Word: dioxin
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...night of Jan. 10, 1979. A tank car on a Norfolk & Western freight broke a coupling and derailed, spilling 19,000 gallons of orthochlorophenol. Sturgeon was evacuated for two days while the spill was cleaned up. Then Monsanto announced that the spilled chemical contained a minute amount of dioxin, the type designated as 2,3,7,8-TCDD and described as the most toxic synthetic chemical known to man. A mere thimbleful was involved. But because the compound has been linked to cancer, fear swept Sturgeon, and the Kemner case took shape...
Over another Monsanto objection, Carr got all the spill cases consolidated, so the proceedings involved 65 plaintiffs, each with multiple medical complaints from alleged dioxin exposure. More than 80,000 pages of testimony from 167 witnesses have been transcribed so far. The case file is already five feet thick. Over 6,000 exhibits have been entered into evidence...
Every morning of the trial, Monsanto's lawyers trundle boxes of documents to court on baggage carts from leased offices two blocks away. The courtroom is cluttered with 4-ft. by 5-ft. symptom boards, outlining alleged dioxin-related plaintiff ills ranging from headaches and high blood pressure to depression and decreased sexual desire. Carr concedes that "none of my clients is falling down sick." But the core of his case concerns possible future cancer developing from dioxin exposure in the 1979 spill...
...Carnow, director of environmental medicine at the University of Illinois, spent 76 days on the witness stand -- at a fee of $3,000 a day to his Chicago health-consultancy firm -- putting the dots up as expert witness for the plaintiffs, contending the ills the dots represent could be dioxin-related. Monsanto's rebuttal expert, Dr. James R. Webster, chief of medicine at Chicago's Northwestern Memorial Hospital, is now in the process of disputing Dr. Carnow, dot by dot, testifying that all alleged ills either predated the spill or could have been caused by something other than dioxin...
...Times Beach, Mo., J.M. Huber Corp. has used a mobile electric reactor that heats up to 4,000 degrees F to destroy the dioxin in several hundred pounds of soil. Also tested at Times Beach is the EPA's mobile incinerator. It got rid of 99.9% of the dioxin in 1,750 gal. of liquid waste and 40 tons of soil in six weeks. Another movable unit is Westinghouse Electric's plasma arc furnace, which is housed in a 46-ft. trailer. The furnace reaches temperatures of 20,000 degrees...