Monsanto Hid Decades Of Pollution
PCBs Drenched Ala. Town, But No One Was Ever Told
By Michael Grunwald
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 1, 2002; Page A01
ANNISTON, Ala. -- On the west side of Anniston, the poor side of
Anniston, the people ate dirt. They called it Alabama clay and
cooked it for extra flavor. They also grew berries in their gardens,
raised hogs in their back yards, caught bass in the murky streams
where their children swam and played and were baptized. They didn't
know their dirt and yards and bass and kids -- along with the acrid
air they breathed -- were all contaminated with chemicals. They didn't
know they lived in one of the most polluted patches of America.
Now they know. They also know that for nearly 40 years, while
producing the now-banned industrial coolants known as PCBs at a local
factory, Monsanto Co. routinely discharged toxic waste into a west
Anniston creek and dumped millions of pounds of PCBs into oozing
open-pit landfills. And thousands of pages of Monsanto documents --
many emblazoned with warnings such as CONFIDENTIAL: Read and
Destroy -- show that for decades, the corporate giant concealed what
it did and what it knew.
In 1966, Monsanto managers discovered that fish submerged in that
creek turned belly-up within 10 seconds, spurting blood and shedding
skin as if dunked into boiling water. They told no one. In 1969, they
found fish in another creek with 7,500 times the legal PCB levels.
They decided there is little object in going to expensive extremes in
limiting discharges. In 1975, a company study found that PCBs caused
tumors in rats. They ordered its conclusion changed from slightly
tumorigenic to does not appear to be carcinogenic.
Monsanto enjoyed a lucrative four-decade monopoly on PCB production in
the United States, and battled to protect that monopoly long after
PCBs were confirmed as a global pollutant. We can't afford to lose
one dollar of business, one internal memo concluded.
Lastmonth, the Environmental Protection Agency ordered General
Electric Co. to spend $460 million to dredge PCBs it had dumped into
the Hudson River in the past, perhaps the Bush administration's
boldest environmental action to date. The decision was bitterly
opposed by the company, but hailed by national conservation groups and
many prominent and prosperous residents of the picturesque Hudson
River Valley.
In Anniston, far from the national spotlight, the sins of the past are
being addressed in a very different way. Here, Monsanto and its
corporate successors have avoided a regulatory crackdown, spending
just $40 million on cleanup efforts so far. But they have spent $80
million more on legal settlements, and another lawsuit by 3,600
plaintiffs -- one of every nine city residents -- is scheduled for
trial next Monday. David Carpenter, an environmental health professor
at the State University of New York at Albany, has been a leading
advocate of the EPA's plan to dredge the Hudson, but he says the PCB
problems in Anniston are much worse.
I'm looking out my window at the Hudson right now, but the reality is
that the people who live around the Monsanto plant have higher PCB
levels than any residential population I've ever seen, said
Carpenter, an expert witness for the plaintiffs in Anniston. They're
10 times higher than the people around the Hudson.
The Anniston lawsuits have uncovered a voluminous paper trail,
revealing an unusually detailed story of secret corporate machinations
in the era before strict environmental regulations and right-to-know
laws. The documents -- obtained by The Washington Post from
plaintiffs' attorneys and the Environmental Working Group, a chemical
industry watchdog -- date as far back as the 1930s, but they expose
actions with consequences that are still unfolding today.
Officials at Solutia Inc., the name given to Monsanto's chemical
operations after they were spun off into a separate company in 1997,
acknowledge that Monsanto made mistakes. But they also said that for
years, PCBs were hailed for preventing fires and explosions in
electrical equipment. Monsanto did stop making PCBs in 1977, two years
before a nationwide ban took effect. And the current scientific
consensus that PCBs are harmful, especially to the environment, masks
serious disputes over just how harmful they are to people.
Today, the old plant off Monsanto Road here makes a chemical used in
Tylenol. It has not reported a toxic release in four years. Robert
Kaley, the environmental affairs director for Solutia who also serves
as the PCB expert for the American Chemistry Council, said it is
unfair to judge the company's behavior from the 1930s through 1970s by
modern standards.
Did we do some things we wouldn't do today? Of course. But that's a
little piece of a big story, he said. If you put it all in context,
I think we've got nothing to be ashamed of.
But Monsanto's uncertain legacy is as embedded in west Anniston's
psyche as it is in the town's dirt. The
