In 1993, a local fisherman caught a severely deformed largemouth bass from Choccolocco Creek, and the truth finally burst into view: For more than 30 years, Monsanto—the world’s largest biotech corporation—had been slowly and consciously poisoning the people of Anniston, Alabama. From the ’40s to ’70s, Monsanto knowingly dumped millions of pounds of the now-banned industrial chemical polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into the town’s landfill and creek. PCBs have been shown to cause cancer in animals and humans, including non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a frequently fatal form of cancer. Some employees suspected danger as early as the 1950s, yet company management did nothing in response to their concerns. In 1966, Monsanto managers discovered that fish submerged in the Choccolocco turned belly-up within 10 seconds, spurting blood and shedding skin as if dunked into boiling water. They told no one. Related: The Incredible Air Juicer ~ Pure Water Out Of Thin Air! Three years later, they found fish in another nearby creek with 7,500 times the legal PCB levels. However, they concluded that there was no point in “going to expensive extremes in limiting discharges.” In 1975, yet another company study found that PCBs caused tumors in rats. Managers ordered the report’s conclusion changed from “slightly tumorigenic” to “does not appear to be carcinogenic.” In 2003, Monsanto finally confessed and agreed to pay $700 million to more than 20,000 residents in the first civil suit of its kind. Thousands of pages of Monsanto documents—many marked “CONFIDENTIAL: Read and Destroy”—proved that, for decades, the corporate giant concealed what it did and what it knew. “This is a classic case of corporate abuse as well as a violation of public trust,” says Jay Feldman, executive director of the health and environmental group Beyond Pesticides. “Even as the signs piled up of its dangers and adverse effects, the company continued to ignore the warnings.” While Monsanto employees kept this dirty secret, the residents of Anniston had no idea how prevalent this pollutant chemical was becoming in their daily lives.
Posted on: Sun, 09 Jun 2013 16:42:18 +0000
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