove

George Johnson

RAW DATA

Last month, thousands of Marines and their families were blocked in federal court from pursuing their claim that the government had given them cancer. The decision, involving people exposed to contaminated drinking water while stationed at Camp Lejeune, a base in North Carolina, didn’t consider the science.

Long before expert witnesses could be called to testify, a United States Court of Appeals let stand its earlier ruling that the lawsuit had come too late. It failed to meet the requirements of a state statute banning claims arising more than 10 years after the final occurrence of a harmful act.

None of this means that the spillage of manufactured chemicals is not a problem or that polluters should not be fined and jailed. Some epidemiologists suspect that synthetic carcinogens are giving many people cancer, but at levels that their mathematical tools cannot detect.

Judging from the evidence, the former residents of Camp Lejeune may have a stronger argument than the people of Woburn and Toms River did, but only if their lawyers can find a way to get the case back into court.

A version of this article appears in print on February 17, 2015, on page D3 of the New York edition with the headline: A Cancer Cluster Is Tough to Prove. Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe

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