Tag: environment contamination

Starting in 1984, the Sterigenics plant in Willowbrook, IL consistently emitted a chemical known as ethylene oxide into the air. These air emissions continued until February 15, 2019 when Illinois EPA ordered Sterigenics to stop operating because it found that Sterigenics’ emissions posed a danger...

Last year, the groundwater feeding a well located at the Portsmouth, New Hampshire Airport–which was one of several wells supplying water to the citizens of the City of Portsmouth–was found to be contaminated with dangerous levels of a chemical known as perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS. Th...

Unfortunately, Deborah and Ralph Graham of Dukeville, North Carolina can now be added to the large and growing list of American families who are learning the hard way that they cannot trust their government to protect them against chemical contamination, even though the Grahams pay their government ...

The U.S. Army is showing a disrespect that borders on hostility toward its neighbors who live near the Army’s Fort Gillem base just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. The Army’s decades-long failure to protect these families from life-threatening contamination—that the Army itself had caused—has f...

In a recent decision described by EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy as “a resounding victory for public health and a key component of EPA’s efforts to make sure all Americans have clean air to breathe,” the Supreme Court backed federally imposed limits on smokestack emissions that cross state li...

Late last week the Minnesota Department of Health notified several hundred residents of the Como neighborhood that they may be threatened by vapors containing cancer-causing chemicals released from the former General Mills facility on East Hennepin Avenue. A review of the records shows that General ...

Late this summer Illinois finally implemented regulations designed to consider the vapor intrusion pathway when looking cleanup of polluted sites within the State. Like our State’s approach to many issues of critical public concern, the action is a day late and a dollar short. Vapor intrusion refe...

On Tuesday September 10th local media reported that investigation of the former Burgess-Norton plant on Nims Street in Muskegon continues to drag on. Click here to read the article. A closer look reveals a troubling, and far too common scenario…….the precise scenario Shawn Collins discussed in h...

Our work for contamination victims typically starts out like this: A group of families get “bad news”. They’re told — often at a community meeting in the basement of a local town hall or church — that their water supply has just been tested, and that dangerous industrial chemicals are in t...

How long should it take to clean up toxic chemicals after they are spilled? A week, a month, a year, 5 years? The answer is: “decades, usually.” Worse, oftentimes, the answer: is “the chemicals will never be all cleaned up”. It’s scary and sad. But it’s true. Here’s a recent example of...