In 1935, the Monsanto Corporation began manufacturing PCBs. Monsanto produced PCBs as well as licensed others to make them. They claimed PCBs to be the perfect industrial chemical. During this time, the postwar economy of the United States was booming and commercial production of PCBs began in response to the electrical industry's need for a safer cooling and insulating fluid for industrial transformers and capacitors.

 

Since the beginning of their use there were already signs of PCB related health problems. The US Public Health Service reported cases of chloracne, which is described as a combination of blackheads and pustules present on workers’ skin coming into contact with the PCBs. The Journal of Industrial Hygiene and Toxicology also suggested that PCBs were linked to liver disease. In 1937, the Harvard School of Public Health hosted a meeting regarding the PCB problem. Among the corporations that were present were Monsanto and General Electric. Although the companies admitted to increasing problems involving the health of their workers, the decision was to continue its use because like Monsanto had said, it was a miracle chemical that could not be replaced. Consequently, beginning in 1947, two of General Electric’s plants, Hudson Falls and Fort Edward began the use of PCB is their manufacturing of capacitors.

 

Much of the PCB released by GE before 1973 was due mainly to the Fort Edward Dam. In the basement of the Fort Edward plant, where the work was being done on the capacitors, there was a puddle of PCB slurry, which was then emptied into the Hudson River. Six hundred thousand pounds of PCBs remain in the clay deposits beneath the parking lot of the Fort Edward Plant. The most concentrated pollution lies in the Thompson Island Pool, which is just south of the Fort Edward Plant. Furthermore, the removal of this dam in 1973 led to the downstream movement of contaminated sediments.

           

After General Electric’s release of PCBs into the Hudson River, there were a series of actions taken by the government to regulate this contamination. During the late 1970s, the Department of Environmental conservation performed a number of studies to determine the concentration and distribution of PCBs in the water column, sediments and the biota of the upper Hudson River. They labeled ‘hot spot’ areas which were defined as regions containing sediments with PCB concentrations exceeding 50 ppm. Between Fort Edward and Troy, N.Y, there were 40 hot spots.

 

Then in 1984, the EPA designated the lower 200 miles of the Hudson River a Superfund Site, meaning that there would be a series of steps taken by the government to evaluate the problem and design a solution. The conclusion that the EPA came to at the time was a ‘no action’ decision because dredging technology at the time was not advanced enough to ensure a successful clean up operation.

In response to EPA’s record of decision in 1984, General Electric began implementing water column monitoring and further information about the PCB contamination of the Hudson River was being unfolded. In 1990, the EPA reopened the no action decision and initiated an investigation and feasibility study regarding dredging. The researching of the origin, fate and transport of PCBs in the river system delayed the original scheduling of this investigation and thus it could not be completed until after 2000. In 2000, the EPA proposed that 2.65 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment would be dredged from the Upper Hudson River.

 

More recent releases of PCBs from the facilities meaning post 1990 have been from the discharge of oils from the bedrock surrounding the GE Hudson Falls plant. PCBs leaked through the fissures of the shale bedrock lying beneath the Hudson Falls plant. One particular incident is the collapse of a wooden gate structure within the abandoned paper mill or the Allen Mill, which is located adjacent to the Hudson Falls plant. This gate kept water from flowing through a tunnel cut into bedrock below the mill. This tunnel contained oil phase PCBs that migrated there through subsurface bedrock fractures. The Hudson Falls discharge has had a major effect on downstream fish concentrations. There is continued leakage from the Hudson Falls plant and a major concern about PCB groundwater contamination of the Upper Hudson is around the GE facilities themselves where free PCB oil has saturated the local aquifers and migrates into the river.

 

It is estimated that the current PCB discharge into the river due to erosion of contaminated soils and sediment, stormwater runoff and seepage of oils from the bedrock beneath the facilities is less than 30 kilograms per year compared to the 2700-16000 kilograms per year released between 1940-1977(About 1.3 million pounds of PCBs in total). These sediments are highly contaminated and can be released through currents and typical flow conditions. The argument for letting nature clean the Hudson River is based on the assumption that there is net deposition in the river, meaning that new sediment will settle calmly on top of previous, contaminated sediment. The EPA claims that a significant proportion of the PCB mass is buried under the bioactive zone, which is an average depth of about 10 cm and may be dormant. However, it does admit that individual hot spots cannot be accounted for and the EPA concluded that sedimentation would not provide adequate insulation of the PCBs from the river for various reasons.

 

As an example, taking one portion of the Upper Hudson River, the Thompson Island Pool, which is measured to have one of the highest levels of PCB contamination shows some areas of net deposition while other areas suffer erosion depending on the flow conditions. The theory that because new sediment will accumulate and bury the contamination is somewhat ideal because in actuality, the river sediment deposition is dynamic and unpredictable.

 

Furthermore, just because the sediment is deemed stable does not necessarily mean that the PCBs will not leak out. The PCBs are lipophilic but high amounts are found in sediment porewater. This porewater provides a mechanism by which deeply buried sediment can contribute to surface water. This porewater movement of PCB to the surface may be slow but when it does reach the surface, the effects can be extremely harmful.