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Don’t be fooled by Dow’s warm and fuzzy propaganda: its lust for profit can been measured in the cancers, deformations, lost lives and ruined dreams its products have caused. How many Bhopals has this company created? Read more about them below.
Dow was one of the principal manufacturers of Agent Orange, an herbicide used by the US military to deprive the Vietnamese resistance of forest cover and food crops. Nearly 21 million gallons of Agent Orange were sprayed over Vietnam during the war, (1) and in concentrations far more intense than anything allowed in the United States. (2) Although Agent Orange is itself a poison, the formulation dumped over Vietnam was also severely contaminated with dioxin – one of the most toxic chemicals ever studied. Dow and other suppliers were aware of the contamination, but kept it secret from the US Government. (3) While a miniscule amount of dioxin is enough to cause serious health effects in humans, we now know that the US military dumped the equivalent of 600 kilograms of pure dioxin over Vietnam. (4)
The result was predictable, and devastating. Entire regions of Vietnam remain so highly contaminated that children--an estimated 500,000 thus far--are being born with serious congenital deformities to this day (read more in The Guardian). A path-breaking 2003 study by Columbia University estimates that “at least 2.1 million but perhaps as many as 4.8 million people would have been present during the spraying.” (5) A 2002 study by The Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine found elevated levels of TCDD (the most toxic chemical in the dioxin family) in 95% of blood samples taken from residents living in Bien Hoa City, more than 30 years after spraying was stopped. (6)
In January of 2004, a prominent group of Agent Orange victims and supporters, including Vietnam's former Vice President, formed the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange (see the Mercury News). Shortly thereafter, the group filed the first-ever lawsuit in the United States seeking compensation for the Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange. The lawsuit sought reparations from thirty-seven American companies, including Dow (see the Associated Press, BBC and Reuters). Although the lawsuit was dismissed on March 10th, 2005, the victims have promised to appeal. Meanwhile, a petition to the US Government seeking justice for the victims of Agent Orange, initiated by the Britain-Vietnam Friendship Society, has already collected nearly 700,000 signatures from around the world. You can add yours here. More Information
The US military was also exposed to Agent Orange, and after the war thousands of veterans found they had serious health problems associated with their exposure. At first the military tried to cover up the problem - the Air Force published three studies exonerating Agent Orange. These studies, it was later found, were altered to remove evidence that children of fliers exposed to Agent Orange were twice as likely to be born with birth defects and that the fliers themselves were sicker than controls by a ratio of 5 to 1. (7) Now, the US Veterans' Administration, citing numerous studies, acknowledges that Agent Orange has been linked to a number of illnesses, including various cancers, birth defects in the children of exposed veterans, leukemia and other diseases. The VA administers a program that provides benefits for veterans with illnesses linked to Agent Orange exposure. Although the US Government enjoys sovereign immunity and could not be sued by the veterans, many veterans did sue the companies that manufactured Agent Orange and kept its toxicity secret. In 1984, Dow and other producers settled for $180 million, and created a fund that was exhausted by 1994. In 2003, the US Supreme Court ruled that veterans who became sick after the fund was exhausted were entitled to pursue their own lawsuits against the companies that had produced Agent Orange. "Larry then was diagnosed as having chronic pancreatitis. We were told that men who have this disease were usually in their 50s and usually did not live long because there is no cure, the pain becomes so severe that most people die from shock. Because of the hospital stays, Larry could not hold down a job. But in May 1980 he did find a job and held in the pain as much as he could. At the same time, we noticed that Caroline, our daughter, was not progressing. After four days of exhaustive tests, all came back normal except for the fact there was something foreign in her blood. We were told that she had severe developmental delays. By January 1981 Larry's health grew worse. His gall bladder was removed and an exploratory laparotomy was done. Recovery from this surgery was very slow and never complete. On the first day back to work, he was told that his insurance had been canceled. On the following day, he was told that his job had been filled in his absence and that he was no longer employed. In July 1981 we had to declare bankruptcy because of the medical bills that had accumulated. That same month Larry checked into Hines Veterans Hospital because of another pancreatitis flare-up. One of his doctors did come out and say, "off the record," that a dangerous level of dioxin had been found in his blood.
"In November 1981 he got a job as a security
officer. He worked until February 1982, when his health grew even
worse. On March 24, he called me at work and asked me to take him
to the hospital. When I reached home, he was doubled over in pain.
By Friday morning, the situation had become critical. He was now
totally on a respirator. I wanted to stay with him, but he told
me to go home and take care of the kids. At 5 P.M. the doctors called
and said they needed consent for emergency surgery. I got to the
hospital just as they were taking Larry down. He was in very critical
condition. About forty-five minutes later, the doctor came to me
and said Larry never made it to surgery. His heart had stopped and
they could not revive him. He was 29 years old." Soldiers from other countries also fought in the war, and were afflicted by Agent Orange. Veterans from Canada, Australia and New Zealand participated in the lawsuit against Agent Orange manufacturers, and collected a portion of the settlement, but Vietnam Veterans from South Korea have not yet received any compensation. During the course of the war, 320,000 Korean soldiers fought in Vietnam, sustaining 16,000 injuries and 5,000 deaths. An estimated 100,000 South Korean veterans are suffering from Agent Orange-related illnesses. In January 2006, a South Korean court ordered Dow and Monsanto to pay $62 million in medical compensation to 6,800 people; Dow has vowed to appeal the decision, and more cases are pending.
