In the mid-20th Century, General Electric’s operations provided Pittsfield with jobs and a booming industrial economy. After the corporate juggernaut withdrew from the city in the 90s, it left unemployment and pollution in the land, air, and water in the form of PCBs, or Polychlorinated biphenyls. The chemical, banned by the Environmental Protection Agency in the late 70s, poses an array of health risks to humans and nature, including causing cancer.
“The group is a place for our community to come and safely ask questions, and the goal is to come up with goals for what we need to happen and where we can start to unravel some of that misinformation that has been given to us over decades and decades," said Kaitlyn Pierce an organizer with Sick of Pittsfield PCBs: Demanding Truth and Action.
Around the turn of the century, GE agreed to a settlement with Pittsfield over its prolific pollution that included a payout and remediation of land and water.
The Morningside neighborhood adjacent to the former GE campus – now known as the William Stanley Business Park – faces starkly lower life expectancy rates than other communities within Pittsfield.
“I am a lifetime Pittsfield resident, and I have three children on my own," Pierce told WAMC. "I grew up right next to GE in Pittsfield, and what I learned last month, actually, when the air levels had spiked for PCBs, that kind of sent me down the rabbit hole when I started learning things. And the more I learned, the more I realized how much of this actually seems to tie into a significant amount of health problems that my children are facing, I'm facing, people I know, and it just started to become very, very concerning.”
The EPA ordered GE to stop demolishing a building on its former campus in July when air samples found PCBs levels at the site had become too high.
Tonight at 8, Sick of Pittsfield PCBs: Demanding Truth and Action is holding an online Q & A session with Attorney Tom Bosworth about legal options available to city residents.
“I filed approximately 10 lawsuits back in 2023 against GE and Monsanto for people who have cancer due to PCB contamination," said Bosworth. "So those cases are ongoing and have been ongoing for some time. They haven't gone to trial yet, we're still in the middle of everything.”
The nearby town of Lee is currently embroiled in a suit against GE and Monsanto – the company that produced PCBs – that alleges the companies knew about the dangers of the chemicals long before they were banned. Monsanto pushed back against those claims in a statement to WAMC after the publication of a March story on the legal action.
Philadelphia-based Bosworth, who was born in Pittsfield and raised in Lenox, describes himself as a lawyer for catastrophic injury victims.
“There are a lot of people in that in that neighborhood, around that area, who are understandably really concerned about the ongoing contamination and the worsening of the contamination in light of the demolition. There are a lot of people who are concerned that their homes are contaminated with PCB soil, because for years, GE would give soil and fill to employees that was drenched in PCBs to take home and do what they might with it, build decks or use in their yards.”
Bosworth says the Pittsfielders he’s met with and represented struggle to find medical support and resources for their concerns about the toxic chemicals.
“I know there's a swath of people who have, and some of them have actually sought blood testing, but they've been turned away and told by their health care providers that we can't do that test here or we don't know where to do it- There's absolutely labs that do test blood for PCB. It's just been kind of a, they've been running into a wall trying to get that testing locally, and they don't think that they should have to pay for it, and neither do I, because they didn't thrust that felt that that problem upon themselves.”
The attorney says he’s willing to represent residents impacted by PCB pollution in a class action lawsuit against General Electric.
“It's going to happen, 100%," he told WAMC. "It's just a question of how many people will want to be a part of it.”
GE used 31.5 million pounds of PCBs in Pittsfield between 1935 and 1977, and their ongoing impact is still felt today.
A 2022 study published in the Chemosphere journal titled “PCBs in indoor air and human blood in Pittsfield, Massachusetts” examined 21 city residents and found that median serum PCB levels were four times greater than the national average. The authors concluded that inhalation of PCBs from Pittsfield’s indoor air may still produce negative health effects, and that serum testing might not capture the extent of the threat.
GE did not respond to request for comment on this story in time for air.
In a statement, Monsanto said it was not responsible for any personal injury as the company did not manufacture or dispose of the PCBs in the greater Pittsfield area:
“Moreover, the weight of the scientific evidence does not support an association between exposure to PCBs and the types of injuries alleged in these cases, even among highly exposed former PCB workers.”
