Seventy-seven people, including employees and their families, have filed a lawsuit against a landfill in Ohio where coal ash is deposited because they were denied protective gear and were sickened by it.
The most amazing detail of the lawsuit is that employees were allegedly told that they don’t need protective gear because coal ash is safe enough to eat.
Doug Workman, a supervisor at the General James M. Gavin Residual Waste Landfill in North Cheshire, Ohio, allegedly responded to worker inquiries about whether working with the coal waste was safe “by sticking his finger into the coal waste and then placing his fly-ash covered finger into his own mouth,” thereby implying that “that coal waste was ‘safe enough to eat,’” according to a report in the West Virginia Record.
I was hungry before reading this.
American Electric Power, the owner of the landfill and nearby coal-fired power plant (pictured above), deserves to be flogged for every penny if these allegations are true.