Full Answer
Nickels is an attorney for Kerr-McGee. "There is no evidence showing that anyone in [those] communities has been harmed," claims Nickels in an interview with Occupational Hazards. The company has employees who lived and worked in those communities and Kerr-McGee would not do anything to jeopardize their safety, he adds.
Attorneys have filed suit in three states against Kerr-McGee, charging that the company's environmental policies have contributed to higher rates of cancer and other diseases near its facilities. Attorneys have filed lawsuits in three states against Kerr-McGee, claiming that environmental contamination from its facilities have contribute d ...
Attorneys have filed lawsuits in three states against Kerr-McGee, claiming that environmental contamination from its facilities have contributed to higher rates of cancer, birth defects, childhood cancers, respiratory disease and other illnesses in areas of Pennsylvania, Mississippi and Louisiana.
The Columbus site is still in operation. Those in Bossier City and Avoca have both been closed for several years. The plaintiffs hired Dr. James Dahlgren, a medical toxicologist who earned national recognition as the medical expert in the case publicized in the movie "Erin Brockovich," to help prove their case.
The United States Department of Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency, which filed the suit, settled last month for the $5.15 billion from Anadarko, which bought Kerr-McGee’s major assets in 2006.
McClanahan argued the amount, which includes $68 million to remediate the 90-acre site in Columbus where Kerr-McGee once operated, wasn’t enough to ensure all toxic chemicals will be removed.
Regular exposure to creosote, a wood preservative used extensively at the plant while it was in operation, was determined to be carcinogenic to humans by the International Agency for Research on Cancer . The plant closed in 2003.