Bayer Faces Billions in Payouts for Decades-Old Toxic Mess
- Health, environmental claims from PCBs have piled up across US
- Company seeks to make its biggest customers help cover costs
Bayer acquired Monsanto in 2018 for $63 billion.
Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Bayer AG’s Monsanto unit stopped making toxic PCBs a half century ago, but the legal fallout lingers even as many of the building materials made with the chemicals are no longer used in US homes, schools and factories.
On Tuesday Bayer was hit with a $100 million verdict in the most recent case blaming it for students and faculty at a Seattle-area public school being sickened by exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, contained in aging fluorescent-light fixtures.