Dark Waters movie - yeah it's real and it pissed me off

What you wrote at the end stopped me cold. "The contamination is real. So is ours." That's it exactly.

I've sat with a lot of vets in my groups over the years and the anger that comes up around this specific thing, knowing that someone had documents, knowing that memos existed, is different from other kinds of grief. It's not just sadness. It's a very particular kind of betrayal and it deserves to be named as such.

The timeline parallel you're drawing is real. The Dark Waters case involved internal DuPont studies from as early as 1961 showing PFOA caused health effects in animals. Sixty one. And the community didn't get meaningful action until decades later. The Camp Lejeune contamination timeline has that same shape to it, known internally, documented, and the people living in it were just... there.

Your VA claim sitting since November is not you being forgotten randomly. You already understand the structural piece of this and honestly that understanding, as infuriating as it is, matters for your mental health too because it means you're not blaming yourself for the slowness.

One thing that helped people in my Wednesday group was keeping a running journal, not of facts for the claim but just of the emotional weight of waiting. Research out of UCSF found that expressive writing over even four sessions reduced psychological distress in people with serious illness. Doesn't fix the claim but it keeps the anger from eating you from inside while you wait.

If the waiting is getting heavy, please talk to someone. A counselor who works specifically with chronic illness or VA trauma can help carry this with you.

What you're describing with the timeline parallel is medically and legally accurate in a way that most people don't realize. The PFOA litigation in Parkersburg took decades partly because proving corporate knowledge of harm requires internal documents that companies fight tooth and nail to keep buried. The asbestos industry ran the exact same playbook, and there's a documented paper trail on it. The Selikoff studies from Mount Sinai in the 1960s and 70s showed clear mesothelioma risk from asbestos exposure, and internal industry memos from that era confirm executives knew. Lejeune's contamination records follow that same pattern of institutional knowledge without disclosure.

For your VA claim specifically, the PACT Act of 2022 expanded presumptive conditions for toxic exposure, which means you shouldn't have to prove causation the same way you used to. That's a meaningful shift on paper. Whether the processing backlog respects that shift in practice is... a different story.

I had a patient whose claim sat untouched for 14 months before we got a congressional inquiry involved through his senator's office. Filed the inquiry in March, got movement by May. Not a guarantee, but that's a real lever people don't always know exists.

Mesothelioma latency averages 20 to 50 years post-exposure, so your 1978 to 1982 exposure window fits the clinical picture exactly. Please make sure your oncologist knows the full occupational history in detail, not just "asbestos," but specific locations and durations. It matters for staging workup and treatment planning.

Talk to your own doctor about where you are clinically and keep pushing on that claim.