Santa Clara, Nov 06: A 73-year-old former IBM factory worker at the center of a landmark cancer lawsuit against the company told a court on Wednesday she was struck by an overpowering odor the first time she reported to work and was regularly exposed to chemicals that stained her skin. "The very first night that I showed up for work, when I opened the door, the smell hit me," Alida Hernandez testified. "It seemed like a horrible nightmare. It was unusual. I had never smelled anything like that."

Hernandez was the first witness to take the stand in the closely watched case in which she and another former factory worker, Jim Moore, are suing IBM for exposure to poisonous chemicals they say ultimately caused cancer.
Moore , 62, has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Hernandez worked for 13 years at the IBM plant, where she applied a chemical coating to aluminum disks.
During her testimony on Wednesday she described her job, which she said also involved routinely cleaning the plant floors and the factory equipment. Bureau Report