Monsanto Reaches $84M Agent Orange Class Action Settlement

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A West Virginia judge approved a class action lawsuit settlement last week that will provide $84 million in medical monitoring and professional home cleaning to Nitro residents who say that chemical manufacturer Monsanto Company polluted the area with unsafe levels of dioxin, a chemical left over from the production of Agent Orange.

Under the Monsanto class action settlement agreement, thousands of people who lived, worked or attended school in the Nitro area will be eligible to apply for benefits such as health monitoring and professional cleaning of their homes.

The Monsanto settlement creates an initial $21 million fund, plus up to $63 million more for Nitro residents to have their health monitored over 30 years at a local hospital. The class action settlement also provides $9 million to pay for professional cleaning of thousands of homes.

The Monsanto Agent Orange settlement will be shared between 5,000 and as many as 80,000 current and former Nitro residents.

The Monsanto plant operated between 1949 and 2004, manufacturing herbicides and other chemicals, including the warfare chemical Agent Orange, which created dioxin as a toxic chemical byproduct that polluted the area with unsafe levels of the chemical. Dioxin has been linked to cancer, birth defects, learning disabilities, endometriosis, infertility and suppressed immune functions. It builds up in tissue over time, so even small exposures can accumulate to dangerous levels.

The long-running litigation against Monsanto began with a class action lawsuit filed by plant workers in the 1980s. Residents also filed a class action lawsuit against Monsanto after blood samples from some residents and dust samples from homes showed extremely high dioxin concentrations.

“These settlements ensure that both individual and community concerns are addressed, and services are made available for the people in Nitro,” Monsanto vice president Scott Partridge said in a statement Friday.

The residents’ lawyer said the main goal of the Monsanto class action settlement was to gain long-term medical monitoring and to provide professional cleaning of individual homes.

“The settlements provide needed medical benefits and remediation services to the people of Nitro and the broader community,” he said in a statement.

UPDATE: A group of Class Members are appealing the Monsanto Agent Orange settlement, saying it unfairly excludes too many Class Members. They petitioned the Supreme Court on Jan. 21, 2014 to take up the matter.