Dow’s factories at its global headquarters in Midland, MI, have contaminated the entire region, including the Tittabawassee River floodplains, with stratospheric levels of dioxin. Testing by the state Department of Environmental Quality have found dioxin levels as high as 100,000 parts per trillion TEQ - more than a thousand times the state residential cleanup standard of 90 ppt. (10) The state has warned residents to “Avoid allowing children to play in soils. Wash hands and any other exposed body surfaces after any soil contact. Do not eat unwashed foods from your garden. Do not engage in any other activities that may introduce soil into the mouth. Keep soil moist to control dust. Remove footwear before entering the house. Store all used gardening clothing outdoors.” (11)
The swathe of dioxin contamination extends twenty-two miles downstream from the Dow plant. Shortly after it first became public, in November 2001, Dow and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality attempted to work out a sweetheart deal in which the DEQ would “solve” the problem by raising the state dioxin cleanup standard tenfold. This attempt was thwarted by outraged community members, environmentalists, and the EPA. Tittabawassee floodplain residents – numbering 179 – filed a suit seeking reparations from Dow for jeopardizing their health and devaluing their property. Although the medical monitoring portion of their claim was struck down by the Michigan Supreme Court, a Saginaw County Circuit Court Judge recently ruled that the suit can proceed with class action status, which could include as many as 2,000 property owners. Although Dow has put away $54 million for the cleanup, an analysis commissioned by the Ann Arbor-based Ecology Center in 2004 said costs could exceed $300 million. More Information Dow and three other companies continued to produce and export the extremely hazardous pesticide DBCP, sold under the name of Nemagon and Fumazone, to developing countries for years after it was banned in the US in 1979. The US ban occurred after DBCP was linked to human sterility in California.
When DBCP was first marketed in developing countries, it had no labels warning that it was extremely toxic and no instructions on the use of safety equipment. "We sprayed without any protections," says José Antonio Rodríguez Pineda, a banana worker who was employed at the San Carlos plantation in El Viejo. "We worked in shorts because it was so muddy, without any protection on our feet or hands." Francisco Gonzáles believes he lost his chance to be a father because of the pesticide DBCP. "I can't have children," says Gonzáles, who began working in the banana plantations of Chinandega, Nicaragua, in 1975, when he was 20 years old. "It's very painful, you know, each one of us would like to have our own child, a child of our blood. But I was poisoned." In El Viejo and other villages in Nicaragua's banana-growing province of Chinandega today, DBCP is called "Death's Dew."
Widespread use of DBCP on banana plantations around the world has caused the permanent sterility of thousands of workers. One study found that approximately 20-25% of the male working population in banana plantations on Costa Rica’s Atlantic coast, where workers had mixed DBCP by hand, were sterilized. DBCP is also believed to cause miscarriages, birth defects, liver damage and cancer when inhaled or absorbed by the skin, and an estimated 22,000 Nicaraguans suffer from Nemagon-caused diseases and disability. This has created a great deal of liability for the companies responsible - primarily Dow, Shell, and Dole. In a 1997 settlement, the four companies that produced the chemical (Dow, Shell, Occidental and Amvac) agreed to pay $41.5 million to 26,000 banana workers in 11 countries. (13) However several other lawsuits continue. On December 11, 2002, a Nicaraguan court concluded that Dow, Shell, and Dole should pay $489.4 million to 486 banana workers. The companies have refused to pay and, led by Dole, they counter-sued the claimants for fraud and asked for $17 billion in damages. Altogether the number of pending DBCP-related lawsuits has grown to 295 in Nicaragua, representing a total of 6,544 plaintiffs and damages worth more than $11 billion. Similar legal actions have also been raised in Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama, Guatemala, and the Philippines, where Dow, Dole and others were named in a $4 billion DBCP action involving 35,000 individuals, which was thrown out in 2002 on appeal.
Dow is trying to kill this burgeoning liability. According to The
New York Times, Dow, Dole, and Shell hired lobbyists to encourage
the Bush administration to help annul Law 364, a Nicaraguan law
that makes it easier for farm workers to sue for DBCP compensation.
