EPA investigating radioactive waste dumping at N.C.'s Camp Lejeune

Last month federal investigators disclosed that Marine Corps families who lived at North Carolina's Camp Lejeune for over three decades were exposed to dangerously high levels of toxic chemicals in the water supply.

Now it turns out a new toxic threat has been discovered at the oceanside base.

The Environmental Protection Agency is looking into whether radioactive material was buried in the 1980s near a rifle range, the Associated Press reports:

A recently recovered Navy document dated 1981 said the material included 160 pounds of soil and two animal carcasses laced with strontium-90, an isotope that causes cancer and leukemia.

"We are looking into this information to determine if we need to sample and where," said Dawn Harris-Young, a spokeswoman for the EPA's regional office in Atlanta. "It's really early."

The news comes as North Carolina is working to increase its economic dependence on the military. But there are serious problems associated with doing this, as we documented in our recent report North Carolina at War. Among them is the fact that the military is one of the most environmentally destructive industries, leaving a toxic legacy across the South -- the full extent of which is apparently still being discovered.