Poison Spring (22 page)

What might we have learned had these studies been conducted (and reported) properly? Hard to say. But between 1976 and 1989, EPA banned or restricted the use of thirty-nine pesticide active ingredients.
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Two criteria for those actions had to do with the possible effects of the pesticides on animal genetics. Sixteen of these very popular agricultural sprays that were either canceled or restricted were tested for mutagenic or teratogenic (deforming) effects, or were shown to have mutagenic or teratogenic effects on experimental animals. Both of these effects are related to genetic damage that, if real, could lead to cancer or other diseases.

Similarly, Parkinson’s disease, a very common degenerative disease of the central nervous system in the United States, has some of its origins in genes affected and poisoned by toxic chemicals. Recent studies show that pesticides, including DDT and DDT-like chemicals, increase the risk for Parkinson’s disease as well as causing Parkinson’s disease. Pesticides damage the neurons, which produce the neurotransmitter dopamine essential for good health.
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We don’t know what, if any, of this research might have been carried out had IBT been a legitimate lab. What we do know is that for more than twenty-five years, IBT and labs like it served as the chemical and pharmaceutical industries’ corrupt enablers, allowing them to sell hazardous substances to the American people. Cigarette companies hid the results of their testing from the federal government. They developed a sophisticated process of deception, presenting reassuring conclusions to the government about their cigarettes even though their own research told a far darker story.

At IBT, Joseph Calandra was determined to do what the cigarette companies did—and much more. As it had in the cigarette industry, scientific dishonesty could protect his industry’s profits. Calandra knew the pesticide and pharmaceutical industries were no less determined to protect their empire than were the executives of cigarette companies. So this former professor and chairman of the biochemistry department of Northwestern University, working closely with executives of chemical companies, developed nearly a perfect scheme to provide the government with test results that would bring their products to the market without any problem and keep them there forever.

The other outcome of the IBT case, of course, was what it revealed about the EPA. Working under the thumb of the corporate political system, the EPA could not and did not recognize or confront IBT’s corruption of American science and business. The agency gave tacit approval to IBT’s perversion of science, and in the process it became complicit in the unethical production of widespread poisons.

The discovery of the IBT crime exposed this practice in a shameful light. Suddenly, the public learned that major companies were involved in the IBT crime—in fact, these companies had brought IBT into being. Strangely, and apparently to avoid deepening its reputation for covering up for chemical companies, the EPA began outsourcing the evaluation of industry studies. The EPA hired consultants to review the data from industry, while EPA scientists, including some one hundred toxicologists, became merely “managers” of that pro-industry process. The unspoken understanding in this outsourcing of government functions has been the near certainty of finding industry data satisfactory—all the time. Labs for hire still dominate the testing of chemicals, and they are as prevalent now as they have ever been. Private companies, not the EPA, hire these labs to test their products. Joseph Calandra’s dream has at last been realized.

Chapter 8

Whistle-blowers and What They're Up Against

In April 1984, Regine Anderson discovered that a can of Raid Flea Killer had ruptured and begun spewing insecticide under the kitchen sink in her Austin, Texas, home. When she opened the cabinet to investigate, the fumes drifted across the kitchen floor, and as they neared her oven's pilot light, they burst into flame.

“The resulting explosion and flash fire hurled me out of the kitchen, leaving second-degree burns on both feet and bruises on my arms, as well as singeing my hair,” Ms. Anderson said. “The fire department and paramedics responded. Since the warning on the can said only to store away from open flames and excessive heat (120 degrees F.) and I had followed these precautions, I feel that the can was poorly labeled as to hazards in storage.”
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When Anderson's complaint reached the ears of the EPA's Dwight Welch, he was hardly surprised. Welch is a tall, wiry man who wanted to do good science and enforce the law. In 1978, he had discovered that aerosol agents in pesticide spray cans have the potential to explode and to start fires. The sprays have propellant gases—propane, butane, isobutane, and dimethyl ether—that are highly flammable and explosive. Welch complained to his supervisors about that hazard, but for close to a decade he was consistently rebuffed.

