Houston personal injury lawyers discuss the lingering effects of a 1988 mass water poisoning incident. In Camelford, U.K. in 1988, a relief truck driver negligently dumped some 20,000 tons of aluminum sulfate, a highly toxic substance, into the wrong tank at the local water supply for a Cornish town. Some 20,000 customers were affected by the toxic aluminum spill, but it took two weeks before local water authorities even alerted locals to the danger. The water authorities had insisted that the water was safe to drink, and even suggested that customers boil the water (which actually concentrates the aluminum even further).
In the days that followed the toxic aluminum sulfate dump, customers began complaining of vomiting, rashes, mouth ulcers, and other health ailments. One customer, Carole Cross, showed successively worse symptoms over the ensuing years, some of which mimicked Alzheimer’s disease. She died in 2010 and was found by a coroner to have the highest concentration of aluminum in her brain that he had ever seen. Our Houston personal injury lawyers point out that a coroner’s report read at the inquest into her death indicated it was highly likely that her neurological condition and progressive deterioration were results of the negligent aluminum sulfate spill.
Dr. Cross, the widower of Carole Cross, believes that there may be lingering danger for all of the customers affected by the 1988 water contamination, and that authorities should come clean about the dangers. Various experts involved in the inquest have put the blame on the water authority for the hazard, saying that its lack of reliable safety policies and procedures created an environment where a major accident was just waiting to happen. Our Houston personal injury lawyers notice that they also add that the procedures of the water authority responsible for the Camelford water supply did not differ significantly from those of other U.K. water authorities of the era.
Learn more about the contaminants that may be in your current U.S. water supply. Read our article on water safety standards in the United States.