Secretary of State Colin Powell was reported to have intervened
with Nicaragua's foreign minister over this issue. Revelations of
this interference in the Nicaraguan press prompted a massive protest
of banana workers--several thousand strong--who marched on the capital
and More recently, in April of 2005, former banana workers in Nicaragua won the right to present their case to the United Nations Human Rights Committee after more than one thousand DBCP victims staged a month-long protest - including hunger strikes, threats to burn themselves alive, and the occupation of the Human Rights Ombudsman office - in Managua. More Information
Every person alive today has synthetic chemicals running through
their veins. (14) Many of these chemicals
did not even exist before WW II. A good number have been produced
by Dow. In 2003 the Center for Disease Control (CDC) undertook the most
extensive study to date of pesticides and industrial chemicals
in the bodies of people across the US. The scientists looked for
just 116 of the thousands of chemicals in modern use and they found
all 116 of these chemicals the blood and urine of the random people
they tested. One of these, chlorpyrifos (also known as Dursban),
was found in 93% of the American population, and a 2004 study by
the Pesticide Action Network North America, Chemical
Trespass: Pesticides in Our Bodies and Corporate Accountability,
quantifies this contamination and concludes that Dow is responsible
for 80% of the U.S. population's Scientists have already discovered that potential harm from exposure to some individual chemicals ranges from reduced fertility and developmental damage in our unborn children to neurological disorders and cancers. Even exposure to miniscule amounts of some chemicals can be harmful, especially to infants and children whose bodies are developing quickly and taking in much more food, water, air and chemicals per pound of body weight than adults. The pesticide residues and other chemicals are in our food, our cosmetics and our pets' flea collars. They are in the water we drink and the air we breathe. They are even present in breast milk and mothers' wombs. (16) In a July 2005 study spearheaded by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) in collaboration with Commonweal, researchers at two major laboratories found an average of 200 industrial chemicals and pollutants in umbilical cord blood from 10 babies born in August and September of 2004 in U.S. hospitals. Tests revealed a total of 287 chemicals in the group. The umbilical cord blood of these 10 children, collected by Red Cross after the cord was cut, harbored pesticides, consumer product ingredients, and wastes from burning coal, gasoline, and garbage. More Information
After women started complaining about silicone breast implants
leaking their jelly-like goo into their bodies and causing a variety
of health effects, Dow subsidiary Dow Corning employed its time-tested
spiel that the However in the 1990s several juries ruled otherwise, deciding that Dow Chemical and Dow Corning conspired to deceive women with breast implants about the health effects of silicone products. Although Dow Chemical maintained that the implants were the sole responsibility of subsidiary Dow Corning, several juries found Dow Chemical itself liable. This led to a 1998 settlement in which Dow Corning and Dow Chemical paid $3.2 billion to cover claims associated with silicon implants among 170,000 women. (17) The sum was so large that Dow Corning was forced to file for bankruptcy protection. More Information
The dreaded Napalm that was used by the US military to burn civilians
and soldiers alike in the Vietnam War was a Dow innovation. The
jelly-like chemical, when sprayed over people, would burn them on
contact. This Extolling the virtues of the “back room boys” or the innovators at Dow, a Vietnam veteran is attributed with this perverse but technically illuminating quote about the development of Napalm: "We sure are pleased with those backroom boys at Dow. The original product wasn't so hot -- if the gooks [Vietnamese] were quick they could scrape it off. So the boys started adding polystyrene --- now it sticks like shit to a blanket. But then if the gooks jumped under water it stopped burning, so they started adding Willie Peter (white phosphorus) so's to make it burn better. It'll burn under water now. And just one drop is enough; it'll keep on burning right down to the bone so they die anyway from phosphorus poisoning." (18) However Dow's President at the time, Herbert D. Doan, described Napalm as "a good weapon for saving lives," claiming further that "It is a strategic weapon essential to the pursuit of the tactic we are engaged in without exorbitant loss of American lives." Novelist Robert Crichton, writing in the New York Review of Books, could have been responding directly to Doan when he wrote that “the justification for this behavior . . .lies in the words 'saving American lives.' Any action can be condoned, any excess tolerated, any injustice justified, if it can be made to fit this formula. The excessive valuation on American life, over any other life, accounts for the weapons and tactics we feel entitled to use." Chlorpyrifos, marketed by Dow as Dursban, is well known as a home and garden insect spray; until 2000 it was the most widely used household pesticide in the US. (19) The pesticide is also a nerve toxin and suspected endocrine disruptor with the potential to alter and interfere with the hormonal systems of insects, wildlife, and people. Since the 1960s, chlorpyrifos has made thousands of people sick each year in the US. (20) It causes neurological damage to children and can result in blurred vision, fatigue, muscle weakness, memory loss and depression. It has been associated with carcinogenicity, reproductive and developmental toxicity, and acute toxicity. (21)
In 2003, Dow agreed to pay $2 million - the largest penalty ever in a pesticide case - to the state of New York, in response to a lawsuit filed by the Attorney General to end Dow's illegal advertising of Dursban as "safe". In 1998, Dow tested Dursban on 60 paid recruits at a lab in Lincoln, Nebraska. Dow also fed Dursban to inmates at Clinton Correctional Institute, New York, in 1972 to assess its effects on humans. (23) The U.S. Centers for Disease Control recently reported on the testing of 9,282 people nationwide for "body burdens" of hazardous or dangerous chemicals. The study found that 93% of the US population has levels of chlorpyrifos metabolites, or breakdown products, in their bodies. The average tested child aged 6-11 was found to have exposure to the neurotoxic pesticide chlorpyrifos at four times the level the US Environmental Protection Agency considers acceptable for long-term exposure. One market analysis (Chemical Trespass: Pesticides in Our Bodies and Corporate Accountability by the Pesticide Action Network North America) concluded that Dow Chemical was likely to have contributed at least 80% of the chlorpyrifos exposure in the United States. Although all residential uses of chlorpyrifos were phased out beginning in 2000, agricultural and industrial uses are still allowed. The Dow Chemical Company puts nearly 8 million people living near
its U.S.
