Breaking: Seattle Joins Major US Cities to Sue Monsanto for Toxic PCB Contamination
The city of Seattle now adds its name to 5 other major US cities that are suing Monsanto over PCBs. Perhaps a tide of similar legal action will finally break Monsanto for good. [1]
Activists may have a tough time shutting down Monsanto for poisoning the planet with GM foods and engaging in the corrupt chemical whirl-go-round that seems to be ruining every conceivable aspect of the natural world, but Monsanto’s karma is catching up, and quick.
Though most of us know Monsanto for creating the best-selling herbicide Round Up and contributing to the creation of Agent Orange, in this case, PCB contamination is targeted in 20,000 acres that drain to the Lower Duwamish, a federal Superfund site in Seattle, Washington.
Monsanto was a producer of PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) for commercial use in the U.S. from 1935 to 1977. The company has made millions from selling PCBs, all the while knowing that natural environments were suffering, causing harm to people, wildlife, and pets.
A majority of the people who worked for Monsanto in their PCB-making ‘glory days’ had little clue what the chemicals were doing to them. Most never thought to connect Monsanto to some of the odder features of life in places such as Anniston, Alabama – where the creek (known locally as “the ditch”) passed through town carrying water that ran red some days, purple on others, and occasionally emitted a foggy white steam.
Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes got the idea of filing the lawsuit in Seattle from other cities which have already done the same. Jose, Oakland, Berkeley, San Diego, and Spokane have already set up legal proceedings against Monsanto.
“When the profit motive overtakes concern for the environment, this is the kind of disaster that happens,” Holmes said. “I’m proud to hold Monsanto accountable.”
An untold amount of PCBs have contaminated Seattle’s waterways in the last few decades. Resident fish and shellfish in the Lower Duwamish Waterway are so contaminated by PCBs that the state Health Department advises there is no safe amount to eat — though people continue to fish from its waters.
No specific amount of damages have yet been named in Seattle’s lawsuit against Monsanto. These will be determined through due course as the suit progresses.
If Holmes can sue Monsanto for the city of Seattle, might not an attorney from every major city in the US do the same?
Monsanto seems to be digging its own grave.
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Featured image sourced and modified from: Paul Joseph Brown/Ecosystemphoto.com
Well we can only stand around and guess just who it is that Seattle is “suing” since the original Monsanto Aroclor PCB Factory in Anniston, Alabama went out of business at the turn of the millennium. They are no longer even known as “Monsanto” anymore and the former address is owned by a new company, Eastman I think it is. They have no corporate ties at all to the former Monsanto Aroclor Factory in Alabama so we can only guess where all of this ends up other than a fleeting moment of headlines in this news column. —- Sue Frasier, Albany New York near the Hudson River PCB dredging project of Upstate New York.
They can run, but they can’t hide, no matter how many name changes and mergers. Monsanto and Solutia Inc. had to (cough) cough up $700 Million to pay claims by over 20,000 Anniston residents over contamination by PCBs.
Yes but you are overlooking one small but very important detail on what you just said. Monsanto and Solutia paid BEFORE they went out of business and now Solutia is owned by Eastman and not Monsanto. The End. This Seattle case is at high risk of getting dismissed without any processing at all by the courts.