Ethylene Oxide/Sterigenics Updates

Articles Posted in PCE

Camp-lejeune-service-members-graduate-college-300x221Update, July 2022: After being passed in the House and Senate, the Honoring Our PACT Act was expected to go to President Biden’s desk for his signature, but it is currently being blocked in the Senate by Mitch McConnell and the Republicans.

After years of denials by the government, Camp LeJeune veterans and their families–who were exposed to cancer-causing toxins on the military base–may be on the brink of getting their day in court.

In a long-overdue action, the House of Representatives recently passed H.R. 3967, the Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act (Honoring Our PACT Act), a broad bipartisan bill that addresses the needs of veterans subjected to toxic exposure. Yesterday, on June 16, 2022, the Senate passed an amended version of the Act. Importantly for Camp LeJeune veterans, this bill includes the Camp LeJeune Justice Act of 2022.

In a recent decision described by EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy as “a resounding victory for public health and a key component of EPA’s efforts to make sure all Americans have clean air to breathe,” the Supreme Court backed federally imposed limits on smokestack emissions that cross state lines. The ruling, issued on April 29th, upholds rules adopted by EPA in 2011 that force polluting power plants to limit the emission of pollutants that ultimately contaminate the air in downwind states and cause smog and acid rain. The Supreme Court held that under the Federal Clean Air Act, the EPA can regulate states that do not adequately control downwind pollution. According to the EPA, the reduction in air pollution will result in hundreds of billions of dollars in health care savings and prevent more than 30,000 premature deaths.

As acknowledged by the EPA and public health agencies, environmental exposures to contaminated air and water are significant risk factors in human illnesses, including cancer. Unfortunately, decades of improper chemical disposal has left a legacy of thousands of contaminated waste sites across the country. As a result of this legacy — today — homeowners from coast to coast are learning that their homes have been contaminated with cancer-causing chemicals like TCE, PCE, Benzene and Vinyl Chloride.

Hopefully, the Supreme Court’s recent ruling will spare future generations from the very real consequences of environmental pollution.

On Tuesday September 10th  local media reported that investigation of the former Burgess-Norton plant on Nims Street in Muskegon continues to drag on. Click here to read the article.  A closer look reveals a troubling, and far too common scenario…….the precise scenario Shawn Collins discussed in his most recent blog post.  We have a severe contamination problem…….highly toxic cancer-causing chemicals (TCE) in an approximate mile-long plume just feet below what looks like hundreds of homes in Muskegon.  The regulator, MDEQ, has known about it since at least as early as 2006, and likely before.  The concentrations of chemicals exceed standards that require a comprehensive investigation to see whether there are any vapors collecting inside or under the homes.  No such investigation has taken place.  Key questions remain unanswered.  Among others:

  • Are toxic vapors from the plume in, or under, any of the homes sitting on top of the hot plume?
  • When will we know?

The Pollution Lawyers recently received final court approval of an $8.1 million settlement of one of its environmental contamination cases. In late 2008, families in the small town of Attica, Indiana learned that toxic chemical vapors were entering the air inside their homes.  After getting the bad news, these families turned to The Pollution Lawyers for help.  Our class-action lawsuit, filed against Kraft Foods Global, Inc. alleged that the volatile organic compounds trichloroethylene (TCE), perchloroethylene (PCE), and vinyl chloride (VC) dumped at a manufacturing plant owned by Kraft seeped into the groundwater and traveled underneath over one-hundred nearby homes.  Once underneath these homes, the chemicals worked their way into the indoor air.  This process is commonly known as vapor intrusion.  Our lawsuit sought recovery for the damage caused to our clients’ property. After two years of litigation, The Pollution Lawyers secured a settlement for our clients that was greater than the assessed value of all the properties in the class.  In addition to the monetary compensation, Kraft has contractually agreed to remediate the groundwater and indoor air contamination.  For more information on our settlement see the following media links:  press release, news video, and newspaper article.

