BNSF sued for cancer

[sgtbean1]

Cancer Suit Against Texas Plant Begins
Tuesday January 8, 4:05 pm ET
By David Koenig, Associated Press Writer

First Cancer Lawsuit Against Railroad Tie Plant Begins FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) -- Testimony began Tuesday in the first of a flurry of lawsuits in which residents of a small Central Texas town claim their cancers were caused by toxic pollution from a century-old plant that makes railroad ties.

Lawyers suing BNSF Railway Co. say the company kept workers and residents of Somerville in the dark about dangers from chemicals such as creosote and arsenic, some of which were buried, burned or dumped in creeks.

"The railroad had a dirty little secret, and they buried it in a place where they didn't think anyone would look, listen or care," said Jared Woodfill, a lawyer for a 50-year-old woman who blames BNSF for her stomach cancer.

Linda Faust and her husband, who had worked at the plant for more than 30 years, are seeking at least $6 million in damages.

Railroad lawyer Douglas Poole said there is no scientific evidence linking Linda Faust's cancer to the chemicals used at the plant, and instead pointed to her smoking habit.

"She never worked at the tie plant," Poole told jurors during his opening statement. "Her husband did. He's fine."

The trial in state district court is expected to last four weeks and is being watched closely as a bellwether for up to 200 similar lawsuits filed by Somerville residents and plant workers against BNSF and Koppers Inc.

BNSF is a unit of Fort-Worth based Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp., which sold the plant to Pittsburgh-based Koppers in 1995 but remains its largest customer.

The plant has been a cornerstone of the economy in Somerville, 90 miles northwest of Houston, since it opened in the 1890s. In some families, several generations of men have worked in the plant, turning out telephone poles and railroad ties.

The plant takes raw lumber and infuses it with a tar-like mixture of chemicals to turn out ties that withstand weather and termites for up to 30 years.

Since the early 1980s, critics have blamed the plant for what they call a cancer cluster and birth defects such as infants born with cleft palates.

Texas health officials have found no unusual incidence of cancer in Burleson County, where the plant sits, but critics say the study was flawed and didn't count people who developed cancer but moved away.

Linda Faust was diagnosed with stomach cancer in 1998, when she was 40, and doctors removed her stomach. She is thin, must eat or drink constantly, sometimes loses control of her bowels, and appears much older than she is.

She sat next to her husband, Donnie, behind their lawyers' table as Woodfill outlined their case to the jury.

Woodfill said workers and residents were exposed to dangerous levels of coal-tar creosote, arsenic and dioxin, which are known or suspected carcinogens. He said BNSF ignored recommendations from the makers of creosote and from federal agencies to outfit workers in rubber gloves and respirators and to issue them uniforms to avoid tracking toxic chemicals into their homes.

A witness for Faust's side will testify that he found high levels of contamination in the couple's attic, Woodfill said.

But Poole said he would call a Georgetown University epidemiologist to dispel any link between Faust's cancer and the chemicals used at the plant. He said creosote exposure has been linked to skin cancer but not stomach cancer.

"She never set foot in the plant as far as we know," Poole said. "She claims she got (cancer) from living more than a mile away. It's a joke."

According to records at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the plant is still struggling to clean toxic waste from groundwater.

The Faust case was tried in September in the same court, but state District Judge Jeff Walker declared a mistrial when a witness mentioned the other pending lawsuits against BNSF and Koppers.

 

Just another case of getting cash from the railroad, or is there truth to this story? 

the company kept workers and residents of Somerville in the dark about dangers from chemicals such as creosote and arsenic

The plant has been a cornerstone of the economy in Somerville, 90 miles northwest of Houston, since it opened in the 1890s. In some families, several generations of men have worked in the plant, turning out telephone poles and railroad ties.

 

Huh? So even though most people had someone in their family working at the plant, nobody knew they were using toxins on a daily basis? Seems a little odd to me. 

[edbenton]

You have another case here of the so called DEEP POCKETS SYNDROME.  Lawyer sees a client looks at their background and goes after those with the deepest pockets for whatever they think they will settle for.  Trouble is every now and then you run into a company like BNSF that will fight and make you earn every penny you get out of them.

