What Are PCBs and Why Are They Here?

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) is the name given to a group of chemicals no longer produced in the United States but still found in the environment. According to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry of the US Department of Health and Human Services, PCBs are linked to cancer, neurobehavioral disorders, immunological disorders, and liver damage.

The General Electric Company (GE) in Pittsfield, Massachusetts used PCBs in the manufacture of electric transformers and to a lesser extent to insulate wires. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, between 1932 and 1977 GE released PCBs into wastewater, stormwater, the Housatonic River, and Silver Lake. Why did they stop in 1977? This was the year in which the federal government ordered a stop to the manufacture of PCBs under the Toxic Substance Control Act because of the risks to public health and to the environment. Why didn't GE stop sooner? You might think it was because they were unaware of the dangers, but then you would be mistaken.

In 1937 a General Electric executive speaking at a meeting hosted by the Harvard School of Public Health on the subject of chlorinated biphenyls including PCBs described the health problems among workers who handled PCBs at the GE plant in York, Pennsylvania. "The first reaction that several of our executives had was to throw it out—get it out of our plant. They didn’t want anything like that for treating wire. But that was easily said but not so easily done. We might just as well have thrown our business to the four winds and said, ‘We’ll close up,’ because there was no substitute and there is none today in spite of all the efforts we have made through our own research laboratories to find one." Fox River Watch has an excellent chronology of events related to PCBs and their use. It details what can only be described as a cover-up among executives at General Electric and Monsanto, the company that manufactured the PCBs and sold them to GE.

So, as early as 1937 GE executives knew of the dangers of PCBs, and they continued to expose their workers to these dangerous chemicals at least until 1977. When a large corporation such as GE works with dangerous chemicals such as PCBs, eventually they have to find a way to dispose of these dangerous chemicals. Where did the PCBs go?