Press release: A Class Action Complaint filed against Pacific Steel Castings

EARTH DAY will be celebrated worldwide tomorrow, Tuesday, April 22, 2008,
a day promoting environmental awareness and calls for the protection of our planet.
Towards this end, a class action law suit will be filed this Earth Day on behalf of the thousands of “downwind neighbors” being blanketed daily by airborne toxic fumes and hazardous particulate matter spewing from PACIFIC STEEL CASTING COMPANY.

For 75 years PACIFIC STEEL CASTING COMPANY (PSC) has denied responsibility for the health impacts and growing nuisance its emissions cause on the people living in the down-wind shadow of PSC’s three plants off Second Street in west Berkeley.

PSC reported to the state of California in 2004 that it disposed of 76 tons of toxic air pollution into Berkeley’s air-shed, or about 420 pounds per day. [1] For the 2005-2006 one-year period PSC released 529 pounds of manganese and 19 pounds of nickel into the air, according to its own public reports to the BAAQMD. [2] Agency data reports similarly high levels of PSC emissions, totaling 691.3 pounds of manganese and
55.8 pounds of nickel in a single year.

Since 2004, PSC itself reports to have more than doubled production. According to CARB, [3] airborne pollutants (including benzene, copper, cresols, phenol and zinc) have increased from PSC by over 160%, with PSC’s manganese and nickel emissions increasing 51.6%, formaldehyde increasing 127.2%, lead increasing 128.5%, over the past few years, together with a substantial increase in total particulates. According to the current CARB database, PSC accounts for 99% of all industrial nickel emissions from the 33 West Berkeley industrial sources, and 100% of all manganese emissions in this neighborhood.

Scientifically reliable air-sampling data collected over the past several months by Global Community Monitoring under a grant from the BAAQMD evidences manganese and nickel concentrations hundreds of times higher than deemed safe by the World Health Organization and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.[4]

The class action law suit being filed tomorrow seeks an injunction requiring PSC to reduce its off-site toxic emissions impact to safe levels or relocate from this neighborhood, in addition to compensation to the thousands of neighbors affected daily by the noxious odors and toxins.

The Law Offices of Timothy P. Rumberger has been prosecuting class action environmental cases for over
a decade, including In re Unocal Refinery Litigation (1994) in Contra Costa County resulting in an $80 million dollar settlement and In re Westley Tire Fire (1999) in Tuolumne and Santa Clara County totaling ~$11 million dollars in settlements for downwind neighbors.

***************************************************************************************

[1] As reported by Michael P. Wilson, Ph.D. Community Environmental Advisory Commissioner, March 13, 2007 report to the Berkeley City Counsel. These emissions include 13 tons of particulates that the Harvard multi-city study have shown are the cause of a 16% increase in premature death in the adult population in urban areas.

[2] Bay Area Air Quality Management District

[3] California Air Resources Board

[4] Nickel levels 180-220 times the U.S. EPA reference concentration in the 700 block of Gilman in Berkeley; Nickel levels 330 times the the U.S. EPA reference concentration in the 1300 block of Third Street in Berkeley.