plants at risk for injury or death in the event of an accident
or terrorist attack, according to an
analysis by U.S. PIRG. Dow Chemical Its emissions are also spectacular: more than 16 million pounds of hazardous chemicals in 2002, according to the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory. This includes many potent carcinogens: in 2000, Dow ranked 6th in the nation for the release of cancer-causing chemicals, dumping more than 2 million pounds into the nation's air and water. In the same year Dow released more dioxin--a spectacularly dangerous and hazardous chemical--than any other parent company in the nation: a full 1457 grams. In July 2006, the EPA cited Dow, claiming clean-air violations, and filed an administrative complaint against the company claiming that Dow violated its chemical release reporting requirements at the company's Midland, Mich., facility. EPA alleges that Dow violated the Clean Air Act by failing to comply with national emission standards for hazardous air pollutants. Specifically, EPA said the company violated testing, operating, monitoring, recordkeeping, reporting and notification requirements. In addition, EPA alleges Dow has exceeded emission and other limits. In an unrelated action, EPA has filed an administrative complaint against Dow for failure to comply with the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act. The company has been cited for failure to file the required chemical release forms for the 2,4-D butoxyethyl ester during calendar years 2000, 2001 and 2002. Dow was also cited for underreporting the volume of chloromethane and propylene oxide released from the facility during calendar years 2000, 2001 and 2002.
Meanwhile Dow’s accidents and releases have threatened the lives and health of people throughout the nation. In November, 2001, a chemical spill in Dow’s Texas City marine facility sent 15 citizens to the hospital, at the same time that the company was threatening to pull out of the community’s safety program because it was miffed with the city's political leadership (see the AFL-CIO report). Other recent accidents and releases have put Dow's neighbors in Sarnia, Canada, Freeport, Texas, Clute, Texas, and Midland, Michigan at risk. And a recent ranking of the worst air polluters in the nation puts Dow Chemical in the top ten in terms of the volume of chemicals released, the relative toxicity of the different chemicals and the number of people at risk. As of December 2000, the EPA has named Dow or Union Carbide as
a Potentially Responsible Party (PRP) under federal or state Superfund
laws at a combined 136 hazardous waste sites. (24)
In 2002, Dow Chemical In the 1940’s, Union Carbide dumped nearly 50 million gallons of radioactive effluents (equivalent to nearly 13 seconds of full flow over the American side of Niagara Falls) into the ground at Tonawanda, New York, and from there it drained into local aquifers and the Niagara River. In the 1960’s and 1970’s they also buried 505 tons of material containing 9,212 pounds of uranium oxide and 1,293 pounds of thorium oxide 20 feet under the earth near Niagara Falls Boulevard. This material has never been recovered and disposed of, and no one knows exactly where it is to this day. According to their
own documents, Dow Chemical and other corporations conspired
since the early 1960’s to conceal the grave danger that vinyl
chloride exposure posed to their own workers. Testing conducted
in 1959 on rats, rabbits, guinea pigs and dogs at Dow Chemical’s
Biochemical Research Laboratory revealed the danger. Adverse effects
on the liver were seen in animals that had inhaled only 100 parts
per million of vinyl chloride, a Rowe's plea for confidentiality was hardly needed. According to Jim Morris of the Houston Chronicle, the industry's own documents "depict a framework of dubious science and painstaking public relations, coordinated by the industry's main trade association with two dominant themes: Avoid disclosure and deny liability." The chemical companies were hiding the fact that they had "subjected at least two generations of workers to excessive levels of a potent carcinogen that targets the liver, brain, lungs and blood-forming organs." And while the documents show that the industry freely shared health information among themselves, "the companies were evasive with their own employees and the government," wrote Morris. "They were unwilling to disrupt the growing market for polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic, used in everything from pipe to garden hoses." However it wasn't until 2001 that a 90-minute special by PBS and Bill Moyers, "Trade Secrets", brought the culpability of the chemical industry to the attention of the public at large. "It's all about money," Ray Reynolds, the Vista chairman of Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Local 4-555, concluded. "All these years, I believe, they've been killing people, but they've put a dollar figure on it." In "Dow's Union Workers--The Forgotten Stakeholders," the Metal Trades Department of the AFL-CIO compiles a devastating record of Dow's union-busting activity over almost half a century. "In the 1960s and early 70s," the report says, "Dow officials reacted strongly to a series of strikes and began to develop a company-wide policy to combat union activity through an opportunistic 'divide and conquer' system that has evolved into what the company today refers to as its 'Basic Principles of Salaried Operations.' That policy, which remains largely unchanged today, is designed to induce workers to dump union representation by dangling a package of 'rewards' that include pay increases of as little as 40 cents, a strict autocratic 'command and control' management structure and special parking privileges. "Other recent incidents highlight different dimensions of the company's crass disregard for workers and citizens. Dow is one of dozens of Fortune 500 companies routinely purchasing so-called 'dead peasant' insurance on its workers. In another case, Dow won a Texas Supreme Court decision that found the company has no legal duty to assure the job safety of an independent contractor. Dow also pioneered the tactic of setting up ex-employees in contracting businesses to provide an alternative workforce, often paying considerably more to get tasks completed, but creating doubt and uncertainty among its own personnel about their future job security." That insecurity seems justified given Dow's current "restructuring"
plan, launched in 2003, which has led to widespread layoffs, pay
cuts, and losses through attrition and plant shutdowns. In April
of 2004, Dow
announced that 3,000 more jobs, or about 7% of its workforce,
would go as the company continued its "restructuring."
