Baron & Budd, P.C. and Gomez Trial Attorneys filed a lawsuit on Wednesday in the U.S District Court in San Francisco, California, on behalf of Oakland City Attorney Barbara J. Parker.
Oakland is just one of a number of cities that have filed lawsuits this year against Monsanto, alleging the company is responsible for PCB contamination. Those cities include San Jose, San Diego, and Spokane, Washington.
As reported in Business Wire, the lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages for the continuing presence in Oakland’s storm water and the San Francisco Bay of runoff of polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs, synthetic organic chemicals produced by Monsanto and widely used until they were banned in 1979.
As claimed in the news release, “California’s Water Resources Control Board determined that the presence of PCBs in Oakland’s storm water threatens San Francisco Bay as a habitat for fish and wildlife and interferes with the Bay’s use and enjoyment by the people of the State of California.” The cost of cleanup is estimated to be at least $1.0 billion.
According to the lawsuit, before PCBs were banned in the U.S. in 1979, Monsanto’s PCB’s were incorporated into a vast array of products. including power transformers, electrical equipment, paints, caulks and other building materials.
The lawsuit contends that Monsanto knew the PCBs were an environmental contaminate and posed a threat to human health, yet chose to put profits over protecting people. “The company that is responsible for this vast contamination should bear the burden of cleaning up our environment, not the taxpayers of Oakland and California,” Parker said in a statement.
According to Think Progress, in a 1970 internal memo, Monsanto alerted its development committee to a problem: Polychlorinated Biphenyls, known as PCBs, had been shown to be a highly toxic pollutant. By that time, PCBs were found in everything, from electrical equipment to women’s shoes and flame-proof Christmas trees.
San Diego State University professor Richard Gersberg says PCBs are “persistent organic pollutants” that don’t break down easily. They actually bio-accumulate. This means that as they move up the food chain, their concentrations become higher.
In a 1997 study of caribou in Canada’s Northwest territories, titled “Persistent Organic Pollutants: A Global Issue, A Global Response,” it was found that caribou had levels of PCBs 10 times higher than the lichen they ate. Wolves that ate caribou had levels of PCBs 60 times higher than the lichen.
Monsanto has not had that great a year in many respects. besides the lawsuits, Reuters is reporting that a company executive says Monsanto is expecting to lose 23 to 33 cents per share in the first quarter of 2016. Monsanto blames restructuring, pressures on glyphosate pricing and lower sales of GMO corn in the U.S., as well as a weak currency in Brazil for its poor showing financially. Last month, Digital Journal reported the beleaguered company had to lay off 2,600 workers.