Welch was upset. He knew that people like Regine Anderson paid dearly—and sometimes lost their lives—because of the EPA's negligence. Welch knew that in New York City, for example, explosive and flammable pesticide sprays were infuriating fire department officials, who complained to the EPA's New York branch about numerous fires and explosions caused by the aerosol pesticide firebombs.
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The EPA's New York staff urged the EPA senior managers in Arlington, Virginia, to close the loophole that permits the chemical industry to produce and sell—every year—some two billion cans of potentially explosive firebombs without any effective warning to consumers.
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About a year after the fire in Regine Anderson's home, a pair of New York City fire marshals met with EPA officials in New York. They brought with them pictures “showing the damage caused by a pesticide spray bomb” and explosion reports taken from the Bureau of Fire Investigation files. “The marshals explained that the explosion had been caused by ‘King Spray Roach and Insect Killer #XXI,' ” an EPA memo noted. “They hastened to add that this brand was not the only ‘Culprit.' We may be seeing only the ‘tip of the iceberg. To date we have been lucky—no one has been seriously injured or killed by the explosive ingredients in these spray cans. These items, apparently, explode with tremendous force.” The marshals urged that spray cans be labeled
flammable
or
explosive
or both.
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Reagan's top pesticide appointees did nothing. Incensed, Dwight Welch talked to a reporter with Cox newspapers about a pesticide can explosion in North Las Vegas that had lifted the roof off a house. However, soon thereafter, he pleaded with the reporter to kill the story because his supervisor promised she would do something about the regulation of explosive pesticide firebombs.

Of course, Welch was aware that he was in hot water now that his bosses knew he was talking to reporters. Welch, who had been seeking a promotion, was now told he was not “a team player” and that he could kiss his long-awaited promotion good-bye.

Undeterred, Welch typed up a memo to in which he complained bitterly about EPA's indifference to the explosive issue of exploding pesticide spray bombs. “So far I have only charged bureaucratic inertia and bad manners,” Welch wrote. “I have not filed criminal charges with the I.G. [Inspector General]. I have not brought it to the attention of the [political] appointees. I have not written my Congressman. I have not sought out the media. This would have made a great story for 60 Minutes or 20/20. But I am not seeking publicity. I am trying to work within the program.''
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For a time, it seemed that Welch had triumphed. He was promoted in 1986. His bosses no doubt hoped he would withdraw to his cubicle and leave them alone, but they also did something about exploding aerosol cans. In June 1987, they ordered the makers of pesticide cans using explosive propellants like propane, butane, isobutene, and dimethyl ether to put a flammability warning on the label of their products.
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Yet even that nominal step toward public safety did not survive the wrath of the lobbyists from the Chemical Specialties Manufacturers Association. That November, seventeen representatives of the group met in the EPA's “fishbowl” conference room with a half-dozen EPA staff, including Dwight Welch. Lawyers from DuPont, Dow Chemical, SC Johnson, A. H. Robins, Miles, Lehn & Fink, Sprayway, Zoecon, and MGK apparently so frightened the EPA managers that just a month later, EPA withdrew its short-lived policy on labeling aerosol sprays.