[garyla]

Remember the bizarre $11 (?) billion verdict in the 1980s Houston trial between Texaco and Pennzoil, regarding the Getty Oil buyout?

Anyone who thinks that rubes are powerless in this society should read up on the impact those 12 jurors had.  What a disaster.

 

[mudchicken]

Amen - Santa Fe and Kirby Lumber were more than a little obsessed with the toxic aspects of the treating plant. Especially where large amounts of chemical were involved. (My experience goes back into the eighties)....Looks like this ambulance chaser and his client are counting on deep pockets and finding a jury pool that has been tainted by the less than informed media hysteria over treated timber. If the person chose to ignore what he was told, that's his problem.

Sommerville was hardly the only tie plant on the railroad over the years. When issues with creosote (in concentrated quantity) were first recognized in the 1960's, they centralized the treating plants at two locations, and then one at Sommerville. The closed plants were hardly forgotten and ignored - the railroad remediated and kept after the older sites at Las Vegas, Albuquerque, etc. (still does, UP managed a similar program)...

[eolafan]

Anybody who has not lived in a hole all their lives knows creosote is very nasty stuff and can and does cause all kinds of conditions, including cancer if exposed long enough.  This is clearly a case of ambulance chasing.

[vsmith]

Interesting, a lifetime of Smoking had nothing to do with it, yeahhh...right!

[Krazykat112079]

It is unfortunate that in these cases you are 100% guilty until proven innocent.  Normally, I don't side with big business and I'm not just siding with BNSF because I'm a shareholder.  The rewards given in these types of cases are more often than not ludicrous.  Everyone says that emotions are priceless, but they always seem to be worth millions when suing someone.  I will be happy if justice is served, but it is more likely to be revenge.

If damages are awarded, it would be poetic justice for the companies to produce the funds by laying off all the employees and liquidating the factory. 

[CopCarSS]

BNSF should just consider themselves lucky, I guess. After all, they could be getting sued for $3 quadrillion.

[eolafan]

It wouldn't surprise me if she was a user of chewing tobacco which is a proven cause of cancer, including stomach cancer.  How about all that hot spicy Tex-Mex food they eat down there?

[MichaelSol]

Interesting, a lifetime of Smoking had nothing to do with it, yeahhh...right!

Smoking causes stomach cancer?

 

[MichaelSol]

Huh? So even though most people had someone in their family working at the plant, nobody knew they were using toxins on a daily basis? Seems a little odd to me. 

News item:

BN has already settled one case out of court:

"A case filed by one-time employee Don Hightower has settled for an undisclosed amount, just before he died from cancer that ate away at his face."

There was a genuine management problem at this plant:

"In a court deposition, former plant superintendent Gene Welch said he was unaware creosote might require special handling.  "... you know, I don't know that I ever had anybody come to me and complain about creosote hurting (them).""

One worker went to work at the railway in 1971 and served on the Railway Safety Committee. "Nobody ever addressed us about the chemicals." "We never had the proper equipment to keep the vapors and fumes from breathing them."

"Creosote can pose a significant danger to soil and groundwater supplies, if mishandled. Once it enters the soil or groundwater, it begins to break down, which can take years."

"According to records at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the plant is still struggling to clean toxic waste from groundwater."

If damages are awarded, it would be poetic justice for the companies to produce the funds by laying off all the employees and liquidating the factory. 

Interesting that people here find profound human suffering and death not tragic enough whatever the cause, that because a railroad is involved the suffering should be intentionally multiplied and compounded by the "poetic justice" of a layoff and losing medical coverage as well.

 

[vsmith]

Interesting, a lifetime of Smoking had nothing to do with it, yeahhh...right!

Smoking causes stomach cancer?

 

Dad died of smoking related cancer, care to guess where his cancer was?

[n012944]

Interesting, a lifetime of Smoking had nothing to do with it, yeahhh...right!

Smoking causes stomach cancer?

 

No, but according to a couple of web sites I visited, neither does creosote.

[MichaelSol]

Interesting, a lifetime of Smoking had nothing to do with it, yeahhh...right!

Smoking causes stomach cancer?

Dad died of smoking related cancer, care to guess where his cancer was?