These included job losses in Freeport,
Texas and Kanawha
Valley, where one worker, Stanley Stricker, a 30-year employee
at the plant, said "We haven't slept easy since this damn outfit
[Dow] took over. These people sold their souls, they made a deal
with the devil. They're just canning people and saying, 'This is
the way it has to be.'" Meanwhile Dow's CEO, William Stavropoulos, must also be pleased. He was awarded a $2.3 million bonus in 2003, on top of a $1.3 million base salary and millions more in other incentives and benefits, according to the company's proxy statement. Kenny Perdue, secretary-treasurer of the state AFL-CIO, responded by saying that the bonus “Flies in the face of the workers. ...The workers are out there doing their jobs, trying to keep their pay and benefits and feed their families and the CEO is awarded a $2.3 million bonus that in his own mind he believes he’s worth,” Perdue said. “And all along the company is laying off workers. Why couldn’t the company use some of this bonus to keep workers?” "First, do no harm", the Hippocratic oath taken by nearly
everyone in the medical profession, has never been a mantra at Dow.
Their fervent support for the human testing of their poisonous products--testing
that has no It's worth noting that Dow is putting its money where its mouth is. Dow has conducted at least five human studies with pesticides since the 1970s (27) - including a 1998 study in Nebraska that recruited college students through an ad in the school newspaper urging students to "earn extra money". That they did by calling 402-474-PAYS, signing a seven-page consent form and popping a pill loaded with the active ingredient in Raid roach spray, Dursban. Dursban, a nerve-gas derivative found to cause neurological damage in children, was withdrawn from household use by the EPA in 1999. Dow AgroSciences paid the test subjects $460 each. In 1971, Dow tested chlorpyrifos on inmates at the Clinton Correctional Facility in New York, (28) and in 1965, Dow conducted dioxin tests on inmates at the Holmesburg Prison in Pennsylvania. (29) Dow and Union Carbide are both (see SHAC
and CARN-AGE)
former customers of Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), one of the most
vile and infamous animal testing companies. Dow continues to test its chemicals on animals, often in needless
or duplicative tests. In a
letter dated June 25, 2004, the Physicians Committee for Responsible
Medicine, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the Humane
Society of the United States, the Doris Day Animal League, and Earth
Island Institute--five organizations with a combined membership
of more than 10 million Americans--all objected to Dow's callous
violation of animal testing protocols. PETA writes
that "Dow has so little regard for the public’s comments
on its test plans that it violated a basic tenet of the HPV [high
production volume, a chemical testing protocol] program and went
ahead with its plans for the
In 1998, Dow announced that it would begin “pursuing long-term,
value-added growth opportunities through biotechnology.” (30)
Today, Dow, led by its subsidiary Dow AgroSciences, is a major player
in agricultural biotechnology. Dow’s patents on plant biotechnology
rank in the top five of all corporations worldwide, (31)
with product lines that include Mycogen Seeds, In 1998, Dow formed a new company, Advanced Agri-Traits, to coordinate strategic alliances for the biotech industry. Dow has also formed many alliances of its own with major biotech players both here and abroad. Dow’s Mycogen division and DuPont’s Pioneer Seed division are jointly marketing seed corn varieties with the B.t. gene under the Herculex label. In 2002, Dow AgroSciences signed an agreement with Monsanto to allow extensive collaboration in the field of biotechnology, (32) and Dow/Mycogen jointly developed herbicide tolerant crops with Rhone Poulenc (now Bayer). Dow and Performance Plants, a biotech company, have a deal to develop GE varieties of canola, sunflower, peanuts, cotton, and silage corn. Dow is also pursuing industrial and pharmaceutical biotechnology applications. Dow AgroSciences has invested $20 million in SemBioSys Genetics Inc. for the development of drugs, vaccines, industrial and feed products from canola. (33) Dow is also collaborating with San Diego-based EPICyte to produce human antibodies in genetically engineered plants. Along with Monsanto and Syngenta, Dow AgroSciences is rushing to introduce its brand of GM cotton, called “Widestrike,” into West Africa. With the support of USAID, the three companies are finalizing plans with the Malian government to convert the West African country’s cotton —its number-one export crop—to transgenic varieties over the next five years. Under the terms of the draft agreement, field tests of imported transgenic Bt cotton will begin in 2004. The plan is being negotiated without consultation with Malian cotton farmers, those most at risk from the impending conversion to GM technology. In