From his 240 Volvo front-end loader, Scot Meisenheimer could hardly see the ceiling lights.
Dust hung heavy and low in the warehouse, and a persistent itch crawled up his throat. His denim coveralls scratched at his skin, crusty from the previous days’ work.
At the environmental cleanup site where Meisenheimer worked, three large pipes pulled thousands of gallons of sediment contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, from the Lower Fox River in Wisconsin every hour. The sludge arrived in the warehouse by the ton – dark and sopping wet…