Toms River (72 page)

8.
Excerpted from “Beautiful Tar: Song of an Enthusiastic Scientist,”
Punch
, September 15, 1888.

9.
This chapter’s account of Johann Jakob Müller-Pack’s travails in Basel draws heavily on the work of a leading historian of the chemical industry, Anthony S. Travis of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. See Anthony S. Travis, “Poisoned Groundwater and Contaminated Soil: The Tribulations and Trial of the First Major Manufacturer of Aniline Dyes in Basel,”
Environmental History
2:3 (July 1997): 343–65.

10.
“Poisoned Groundwater and Contaminated Soil,” 349. The quotation is originally from a speech by August Leonhardt, who worked for a British dye manufacturer in the 1860s. His speech, “Remarks on the Manufacture of Magenta,” was prepared for delivery at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876.

11.
The coloration of rivers was a mark of industrialization even before the rise of synthetic chemistry. In
Hard Times
, published in 1853, three years before William Perkin’s discovery of aniline dyes, Charles Dickens described the book’s fictional setting, Coketown, as “a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness.” Almost seventy years later, in his modernist masterpiece
The Waste Land
, the poet T. S. Eliot wrote: “The river sweats/Oil and tar/The barges drift/With the turning tide.”

12.
The reference to the Rhine as a dumping ground for “effluents” and “rubbish” is on page 8 of
Society of the Chemical Industry in Basle, 1884–1934
, an official and
privately published corporate history published in Switzerland to commemorate Ciba’s fiftieth anniversary.

13.
Friedrich Goppelsröder reported his findings to the health committee of the Canton of Basel in a three-page handwritten letter dated June 8, 1864.

14.
Markus Hammerle,
The Beginnings of the Basel Chemical Industry in Light of Industrial Medicine and Environmental Protection
(Schwabe & Co., 1995), 54. Translated from German.

15.
The prosecution of Johann Jakob Müller-Pack in Basel was just the first of several highly publicized incidents involving water pollution by aniline dyes. There were also scattered reports of arsenic poisoning from eating artificially colored candies and even from wearing fuchsine-dyed stockings. The October 3, 1868, edition of
The Times
of London, for example, included two reports of “poisonous socks.” One, a reprint from
The Lancet
, the medical journal, described a ballet dancer who had to be hospitalized with a severe rash after sweating through her “brilliant red” stockings. The other was a letter from a physician who reported that one of his patients had suffered similar symptoms after buying dyed socks. When the man returned to the store to protest, the storekeeper admitted that several buyers had lodged similar complaints.

16.
Casimir Nienhas’s experiment is described on page 56 of
The Beginnings of the Basel Chemical Industry in Light of Industrial Medicine and Environmental Protection
.

17.
Society of the Chemical Industry in Basle, 1884–1934
, 8, 76.

18.
Beginnings of the Basel Chemical Industry
, 44.

19.
D. H. Killeffer, “Industrial Poisoning by Aromatic Compounds,”
Industrial and Engineering Chemistry
17:8 (August 1925): 820–22.

20.
Beginnings of the Basel Chemical Industry
, 41.

21.
Society of the Chemical Industry in Basle, 1884–1934
, 56.

22.
M. W. Tatlock, “Industrial Waste Treatment: Cincinnati Chemical Works,”
Proceedings of the Eleventh Purdue Industrial Waste Conference
(1956): 166–71.

23.
The first comprehensive sampling of the entire Ohio River, from its source in western Pennsylvania to its terminus in the Mississippi River, was conducted September 18–29, 1950, by a newly created interstate agency called the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission. In the report that followed, “Pollution Patterns in the Ohio River—1950,” the commission concluded that the most polluted section was at the Cincinnati waterfront and immediately downstream.

1.
The description of the facilities and dye-making processes at the Toms River plant during the first years of its operation is drawn from Kevin J. Bradley and Philip Kronowitt, “A Staff-Industry Collaborative Report: Anthraquinone Dyes,”
Industrial and Engineering Chemistry
46:6 (June 1954): 1145–56. At the time, Bradley was the assistant editor of the journal, a publication of the American Chemical Society. Kronowitt was a Ciba executive who helped to design and build the Toms River plant.

2.
Robert J. Baptista, a former industry executive and historian of the dye industry,
elaborated on why anthraquinone vat dyes were so useful in an interview with the author: “Vat dyes were a tremendous technology breakthrough because cotton fabrics would no longer fade.… The vat dyes were rugged molecules. They were built to last. They had just the right shape and weight to fit into the fiber structure and not get rubbed out or bleached out.”

3.
November 14, 1956, memo from Ciba executive Al Meier to five senior managers.

4.
Julia E. Gwinn and David C. Bomberger,
Wastes from Manufacture of Dyes and Pigments: Volume 4, Anthraquinone Dyes and Pigments
(SRI International, 1984, under contract to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency), 46.

5.
Bradley and Kronowitt, “Staff-Industry Collaborative Report,” 1153: “The capacity of four million pounds of dyestuffs requires about twenty-two million pounds of various raw materials. Chief among these are sulfuric acid, caustic soda, hydrochloric acid, phthalic anhydride, ammonia, benzene, nitrobenzene, glycerol and alcohol.”