Welch was furious, and he openly denounced EPA's humiliating retreat. Welch knew that each 12-ounce can of flying insect spray contains 3 ounces of propellant gas—about the same potential energy as 22.5 ounces of nitroglycerine. Indeed, gram for gram, propane is far more powerful than nitroglycerine: one gram of propane creates 12,000 calories of energy at complete combustion; the same amount of nitroglycerine gives off just 1,600 calories of energy. Welch also  had evidence that between 1980 and 1987, some twenty people had died in the United States because of these explosive pesticide spray bombs sold so casually throughout the country. Abandoning the spray regulations—not warning consumers of the fire potential of pesticide aerosols—was further evidence of EPA's “being in bed” with the companies that made the products, Welch wrote to one of the senior EPA officials intimidated by the chemical men. Rather than providing evidence of their products' safety, the lobbyists simply “tried to bully us into compliance, and have succeeded.”
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Welch found himself persona non grata within his agency. He was transferred from his position as a chemist into a bureaucratic job. During 1989 and 1990, he filed a formal grievance with the U.S. Department of Labor, accusing the EPA of destroying his career. He pointed out the “system” where he worked at the EPA was “rife with cronyism.” The EPA's decision to remove him from his job as a chemist “had a great detrimental effect not only on my professional life, but my personal life as well. I am quite depressed because of it.” On August 1, 1989, Welch charged the managers of the Pesticide Registration Division with allowing practices by the chemical industry that led to destruction and death. “People continue to be burned and killed by this Division's lack of responsibility in dealing with the issue,” he said.
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Welch lost his grievance struggle. He decided to get out of the Office of Pesticide Programs and spend the rest of his career in the professional employee union. But in 1990, he offered a final shot in the conflict over exploding spray cans. “Propane, butane, and other hydrocarbon propellants are extremely flammable. Not theory, not opinion, but fact,” Welch wrote. Bizarrely, under current EPA regulations, even a cylinder of propane or a case of gunpowder (which is also found in pesticides) would be found to be ‘‘nonflammable and nonexplosive.''

“I did my job, reporting these facts, which none of my colleagues nor supervisors dispute,” Welch wrote. “However, management in the Office of Pesticide Programs and those in charge of writing regulations have done nothing to change the regulations in all these years. Writing the regulations is not my job, doing science is. I did my part, but others, who are either too incompetent and/or too arrogant, have not.”

Today, aerosol cans warn consumers to keep their aerosols away from flames or heat, and they warn against incinerating or puncturing the can. They also warn that “physical hazard may cause bursting.” Some even warn that the container, if heated, may explode.

 

Even as all this was going on, Cate Jenkins, the EPA chemist who revealed Monsanto's and EPA's cover-up of the dioxin menace (described in chapter 3), was discovering another depressing example of collusion between polluters and her supervisors. In October 1988 she wrote to an array of powerful politicians claiming that senior EPA officials “knowingly engaged in serious violations of conflict of interest statutes and other regulations governing the use of public sector consultants.” The EPA Office of the Inspector General “willfully covered-up evidence to this effect.”
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Jenkins focused her charges on what she knew best: the development of regulations governing wood preservatives, chemicals used to treat marine pilings, telephone poles, bridge structural timber, and wood for home decks. These compounds—pentachlorophenol, creosote, and inorganic arsenicals—are acutely toxic in their own right, but they are also mixed with and contaminated by even more dangerous poisons—dioxins and furans.

In Jenkins's view, EPA consultants were serving two masters—the EPA and the wood treatment industry. Under these conditions, consultants covered up the discovery of dioxins in the wastes of Weyerhauser in Arkansas and in the emissions of the pulp and paper mills of Louisiana-Pacific and Simpson Paper in Humboldt County, California. The consultants “utilized every misrepresentation possible in favor of its lucrative industrial clients,” Jenkins wrote. In other words, under the Reagan administration, EPA consultants enriched themselves from polluters even as they helped create EPA policy protecting those polluters. It was a perfect scheme.

Jenkins considered the relationship between EPA and these consultants a form of “embezzling” in which public funds paid company salaries even as they let polluters off the hook. She warned elected officials overseeing environmental policy that EPA's corruption “can lead to tainted, less protective environmental regulations.” Indeed, Jenkins charged EPA's regulators with granting industry a license to pollute. “This de-regulatory effort would allow industry the new authority to determine on their own whether or not their wastes contained sufficient concentrations of toxicants to be hazardous,” she said. And all this deregulatory activity cost EPA money, something Jenkins found intolerable, even “criminal.”
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