INTERVIEW WITH TCE EXPERT (VIDEO REPORT)

Dr. Phillip Leveque is a physician, toxicologist, and nutritional biochemist residing near Portland, Oregon. He holds Masters degrees in Biochemistry and Pharmacology as well as a Doctorate degrees in Pharmacology and Osteopathy. He was one of Oregon's first toxicologists and has served as an expert witness in more than 400 cases. He has extensive experience as a toxicologist, medical school professor, and practicing physician.



TUESDAY, AUGUST 26, 2008


TCE EXPERT SPEAKS TO SALEM-NEWS.COM


TRANSCRIPT FROM VIDEO INTERVIEW


Dr. Phil Leveque and reporter Tim King


(SN = Tim King, from Salem-News.com)


SN:
I’m Tim King from Salem-News.com, and I just returned from a week in southern California at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station where I was based in the early 1980’s, investigating TCE, Trichloroethylene contamination, and it just so happens that Dr. Phil Leveque on our staff at Salem-News.com is one of the first people who ever had a TCE court case as a toxicologist. So, we’re going to go through the TCE “drill” right now and learn more about it. Things that we’ve all been wanting to learn.

Doctor, how are you doing today?

DR. LEVEQUE:
I’m just doing fine, thanks.

SN:
TCE. You and I have spoken about it quite a bit, but we’ve had kind of a limited conversation about it since I’ve been back. But, start, tell us if you will what TCE, Trichloroethylene is.

DR. LEVEQUE:
Trichloroethylene is a compound that has two carbon atoms and three chlorine atoms, and it is based upon chloroform, which many people understand what that is. Chloroform was one of the first general anesthetics, the other one was ether. And, I can’t remember which was discovered first, but they were both discovered about the same time, about 1850, I can’t remember for sure, but around that time.

Well, what they found out was that both of them could be administered with an open mask. Which, the modern anesthetics have to have a closed system and so forth, and you see people wearing these things on their faces. But chloroform and ether were the general anesthetics that they could use that way. Well they discovered fairly soon that chloroform caused severe damage to the liver, ending up frequently with cirrhosis, or just total destruction of the liver, and lethality.

In other words, it killed them. And so they found out well, you can use chloroform once, but you can’t use it more than twice- cause if you do, you’re going to kill somebody.

So they discovered, or, whatever- manipulated the formula, so they ended up with the Trichloroethylene, and Trichloroethylene was used as a general anesthetic for a while. Its name was Trilene. And, it was purported to be safer than chloroform, but it wasn’t.

And so some of the- I’ve checked this up on the computer, and some of the postings, one of them said Trichloroethylene was one of the most toxic chemicals used in the United States as a degreasing agent. My experience, as you mentioned, was the first, I think the first court case of Trichloroethylene lethality and that was about 1974 is Des Moines, Iowa.

SN:
It’s “lethality” that’s causing all this investigation to go on in the first place, because a number of Marines from both El Toro and Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, where there’s an active base, have had serious, severe health problems; death. Doc, what was the story on that first court case you had? That was very interesting to me.

Dr. Leveque:
The man had a janitorial service, and where he got his exposure was in grocery stores where people had spit their chewing gum on the floor. And so, he was using the Trichloroethylene to loosen it up so he could scrape it off the floors. But at the same time, whether he was putting it on with some hunk of cloth or spraying it on or something like that, but he was exposed to Trichloroethylene fumes for four to eight hours a day. And if I can remember correctly, and I’m not sure about this, but he, in about six weeks, got enough exposure and it killed him.

SN:
So, TCE in the case of El Toro was used to clean the jet fighter parts. It was a degreaser. It’s my understanding that they would keep vats of it and parts would be dipped into it and they would also take it out to the aircraft to use it. And ultimately, this Trichloroethylene would just be dumped into the ground water system. And then, the health problems began. And of course the contamination of the water system at the base, that went on until about 1970, when the base at El Toro switched to municipal water supply.

But, Doc, talk to me about the things that people would go through just by being in the general proximity to it like that. Of course, liver failure if it’s direct contact, but many other problems as well.

Dr. Leveque:
Well, Okay, good question. Nerve tissue in the body is, the covering of the nerves and the nerves themselves, are fatty tissue.

And, just as well as Trichloroethylene is a “grease solvent” for engine parts, fat in your body is the same as grease, and so it actually not only affected the nerves, but it affected almost every system in the body.

The liver is most important because the liver is the organ in the body which detoxifies poisons. It metabolizes them to a lesser – but at the same time, it destroys itself.

So, this is one of the things that can happen. And also, it can alter the DNA-RNA system, which ends up with all sorts of tumors, and cancers, and so forth.

Reading on the computer these days, which I’ve done a lot the last few weeks, in sort of a preparation for today, I notice that there’s a lot of what I consider to be really abnormal, medical, not only medical but lethal medical problems that have occurred and if I understand correctly, we’re getting a lot of mail in to that degree. For example, there were a whole bunch of miscarriages and dead infants and so forth. Lots of them.

This does not surprise me, knowing what I know about Trichloroethylene. And what has been concealed from almost everybody accept for the people who sell it. So this is a bad scene. That’s the best I can say for it.

SN:
In talking about the people that sell it for just a moment, we’re kind of in a unique category here. We often have to be, obviously very careful in News, we can’t say things that aren’t true, or that we suspect as truth we can’t present them as the truth. But Dow Chemical, actually, you learned during this court case, that they hadn’t made correct, they hadn’t made it clear how dangerous this was.

