This seemed to explain why Richard Toomey and several other Woburn people had complained of a burning sensation in their eyes while bathing. Schlichtmann had always assumed that the primary route of exposure had come from drinking the water. That would have meant that the families had consumed only the TCE contained in a quart or so of water each day. But every ten-minute shower they had taken would release to the air most of the TCE contained in sixty gallons of water, which would have found its way inside their bodies through inhalation.

Jonathan Harr, A Civil Action, loc. 1096