Lets hope not - this quiet countrified deep south kinda town was home to a huge PCB making factory from the 1930s to 1971 - and the factory was not exactly careful about where the excess and waste PCBs went - millions of pounds were discarded into the local creek and soil ending up contaminating wildlife, fish and the townspeople. PCBs cause cancer, hormonal and developmental problems. Well in 2003, the people of Anniston banded into a 3500 person class action suit against Monsanto for chemical contamination and degraded health and won a $300 million settlement. After paying off the lawyers, that works out to something like $40,000 per person, not exactly cause for celebration. To add insult to injury, now the Medicare system is suing the plaintiffs, the people of Anniston and their lawyers, for payback since Medicare covered the costs of their medical bills. In my view, if Medicare wants a piece of that pie, they should have been with the plaintiffs in court and not go chasing after the money at this point. Hopefully Medicare isn’t going bankrupt financially, but this suggests they are heading in that direction morally.
We here in Connecticut have a few toxic waste sites of our own and towns with some contamination that may be impacting rivers, groundwater, soil and homes. It could be PCBs in some cases, or fuel spills, old industrial and dry cleaning solvents (TCE, PCE), or pesticides. In most cases, the CT DEP has done a good job of identifying such issues and getting them addressed. Here is a listing of the 13000+ contaminated sites in CT - every town has some - click on the link to find out where there have been toxics issues in your town. Call DEP to find out the status. Knowledge is power and leads to smarter healthier longer living.
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