It’s a heartbreaking spectacle.  Japan’s Fukushima nuclear reactor spewing radioactive material into the air and ocean. Yet, even though it’s half a world away, this disaster offers a lesson to Americans that is much bigger than simply, “Let’s be careful about nuclear power.”   The message really is: “We cannot afford to trust our health and environment to what polluters say.” We should admire the Japanese for their discipline and unity under crisis, of course.  But we shouldn’t mimic the extraordinary trust and obedience they extend to the powerful companies that dominate life in Japan.  These companies – like the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (“TEPCO”), which operates the Fukushima plant – use the people’s trust to conduct their business in a culture of secrecy.  The result is a nuclear power plant built on the ocean’s shore in the heart of an earthquake-active region that is not designed to withstand a tsunami, and “safety” reports publicized in the aftermath of the tsunami-driven disaster that falsely underplayed the danger to the Japanese people from the escaping radiation.  While TEPCO at first said the radiation levels were only modest and asked for the evacuation of citizens within just 20 kilometers of the plant, America’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission – no protector of the people, by any means – described those same radiation levels as “extremely high,” and insisted on the evacuation of all Americans within 80 kilometers of that plant.  After weeks of TEPCO’s false assurances, we now know the truth:  Fukushima is history’s worst nuclear power plant disaster. We Americans shouldn’t get too smug about this.  Before we write Fukushima off as something that happened far away and would never happen here, let’s be honest: We Americans give the same undeserved trust to our companies.  We allow them repeatedly to belch poison into our air and water without making them pay a price for it; without demanding that they tell us the full truth about what they have done; and without making them clean it up.  Sometimes it’s because we’re just so happy to have the jobs that we tolerate this treatment.  Sometimes it’s because we’re not paying attention, and so we don’t know what they’re really doing to us.  Sometimes it’s because we believe – and we’re wrong when we do – that if there really were a serious environmental danger our government would tell us and protect us.  With the more than 20,000 people I have represented against polluters in the last decade, all of these explanations apply. Below, I tell a real-life story from my first pollution case, where a consultant for the polluter, like the spinners at Japan’s TEPCO, falsely assured the people about their safety.  And I itemize the lessons that a decade of battling polluters has taught me about the things we hear from polluters that we just cannot afford to trust.  In the end, the vigilant protection of our health and environment – whether here or in Japan – demands that we not accept on faith whatever polluters want us to believe. Things You Shouldn’t Trust When The Polluter Says Them I’ll never forget what he said. In the first pollution case I ever worked on, the consultant for the polluting company looked reassuringly into the eyes of the many anxious families who had come to the public meeting to get some answers.  They wanted to hear from the consultant about whether the toxic chemicals that the company had dumped onto its property – right across the street from the families – had contaminated the groundwater.  It’s the water that for years had been piped into their homes, and used for drinking, preparing food, and bathing. “I’ve done studies,” the consultant said, “and I can promise you that the contaminated groundwater never got off the company’s property.  So, it could not possibly get to your homes.” He was wrong.  Testing a few months later would prove it:  at the very moment that the consultant was offering his most sincere assurances to those families, the contaminated groundwater not only had gotten off the polluter’s property, and moved across the street, but had, in fact, traveled three miles off the company’s property, and was underneath thousands of homes in three different towns. It had been there for years. Point of the story?  You can’t trust what polluters tell you about how bad their pollution is.  Different reasons for this.  Some are just liars, sure.  They lie about having dumped the chemicals in the first place, and then they lie about the damage it’s done.   Others are cheap; they know that if they admit that they polluted their neighborhood they may have to pay a lot of money to clean it up.  And still, others are in denial; like Japan’s TEPCO, they don’t like to think of themselves as the kind of company that would hurt people or the environment, so they pretend that they didn’t.  Whatever the reason, their incentive is to not tell you the truth. Here’s a list of favorite lines from “The Polluters’ Public Relations Playbook.”  I accumulated these “Playbook” lines over the last decade, fighting polluters in court on behalf of families, and calling polluters out on their phony assurances. Don’t buy any of these lines.  Trusting them will very likely make you feel, maybe not until years later, like you’ve been had.  Most importantly, your trust may actually put you and your family in danger. (1)        “The levels of the contamination are not high enough to hurt anyone.” That’s what TEPCO first told the people of Japan.  The truth is that most of the chemicals polluting American groundwater – like “TCE” and “PCE” – were once used to clean grime off parts in a factory.  So, you don’t need a scientist to prove that these chemicals don’t belong in the human body.  Confirming this, USEPA officially states that there is no safe level for TCE and PCE.  So, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. (2)        “We’re working with the Environmental Protection Agency on the problem.” The truth is that many polluters hire a small army of lawyers and consultants to fight EPA, and convince EPA that the problem isn’t very serious, or that the company had nothing to do with it in the first place.  Over the years – and many of these problems sadly play out over years, even decades – the polluter’s army usually wears down the under-staffed EPA, with the result that the final clean-up “solution” ordered by EPA does not really protect the people that EPA is in business to protect.  More accurate to say that polluters “work with” EPA like fox “works with” the hens. (3)        “The contamination is fully contained on company property.” See my “consultant” above.  The truth is that the polluter often does not really look to see how far its pollution has spread.  The game is this:  the polluter does not actually test the groundwater in the neighborhood that might have been contaminated with the polluter’s chemicals.  Why?  Too dangerous. They might actually discover contamination there.  Instead, the polluter hires a consultant who develops a “model” – a very expensive guess, really – that uses many loaded assumptions to predict, voila, that the contamination actually hasn’t moved very far at all.  It is by this process that the polluter’s consultant can confidently assure nervous families that the contamination hasn’t moved off his client’s property….when it has already moved 3 miles off the property and polluted thousands of homes. (4)        “We take very seriously the health of our neighbors.” The truth is that many polluters hide the truth from their neighbors for years.  Or, like TEPCO, for however long they can get away with it.  Polluters live in terror of the moment that the neighbors do find out, and work overtime to keep them in the dark.  Beyond the rank immorality of keeping this kind of information a secret, the polluter is hurting itself with the secrecy.  The longer the pollution remains a secret, the more harm it does, and the more expensive it is to fix it.  For my client-families, the most anguishing part of their neighborhood being contaminated is finding out that the company knew years ago that they were in danger, but didn’t respect them enough to give them the information they needed to protect themselves and their children. (5)        “Yes, your neighbor’s well is contaminated, but yours tested clean.” The truth is that wells don’t get contaminated, the groundwater that feeds the wells does. The contaminated groundwater feeding your neighbor’s well is the same groundwater feeding yours.  And that groundwater is always on the move, meaning that the levels of contamination discoverable in any given water well are always moving and always changing.  So, while your well tested “clean” today, literally tomorrow it might test with a high level of contamination…..and tomorrow your neighbor’s well may test “clean.”  Bottom line: if today your neighbor’s well tests as contaminated, you should assume that yours is too, or will be, and take the same precautions. * * * * It’s a very human tendency in the wake of disturbing news to hear assurances and want to believe them.  When we are jarred by learning that our air or soil or water may be polluted, our minds search anxiously for the words that restore our peace of mind.  We want to be returned as quickly as possible to the feeling that our homes and neighborhoods are safe.  So when someone, even the polluter, says to us: “Don’t worry, you’re safe,” we really want to trust it. But history tells us, again and again, that this trust is not deserved.  Or worse, it is dangerous, because it causes us to drop our guards when we should be aggressively protecting ourselves and those we love.  That goes for here.  That goes for Japan.  That goes for any place that there are human beings and polluters who mistreat them.

