Monsanto related environmental and health risks lead to court case - again

According to The Madison St Clair Record last week:

A group of Illinois residents who live in or near Sauget have filed a class-action lawsuit over the release of various hazardous substances that they claim has created a severe health risk and has contaminated their properties.

Lead class plaintiffs Vernon Lee Anderson Sr., Ernestine Lawrence, Katie Burnett-Smith, Martha Emily Young, Marcella Phillips and Bernice Laverne Collins argue that three release sites - a 90-acre landfill operated by Sauget and Co., a 314-acre W.G. Krummrich Plant and property owned by Cerro Flow Products - have released PCBs and other various substances, including dioxins and furans, into the atmosphere for more than 70 years.

Residents fear they will develop a deadly disease from the PCBs, which have been shown to result in toxic effects in the brain and nervous system and in low birth rates and birth defects.

"According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, a lifetime dose of one milligram of PCBs is sufficient to cause cancer and other serious and life-threatening diseases," the suit filed Feb. 10 in St. Clair County Circuit Court states. "According to the World Health Organization, there is not safe level of exposure to PCBs."

Dioxins and furans are also known to be dangerous and to create significant health problems through inhalation, ingestion, dermal absorption and ingestion of homegrown produce.

In addition to the health risk, the residents claim the PCBs have contaminated property within a two-mile radius of the release sites, waterways and groundwater, the suit states.

The releases began after the W.G. Krummrich Plant, which is also referred to as the Monsanto Facility in the complaint, began producing, storing and disposing of PCBs at its facility, the residents claim.

In fact, "more PCBs were produced at the Monsanto Facility than at any other site in the United States, and perhaps even the free world," the suit states.

This Sauget flood plain region is well-known to the US Environmental Protection Agency and Monsanto had previously entered a negotiated settlement with the State of illinois.

Fox River Watch has a history of PCB health problems in the US here.

And with a corporate history like that Monsanto (along with the other biotech multinationals now operating here) expects Australians to take its word that the genetically modified crop types it is pushing onto often unwilling communities will do no harm?
Show us the longitudinal studies which scientifically demonstrate this, Monsanto.

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.