Maine AG Sues Monsanto for Manufacture and Sale of Dangerous Chemicals

Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey on Friday announced that he was filed a lawsuit against Monsanto alleging that the agricultural biochemical giant knowingly manufactured and sold dangerous chemicals.

In his 47-page complaint, filed Thursday in Cumberland County Superior Court, Attorney General Frey accuses Monsanto of selling polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) while knowing the harms they pose to humans, wildlife, and the environment.

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According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the federal government banned PCBs for most uses in the 1970s due to the negative health effects linked with exposure to the compounds, including cancer, the weakening of the immune system, and other harmful neurological and endocrine effects.

PCBs substantially persist and accumulate in the natural environment and resist degradation rather than breaking down over time, causing prolonged contamination.

Monsanto manufactured and sold PCBs from about 1935 to 1977, during that period accounting for 99 percent or more of all PCBs used or sold within the U.S., and used PCBs in a wide variety of products, including paints, caulks, inks, dyes, lubricants, plastics, and other applications.

The complaint alleges that Monsanto, despite “early knowledge of the grave dangers associated with PCBs,” ran a “decades-long campaign of misinformation and deception” to increase their rate of manufacture and sale of PCBs in Maine and elsewhere.

“From 1960 to the mid-1970s alone, Monsanto sold at least hundreds of thousands of pounds of commercial PCB mixtures to customers in Maine,” the suit reads.

According to the complaint, more than 400 Maine river and stream miles and over 1.9 million ocean acres under the state’s trusteeship are currently identified as “impaired” due to the presence of PCBs.

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Maine has also been forced to issue PCB-specific fish and shellfish consumption advisories as a result of PCB contamination, advising the public either not to eat certain fish at all, or severely limiting the consumption of certain fish, the suit claims.

“We have evidence that Monsanto knew that its PCBs products were causing long-lasting harm and chose to continue to make money off poisoning Maine’s people and environment,” Attorney General Frey said Friday. “I am taking action to demand that Monsanto pay for the harm it knowingly caused our state.”  

The complaint seeks damages for injuries and contamination, including the costs to clean, monitor, and mitigate the affected rivers, streams, and ocean waters that are currently identified as impaired by the presence of PCBs.

In response to the lawsuit, Monsanto issued a statement Friday saying the company “has strong defenses and will vigorously defend against these claims.”

“We will respond to the complaint in greater detail in court at the appropriate time, however, we believe this case is meritless as Monsanto never manufactured or disposed of PCBs in the State of Maine, and any PCB-containing products that could be the source of any impairments in the state were manufactured and disposed by third parties,” Monsanto stated.

“Under applicable law, a manufacturer of component parts is not responsible for the downstream, third-party uses of a product that it lawfully introduced into the stream of commerce and over which it has had no control for nearly five decades,” the company stated.

“Monsanto discontinued its production of PCBs nearly five decades ago, conducted hundreds of studies about their safety, and provided warnings to its customers based on the state-of-the science at the time,” they added.

Update: this story was updated to include a statement on the lawsuit from Monsanto.