Yet another case of toxic vapors invading homes through the process of vapor intrusion came to light recently in Madison, Wisconsin, where families were told that the air in their homes has been polluted with carcinogenic chemicals from the nearby Madison-Kipp manufacturing plant. PCE, a dangerous cleaning solvent which was allegedly disposed of decades ago, and supposedly cleaned up, is now showing up in homes near the plant property. Some of the homes have been fitted with vapor sucking devices designed to pull the polluted vapors out from under the homes to prevent contamination of the air inside.  The families, many of whom have young children, are being told that the dumping of the harmful chemical took place “decades ago”, that the levels are “slightly” elevated, and that the problem is just a “potential concern”.  But, nothing could be further from the truth.  The truth is that the company claims to have stopped using the chemical more than 25 years ago and also claims to have cleaned up its property.  Very few homes have been tested. The extent of the problem has not been determined.  The levels which have been detected are many times higher than the levels considered safe by many regulatory agencies. The truth about these vapor intrusion problems can be sobering.  Often times we see exactly what has happened here.  The company claims to have stopped using the chemical and claims to have cleaned its property.  But, these chemicals typically contaminate the groundwater under the factory and move with it off the plant property under nearby homes.  The water then off-gases these dangerous chemicals into the homes sitting on top of the contaminated water.  The fumes are odorless, so the people living in the homes have no idea they are there.  And, unlike then problem presented by polluted tap water which exposes people when they ingest it or bathe in it, people are exposed to these chemicals 24/7…even when they sleep. Unless, and until, the contaminated water is cleaned, these families will remain in harms way.  It goes without saying that even a home fitted with one of these vapor-sucking contraptions will be difficult, if not impossible, to sell.  The American dream of those families becomes a nightmare.

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