For nearly 50 years, the agrochemical conglomerate was the sole producer of polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs in the United States.
By Hillel Aron, Courthouse News Service
Monsanto has agreed to pay the city of Los Angeles $35 million to settle a lawsuit claiming that the agrochemical giant’s use of polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs in a range of its products tainted the city’s water supplies.
“With this settlement, Monsanto is being held accountable for the damage its dangerous PCBs have inflicted upon Angelenos for decades,” LA City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto said in a written statement on Friday. “This is a significant step towards cleaner, safer waterways and justice for our City’s residents.”
The Environmental Protection Agency classifies PCBs as a “probable” human carcinogen, meaning that evidence points to it causing certain kinds of cancer. Although the chemical was banned in the United States in 1979, PCBs have lingered in a variety of older products including paints, sealants and electrical equipment.
For nearly 50 years — until 1977 — Monsanto was the United States’ sole producer of PCBs, which it sold under the name “Aroclor.”
“For decades, Monsanto knew that its commercial PCB formulations were highly toxic and would inevitably produce precisely the contamination and human health risks that have occurred,” the city said in its lawsuit, filed in LA County Superior Court. “Yet Monsanto misled the public, regulators, and its own customers about these key facts, maintaining that its PCB formulations were safe, were not environmentally hazardous, and did not require any special precautions in use or disposal.”
Traces of the chemical can still be found in Ballona Creek, Marina Del Rey, Santa Monica Bay, the Los Angeles Harbor, Machado Lake and Echo Park Lake.
“The $35 million settlement will be used to pay for the abatement and monitoring of waterways impacted by PCB contamination and to reimburse the City for costs already incurred,” the city attorney said in a press release Friday.
A number of other cities, counties and states, as well as private citizens, have also sued Monsanto over its production of PCBs.
In May, a Washington state appeals court overturned a $185 million verdict against Monsanto in a lawsuit filed by three teachers who claimed that PCB leaks had given them brain damage. In July, Monsanto, which was acquired by the German conglomerate Bayer in 2018, agreed to pay Seattle $160 million to settle that city’s lawsuit.
LA City Council voted 13-0 to approve the settlement last month. The deal was filed in court on Thursday. Under the agreement, Monsanto admits no wrongdoing.
A spokesperson for Monsanto said, in an email, that the settlement with LA was “in line with most prior settlement agreements,” adding that the company “never manufactured or disposed of PCBs in the Los Angeles area, discontinued its own legal production of PCBs nearly five decades ago, conducted hundreds of studies on PCB safety, provided appropriate warnings to its customers based on the state-of-the science at the time, and has committed to participation in agency processes where it has been determined to be a potentially responsible party.”