Many, if not most, adjusters may feel confident that they rarely will have to deal with serious hazardous material claims. After all, unless their insurers write environmental impairment liability coverage or their self-insured clients are in businesses that might involve chemicals or other pollutants, there are those delightful “absolute pollution exclusions” in the policies. Right?

Not always. It is true that those exclusions are pretty solid. The one in the CGL policy goes on for more than a full page of fine print defining and listing exceptions to the exclusion of any “bodily injury or property damage arising out of the actual, alleged, or threatened discharge, dispersal, seepage, migration, release, or escape of pollutants.”

Back in the 1970s, when I taught a coverage class, I used to have the pollution definition memorized. I called it the McDonald's Exclusion. It includes “any solid, liquid, gaseous, or thermal irritant or contaminant, including smoke, vapor, soot, fumes, acids, alkalis, chemicals, and waste,” to which I always added (reflecting the then current McDonald's ad), “on a sesame seed bun!” Come to think of it, some fast food I have encountered does resemble that definition, considering what goes into the meat, lettuce, catsup, pickle relish, and mustard.

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