I don''t care to get into an argument with you. I don't happen to agree that anyone's experience, with your Father or otherwise, justifies mocking terminally suffering people because they smoked or ate spicy food and that breathing burning creosote residue in the air, or drinking the creosote in the drinking water was somehow their fault too.

Every time this stuff comes up, some of you treat people's deaths like a spectator sport and try and figure out how many ways the victim must have "deserved" their pain, suffering, agony and death. I find it repulsive and offensive.

 

 

[MichaelSol]

Interesting, a lifetime of Smoking had nothing to do with it, yeahhh...right!

Smoking causes stomach cancer?

No, but according to a couple of web sites I visited, neither does creosote.

Incomplete combustion of creosote creates polycyclic aromatic byproducts. These have been positively identified to cause skin, lung, stomach, liver, colon and bladder cancers in laboratory animals. It is assumed that there can be a link to human cancers of the same type, but as always, human "testing" cannot be carried out, creosote contamination and its long term effects on humans is difficult to measure because of the very isolated population samples, and pockets of unusual cancers like this one appears to be generally are one of the rare "samples" that health authorities get a chance to look at, often as the result of lawsuits bringing the matter to the attention of health authorities.

Less is known about creosote breakdown in groundwater because the conditions are quite variable. These plants are often associated with PCP treatment as well, and Dioxin is a known by-product, which is fat soluble, highly toxic, and accumulates in body tissues.

News item:

"Sitting in a Fort Worth courtroom, Linda Faust scribbled the names of sick friends and neighbors on a sheet of notebook paper.

"Joe Moya, Patricia Thomas and Frank Kromar have colon cancer. Holly Monk, Victor Fonseca and Bud Archer have lung cancer. Dale Davis, Elaine Flannigan and Mary Archer, like Faust, have been diagnosed with stomach cancer.

"Seventy-six names in all.

"What do they have in common? They've lived, worked or had a loved one employed at the huge railroad tie plant in the small Central Texas town of Somerville.

""We've got 13 streets in our town, and if you go up and down them, there is cancer after cancer after cancer. Unusual cancers," Faust said, her wrinkled face pocked with the acne that her attorneys say came after being exposed to dioxins. "It is just rampant.""

This doesn't sound like any typical small town sampling of cancer that I am aware of.

In any event, there appears to be a number of suffering people involved. The situation doesn't warrant the usual armchair judgments from afar.

 

[solzrules]

Huh? So even though most people had someone in their family working at the plant, nobody knew they were using toxins on a daily basis? Seems a little odd to me. 

News item:

BN has already settled one case out of court:

"A case filed by one-time employee Don Hightower has settled for an undisclosed amount, just before he died from cancer that ate away at his face."

There was a genuine management problem at this plant:

"In a court deposition, former plant superintendent Gene Welch said he was unaware creosote might require special handling.  "... you know, I don't know that I ever had anybody come to me and complain about creosote hurting (them).""

One worker went to work at the railway in 1971 and served on the Railway Safety Committee. "Nobody ever addressed us about the chemicals." "We never had the proper equipment to keep the vapors and fumes from breathing them."

"Creosote can pose a significant danger to soil and groundwater supplies, if mishandled. Once it enters the soil or groundwater, it begins to break down, which can take years."

"According to records at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the plant is still struggling to clean toxic waste from groundwater."

If damages are awarded, it would be poetic justice for the companies to produce the funds by laying off all the employees and liquidating the factory. 

Interesting that people here find profound human suffering and death not tragic enough whatever the cause, that because a railroad is involved the suffering should be intentionally multiplied and compounded by the "poetic justice" of a layoff and losing medical coverage as well.

 

Michael the whole premise of the lawsuit is highly suspect.  No one is claiming that creosote isn't harmful.  It's just that when you never actually step foot in the plant and yet you still claim to have creosote poisoning I've got to wonder.  You could have gotten poisoned from the electric pole in your front yard.  If your house of really old construction - say 1890's-1900's - I've seen them use creosote to treat the joists.  There are all kinds of sources for the chemical.  Or, you could smoke your whole life.  This has been known to lead to all kinds of cancer as a result.  My grandfather died from bladder cancer - and he smoked for 35 years before he quit.  You wouldn't think that organ had anything to do with smoking, but the doctors told us that after 35 years the carcinogens in the cigarettes can and do break down basic tissue functions all over the body.

