Category: Environmental Contamination

The Collins Law Firm is proud to represent Illinois individuals, families, and workers harmed by toxic exposure — including chemicals found in everyday cleaning products. Many people assume that consumer and industrial cleaners are safe because they’re sold on store shelves or used in workplaces...

Across Chicago’s South and West Sides, in neighborhoods like Pilsen, Little Village, and Southeast Chicago, residents have long lived alongside heavy industry. Steel plants, metal finishers, chemical processors, and diesel freight yards have left behind more than economic footprints; they’ve lef...

Illinois has one of the highest numbers of lead service lines in the nation, an estimated 600,000 in Chicago alone. For decades, those pipes have quietly carried drinking water into homes, schools, and childcare centers, exposing countless residents to toxic levels of lead. Despite public awareness ...

The Collins Law Firm is proud to represent Illinois families, property owners, and businesses devastated by natural gas explosions. These incidents are sudden, violent, and life-changing — often destroying homes, injuring bystanders, and leaving entire communities with lasting trauma. While utilit...

The Collins Law Firm is proud to serve communities and businesses throughout Illinois who are facing the devastating impact of PFAS contamination. As environmental advocates and trial attorneys, we’ve seen how exposure to these so-called “forever chemicals” can harm public health, destroy prop...

When communities are impacted by industrial fires, people need straight answers and practical help. The experienced environmental attorneys at The Collins Law Firm have stood with residents after major chemical and lubricant‐facility disasters—including the Chemtool catastrophe in Rockton, Illin...

For the last 50 years, EPA has buckled to pressure from the chemical industry, and basically done nothing to protect millions of Americans from breathing a life-threatening, cancer-causing chemical known as “ethylene oxide” (ETO). Along the way, EPA even repeatedly violated federal law – the �...

Who’s protecting the residents of Cicero and Stickney, IL, from the tons of toxic chemical emissions migrating from the massive, 36-acre Koppers coal tar plant at the corner of Laramie and Pershing roads? The danger is that these chemicals from Koppers are blowing into nearby residential neighborh...

For years, the big cereal companies have been telling us that a bowl of whole grain oat cereal for breakfast is a healthy way to start our day. Turns out maybe it isn’t. A recent study by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) has uncovered a toxic chemical, chlormequat, in popular oat cereals like...

Attorney Shawn Collins, founder and partner of The Collins Law Firm in Naperville, Illinois, was instrumental in forging a $408 million settlement of the cancer claims of more than 800 plaintiffs in In re Willowbrook Ethylene Oxide Litigation, venued in Illinois State Court (Cook County). The claims...