(The following story by max B. Baker appeared on the Fort Worth Star-Telegram website on January 24.)
FORT WORTH, Texas — When Donnie Faust came home after working a night shift at a plant that treats railroad crossties in southeast Texas, he would pull off his creosote-stained clothing and leave it for his wife, Linda, to clean.
Now he is convinced this simple, everyday act, a husband asking his wife to launder his sweaty, tainted blue jeans and work shirts, caused the cancer that may ultimately shorten her life.
“I would not have taken it home if I knew it was going to kill my wife,” he testified this week during a trial in a suit against the BNSF Railway Co. in Tarrant County civil court.
Donnie Faust and his wife are suing the Fort Worth-based railroad over how it operated one of the nation’s oldest and largest crosstie plants in Somerville, about 30 miles from College Station. Their lawsuit is one of several pending in state court against the railroad.
The Fausts also blame the railroad for polluting the entire town by burning treated lumber scraps in boilers not outfitted with the proper pollution control devices.
The Fausts are suing for at least $6 million in damages.
“A good neighbor doesn’t do that,” said Jared Woodfill, the attorney representing the Fausts and several other families in Burleson County. “They don’t pollute the groundwater, air and the soil.”
The railroad’s attorneys argue that Faust’s attorneys are buttressing a weak case by relying on “junk science” that distorts scientific studies they’ve conducted on how the plant was run, as well as soil and attic dust samples, to make the plant look “dirtier than it was.”
The Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe Railroad operated the plant for almost 100 years, until it merged with the Burlington Northern Railroad in 1995. BNSF sold the plant to another company, Koppers, the same year. Koppers is not named in the lawsuit.
“This anecdotal evidence is not scientific. We’re not responsible. We’re innocent,” said Doug Poole, one of the railroad’s attorneys.
Caked in creosote
During the first two weeks of the trial in state District Judge Jeff Walker’s court, a jury of seven women and five men have heard Nicholas Cheremisinoff, a chemical engineer, testify that the plant was not operated safely and that boilers used to power the plant were not correctly retrofitted with adequate air-pollution controls.
Paul Rosenfeld, an environmental health expert, testified that his studies of attic dust in 14 homes in the community showed a higher-than-acceptable level of toxic chemicals, an indication of the contaminants the Fausts and others have been exposed to over the years.
During the trial, Woodfill has introduced internal railroad documents and manufacturer warnings showing that the tie-plant employees should have been using respirators, taking showers before they went home and wearing uniforms left at the plant.
Donnie Faust and his co-workers say they were never warned of the job hazards.
Faust said he went to work at the factory after he graduated from high school in 1974. He’s had several jobs at the plant: mowing weeds, picking up trash, stacking treated and untreated railroad ties. No matter what he did, it was hard to keep the creosote off, he said.
“It was constantly splashing all over you. You were caked in creosote,” Faust said.
Donnie Faust said that in his early years at the plant he never wore a respirator, apron, rubber gloves or a uniform.
Then, in the mid-1980s, Linda Faust’s stomach began to hurt. In 1998, doctors told her she had cancer and her entire stomach was eventually removed. At one point, doctors said she had less than a 10 percent chance of survival.
“I was sitting there preparing a funeral for a person who was still alive,” testified Donnie Faust, who broke down in tears and went to a corner of the courtroom out of the jury’s view to regain his composure.
Cadillac of plants
But former plant superintendents testified that they consider the Somerville plant to be among the best in the nation.
Vernon Welch, in a videotaped deposition, described the Somerville facility as the “Cadillac of treating plants.”
Sam Barkley, superintendent at the plant for 15 years, said he lived at the plant without any ill effects.
“I never saw anyone outside the plant with clothes dripping with creosote. That’s not how it was,” he said.
Instead, the railroad’s attorneys have blamed Linda Faust’s cancer on her half-pack-a-day cigarette habit and say she was infected with Helicobacter pylori, a bacterium that is linked to higher cancer risk.