I think this a case of a lawyer looking for a new tobacco company.  Why didn't he just sue the cigarette companies?  Maybe because their tapped and they've gotta find a new source of free money?  Railroads have nothing to do with it.  The lawsuit is bogus based on its premise.   

[vsmith]

Interesting, a lifetime of Smoking had nothing to do with it, yeahhh...right!

Smoking causes stomach cancer?

Dad died of smoking related cancer, care to guess where his cancer was?

I don''t care to get into an argument with you. I don't happen to agree that anyone's experience, with your Father or otherwise, justifies mocking terminally suffering people because they smoked or ate spicy food and that breathing burning creosote residue in the air, or drinking the creosote in the drinking water was somehow their fault too.

Every time this stuff comes up, some of you treat people's deaths like a spectator sport and try and figure out how many ways the victim must have "deserved" their pain, suffering, agony and death. I find it repulsive and offensive.

 

 

My POINT was that the smoking is more that likely the primary cause of the plaintifs illness, creosote might be a contributing factor, but smoking has a very well documented cancer link compared to non-smokers going back 50 years. If this person wasn't a smoker I would be more inclined to your POV.

[selector]

How can anyone demonstrate that a cancer was rooted in a given cause?   There is no way except that we have accepted that smoking causes a great deal of the lung, tongue, and esophageal cancers we see, but so does alcohol...or so I heard years ago...maybe they've changed their minds.  But that's my point, we don't really know.  We assume that a lung cancer was caused by a person's smoking, but we don't know. 

My mother died a few years back from a rare cancer that effectively forced her to starve to death...it was a lyo-myo-sarcoma...extremely rare and highly resistant, as are all myo-sarcomas, to radiation therapy.  The tumour was at the side of her esophagus, and it slowly grew to squeeze it shut.  She had undergone several rounds of dental implantations over the preceding three years, the result of an auto accident.  Was there something about the compounds used in her implant treatment, maybe the various X-rays that led to her cancer?  Who is to say.?  Maybe auto accidents are at the root of some cancers since they precede them in many instances.  Pos hoc, ergo propter hoc.

I know my mother, though.  She would not sue her endodontist because she suspected his service to her had led to her untimely demise.  She really wanted to have a realistic smile, and smile she did, even as she lay dying.

-Crandell

[MichaelSol]

Michael the whole premise of the lawsuit is highly suspect.  No one is claiming that creosote isn't harmful.  It's just that when you never actually step foot in the plant and yet you still claim to have creosote poisoning I've got to wonder.  You could have gotten poisoned from the electric pole in your front yard.  If your house of really old construction - say 1890's-1900's - I've seen them use creosote to treat the joists.  There are all kinds of sources for the chemical.  ...  Railroads have nothing to do with it.  The lawsuit is bogus based on its premise.   

A town with a tie treatment plant, a town practically saturated in creosote, and the creosote came from somewhere else?

And this was the only town that used creosote treated joists -- or had a high incidence of cancer from them? 

Whew, a creosote plant, dioxin, a chip burner with no pollution controls, old ties burned out in the open, a creosote-polluted water supply, the plant manager didn't know that creosote was dangerous, the safety committee was never told anything about the stuff, 200 people in a town of 1700 have [or had] various rare cancers .... and the railroad had "nothing to do with it?"

News item:

Some workers in Somerville say that ...  workers there handled creosote with their bare hands and wore it home on their clothes.  They say workers even burned treated ties at night, spreading what they say were toxic fumes over the town.

Now, some say that exposure is killing them.

"The problem is we don't know what we're catching because every cancer seems to be some rare form of cancer," said Dennis Davis, who can rattle off more than two dozen people from Somerville with cancer.  "It's like a plague has come down on us."

This year, he joined the list.

"(The doctors) diagnosed that I have pancreatic cancer," he said.

That's why Davis joined a list of more than 160 other Somerville residents touched by cancer taking on the railway in a company town.

"This has been the most horrific, awful thing I've been involved in my entire life and it's sad and sickening," he said.

