Twenty Things to Remember About Dow Chemical on the 20th Anniversary of Bhopal

by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

Let's assume for a second, as the law does, that a corporation is a person.

If a corporation is a person, then how come we don't see biographies of corporations?

We're not talking about "official" biographies -- those written by people in the pocket of the corporation.

Of course they exist.

By why not warts-and-all biographies of major American corporations?

...Now comes Jack Doyle...to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, Doyle is out with "Trespass Against Us: Dow Chemical and the Toxic Century" (Common Courage Press, 2004).

At midnight on December 2, 1984, 27 tons of lethal gases leaked from Union Carbide's pesticide factory in Bhopal, India, immediately killing an estimated 8,000 people and poisoning thousands of others.

Today in Bhopal, at least 150,000 people, including children born to parents who survived the disaster, are suffering from exposure-related health effects such as cancer, neurological damage, chaotic menstrual cycles and mental illness.

Over 20,000 people are forced to drink water with unsafe levels of mercury, carbon tetrachloride and other persistent organic pollutants and heavy metals.

...Many events worldwide are taking place to coincide with the 20th anniversary, including the release of Doyle's book-length rap sheet against Dow.

In honor of the dead and dying in Bhopal, we urge you to buy Doyle's book. Every time you use common plastic items, think of the destruction. Every time you use Saran Wrap (originally a Dow product), question the consequences.

And in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the crime of Bhopal, we present here 20 things to remember about Dow Chemical -- the company now responsible for Bhopal and a fugitive from justice.

20. Agent Orange/Napalm -- The toxic herbicide (which cancerously disintegrated the bones, thus killing, a Bronze Star-winning Army Colonel whose son was a friend and drill team compatriot of mine) and jellied gasoline used in Vietnam created horrors for young and old alike -- and an uproar back home that forced Dow to rethink its public relations strategy.

19. Rocky Flats -- The top secret Colorado site managed by Dow Chemical from 1952 to 1975 that is an environmental nightmare for the Denver area.

18. Body burden -- In March 2001, the Centers for Disease Control reported that most Americans carry detectable levels of plastics, pesticides and heavy metals in their blood and urine.

17. 2,4-D -- An herbicide produced by Dow Chemical. It is still in use today. Used for killing lawn weeds, crop weeds, range weeds, along utility company rights-of way, railroads. One of the key ingredients in Agent Orange, the toxic defoliant used in Vietnam. 2,4-D is the most widely used herbicide in the world.

16. Mercury -- In Canada, Dow had been producing chlorine using the mercury cell method since 1947. Much of the mercury was recycled, but significant quantities were discharged into the environment through air emissions, water discharges, waste sludge and in end products. In March 1970, the governments of Ontario and Michigan detected high levels of mercury in the fish in the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair, the Detroit River and Lake Erie. Dow was sued by state and local officials for mercury pollution.

15. PERC -- Perchloroethylene, the hazardous substance used by dry cleaners everywhere. Dow tried to undermine safer alternatives.

14. 2,4,5 T -- One of the toxic ingredients in Agent Orange. Doyle says that "Dow just fought tooth and nail over this chemical -- persisted every way it could in court and with the agencies, at the state and federal levels, to buy more time for this product. They went into a court in Arkansas in the early 1970s to challenge the EPA administrator. They did that to buy some extra marketing time, and they got two years, even though it appears that Dow knew this chemical was a bad actor by then, caused birth defects in lab animals, and was also being found in human body fat by then. But it wasn't until 1983 that Dow quit making 2,4,5-T in the U.S., and 1987 before they quit production in New Zealand. And 2,4,5-T health effects litigation continues to this day."

13. Busting unions -- In 1967, unions represented almost all of Dow's production workers. But since then, according to the Metal Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, Dow undertook an "unapologetic campaign to rid itself of unions."

12. Silicone -- Key ingredient for silicone breast implants, made by a joint venture between Dow and Corning (Dow Corning). Made women large, but also made them sick. Ongoing illness and litigation.

11. DBCP -- Toxic active ingredient in Dow pesticide Fumazone. Doctors who tested men who worked with DBCP thought they had vasectomies -– no sperm present.

10. Dursban -- Chlorpyrifos, a toxic pesticide, a product that proved to have the nerve agent effects that Rachel Carson warned about. Also tested on prisoners in New York in 1971 and in 1998 at a lab in Lincoln, Nebraska. Took over for DDT when DDT was banned in 1972. Huge seller. In June 2000, EPA limits use.

9. Dow at Christmas -- "Uses of Dow plastics by the toy industry are across the board," boasted Dow Chemical in an internal company memo one Christmas season -- "and more and more of our materials are found under the Christmas tree and on the birthday table, make some child, some toy company, and Dow, very happy indeed." Among the chemicals used in these toys -- polystyrene, polyethylene, ethylene copolymer resins, saran resins, PVC resins, or vinyls and ethyl cellulose. And a Happy New Year.

8.The Tittabawassee -- River and river basin polluted by Dow in its hometown, Midland, Michigan.

7. Brazos River, Freeport, Texas -- February 1971 headline in the Houston Post read: "Brazos River is Dead." In 1970 and 1971, Dow's operation there was sending more than 4.5 billion gallons of wastewater per day into the Brazos and on into the Gulf of Mexico.

