NewsChannel 5's Stewart Ledbetter is with live link Five outside the IBM plant in Essex junction with tonight's top story. Stewart?

Thom, over the last two weeks, you've seen the newspaper ads, urging past and present ibmers who work in this plant's "clean rooms" and whose families suffered unusual health problems, to come forward. The lawyer who took out those ads say more than 3-hundred have and the number is still rising.

These pictures, provided by IBM, show the clean rooms where local workers make the cutting-edge wafers, the computer chips used in some of the world's best technology. And the chief lawyer already suing i-b-m and its suppliers in New York, say in these places workers may have been exposed to chemicals which made them sick.

"what we saw in New York and are beginning to see in Vermont are am alarming # and what we're believing will be a cluster of cancers."

Deprospo's newspaper ads urge people who worked at IBM here since 1980, and who developed cancer, or whose kids had serious birth defects to come forward. He said in the last two weeks, more than 300 have, though he would not reveal their names.

He's already filed suit on behalf of workers from the IBM plant in fishkill, New York, who developed a range of cancers rare for people in their 20s and 30s, or their children birth defects he says were due to chemical exposure at fishkill.

"reduced limbs. Blindness. Hydroenchephaly. Some children born with tumors. And you allege cause and effect? Absolutely. Absolutely."

If Vermont workers were in danger, it's the first the governor's heard of it.

"this is a surprise. I don't really know what's going on. We've heard nothing from the company and nothing from the company's employees."

Vermont's occupational health division has inspected IBM Essex -- at least seven times since 19-87. Finding no violation of chemical exposure standards. Yet vosha's bob mcleod says that doesn't mean employees couldn't become ill.

" there's always the possibility that someone could become ill because of an exposure to a chemical, and even though they don't exceed the permissible exposure limits that we have."

But could it happen to large numbers of workers and the state not know it? The commissioner of health, doctor Jan Carney didn't return our calls.

The spokesman for IBM, Jeff couture declined to be interviewed for this story. But in a statement, said,

"we don't believe the illnesses are the result of the clean rooms. We know of no scientific evidence which supports significant health problems, including cancer, associated with working at IBM."

But lawyer deprospo called it an enormous case, which is about to spread here to Vermont.

"just the cases that are pending, that are in suit, are seeking in the area of three billion dollars. Those are the cases in suit in san Jose and also in New York. I can tell you preliminarily, though i haven't pinned it down, the calls are coming in a rather fast and very alarming rate in the state of Vermont, um, that over the next several weeks, we plan on increasing the lawsuit and including a very large number of people who worked at the Essex facility."

IBM Essex junction employs 75-hundred people-- the largest private employer in the region-- the state's number one economic engine. We understand talk of the lawsuit expanding to Vermont has been the buzz around the water cooler lately. But noone we approached would talk about this.