A jury in the US state of Washington has ordered the agricultural and pharmaceutical company Bayer to pay damages of 100 million dollars (around 97 million euros).

On Tuesday, the jury found that the four plaintiffs had suffered health damage due to fluorescent tubes containing PCBs in a school near Seattle. Eleven other lawsuits were dismissed, according to a plaintiff's attorney. Bayer argued that the plaintiffs had not been able to prove that their illnesses were caused by PCBs and that the levels found in the school had been deemed safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It also said the school ignored warnings from regulators to replace the lighting fixtures in the aging building. The toxic chemicals were manufactured by Monsanto, which was acquired by Bayer in 2018.

The defeat is the latest in a series of setbacks for the chemical company over the alleged contamination of the Sky Valley Education Center in Monroe, Washington. More than 200 students, staff and parents say they have developed cancer, thyroid disease, neurological damage and other health problems because polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) escaped from the school's lighting fixtures. In this context, Bayer has already been ordered to pay more than $1.5 billion in damages in previous proceedings, although some of these have been reduced or overturned.

PCBs were once widely used to insulate electrical equipment, but also in products such as carbon paper, caulk, floor polishes and paints. They were banned in 1979 after being linked to cancer and other health problems. Monsanto manufactured PCBs from 1935 to 1977. With the acquisition of the chemical company Monsanto, Bayer had incurred extensive lawsuits regarding PCBs and in particular regarding the suspected carcinogenic weed killer Roundup.

(Report by Brendan Pierson and Dietrich Knauth, written by Katharina Loesche. If you have any questions, please contact our editorial team at berlin.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for politics and business) or frankfurt.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for companies and markets).)