New Hampshire AG Filed Lawsuit against Monsanto over PCB Contamination

OCTOBER 27, 2020

New Hampshire Attorney General Gordon MacDonald filed a lawsuit in state court against agrochemical giant Monsanto and two related companies over their role in polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) contamination of the state’s “surface water, sediment, fish, wildlife, marine resources, and other natural resources and public property.” PCBs were banned under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) in 1979 amid mounting evidence of their toxicity to humans and wildlife. AG MacDonald’s lawsuit alleged that Monsanto became aware of the harmful effects of PCB exposure more than four decades before the 1979 ban, and “embarked on a decades-long campaign of misinformation and deception to prolong the manufacture, sale, and use of its commercial PCB mixtures.” The lawsuit sought damages “for injury to New Hampshire surface water, sediment, fish wildlife, marine resources, other natural resources, and public buildings, including the economic impact to the State and its residents from loss of use, value, benefits, or ecological services, or other injuries,” as well as “past, present, and future costs to investigate, assess, analyze, monitor, and remediate the contamination.”