A 63-year-old grandmother who works at the Fred Meyer office across the street from Bullseye Glass in Southeast Portland just filed a lawsuit accusing the known air-polluter of causing her terminal lung cancer.
Valarie Silva and her husband Richard filed the lawsuit on Tuesday in federal court.
“Ms. Silva was diagnosed with stage IV (terminal) non-small cell lung cancer on September 28, 2014,” the lawsuit says. “The cancer is located in both lungs. The cancer was caused by airborne contamination. Ms. Silva never smoked cigarettes or used other tobacco products, nor did her husband.”
The suit says that at work in February she received notice that “high levels of arsenic, cadmium and hexavalent chromium were obtained at a testing site located in the Fred Meyer parking lot. These contaminants had been emitted from the smokestacks at the Bullseye facility across the street.” Those contaminants can cause lung cancer and tumors.
The Silvas are suing Bullseye Glass for “Strict Liability for Ultra-Hazardous Activity,” negligence, negligence per se, loss of consortium, and battery.
Read the full suit here:
6-14-2016-Bullseye-Glass-Lawsuit (PDF)
6-14-2016-Bullseye-Glass-Lawsuit (Text)
And read the exhibits to the suit here:
6-14-2016-Bullseye-Glass-Lawsuit-Exhibits (PDF)
6-14-2016-Bullseye-Glass-Lawsuit-Exhibits (Text)
That’s the Fred Meyer headquarters, but there’s no store there.
If she works at the Fred Meyer headquarters, she also works next door to Lehigh Cement (fly ash) and across the street from Intermodal (major railhub with diesel emissions from trains and idling trucks). Both of those are far more likely to contribute environmental toxins than Bullseye. Lead, arsenic, and cadmium are all strongly linked to diesel exhaust and Multnomah county is one of the worst in the nation for diesel emissions. I’m sorry that she has cancer but there are far too many confounding variables to pin this on Bullseye. http://www.deq.state.or.us/…/docs/Dies… and http://portlandcleanair.org/files/Diesel particulate map.pdf