IBM Sued Over Toxic Waste Chemicals at Former Circuit Board Plant

Saturday, August 02, 2008 by: David Gutierrez, staff writer
Tags: IBM, health news, Natural News

(NaturalNews) Electronics and computer manufacturer IBM is being sued for causing cancer and birth defects in and around town of Endicott, New York., where the company was founded.

Approximately 90 current and former residents of Endicott and nearby Union filed suit against the company in the New York Supreme Court, claiming that the IBM factory operating in Endicott from 1924 until 2002 released a "toxic plume" into the groundwater that also led to the contamination of the air and soil. According to the lawsuit, this pollution led to property devaluation and damage, personal injury, and wrongful death, including congenital heart defects in children and kidney cancer in adults.

IBM "should have known that the volatile organic chemicals that [it] had wrongfully discharged into the air, soils and groundwater, and which had contaminated the groundwater beneath the Village of Endicott and the Town of Union, would remain volatile in the soil for substantial periods of time, exceeding decades, and would migrate, as vapors, into the homes, businesses, schools and churches located above the contaminated groundwater plume," the lawsuit reads.

The plaintiffs allege that IBM polluted the area around the factory "with conscious indifference and disregard to the health and safety of the residents."

The factory, which IBM sold in 2002, manufactured computers, typewriters, circuit boards and integrated circuits. According to the lawsuit, the toxic chemicals used during this process were not properly treated or disposed of.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages in compensation for injury to property and persons, as well as punitive damages.

At one time, IBM was facing more than 100 such pollution lawsuits, but all of them have since been either settled or dismissed. In 2003, the company defeated a lawsuit by two California employees who claim they had developed cancer due to chemicals they were exposed to at a semiconductor manufacturing plant.