Dr. Leveque:
That’s what I understand and what I can remember, at the time, because the insurance carriers for – I presume for Dow Chemical Company, said, “Dow Chemical says that this stuff is not harmful when used properly.” But whatever that means, is kind of hard- I mean, you can use this for removing chewing gum on the floors, and so forth, but how are you going to do that without exposing yourself?

So, but at the same time, I’m pretty sure that after the case I had, in which- well I guess it was Dow Chemical, was found guilty of causing harm, and their insurance carrier paid off to this family, I was under the impression that they were not gong to be using it any more. But apparently they just kept on using it.

SN:
And in the course of using it, at El Toro in particular, again it was dumped into the ground water system. And today, there is what they call an “underground plume” of TCE and it’s a huge, massive amount of TCE that’s occupied the water underneath the base. And now it’s moved off the base, into the Woodbridge community of Irvine, the city of Irvine. It’s a very wealthy community as you know Doc. What should these people in Irvine be thinking about, when they’re now first learning that they literally are sitting right on top of this big TCE plume?

Dr. Leveque:
If I read correctly, they’re trying to make a housing project on El Toro, with parks and baseball fields and all that kind of stuff?

Well this stuff is constantly vaporizing into the atmosphere, and these people that are there are exposed to Trichloroethylene fumes when they walk right over the top of the aquifer.

SN:
Now I think I mentioned this to you, and it was in my last report. I had parked my car at the worst part of El Toro, which is the area I worked in, it’s called Marine Wing Support Group 37. I parked the car there about ten minutes, weather was about 85 degrees out, and as I drove away I thought I had a nail in my tire. I got out to look, and a huge cake of the asphalt that I had been parked on top of just stuck to my tire and I drove away with it. I’ve never seen that happen before, and you mentioned the fact that, well, TCE is a solvent and when it hits something like asphalt which is an oil-based product, just starts (coming apart).

Dr. Leveque:
Well, tar is heavy grease if you want to call it that, and Trichloroethylene will dissolve it, and probably resulted in the loosening this stuff so it fell apart, yes.

SN:
And as you said, they are planning on making this into a huge park facility, with all of the “human participant” games like ball fields and this type of thing. It makes me cringe, honestly, thinking of that happening to my tire and 100 yards over here they want to have little kids playing in the grass.

Dr. Leveque:
That would be a horrible mistake. Whoever the officials are in Irvine, or that area, if they don’t know that now, they should know it.

And this would be a terrible mistake to have any type of habitation there. I don’t know what they could do about that, I think the best example would be to put about six inches of concrete over the 700 acres or whatever it is.

SN:
1300 acres. And at the time, it was a vibrant place. It was so clean, and active, and now it’s hard to see it looking as it does with the weeds growing through the cracks.

Dr. Leveque:
I’m sure that they had family accommodations on there too, for the Marines?

SN:
Yes, base housing was out at the back gate and it’s all closed down now.

Dr. Leveque:
I am certain that a lot of those people, particularly children are more sensitive to toxic substances like this. There were no “old” people on the base I’m sure, but children and old folks are the ones most sensitive or susceptible to poisons of all sorts- including Trichloroethylene. And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if there were a lot of children who died unexpectedly.

The quote is, “of natural causes”, but hogwash, because we know of lethality from Lejeune information that we have, so this wouldn’t surprise me at all.

And I would suggest that any Marine or Marine family that were on the base for, what the heck, even a month, if they had some abnormal medical condition, it’s probably connected to Trichloroethylene.

Fact of the matter is, that’s not the only substance that was there. They also had Perchloroethylene, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they had other chlorinated hydro-carbons also, all of which are lethal. Toxic, lethal, whatever the right word is.

SN:
We know about TCE, we know about PCE, Perchloroethylene, which the doctor just mentioned, and we also know about Perchlorate, which is a rocket fuel ingredient. And this one had us stumped for a moment, you and I, because it didn’t make sense that that would be there, then we learned that the Perchlorate is from bombs that were dropped on a range outside of the base. But all of these different things going on, with developers building right on top of it, it seems like money is kind of driving this more than comment sense.

Dr. Leveque:
Well, what’s money worth in that area? Probably a million dollars an acre or something like that? So, the people that want to sell it can make an awful lot of money, and they’re probably doing everything they can to conceal the fact that it is, in the most literal sense, a toxic waste dump. It just is, it just is that.

SN:
So, Doc: TCE, Trichloroethylene, three chlorines?

Dr. Leveque:
Yep.

SN:
What’s the difference between Trichloroethylene and Perchloroethylene?

Dr. Leveque:
Perchloroethylene has four chlorines and Trichloroethylene has three, but essentially they have about the same toxicity.

SN:
And when you’re in this context and you use the word “per” as in Perchlorate, what does that mean?

Dr. Leveque:
To me, it means “extra”. Somebody’s going to say, “don’t you know any chemistry?” Well, I was a Chem major, and a Bio-Chem major, and worked as a toxicologist for fifty years, and I’ll admit I don’t know everything- but I know an awful lot of stuff.

SN:
Well Doc, I really appreciate you taking the time on this, and I think we’re going to have a whole host of other questions coming down the line from this work that we’re doing. And I just think that the odds that we would have a toxicologist and a person with TCE practical background and experience as we go into this story involving my own background, it’s a great series of coincidences, don’t you think?

Dr. Leveque:
Beyond believable.

SN:
Of course, it’s a very sad story, but we will keep you updated on that. Thanks very much for joining us. With Dr. Phil Leveque, I’m Tim King, for Salem-News.com.