Monsanto in $700m pollution settlement

Monsanto, the controversial biotech firm best known in Britain for its pioneering genetically modified crops, last night agreed to pay a share of $700m to settle claims that it contaminated an Alabama town.

The payment settles two Alabama court cases involving thousands of people who said their homes and lives were damaged by PCB contamination.

Monsanto and Solutia, which was spun out off the company in 1997, will pay the damages and fund community improvement programmes to settle the state and federal cases. They represented more than 20,000 current and former residents of Anniston, Alabama.

Attorneys for the law firm Shelby, Roden & Cartee, which represented some of the plaintiffs, claimed during the case that they had uncovered internal company documents dating back to the 1930s that suggested that Monsanto was aware of the potential health hazards of PCBs for decades and failed to warn local people.

Monsanto was later spun off from the third company involved in the settlement, Pharmacia, into a pure agricultural company.

Monsanto had been accused of pumping the local river with chemicals called PCBs, which were banned by the US government in the 1970s as a possible carcinogen. It had also buried waste in a landfill.

Lawyers claimed Monsanto had covered up evidence that the PCBs were harmful, including evidence of fish dying in nearby creeks. Internal memos were produced that insisted they should protect the image of the corporation. One said: "We can't afford to lose one dollar of business."

Although a clear link between the chemicals and cancer has not been proven, the people of Anniston have argued for years that their cancer rate is abnormally high.