Marc Bern In your practice and the US more widely, what would are the most common kinds of hazardous environment-related injuries that give rise to lawsuits? At the top, I would say that there are the toxins that particularly cause various types of cancers, whether it be lung cancer or kidney cancer or numerous others that, depending on the toxin, would be related to those exposures. Additionally, serious pulmonary problems such as asthma and potentially COPD and other serious conditions that can cause lifelong problems. My Legal Life Securing Compensation for Environmentally Injured Victims As a series of recent train derailments in the US have demonstrated, there is an ever-growing public awareness of hazardous materials in the environment and the damage they may cause. Speaking with us this month is Marc Bern, a prolific environmental lawyer who has worked on some of the most significant litigation of the past three decades. In this exclusive interview, he shares the insights he has gained over a storied career of seeking justice for environmentally injured clients. MY LEGAL LIFE 25 What are the key pieces of environmental law upon which these suits are based? This depends on the cause, of which there are so many different types. For instance, you might have air pollution caused by an incinerator that has been burning negligently and releasing toxins into the air that people are breathing. You might have toxins dumped into reservoirs that people are exposed to by drinking the contaminated water. You might also be familiar with a lawsuit that is now pending on behalf of marines and employees at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, where the government was actually dumping various very serious toxins into the drinking water that people at the marine base were exposed to over many decades. Years ago, there was a gasoline additive called methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) which was added to the gas by congressional approval, and it turns
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