the West African context there is simply no way to guarantee that transgenic cotton, once it is introduced, will not contaminate the conventional cotton supply. Read more in Corpwatch. Recently, Cargill-Dow introduced its NatureWorks line of fleece that uses genetically-engineered corn as a material replacement for plastic. Cargill-Dow claims they are attempting to find alternate sources of non-genetically engineered materials, such as straw. Until then however, they are already producing even more products from GE corn, including carpeting, wall panels, upholsty, interior furnishings, outdoor fabrics, and plastics like those used to wrap CDs and golf balls. There were also discussions with Bed, Bath & Beyond to produce a line called “Natural Balance”, which included pillows, comforters and mattress pads made from this material. Read more in Corpwatch. In 2002, Dow AgroSciences was fined $8,800 by the EPA for not isolating a field trial of insect-resistant corn properly to prevent cross-contamination. The field trial, which took place in Hawaii, was initially conducted without the approval of the EPA, because the company felt that it had met federal regulations. (34) Also in 2002, Dow contributed nearly US $400,000 to the Alliance for Better Foods’ US $5 million advertising blitz to defeat Oregon’s Proposition 27, a ballot initiative to label genetically modified foods. Opponents outspent supporters 61 to 1. (35) In January 2006, Dow and Monsanto agreed to share patented technology for developing genetically altered crops. The deal allows Monsanto and Dow AgroSciences to share patented genes in different strains of corn, soybeans and cotton. For an overview of agricultural biotechnology and its impacts, see PANNA’s online presentation, “Genetically Engineered Crops and Foods”. In the 1930s the Hawks Nest Tunnel in West Virginia swallowed up
2000 lives, mostly African-American workers who died of silicosis.
Some were buried in mass graves to try to hide the deaths. It was
Union Carbide's first The West Virginia Historical Society Quarterly writes that “The tunnel was of singular importance to the expanding Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation, which was developing the technology and markets for a whole new world of alloyed metals, chemicals and plastics. ...Rumors circulated wildly about the number of men dying. Some were dumped in the river bed and covered with the tunnel rock. Others were transported to Nicholas County and buried unceremoniously on a private farm. Pneumonia was given as the cause of death in most instances. In May, the Chief of the State Department of Mines began an investigation of working conditions on the tunnel project. According to the Fayette Tribune, the investigation was ‘precipitated by an unusual number of deaths . . . through accidents and disease’ and the death rate was ‘high, especially among colored workers.’" Union Carbide, operating the Hawk's Nest mine with the same safety standards that would lead to the Bhopal tragedy decades later, chose not to issue dust masks or to wet the site to reduce workers' danger of contracting silicosis. While an estimated two thousand workers died of the disease, the company suppressed medical information about the causal relationship between inhaled silica dust and the illness and paid scientists to downplay the danger. In subsequent Congressional hearings a Union Carbide contractor bereft of PR packaging finally told the bald truth, saying "I knew I was going to kill (the mine workers) but I didn't know it was going to be this soon." In an investigation into endocrine disruptor chemicals (EDCs) on PBS’ Frontline, Dr. Frederick Vom Saal, a scientist and Professor from the University of Missouri, alleges that Dow Chemical asked him to withhold the results of a study he conducted on a chemical known as bisphenol-A. The chemical is produced by Dow and used in everything from compact discs and eyeglasses, to milk containers, baby bottles, and dental sealants. In the human body, Bisphenol-A acts like estradiol—the hormone with the clearest link to breast cancer, and one that also plays a critical role in human and animal development. The consequences of this "endocrine disruption" can be far-reaching, causing problems with reproduction, development, and behavior in wildlife and humans. In the interview, Vom Saal said that Dow “essentially asked if there were a mutually beneficial outcome that we could arrive at where I held off publishing the information about this chemical until they had repeated my studies, and after repeating my studies, approval for publication was received by all the plastic manufacturers.” More information about the experiments, as well as the industry's subsequent attempt to undermine Vom Sall's credibility, is available here.
Dow, Bayer, and GE Plastics are the major producers of this chemical,
which is used in everything from compact discs and eyeglasses to
Nalgene water bottles, toys, pacifiers, baby bottles and teethers.
