Welcome to July, the heart of summer and home of Independence Day! But before you light up those illegal fireworks in the back yard, settle back with a glass of iced tea in your favorite hammock and dream with me about how much better our business would be if we declared independence from several thorns in our side.

?The CGL pollution exclusion. This well-meaning attempt to rid ourselves of potentially catastrophic claims arising from waste treatment dumps and/or chemical contaminants brazenly dumped in our rivers and streams by heartless, profit-mongering managers (thanks, Erin Brockovich) has gone terribly awry. We are repeatedly confronted with situations in which heartless, profit-mongering adjusters (or merely ignorant ones) wield this mighty sword to disallow claims arising from such potentially catastrophic pollution exposures as retail cleaning supplies, office-copier inks and toners, lawn mower gas cans and skunk attacks. And as creative attorneys find endless ways to work around the basic policy exclusion's somewhat convoluted language, many carriers respond by simply attaching the absolute exclusion endorsement with a shout of, "A pox on all your polluted houses!" (That this oath fails to take into consideration the communicable-disease exclusion is an obvious oversight.)

I humbly suggest two possible approaches that may free us from the black hole of claims disagreements. The first is to follow the commercial-property forms and simply provide the coverage, but only up to a specified limit. Doing so won't resolve the "what is and isn't a 'pollutant'" argument, but at least the coverage limit will be far more containable within non-catastrophic parameters. Then those who want higher limits can avail themselves of the supplemental pollution coverages marketplace. Another benefit of this measure is the creation of medical payments coverage for pollution claims, which will eliminate conflict over minor medical bills associated with copier-toner and cleaning- supply spillage claims.