Faust never worked at the plant, but her husband does, and ...  she laundered his clothes blanketed with creosote.  She says she ate vegetables from her garden, which she now believes was tainted with ash from the improperly burned creosote. Her garden was trimmed with railroad ties. 

"I handled it daily," she said.  "We were told it wouldn't hurt us."

The creosote got into the water supply. She drank toxic stew with every drink of water.

The argument that she might have gotten cancer anyway is an old and cruel defense tactic: "she was probably going to die anyway, so what if we also poisoned her and just sped it up?"

There is always a problem of ultimate causation of cancer in humans; however, it's not a defense to say we could just let this stuff go all over, on the workers, in their clothes, in the air, into their food, and into their water -- even though we know it is carcenogenic and just forgot to tell the plant manager -- because they were all going to die someday from something, and whatever they die from its probably their own fault anyway.

Which is pretty much what you suggest that the BN should be permitted to argue.

And when the angry jury returns a headline-making judgment, you will continue to wonder why juries do those things ...

Appendix:

Houston Press:

Toxic Town: Cancer and Birth Defects in Somerville

In Somerville, chances are far better than normal that you will die of cancer or give birth to a deformed baby

By Todd Spivak 

Published: December 6, 2007

http://www.houstonpress.com/2007-12-06/news/toxic-town/

Dennis Davis thought maybe his family was cursed.

In early 1998, his uncle Don developed an aggressive skin cancer that devoured his face. Several months later, his brother Dale died suddenly at age 46 from stomach cancer. A few weeks after that, his granddaughter Makayla was born with severe birth defects.

Davis started thinking about the other families in his small town that he knew had serious illnesses - the cancers, the brain tumors, the babies born with cleft palates.

He went house-to-house in his neighborhood and was stunned to find that nearly every family he visited was privately dealing with some type of horrendous disease.

"There's a catastrophe in our community," says Davis, who in November 2006 at age 53 was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. "God knows what we're contaminated with."

Somerville, Texas, a sleepy, one-­stoplight town 90 miles northwest of Houston, is home to a massive wood-treatment facility, which for more than 100 years churned toxic chemicals into the atmosphere while manufacturing phone poles and bridge supports. Locals call it the "tie plant" since it was once the nation's largest producer of railroad cross-ties.

It was also among the industry's worst polluters, according to several prominent environmental scientists who now say Somerville residents for decades were exposed to wildly elevated levels of arsenic, dioxins and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons - all known cancer-causing chemicals considered highly toxic even at low doses. (For more detailed information, click here.)

Dust samples taken during the last year from several Somerville homes and school buildings reveal contamination levels higher even than those found 30 years ago in Love Canal, the notorious chemical landfill in Niagara Falls linked to high rates of cancers and birth defects, according to James Dahlgren, a clinical assistant professor of medicine at UCLA School of Medicine who has been retained by plaintiff attorneys in several pending lawsuits against the plant.

"The situation in Somerville is a ­public-health emergency," Dahlgren says. "The government should be called in to investigate."

A Houston Press investigation found as follows:

• Though incidences of stomach cancer across the country have plummeted during the last several decades, now representing just 2 percent of all new cancer cases, Somerville residents are contracting the disease at a rate as much as 40 to 60 times the national average, according to Dahlgren
• Though industry standards have existed for decades regarding ­industrial-waste management, the tie plant as recently as the mid-1990s neglected to install any air-pollution controls on smokestacks, routinely flushed chemical waste into local creeks and improperly used wood-waste boilers as incinerators, causing an incomplete combustion that increased the toxicity of chemicals released into the air
• Though the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has never conducted any off-site testi

[MichaelSol]

How can anyone demonstrate that a cancer was rooted in a given cause?  

With statistics.

It is rare, for instance, for people to die of mesothelioma. When a cluster of people do, there is a problem, and spicy food isn't one of them ...

News Item:

The large number of deaths in Libby, Montana gave rise to concern in the health department. In collaboration with the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, studied the mortality statistics for Libby, Montana for a 20 year period from 1979 to 1998.

It was noticed that most of the people were dying of respiratory diseases, lung cancer, mesothelioma, digestive cancer and diseases of pulmonary circulation. Most of these people died decades after working in asbestos mines. It was concluded that most of these diseases and deaths were the direct result of asbestos exposure from vermiculite mine.