The chemical is also Update: scientists at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston suggest that bisphenol-A may be responsible for breast cancer. During the reign of the apartheid government in South Africa, Dow continued with business-as-usual, supplying it with herbicidal chemicals to render the border between South Africa and Zimbabwe infertile. These actions have led to a $71 million lawsuit, filed in New York, by farmers who claim that their lands remain infertile. (36) Separately, in October 2003, a New York lawyer filed a case against five companies, including Dow and Union Carbide, accusing them of defrauding South African workers during the Apartheid era. (37) DDT, a deadly pesticide, is one of the twelve Persistent Organic
Pollutants (POPs) In January 2002, Dow settled a case brought against its subsidiary
Union Carbide by workers exposed to asbestos in the workplace. The
case was filed before Dow’s acquisition of Carbide; however,
as
How has Dow reacted to all this asbestos liability? By trying to wriggle out of it, of course. Dow and other corporations facing massive asbestos liability have been lobbying Congress forcefully for the last two years to create a national asbestos trust fund to settle all claims. Although this may sound innocuous, it's actually a huge giveaway to the corporations currently in the dock over their asbestos liabilities. Not only would the trust fund erase the Chapter 11 (bankruptcy) proceedings facing any corporation that contributes to the fund, but the value of those trust fund contributions would be a lot less than what the companies are expected to pay now. In fact, the savings amount to about 79 percent according to Public Citizen, or a total of $20 billion. The companies created the innocuous-sounding Asbestos Study Group, which spent about $27 million between in 2003 and 2004 to lobby Congress for the liability loophole. (The ASG refuses to make its membership list public, which doesn't help the shadiness factor.) Meanwhile, about 10,000 Americans die from asbestos-related causes every year, according to the Environmental Working Group. Dow has been a regular supplier to and has profited handsomely from military contracts since its founding. In WWI, Dow supplied numerous chemicals for the war effort, including picric acid and monochlorobenzol, used in making explosives, and gas warfare agents including phosgene and mustard gas. The Army assigned a unit of doughboys to Midland to work with Dow chemists to learn how to handle lethal mustard gas. The unit suffered several casualties and two fatalities in the process. (39)
“Does it not seem unfortunate,” Congressman Leavy of
Washington asked in 1942, “that this great nation in its hour
of peril must depend upon a group whose misconduct will have been
officially established in connection with strangling production
by contract agreement with our enemies?” Leavy was talking,
besides a few others, about Dow Chemical and the patent cartel they
had operated in with I G Farben - infamous instrument of Nazi economic
domination - until WWII was underway. Investigations by the Truman
Committee in the early 1940’s discovered that Dow sold magnesium,
a material vital to the war industry, to Nazi Germany for 21 cents
a pound while maintaining a 30-cent price in the US. “Our
own Dow Chemical Company,” said Congressman Rabant in 1942,
“was the sole licensee in this country and agreed to sell
only a small amount to England.” As a result of Dow’s
treachery, by 1940 American output of magnesium was 6,000 tons while
Germany’s was 25,000 tons, giving the Nazi war machine a distinct
advantage in aircraft production. When the matter came up during the Nuremberg trial of twenty four I G Farben corporate officers in 1947, Willard H. Dow, then chairman of the company, apparently said: “We never had any contract with Farben.” The Nation called Dow’s comment, in the light of numerous investigations, “an amazing statement”. The chief suspect at the trial of IG Farben was Otto Ambros, production chief of I.G. Farben's poison gas facilities. A subsidiary of Farben manufactured Zyklon B, the poison of Auschwitz, whose chief ingredient was hydrogen cyanide: the same chemical found in the bodies of Carbide’s victims in Bhopal (and now a part of Dow’s global manufacturing). Ambros was convicted for crimes against humanity, including slavery and murder, and sentenced to eight years in prison in a ruling highly significant to the development of international law for corporate crime. However, Ambros’ reputation as ‘The Devil’s Chemist’ didn’t make him any less attractive to Dow upon his release from jail: they were so enamored that they invited him to come and work with |
The
companies knew since at least the 1960s that the product caused
male sterility in rats, and 
“Testicular
atrophy may result from prolonged repeated exposure. A tentative
hygiene standard of 1 part per million is suggested.” However,
Dow did not reduce exposures to the chemical, and neglected to report
findings of reduced sperm and atrophied testicles of rabbits and
monkeys when they submitted information for registration and labeling.
It wasn’t until 1977, when 35 of 114 workers at a DBCP production
plant in California were found to be sterile, that the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) levied strict regulations of the chemical.
One worker in a Dow manufacturing plant said, “After telling
me that I shouldn't worry about anything out there because it can't
hurt me, now to find out that I'm sterile from it, their answer
was, don't worry about that because you can always adopt children.”
demanded
that the government resist US pressure. Subsequently both the Nicaraguan
government and the Supreme Court have backed Law 364, leading Dow
and Shell, in January 2004, to ask a federal court in California
to declare future rulings in Nicaraguan courts under the law "unenforceable"
in the United States courts. See this 
chlorpyrifos
body burden. It is estimated that there are 700 contaminants in
each of us. 
implants
were “100 percent safe.”
Life
photograph of a naked child running down a street in Vietnam screaming
in agony captures the effects of Napalm. Nick Ut's photograph of
Kim Phuk, taken in 1972, won the Pulitzer Prize (© Associated
Press).
