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Large-scale environmental contamination events
United States, Massachusetts
Pittsfield is one of GE’s hometowns. Pittsfield was home to GE’s transformer and capacitor divisions,
and electrical generating equipment built and repaired in Pittsfield powered the electrical utility
grid throughout the nation.
PCB-contaminated oil routinely migrated from GE’s 250-acre industrial plant located in the very
center of the city to the surrounding groundwater, nearby Silver Lake, and to the Housatonic River,
which flows through Massachusetts to Connecticut on down to the Long Island Sound. Faced with
ever mounting amounts of PCB-contaminated material, and with a growing need to dispose of
this material, GE and its contractors hauled and dumped PCB-contaminated material anywhere
they could. They still had too much. So GE in the 1940s and 50s launched a giveaway program. GE
employees and their neighbors and local contractors, in return for signing a letter stating that they
were receiving clean fill and that they would not hold GE liable for any subsequent problems, were
given truckloads of PCB-contaminated material to use as fill in their backyards and construction
projects.
The sheer magnitude and varied scope of this contamination has made the Pittsfield/Housatonic
Site one of America’s most complicated PCB sites.
New York State
Between approximately 1947 and 1977 General Electric Company (GE) released up to
1,300,000 pounds (590,000 kg) of PCBs into the Hudson River. The PCBs came from the company’s
two capacitor manufacturing plants at Hudson Falls and Fort Edward in New York State.
In 1976, because of concern over continuing high levels of PCBs in local fish and other aquatic
organisms, and the unacceptable risk to the health of consumers of such fish, the NYSDEC banned
all fishing in the Upper Hudson River, as well as commercial fishing of striped bass and several
other species in the Lower Hudson River, and also issued advisories restricting the consumption of
fish caught within a 20-mile (30 km) long segment of the Hudson River from Hudson Falls to Troy.
There have been many programs of remediation work to reduce the PCB pollution. In 1984,
approximately 200 miles (320 km) of the Hudson River was designated a Superfund site, and attempts
to cleanup the Upper Hudson River began, including the removal in 1977-8 of 180,000 cubic yards
(140,000 m3) of contaminated river sediments near Fort Edward. In 1991, further PCB pollution
was found at Bakers Falls near the former GE Hudson Falls factory, and a program of remediation
was started. In August 1995, a 40-mile (64 km) reach of the Upper Hudson was re-opened to
fishing but only on a catch-and-release basis. Removal of contaminated soil from Rogers Island
was completed in December 1999. In 2002, the EPA announced a further 2,650,000 cubic yards
(2,030,000 m3) of contaminated sediments in the Upper Hudson River would be removed.
Indiana
From the late 1950s through 1977, Westinghouse Electric used PCBs in the manufacture of
capacitors in its Bloomington, Indiana plant. Reject capacitors were hauled and dumped in area
salvage yards and landfills, including Bennett’s Dump, Neal’s Landfill and Lemon Lane Landfill.
Workers also dumped PCB oil down factory drains which contaminated the city sewage treatment
plant. The City of Bloomington gave away the sludge to area farmers and gardeners, creating
anywhere from 200 to 2000 sites which remain unaddressed. Over 2 million pounds of PCBs were
estimated to have been dumped in Monroe and Owen Counties.[citation needed] Although federal
and state authorities have been working on the sites’ environmental remediation, many areas
remain contaminated. Concerns have been raised regarding the removal of PCBs from the karst
limestone topography, and regarding the possible disposal options.
To date, the Westinghouse Bloomington PCB Superfund site case does not have a RI/FS (Remedial
Investigation/Feasibility Study) and ROD (Record of Decision), although Westinghouse signed a US
Department of Justice Consent Decree in 1985.. The 1985 Consent Decree required Westinghouse
to construct an incinerator that would incinerate PCB-contaminated materials. However, due to
public opposition to the incinerator, the State of Indiana passed a number of laws that delayed and
blocked the construction of the incinerator. Consent Decree parties began to explore alternative
remedies in 1994 for six of the main PCB contaminated sites.
On February 15, 2008, Monroe County approved a plan to clean up the 3 remaining contaminated
sites in the City of Bloomington, at a cost of $9.6m to CBS Corp., the successor of Westinghouse.
The Great Lakes
Much of the Great Lakes area is still heavily polluted with PCBs, despite extensive remediation work.
Locally caught fresh water fish and shellfish are contaminated with PCBs and their consumption
is restricted.
From 1959 to 1971, Waukegan Harbor in Illinois on Lake Michigan was contaminated with PCBs
discharged by the Outboard Marine Corp.
Alabama
PCBs (manufactured through most of the 20th century) originating from Monsanto Chemical
Company in Anniston, Alabama leaked into Snow creek, then Choccolocco Creek, then Logan
Martin Lake. In the early 2000s, class action lawsuits (led, in at least one case, by the late Johnnie
Cochran) were settled by local land owners, including those on Logan Martin Lake, and Lay
Reservoir (downstream on the Coosa River), for the PCB pollution.
Today, the highest pollution levels remain concentrated in Snow and Choccolocco Creeks.
Concentrations in fish have and continue to decline over time, however, sediment disturbance can
resuspend the PCBs from the sediment back into the water column and food web.
Belgium
In 1999, the Dioxine affair caused serious trouble for the Belgian government when PCBs were
found in chicken and eggs.
Czechoslovakia
The chemical plant Chemko in Strážske (east Slovakia) was an important producer of polychlorinated
biphenyls for the former communist block (Comecon) until 1984. Chemko contaminated a large
part of east Slovakia, especially the sediments of the Laborec river and reservoir Zemplínska šírava.
Republic of Ireland
Main article: 2008 Irish pork crisis
In December 2008 a number of Irish news sources reported that testing had revealed “extremely
high” levels of PCBs in pork products, ranging from 80 to 200 times the EU’s upper safe limit of 1.5
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