6. Toxic Trespass -- Doyle writes: "Dow Chemical has been polluting property and poisoning people for nearly a century, locally and globally -- trespassing on workers, consumers, communities, and innocent bystanders -- on wildlife and wild places, on the global biota and the global genome. ... Dow Chemical must end its toxic trespass."

5. Holmesburg Experiments -- In January 1981, a Philadelphia Inquirer story reveals that Dow Chemical paid a University of Pennsylvania dermatologist to test dioxin on prisoners at Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia. Tests were conducted in 1964. Seventy inmates tested.

4. Worker deaths -- Dow has a long history of explosions and fires at its facilities, well documented by Doyle in Trespass Against Us. One example, in May 1979: an explosion ripped through Dow Chemical's Pittsburgh facility, killing two workers and injuring more than 45 others.

3. Brain tumors -- In 1980, investigators found 25 brain workers with brain tumors at the company's Freeport, Texas facility -- 24 of which were fatal.

2. Saran Wrap -- The thin slice of plastic invaluable to our lives. Produced by Dow until consumers were looking for Dow products to boycott. Dow decided to get out of consumer products for this reason -- they sold off Saran Wrap -- and since just makes chemicals that make our consumer products.

1. Bhopal -- Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we seek to bring to justice those who trespass against us.

 

No.

 

What county and state do you live in?

 

BBC Falls Prey to Hoax on Anniversary of Bhopal Disaster
By ALAN COWELL

LONDON, Dec. 3 - The BBC, Britain's public service broadcaster, acknowledged Friday that it had been tricked into broadcasting an interview with a man pretending to be a spokesman for Dow Chemical, who claimed that the company had taken the blame for the disaster in Bhopal, India, in 1984.

The hoax, contradicting Dow Chemical's rejection of any responsibility, came on the 20th anniversary of the catastrophe, when waves of lethal gas escaped from a chemical plant in Bhopal, in central India, killing more than 3,500 people and injuring thousands more. At the time, the plant was owned by the Union Carbide Corporation, which was taken over by Dow Chemical Company three years ago. Survivors have long complained that they have received inadequate compensation.

The interview with the fake spokesman was broadcast less than a year after an official inquiry criticized the BBC for inaccurate reporting and "defective" editorial supervision in asserting that Prime Minister Tony Blair and his aides had exaggerated the case for war in Iraq. Two of the broadcaster's top managers quit as a result of that inquiry.

The BBC is also midway through a government review of its operations, carried out once every 10 years in preparation for the renewal of the Royal Charter under which it operates. The interview was broadcast on BBC World, a 24-hour television news channel broadcast globally. Twice on Friday, the channel broadcast the interview with a man identifying himself as Jude Finisterra, who said Dow Chemical had agreed to set up a $12 billion compensation fund, apparently reversing its previous insistence that such liabilities had been settled by Union Carbide before Dow took over the company.

Later in the day, the BBC said in a statement that the interview was "part of an elaborate deception." "The person did not represent the company," it said, "and we want to make it clear that the information he gave was entirely inaccurate."

"We apologize to Dow and to anyone who watched the interview who may have been misled by it," the statement said. "Of course, the BBC is investigating how the deception happened."

Dow Chemical also said that Mr. Finisterra was not a company employee.

Friday evening, BBC World reported that reporters preparing for the anniversary of the Bhopal disaster had gotten contact information for Mr. Finisterra on what appeared to be Dow Chemical's Web site.

The person who identified himself as Mr. Finisterra had told the reporters there would be a significant announcement and offered to travel from Paris to London for an interview. Instead, the BBC set up a two-way interview, with the interviewer in London and the interviewee in a BBC studio in Paris.

"He was incredibly plausible," a BBC executive said on condition of anonymity.

In a separate BBC interview on a lunchtime radio news show after the hoax was uncovered, the same man said he represented an organization called "The Yes Men," whose Web site (www.theyesmen.org) says it engages in "identity correction."

"Honest people impersonate big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them," the Web site says. "Targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else."

The man identified as Mr. Finisterra told BBC Radio that he was speaking "in a certain way" for Dow Chemical by setting out "the only reasonable thing for Dow Chemical to do."

They got CNBC too, in early 2001.

Their movie is about how they got the WTO; trailer here.

 

Dow's Products and Services. How did mankind get along without all this stuff?

 

We have flight because of corporations and toxic products? Foolishness.

We have flight because a few guys wanted to really try it out and get it to work.

Only you and people like you look at the corporatised, commercialised way that flight's evolution has been taken and argue it as if its the natural state of things. You look at the reality presented in front of you, and will die before contemplating another, I guess because it makes you personally unsure, intimately unstable, to have possibilities running around with all that hatred of so many current realities. Your the guy that wold have went to war - or, let me more correctly state, sent others' kids to war - for the Great and Wonderful Oz...because there he IS, right in front of you...

Pathetic. I'm not only glad that I don't see the world as you do, I thank God that your way of seeing is so easily understandable, so naturally subsumable and refutable, and currently, in terms of the world as a thing that is still, regularly becoming (and not a Kelleresque crystallisation), far behind us.

 

And that, in the end analysis, is the issue, now isn't it?

 

Yes, you are pathetic. And less than fully human, even in the striving. It's the only way you can post what you post. What's great is that in every single thing I do, and every single thing my family does, you don't matter. The wonders of the modern world, I tell ya...

 

Whereas, outside of their family and friends, what's the difference if neocons masquerading as an "independent centrists" abandon the world? Maybe we'd wax nostalgic a moment or two, then spend that good gray matter on what matters.