In
1995, Dow was fined $732,000 for not sending the EPA reports it
had received on 249 Dursban poisoning incidents. In June 2000, as
a result of pressure from environmental and public health organizations,
including the EPA, Dow withdrew registration of chlorpyrifos for
use in homes and other places where children could be exposed, and
severely restricted its use on crops. The company, however, continues
to market Dursban in industrializing countries, including India,
where Dow's sales literature claimed Dursban has "an established
record of safety regarding humans and pets." 
had
2,562 accidents between 1990 and 2003, including 85 accidents involving
rail transport. Dow is an industry leader when it comes to accidents,
ranking higher in sheer number than all other members of the American
Chemistry Council since 1990 with the exception of BP. Luckily,
many of these accidents did not result in major fatalities, but
the potential for disaster at a Dow-owned facility remains very
real.
estimated
its 
potential
of helping and every probability of harming the health of paid test
subjects--undermines everything that the Hippocratic Oath stands
for. At issue is the safety standard that the US EPA currently employs
to protect us from pesticide exposure: a level of harm is established
for animals, and then that level, divided by a safety factor of
ten, becomes the standard used by the EPA. That factor-of-ten cushion
is a source of irritation to the chemical companies that produce
and market pesticides, including Dow, and they've been pressing
the EPA to recognize the results of human testing--which seem likely
to result in 
Huntingdon
has been the target of five undercover investigations, videotapes
from which have exposed HLS staff punching and violently shaking
beagle puppies, performing a dissection of a live monkey, transplanting
a frozen pig's heart into a baboon and breaking numerous animal
welfare laws. These investigations have resulted in the convictions
of HLS employees for animal cruelty, fines by the USDA, and the
near-closure of Huntingdon by the British government (see 
proposed
animal tests even before the public-comment period was over! The
agreement, signed by all HPV participants, calls for them to post
their plans for testing on a Web site for 120 days and to consider
all public comments before proceeding. In violation of the HPV animal
welfare agreement, Dow decided to use a test that kills 1,350 animals
to test the chemical 2,3,4,5,6-pentachloropyridine, even though
the company 
Phytogen,
Bt corn and Atlas Roundup Ready soybeans. Mycogen, a wholly-owned
subsidiary of Dow, focuses on a number of different crops, including
alfalfa, corn, sorghum, soybean, sunflower, as well as animal feed
crops. Mycogen’s purchase of Illinois Foundation Seeds provided
Dow with about 12 percent of the U.S. corn seed market; the company
also owns Wisconsin-based Agrigenetics and Brazil's Dinamilho Carol
Productos Agricolas, Hibridos Colorado Seed, and FT Biogenetica
de Milho.
experience of mass killing.
used in epoxy resins that coat food cans, bottle tops and water
supply pipes, and as sealants for children's teeth for the prevention
of cavities. In the human body, bisphenol-A acts like estradiol—the
hormone with the clearest link to breast cancer, and one that also
plays a critical role in human and animal development. The consequences
of this "endocrine disruption" can be far-reaching, causing
problems with reproduction, development, and behavior in wildlife
and humans. Although about 2 billion pounds of bisphenol A are produced
yearly in the United States, several studies have suggested that
bisphenol A can leach from products under high heat and alkaline
conditions. This has led to widespread exposure throughout the population,
and at levels that several peer-reviewed studies suggest could be
an issue of concern, particularly for pregnant women and children.
The California legislature has now taken up the issue, and a new
bill, AB319, would prohibit the manufacture or sale of any product
intended for use by a child 3 years of age or younger, if it contains
bisphenol A. If passed, California would be the first state to limit
its use. Read more in this March 31st, 2005 article by the 
slated
for elimination under the Stockholm Convention. Its use was first
implicated as a cause of egg-shell thinning and human cancer by
Rachel Carson in Silent Spring, but the EPA didn't ban
DDT until 1972. American manufacture of DDT began in 1939, shortly
after its potency as a pesticide was discovered. DDT is an endocrine
disrupter, affects the nervous system and can cause liver damage,
and remains in the environment for long periods of time. 
Carbide’s
new owner, Dow had to reach a settlement in the case. Additionally,
the company has 
In
WWII, Dow also played a key role in supplying phenol for use in
explosives, and incendiary bombs, among other products. Union Carbide
also profited. A few days after August 6 the War Department published
the following Statement of the Secretary of War: “The recent
use of the atomic bomb over Japan, which was today made known by
the President, is the culmination of years of herculean effort on
the part of science and industry working in cooperation with the
military authorities . . . While space does not permit of a complete
listing of the industrial concerns which have contributed so signally
to the success of the project, mention should be made of a few.
The du Pont de Nemours Company designed and constructed the Hanford
installations in Washington and operate them. A special subsidiary
of the M.W. Kellogg Company of New York designed one of the plants
at Clinton, which was constructed by the J.A. Jones Company and
is operated by the Union Carbide and Carbon Company.”