In this regard, death certificates were also reviewed to judge the accuracy of such claims. Most of these certificates were witness to the fact that people living in Libby had died from various lung and respiratory diseases and mesothelioma due to asbestos exposure. This 20 year period review also showed that the mortality rate in Libby was up to 40% to 60%, higher than other states of the US.

 

[Krazykat112079]

Based on the data you have produced, MichaelSol, they have suspected that something was amiss since the 70's.  Would you not consider then that the town also bears partial responsibility for not addressing the issue 30+ years ago?  If your car smells funny, but no indication lights come on and you continue driving it for hundreds of miles until it bursts into flames, do you not bear responsibility for not investigating the smell?  I refuse to believe that the townsfolk were completely ignorant to the hazards as presented in the case, especially after suspecting something was amiss back in the 70s.  Sure, the plant and the companies that operate(d) it bear a level of responsibility and the suffering that these people endure is tragic.  Is it not also tragic when a mother of 4 kills herself driving around the gates of a grade crossing?

My point was not that BNSF should get off scott-free.  They bear responsibility to a degree.  What I was intending to convey is that I do not have faith in our justice system enough to recognize that and remain blind to the tragedy, which is not relevant to justice.  In my opinion, BNSF and the other company should immediately detoxify the land.  I admit, I have no idea what is involved, but maximum haste should be used.  In addition, it would not be outside the realm of justice for them to pay medical bills related to cancer for those townsfolk over the age of 30.  Everyone else, that burden lies with the town and the people that inhabit it. 

[MichaelSol]

Based on the data you have produced, MichaelSol, they have suspected that something was amiss since the 70's.  Would you not consider then that the town also bears partial responsibility for not addressing the issue 30+ years ago? 

Good grief.

The railroad said that creosote was not dangerous. The plant manager received no warning from the company that there was a problem. The creosote was incinerated in an ordinary incinerator. It was dumped in the creek.

Have you complained to a company lately about them poisoning the town? And they said everything was OK. What were you to do? Complain some more?

Did you keep your job?

I can tell you exactly what happened to any whisteblower in the 1970s. They were fired.

They left town.

They died of cancer somewhere else; probably couldn't even afford the medical care and the family went broke.

And no one noticed.

And I would just bet there are people here who say they deserved it for squealing on their employer. That's how some of you think.

The Company knew about this in the 1970s. It had the expertise to know there was in fact a problem, and it alone had the ability to fix it.

In the intervening 30 years, it did nothing.

What do you think it takes to get corporate attention on such matters?

Perhaps a lawsuit?

 

[eolafan]

Based on the data you have produced, MichaelSol, they have suspected that something was amiss since the 70's.  Would you not consider then that the town also bears partial responsibility for not addressing the issue 30+ years ago? 

Good grief.

The railroad said that creosote was not dangerous. The plant manager received no warning from the company that there was a problem. The creosote was incinerated in an ordinary incinerator. It was dumped in the creek.

Have you complained to a company lately about them poisoing the town?

Did you keep your job?

I can tell you exactly what happened to any whisteblower in the 1970s. They were fired.

They left town.

They died of cancer somewhere else; probbly couldn't even afford the medical care and the family went broke.

And no one noticed.

And I would just bet there are people here who say they deserved it for squealing on their employer. That's how some of you think.

 

 

 

 

MichaelSol, seems to me there is more to your passion over this subject than meets the eye of most of us, care to share it or simply tell us to mind our own businesses?

[n012944]

Based on the data you have produced, MichaelSol, they have suspected that something was amiss since the 70's.  Would you not consider then that the town also bears partial responsibility for not addressing the issue 30+ years ago? 

Good grief.

The railroad said that creosote was not dangerous. The plant manager received no warning from the company that there was a problem. The creosote was incinerated in an ordinary incinerator. It was dumped in the creek.

Have you complained to a company lately about them poisoing the town?

Did you keep your job?

I can tell you exactly what happened to any whisteblower in the 1970s. They were fired.

They left town.

They died of cancer somewhere else; probbly couldn't even afford the medical care and the family went broke.

