Environmental Science

In the late 1970s and early 1980s after her son, James Anderson, was diagnosed with leukemia, Anne Anderson discovered that a number of other children in her neighborhood also had the disease. Concerned about what seemed like an unusually high number of leukemia cases, Anderson and other Woburn, Massachusetts families set out to find a possible source of their children's illness. In 1986, personal injury lawyer Jan Schlichtmann and his two partners filed a civil lawsuit of wrongful death and conscious suffering on behalf of Anderson and the other families against three companies with plants operating in the area. The lawsuit alleged that the companies illegally dumped waste containing the known carcinogens Trichloroethylene (TCE) and Perchloroethylene (PCE) and contaminating two of the wells that provided the city's water supplies. Bolstered by a Harvard School of Public Health study that found a link between the contaminated wells and increased...
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