We regard companies that knowingly introduce toxic substances into the environment as perpetrators of a crime against our children. Here are some of the biggest and most powerful chemical companies whose record of deeds and misdeeds are on the public record.
Chemical industry profits rose from $2 billion a year in 1962 to $484 billion in 2004 to $689 billion today.
For almost 40 years, the Monsanto Company manufactured PCBs (fire-resistant chemicals once used in electrical equipment) in an Alabama town called Anniston, in a section of the city populated largely by African-Americans. The company “routinely” dumped millions of pounds of toxic wastes, including mercury and other hazardous substances but chiefly PCBs, into streams and open landfills in and around Anniston. Internal documents show that Monsanto knew it was poisoning the community with potentially devastating health effects. Thousands of Anniston citizens filed damage claims against Monsanto on behalf of themselves and their children; those who won were awarded small sums. PCBs, a probable carcinogen which also harm the brain and nervous system and damage the body’s hormones, were finally banned 1978.
Monsanto also manufactures Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH), which is injected into cows to increase milk production, as well as the Agent Orange herbicide used in the Vietnam war and the pesticide 2,4-D, whose manufacture leaves a residue of the highly toxic by-product dioxin.