And no one noticed.

And I would just bet there are people here who say they deserved it for squealing on their employer. That's how some of you think.

 

In any event, there appears to be a number of suffering people involved. The situation doesn't warrant the usual armchair judgments from afar.

 

Funny, it seems that you are doing just that.  From what I have read here, it appears that you have already convictied the BNSF.

[vsmith]

Sounds like Mr Sol does have a more personal connection to this situation.

[eolafan]

Sounds like Mr Sol does have a more personal connection to this situation.

Exactly my suspicion.

[TomDiehl]

Incidents like this were the reason for the passage of the Hazard Communication Standard in 1983. Before this, the supervisors at any plant could make statements that their processes or chemicals were of no hazard, probably because they were told this by their suprvisor. There were no channels easily accessible to check the information given by the higher ups. The HAZCOM Act (common name) required any company producing hazardous materials to originate a Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) and provide copies of these to all customers of the material. All employees that can possibly be exposed must have access to the MSDS copies and be trained how to read them. The company is responsible for any contamination and must take precautions to prevent it.

Before this act, people could be exposed to any hazardous material and not told anything about it. Look at how asbestos was handled in the days of steam.

[MichaelSol]

MichaelSol, seems to me there is more to your passion over this subject than meets the eye of most of us, care to share it or simply tell us to mind our own businesses?

I grew up on railroad property. It was 24/7. Played on the tracks, the tie piles, had the section crews over for lunch or Friday afternoon picnics in the summer all the time. Old ties were sometimes burned. Creosote was present on a daily basis. I recall the company memo, in the early 1970s, advising that creosote had been suspected to be hazardous, with a list of precautions to take. Well, some people have railroading "in their blood" but it has a little different meaning in this context.

When I went to work for the government in R&D, I was fortunate in that my job allowed me to put in 40 hours a week, and still be able to work on a doctorate in biochemistry. The engineering school was too far away to finish a masters in Chem E, but I don't like to sit still, there was a good biochem program, and so I did that. My emphasis was Neurochemistry. At the same time, as the only guy in our project with any authentic Chem E credentials, I was in charge of our analytical chemistry section, the metal fatigue and corrosion lab, and I was also the safety officer. We contracted to do research for a variety of agencies, including the US Army and the US Air Force Chemical Weapons Laboratory. That last one was an eye-opener.

It was a great time in my life. I still stay in touch with everyone even though this was 35 years ago. Our retired Wind Tunnel Manager happens to be on my appointment calendar this afternoon as an odd coincidence to this conversation.

In the course of those experiences, I became sensitized to the environmental problems caused by negligent industrial and research practices. In particular, biological systems are particularly susceptible to polycyclic aromatic compounds in the environment which are for practical purposes in my book inherently not only carcinogenic but mutagenic.

And that is what turned on the red light for me in reading about Somerville: the birth defects, in particular the cleft palates. None of the articles that I have read on Somerville are mentioning this, but cleft palates in a population are almost always an indicator of some kind of polycyclic chemical contamination. Babies don't get that birth defect from their mother's smoking or because of spicy food. And maybe I am too sensitive to God's creatures, but malformed babies as the result of some corporate practice passes far beyond any line of outrage that I can imagine.

The cleft palates are what told me, instantly, that this lawsuit was firmly grounded, perhaps more so than they realize, and that this tie plant was completely mismanaged by the railroad. They knew exactly what the dangers from creosote were by the mid-1970s and there is nothing in the published record that shows that they did a d**** thing to protect these people; instead, telling them all was well.

Now, personally?

I have been a consultant to the Burlington Northern Railway through one of it's lead law firms regarding hazardous waste sites, including diesel fuel and creosote issues, based on historical knowledge of where they are or were and my opinion of the hazards based on specific historical knowledge of the sites. BN lawyers spent a half a day in my office as recently as 2006 reviewing the available historical record. I have provided a written report and documentation. We communicate from time to time. I had a request by email just last week as part of ongoing communications about hazardous waste sites and issues and a request for some additional documentation.

None of those communications involve Somerville.

 

[selector]

MichaelSol, seems to me there is more to your passion over this subject than meets the eye of most of us, care to share it or simply tell us to mind our own businesses?

