2008 ashpondspill cleanup moronation

 Toxic Exposure, Legal Remedies - Winning Very Large Cases.
Todd Boyle ---- 5.94K subscribers ------ 17 views  Mar 10, 2024
Toxic Exposure, Medical Harm, and Legal Remedy in the
context of the TVA Kingston Coal Ash Spill, the largest
industrial spill in United States history

Panelists: Louis W. Ringger, III, Angela Hind, M.D., Norman Kleiman, PhD

March 3, 2024
PIELC 2024  -  The Public Interest Environmental Law Conference
University of Oregon law school  -  Eugene, OR

The Tennessee Valley Authority/Jacobs’ Engineering Kingston Coal Ash spill was one of the largest environmental and industrial disasters in United States history. On December 22, 2008, a coal ash pond holding decades of industrial waste ruptured, releasing over 1 billion gallons of coal ash into the surrounding community. The spill and consequent litigation received significant international press, and this summer resulted in an unprecedented settlement as compensation for the deleterious health effects suffered by the clean up workers as a result of their unprotected exposure to the coal ash. The prolonged case took 10 years and is a powerful demonstration of the following:

1. The importance and power of the formation of community around unjust medical harm by corporations. The community that formed amongst the clean up workers and their families was instrumental and inspiring, and it swayed public opinion and influenced case outcome. The case could not have been won without the passion, persistence, and cohesiveness of the hundreds of workers and their families.

2. The plausibility of legal recourse for non specific health injuries related to specific chronic toxin exposures.

3. The undeniability and strength that partnership between lawyers and leading medical toxin researchers brings to cases involving exposure, causation, and medical harm.

4. The value of legal cases to compel EPA to address the health risks of unregulated and emerging toxins. Prior to this case coal ash was classified as nuisance dust with no recognition of its extreme toxicity. The 221 worker plaintiffs many of whom worked 12 hours, 7 days per week, for over 5 years were denied even the most basic protective equipment and thus were exposed unnecessarily to the toxic components of coal fly ash. In 2013, after so many of them had become sick and seen their health ruined , dozens of workers filed suit against the TVA contractor, Jacobs’ Engineering, who was responsible for safety oversight. Hundreds of other workers joined the lawsuit in the ensuing years. In 2018, a jury ruled in the first phase of the two phase federal trial that Jacobs’ actions could have caused a long list of specific diseases due to the constituent toxins in coal ash. These included coronary artery disease, leukemia, COPD, asthma, peripheral neuropathy, hypertension, lung cancer, and skin cancer. In the second phase, plaintiffs had to establish specific causation and extend the conclusion that the workers’ exposure to coal ash "could have caused" their conditions or "did cause" them. Our law firm, assisted by Dr. Angela Hind, assembled a team of scientific experts to establish the causal relationship between coal ash exposure and the specific medical conditions present among the individual workers, including leukemia, lung cancer, cardiorespiratory conditions, neurological conditions, skin conditions, and other ailments. This team of experts included the following: 1. Elizabeth Ward, PhD, Epidemiologist and Chair of the World Trade Center Science Advisory Committee 2. Dr. Sanjay Rajagopalan, Director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at Case Western Reserve University. 3. Dr. Carrie Redlich, Director of the Occupational and Environmental Medicine Program at Yale University School of Medicine. 4. Joseph Graziano, PhD, Senior Professor of Environmental Health Science at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health 5. Dr. Francis Arena, Clinical Professor at the NYU School of Medicine, and Medical Director at NYU Langone Arena Oncology 6. Dr. Raajit Rampal, MD, PhD, Clinical Director of the Leukemia Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center 7. Ola Landgren, MD, PhD, Chief research, Myeloma Division, University of Miami Medical School Dr. Hind and I, along with one or more of the experts listed above, will discuss how this team was established, and how subsequently the team worked in concert to develop a cohesive scientific and medical case for coal ash toxicity and medical harm among the cohort of workers. We will discuss how community organizing among these hundreds of local workers and their families was an integral aspect of our approach. This community swayed public opinion, documented compelling patterns of disease among the workers, and worked tirelessly with reporters. Finally, we will discuss the profound injustice inherent in the destruction of a person’s health when corporations are negligent with toxin disposal and clean up, especially in impoverished areas such was the case in Kinston, TN
Transcript

 

COAL ASH DUST
"dangerous just by the fineness of the particulate matter"

No NO no NooohhhohohhhhHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
this is classic baby bathwater paranoia
it's like saying men above a certain age are by definition suspect if they happen to be deadly jealousy 'provoking' kidmagnets ...

the fineness is an asset and feature ... a treasure in fact ... BUT it's exceedingly important to keep it down/wet and let the micro workers sort it out  ... they will and thrive doin so ....

same goes for many such substances .. the 'waste' of steel making .. etc ...

this brand of paranoia caused a dutch 'whistle blower bunch' to help a panic along, sparked by idiotic untidyness ['zwerfvuil'] which caused a HUUUUGE MOUNTAIN of extremely valuable stuff .... god's own money in fact in fact, if you look into this little 'matter of concern[unnos and associated]' long enuff, to be demonized

... such as our topsi turvee world will be able to keep up thru 2025 tops .. and by no means necessarily ... if we wise up .. by the necessity i urge u to become adept recognizing .. easily done while my tracks are still warm ... i'm still open to questions

 still inspire people and must keep distancing myself from those who try to realize lots of delicate stuff from a distance, iow, NOT under guidance of those who 'spilled' a hint and incling or too that got them inspired in the first place ...

... crediting ... really hard if you never saw the point of that being routine staple to NOT lose threads worth following instead of breakin n rippin n tearin at them, into them and worse .....