Verizon Put Utility Workers At Risk By Leaving Old Lead-Wrapped Cables In Place, Class Action Alleges

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Verizon has been hit with a proposed class action over its allegedly profit-minded decision to leave lead-wrapped cables in place long after they have become obsolete, potentially exposing thousands of utility workers to dangerously high levels of the toxic substance. 

If you were exposed to lead-sheathed telecommunications cables as a lineworker for a utility company, let us know here.

The 32-page complaint against Verizon Communications and Verizon Pennsylvania LLC relays that the companies’ infrastructure, which they took over from affiliates of the Bell Telephone Company and AT&T, includes a sprawling network of copper-wire cables—overhead, underground, in buildings and underwater—covered in thick jackets of toxic lead for insulation and corrosion-prevention purposes. 

The lawsuit alleges that despite significant technological advancements, including the creation of plastic sheathing and fiber optics, Verizon, rather than properly dispose of the hazardous lead materials as required by state and federal laws, negligently abandoned many of the old lead-sheathed cables in place, as well as the lead that “washed off the cables into the surrounding environment.” As a result, utility workers who come into direct contact with the old cables, many of which were laid prior to the 1960s, have been put at risk of cancer and other significant health problems, the case claims. 

“For many years, Defendants have known that the lead-covered cables existed, that lead was potentially leaching into the environment surrounding the cables, and that the cables created significant risks of human and animal exposure,” the filing reads. “Defendants, however, have not meaningfully acted to mitigate the health risks to the individuals who work near the cables or made adequate efforts to monitor or dispose of the cables.” 

No amount of contact with lead is safe for humans, the suit stresses. Lead exposure can cause nervous system damage, kidney and cardiovascular issues, reproductive problems, cancer and more, the case relays. The lawsuit adds that lead can cause health problems shortly after exposure but also much later on after being stored “inertly in the bones and other locations in the body.” 

Per the complaint, utility workers are “uniquely harmed” by Verizon’s failure to remediate the lead-sheathed cables left in place nationwide. 

“For example, telecom workers have reported that lead-sheathed telecommunications cables often have a dusting of silvery lead so soft and thick people would at times scribble messages in it, and numerous studies over the past 50 years have shown that utility workers who work with or near the cables have elevated levels of lead in their bodies and a number of significant health issues.” 

Further, as the lead in the cables degrades, it leaches into groundwater, soil and sediment, exposing those who come into contact with it to a heightened risk of lead poisoning, the case says. 

The lawsuit accuses Verizon of causing a “public health crisis” by failing to properly assess and dispose of cables wrapped in lead that has leeched into the surrounding environment, and argues that utility workers are entitled to medical monitoring so as to diagnose any potential lead-related illnesses as early as possible. 

The plaintiff, a Commodore, Pennsylvania resident and utility worker, claims to have been “routinely sick” while working in contact with Verizon’s lead-sheathed cables. The plaintiff says he is worried that past and future exposure to lead-wrapped cables will cause him to become sick again. 

The case was filed in the wake of a Wall Street Journal investigation that found that AT&T, Verizon and other telecom heavyweights have left behind a spider web of lead-covered cables that have exposed consumers nationwide to levels of lead considered unsafe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 

The lawsuit looks to cover all utility pole workers who were occupationally exposed to Verizon’s lead-sheathed cables in Pennsylvania. 

If you were exposed to lead-sheathed telecommunications cables as a lineworker for a utility company, let us know here.