Insurance Blog

The Wall Street Journal reports that lawyers are descending on the Gulf coast and preparing lawsuits over the oil spill from the sunken Deepwater Horizon rig. It notes that the regime for compensating those hurt by offshore oil spills is complex:
Individuals can file traditional lawsuits in court and receive money by proving liability. Or injured parties can make use of a claims process established under the 1990 Oil Pollution Act, in which the federal government makes payments from a fund collected through a tax imposed on the oil industry.”

Meanwhile the New York Times reports that while President Obama has called the spill “a potentially unprecedented environmental disaster” and doomsday predictions abound about its impact, the spill is not unprecedented nor yet among the worst oil accidents in history.
Its ultimate impact, according to the NYT, will depend on a long list of interlinked variables, including the weather, ocean currents, the properties of the […]

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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) yesterday announced that it will be studying the impact of bisphenol-A on the environment and adding it to its list of chemicals of concern. BPA is a chemical used in a variety of consumer and industrial products. Some food and drink packaging, such as water and infant bottles, contains BPA. In January the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) said it had some concerns about the potential human health impacts of BPA and it would study the potential effects and ways to reduce exposure to BPA in food packaging. Now the EPA says releases of BPA to the environment exceed one million pounds per year. Its study of the environmental impacts of BPA includes:

• Adding BPA to the chemical concern list on the basis of potential environmental effects
• Requiring information on concentrations of BPA in surface water, ground water, and drinking water to determine if […]

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The number of vehicles on U.S. roadways has grown by 7 percent over the last five years, but the number of times those vehicles have collided with deer has jumped by 18.3 percent. In its latest study of annual deer claims, State Farm estimates 2.4 million collisions between deer and vehicles occurred in the U.S. during the two-year period between July 1, 2007 and June 30, 2009. Among the 35 states where at least 7,000 deer-vehicle collisions occur per year, New Jersey and Nebraska posted the largest increases of 54 percent. Deer-vehicle collisions also jumped by 41 percent in Kansas, by 38 percent in Florida, Mississippi and Arkansas, by 34 percent in Oklahoma and by 33 percent in West Virginia, North Carolina and Texas. For the third year in a row, West Virginia tops the list of those states where a collision with a deer is most likely. State Farm […]

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A severe thunderstorm that swept across New York City on Tuesday night left nearly 100 trees felled and hundreds more damaged in the city’s Central Park. An August 19 article in the New York Times cites officials at the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation and at the Central Park Conservancy saying this is the most severe destruction the park’s trees have sustained in decades. Trees in several other city parks also suffered significant damage. The storm is a reminder that thunderstorm losses can be substantial. A recent MunichRe Webinar noted that severe thunderstorms in the United States caused estimated insured losses of $6.1 billion (estimated overall losses of $8.9 billion) in the first six months of 2009. This was more than first-half losses from flood, winter storms and wildfires combined.

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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) yesterday said it has determined that a public health emergency exists at the Libby asbestos site in northwest Montana. This is the first time the EPA has made a public health emergency declaration under the Superfund law (CERCLA). “This determination recognizes the serious impact to the public health from the contamination at Libby and underscores the need for further action and health care for area residents who have been or may be exposed to asbestos,” said the EPA in a press release. It noted that investigations performed by the Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry have found the incidence of occurrence of asbestosis in the Libby area staggeringly higher than the national average for the period from 1979-1998. In 1963, W.R. Grace, a construction materials and chemicals company bought Zonolite, a Libby, MT company that mined vermiculite, a mineral contaminated with asbestos. Last month […]

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Increasing numbers of insurers are offering new coverages to tackle climate change and rising weather losses. That’s the upshot of From Risk to Opportunity: Insurer Responses to Climate Change, a new report from Ceres. The report identifies more than 600 climate-related products and services now being offered by insurers in the United States and abroad – a 50 percent increase on 2007. Insurance coverage for wind and solar production shortfalls, premium discounts for building efficiency renovations, directors’ and officers’ (D&O) liability protection against climate-related lawsuits, carbon capture and storage insurance, and coverage for humanitarian emergencies prompted by drought are among the newest insurance products and services available. However, the report also notes that insurer climate-related activities go far beyond offering new products. Examples include integration of climate change impacts and trends such as warmer ocean temperatures and recent flooding data into traditional catastrophic modeling, and $11 billion in direct investments in businesses […]

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