Huh? Passion is okay in a discussion, as long as it doesn't get personal.  It seems you have decided the direction with your own comment above.

If I may be permitted to step in, Michael darned well should be passionate about what he says here because it is so often misattributed, misunderstood, or misreprepresented.  Despite his attempts to offer many sources to bolster what he contends, he finds himself having to repeat and to seek yet more supporting material in an attempt to deal with the subject constructively for the sake of onlookers who are not actively posting, but who are nevetheless interested in developing an informed opinion.

These shouldn't be arguments of the Monty Python kind where simply denying another's assertions, particularly when supported, is to be taken as a polite or fruitful form of discourse, and then not bothering to support your denial's basis.  It isn't honourable, nor is it fair.  Passion may merely be frustration, even pique.  Why does he even bother, in other words.  Is he in this for his health?

So, minding one's own business...no, I don't think there's an shortage of that going on around here.

[eolafan]

MichaelSol, seems to me there is more to your passion over this subject than meets the eye of most of us, care to share it or simply tell us to mind our own businesses?

I grew up on railroad property. It was 24/7. Played on the tracks, the tie piles, had the section crews over for lunch or Friday afternoon picnics in the summer all the time. I recall the company memo, in the early 1970s, advising that creosote had been suspected to be hazardous, with a list of precautions to take. Well, some people have railroading "in their blood" but it has a little different meaning in this context.

When I went to work for the government in R&D, I was fortunate in that my job allowed me to put in 40 hours a week, and still be able to work on a doctorate in biochemistry. The engineering school was too far away to finish a masters in Chem E, but I don't like to sit still, there was a good biochem program, and so I did that. My emphasis was Neurochemistry. At the same time, as the only guy in our project with any authentic Chem E credentials, I was in charge of our analytical chemistry section, the metal fatigue and corrosion lab, and I was also the safety officer. We contracted to do research for a variety of agencies, including the US Army and the US Air Force Chemical Weapons Labratory. That last one was an eye-opener.

It was a great time in my life. I still stay in touch with everyone even though this was 35 years ago. Our retired Wind Tunnel Manager happens to be on my appointment calendar this afternoon as an odd coincidence to this conversation.

In the course of those experiences, I became sensitized to the environmental problems caused by negligent industrial and research practices. In particular, biological systems are particularly susceptible to polycyclic aromatic compounds in the environment which are for practical purposes in my book inherently not only carcinogenic but mutagenic.

And that is what turned on the red light for me in reading about Somerville: the birth defects, in particular the cleft palates. None of the articles that I have read mention this, but cleft palates in a population are almost always an indicator of some kind of polycyclic chemical contamination. Babies don't get that birth defect from their mother's smoking or because of spicy food. And maybe I am too sensitive to God's creatures, but malformed babies as the result of some corprorate practice passes far beyond any line of outrage that I can imagine.

The cleft palates are what told me, instantly, that this lawsuit was firmly grounded, perhaps more so than they realize, and that this tie plant was completely mismanaged by the railroad. They knew exactly what the dangers from creosote were by the mid-1970s and there is nothing in the published record that shows that they did a d**** thing to protect these people; instead, telling them all was well.

Now, personally?

I have been a consultant to the Burlington Northern Railway through one of it's lead law firms regarding hazardous waste sites, including diesel fuel and creosote issues, based on historical knowledge of where they are or were and my opinion of the hazards based on specific historical knowledge of the sites. BN lawyers spent a half a day in my office as recently as 2006 reviewing the available historical record. I have provided a written report and documentation. We communicate from time to time. I had a request by email just last week as part of ongoing communications about hazardous waste sites and issues and a request for some additional documentation.

None of those communications involve Somerville.

 

Thanks for sharing, this clears up quite a few questions in my mind.  Absolutely seriously...it certainly sounds like your passion for this issue is well founded in research and fact.  You'll have to excuse us novices who look at such litigation with something of a jaundiced eye as we do so based on the extreme levels of unjustified litigation in this country in recent decades.  Such levels of litigation (in my opinion) have gotten way out of hand, are driving up our insurance and other costs, and are causing many (myself included) to somewhat naturally assume such litigation is founded in greed rather than in fact.