New Hampshire reaches $25M deal with Monsanto over PCBs

Monsanto, based in St. Louis, produced them from 1935 until 1977, two years before they were banned by Congress.

German pharmaceutical and chemical company Bayer, which bought Monsanto in 2018, said in the settlement agreement that it did not admit to any allegations in the complaint, nor any wrongdoing nor any violations of the law.

“We have reached an agreement with the Attorney General of New Hampshire that will resolve all of the state’s claims regarding PCBs and result in the dismissal of the state’s case, and contains no admission of liability by the company,” Bayer said in a statement, claiming that it “never manufactured, used, or disposed of PCBs near or in New Hampshire waterways.”

Citing internal documents, the state says companies continued selling PCB mixtures even though they knew the compounds would lead “to contamination of human food (particularly fish), the killing of some marine species (shrimp), and the possible extinction of several species of fish-eating birds.”

The state said that PCBs have fouled about 81 square miles of the Atlantic Ocean and 46 other water bodies, including stretches of the Souhegan River and Squam Lake, where PCBs have been linked to a reduction in the loon population and found in the state’s seal population.