The Department of Defense plans to develop a registry for residents of Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, who consumed water tainted with jet fuel in November 2021 to understand the long-term health impacts, a Defense Health Agency official said Tuesday.
The announcement comes more than two years after 93,000 service members and their families were exposed to the contamination. It is still unknown when the registry will be operational, but work on creating it is expected to start later this year.
Working with the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, the Pentagon is building the database and plans to provide a grant to an independent organization, such as a nonprofit or university, to manage the project. Army Col. John Oh, a DHA spokesman, said during an online briefing Tuesday that the grant is expected to be awarded sometime in the summer or fall but couldn’t say when residents would be able to sign up.
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“I know people want the registry — like, it should have been operational a year ago. I wish it could have been. The reality though … is these registries take time,” Oh said.
He said the DoD is spending time developing the registry so it can capture and provide valuable data and information on the health effects of fuel consumption for years to come.
More than 90,000 people were…
