For 19 years, Sadie Thigpen, 82, worked as a teacher's aide for East St. Louis School District 189 before retiring. About six years ago, she was diagnosed with cancer.
Lorine Rencher, 74, worked for 20 years as a cook at the Hy-Ho Restaurant in Belleville before retiring. About nine years ago, she was diagnosed with cancer. Both women live in East St. Louis within a two-mile radius of a large industrial center in the tiny village of Sauget.
And both are listed in a lawsuit that names 31 other women and one man as having contracted cancer or sustained other physical damage as the result of breathing air contaminated with some of the world's deadliest poisons, according to the most recent of a series of six lawsuits filed in St. Clair County Circuit Court. There are 111 plaintiffs in the lawsuits naming women and men who claim their cancer is connected to air pollution or that property they own is contaminated and therefore unusable.
"You can't see it. It's in the air you breathe. And you have to breathe," said Thigpen, "It's terrible."
The lawsuit that lists Thigpen and Rencher also names as defendants Cerro Flow Products Inc., Pharmacia Inc., Solutia Inc., Pfizer Inc., and Monsanto AG Products, LLC, which do business in Sauget. Attorneys for the defendants and representatives of Cerro Flow could not be reached.
"We are currently reviewing this case, which was just recently filed, and for this reason do not have an immediate comment," said Monsanto spokesman John Combest.
The source of the pollution is listed as the 314-acre W.G. Krummrich Plant on Monsanto Avenue, a 90-acre landfill operated by Sauget and Co. and a site abutting the "Monsanto facility" at 3000 Mississippi Ave.
The legal complaint alleges that up until 1997, "more PCBs were produced at the Monsanto Facility than at any other site in the United States, and perhaps even the free world."
PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, are necessary in many manufacturing processes. For at least 40 years, they have been known to cause cancer. The World Health Organization states there is no minimal safe level of PCBs in humans.
"Are there hundreds of people that have diseases as a result of this? The answer to that is yes," said plaintiffs' attorney Paul Schoen of Schoen, Walton, Telken, Foster LLC of East St. Louis.
"They haven't all been filed yet. We will routinely and continuously file these lawsuits until all the people that have been injured as a result of these poisons have been given their opportunity for redress. It is certainly a major environmental problem."
Carcinogens have been continuously released into the atmosphere from the Sauget locations since as early as 1935, the lawsuit claims.
"Defendants each knew or should have known that their conduct was causing the release of millions of tons of carcinogenic substances into the environment," stated a 15-page complaint filed Aug. 21. The carcinogens are listed as PCBs, dioxin and furans, the byproducts of copper recycling and other industrial procedures that allowed the poisons to escape into the atmosphere or contaminate groundwater, the complaint alleged.
The lawsuit states that anyone who lived or still lives within a radius of two miles of the source of the contamination is a potential plaintiff.
Another lawsuit, now in U.S. District Court in East St. Louis that was originally filed in St. Clair County, is a class-action lawsuit brought by plaintiffs who do not have cancer but were exposed to the carcinogens. It seeks "medical monitoring of "tens of thousands" of persons who lived or live in the two-mile radius, plus a monetary award sufficient to remove the pollution that is said to exist.
Attorneys for the defendants are fighting to keep the lawsuit in federal court. Schoen said lawyers for the plaintiffs want the lawsuit to return to St. Clair County court. An appeal of a federal judge's July 30 order returning the litigation to the county is before the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago.
Schoen said the lawsuits in county court represent the first litigation filed on behalf of individuals who allege cancer and other damage occurred because of airborne pollution from the industries in Sauget. But Schoen said the state and federal government have filed lawsuits over the years.
"The U.S. EPA and the Illinois EPA have been involved with it for years," Schoen said, "There has been litigation previously by the government against the manufacturers. But as far as private litigation, to help the individuals who have been hurt, this is the first litigation that is pending right now."
The complaint involving the 32 women and one man recently filed in St. Clair County, alleges that Monsanto AG Products LLC, also called the "Monsanto defendants," conspired with Industrial Bio-test Labs of Northbrook, Ill., "to falsely certify that the substances being released (in Sauget) were not carcinogenic, despite empirical evidence to the contrary."
The complaint stated that after investigations in the 1970s and 1980s by the U.S. EPA and the federal Food and Drug Administration, "Thousands of (Industrial Bio-test) studies were found to be fraudulent."
A representative of the testing company could not be reached.
The lawsuit also alleges that carcinogens continue to be released into the atmosphere.
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