German group Bayer is facing another lawsuit in the US over alleged long-term effects of the decades-old banned PCB chemical. The city of Chicago is suing Bayer for contaminating water, air and soil with PCB chemicals, according to court documents released Wednesday. Bayer denies the allegations.
“Monsanto considers this lawsuit to be unfounded as the company has never produced or disposed of PCBs in or near the Chicago metropolitan area,” Leverkusen-based DAX Group said Thursday. “Furthermore, the products claimed to be the source of the environmental impacts were manufactured by a third party and not by Monsanto.”
In 2018, Bayer took the PCB issue into its own hands with its $60 billion acquisition of US agrochemical company Monsanto. Monsanto manufactured polychlorinated biphenylene (PCB) in the United States from 1935 to 1977. Chemicals were banned there in 1979.
The Chicago case follows several others alleging personal injury and property damage related to PCB products. Bayer has already obtained damage judgments, but is proceeding against them.
Experts such as Sebastian Bray, an analyst at Berenberg, a private bank, estimate that settling the PCB lawsuits could cost Bayer in the low to mid-single-digit billions of dollars in total.
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