Welding industry manganese litigation

The class-action wave against the welding industry on manganese-Parkinson's claims; $100M+ in legal defense costs; the eventual scientific resolution that manganism attacks a different part of the brain than Parkinson's; plaintiffs' attorneys migrating from asbestos to welding.

Now, a few years ago, some attorneys in the United States were trying to go after the welding industry — because if you were to breathe 100 percent manganese — we've known this since the 1790s — people who worked in manganese ore mines would get something that looked sort of like Parkinson's disease, a nervous disorder. We've since learned, actually some people at Mass General did some of this work, that it attacks a different part of the brain. If you get too much manganese, you can get a neurological deficit, which is permanent, and it's sort of like Parkinson's disease.