Sick and dying workers demand help after cleaning coal ash

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Sick and dying workers demand help after cleaning coal ash

By TRAVIS LOLLER
August 28, 2019

KINGSTON, Tenn. (AP) — The Tennessee Valley Authority, long respected for providing good jobs and cheap electricity, is facing a growing backlash over its handling of a massive coal ash spill a decade ago, with potentially serious consequences for an industry often opposed to environmental regulation.

A jury in Knoxville decided within hours that the TVA’s contractor, Jacobs Engineering, breached its safety duties, exposing hundreds of cleanup workers to airborne “fly ash” with known carcinogens. The jurors said Jacobs’ actions were capable of making the workers sick. The key question of whether they caused each worker’s injuries was left for a different jury in a second phase of the civil trial.

More than 200 workers blame the contractor for exposing them to ash they say caused a slew of illnesses, some fatal, including cancers of the lung, brain, blood and skin.

Despite last November’s favorable verdict for the first 72 plaintiffs, they won’t get monetary damages unless they can prove exactly what caused their specific illnesses. The judge, alluding to their urgent need for medical care, ordered mediation. More than a hundred other plaintiffs await the outcome.

“To have the burden put on you, that you have to prove what caused these horrific things -- that’s an atrocity,” said Janie Clark, whose husband, Ansol, has a rare blood cancer after driving a fuel truck at the site. “I guess that’s just the law.”

-snip-

Read more: https://apnews.com/a7c90c7577e74715b00a4e02d48afc96

[Backseat Driver]

1. What did they know and when did they know it -

vs. how did you, the heroes cleaning up our "accident aka failure" live off-site from your earliest days??? Poisons on/in foods;a diet deficient in nutrients, smoking, plastics, aluminum leaching and heavy metal fillings, previous exposures to all sorts of stuff including EMF radiation - yeah, it wasn't our fault you're sick...


1. Comprehensive care for all would sure ease the financial burden on these American families; the captains of industry need to be better prepared and pay a greater portion when there are "accidents" and failures of employee non-compliance of safety measures.

2. We certainly know what's necessary on job-sites to promote health and safety in the avoidance of toxins; less often we don't know or practice what's known about that in our homes. TPTB often whitewash the truths they find in favor of selling product/service, etc...and lack adequate oversight.

3. Time is running out for our planet as we continue to do what's most convenient for making a buck - implementation of programs toward sustainability is now imperative sooner than later. We're all responsible, but employers need be held accountable for the "corporate" greed that promotes bad stewardship of the planet and to their employees that "clean up" the accidents.

Even if man-augmented climate change is a hoax, there is absolute sense in preserving and protecting what is needed for healthy life, clean air, water, and nutrition, in view of scientists' best guesses of any perfectly natural change - For the record, I believe climate change is REAL - what is not needed is any wealth gap that promotes a conspiracy to kill those with less, much less.

4. We all have to go from something, but it's obvious that mysterious symptoms and chronic illnesses are increasing and at younger ages; our very environment stresses our systems and throws the body out of homeostasis; yet we remain unconvinced about how our technologies and drugs that make our lives more convenient and/or pain and symptom-free also contribute to our subtle extermination.

[Peregrine Took]

2. My dad was a flat janitor in the '50's - always shoveling coal

and cleaning out "clinkers" and coal debris from huge furnaces.
No wonder he wound up with emphesema.
That was hard, hard work - big corner buildings. No machinery to help back then, just back breaking work.

[Grins]

3. But if there was universal health care...

...they would not have “to PROVE EXACTLY what caused their specific illnesses.”

And my favorite response to this:

“We tried to help, but you voted Republican...”