6.
Two years after being chased out of Basel, having returned to a vagabond life, Paracelsus wrote of his critics: “Not one of you will survive, even in the most distant corner, where even the dogs will not piss. I shall be monarch and mine will be the monarchy.” See page 73 of
Das Buch Paragranum
(The Book Against the Grain) by Paracelsus, as excerpted and translated from the original German in Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke,
Paracelsus: Essential Readings
(North Atlantic Books, 1999).

7.
Scholars disagree on whether the infamous book-burning incident involving Paracelsus actually occurred or is an embellishment added much later by his followers. Some versions of the story have Paracelsus burning a tract by Galen instead of Avicenna. In any case, there is abundant evidence that Paracelsus antagonized the city’s establishment during his brief stay in Basel. See, for example, Henry M. Prager,
Magic into Science—The Story of Paracelsus
(Sumner Press, 2007). The book was originally published in 1951, when Prager was a professor of history at City College of the City University of New York.

8.
Das Buch Paragranum
, excerpted in
Paracelsus: Essential Readings
, 74.

9.
There is controversy over the wording of Paracelsus’s famous handbill advertising the Basel lectures, since versions were published many years later by his acolytes and his enemies. The version quoted here is from
Magic into Science—The Story of Paracelsus
, 152–53.

10.
Paracelsus’s book on mining diseases,
Von der Bergsucht und anderen Bergkrankheiten
(On the Miners’ Sickness and Other Miners’ Diseases), was written in 1533 but not published until 1567, twenty-six years after his death. While the book is generally considered to be the first full-length work on occupational disease, there was at least one earlier effort. A German physician named Ulrich Ellenbog in 1473 wrote a short work for goldsmiths entitled
Von den gifftigen besen Tempffen und Reuchen
(On the Poisonous, Evil Vapors and Fumes). It was published as an eight-page pamphlet in 1524. In addition, another contemporary of Paracelsus, Georgius Bauer, better known by his pen name Agricola, published his
De Re Metallica
(On the Nature of Metals) in 1541.
De Re Metallica
was primarily a description of the mining industry, but Agricola also wrote about mining illnesses and preventative measures, including ventilation shafts.

11.
According to Bernardino Ramazzini’s
De Morbis Artificum Diatriba
(Diseases of Workers), published in 1700, Hippocrates also referred to mining diseases and noted that those affected by the “metallic pests” include not only miners but also “many others whose work is too near the mines.” Thus Hippocrates, who died in approximately 375 B.C., may have been the first to recognize that pollution can harm more than just directly exposed workers.

12.
This quotation is from the first chapter of the third tractate of
Von der Bergsucht und anderen Bergkrankheiten
. Henry G. Sigerist, ed.,
Four Treatises of Theophrastus Von Hohenheim, Called Paracelsus
(Johns Hopkins Press, 1941), 68.

13.
Robert Meerpol,
An Execution in the Family: One Son’s Journey
(St. Martin’s, 2003), 13–15.

14.
“Governor Dedicates Ciba States Building,”
Asbury Park Press
, June 5, 1953.

15.
“ ‘Effluent Pure,’ Ciba Head Says,”
Ocean County Sun
, June 11, 1953.

16.
“Ciba Builds to Serve,” a promotional booklet published by the company in 1953, 22.

17.
Howard S. Pratt, “Rod and Gun,”
Brooklyn Eagle
, March 24, 1953.

18.
“Tour of Ciba Disposal Plant Dispels Rumors of Pollution,”
New Jersey Courier
, April 2, 1953. Leading the tour that day was the Swiss company’s public face in Toms River, a Hungarian émigré and chemical engineer named Philip Kronowitt. After World War II, the U.S. government sent Kronowitt back to Europe to study the advanced manufacturing techniques of the I. G. Farben cartel, which the Allies were dismembering with the enthusiastic support of competing firms in Switzerland and America. Returning home the following year, Kronowitt went to work for Ciba and took charge of the search for a new factory site in America. Moving to Toms River to supervise the plant’s construction, he served as president of the Ocean County Boy Scouts Council and the Red Cross and led the drive to establish the county’s first hospital. See “Philip Kronowitt,” a profile in the Fall 1957 edition of
TRC Color
, a company newsletter.

19.
Nicholas P. Cheremisinoff,
Handbook of Pollution Prevention Practices
(CRC Press, 2001), 238.

20.
A 1953 article in
Chemical and Engineering News
typified the cheerleading coverage of the era. “Ciba Solves Water Pollution Danger at Toms River Dye Plant” was the headline. A relevant passage: “Actually, the water discharged into the Toms River will be a great deal more palatable for fish and humans than the river itself. The Toms River flows through such swampy land that by the time it reaches the sea it contains a high percentage of organic matter and has a fairly high pH.” The article did not carry a byline but was written by an editor at the magazine, Kevin J. Bradley, who was also the coauthor—with Ciba’s Philip Kronowitt—of a similarly glowing article on the plant published the following year in another publication of the American Chemical Society,
Industrial and Engineering Chemistry
. The initial article’s final line noted that “Ciba’s relations with its neighbors have been very cordial.” See
Chemical and Engineering News
31:36 (1953): 3691.

21.
June 30, 1949, memo by an unnamed Ciba executive to senior managers in Basel, page 2. The complete quotation is: “The sewage treatment area is deliberately located at considerable distance from the river. The treated effluent will be carried in an open ditch to the river and the cost of such ditch is low. Long line will help aeration
of the effluent before it enters the river and we expect considerable seepage into adjacent area from ditch, which will reduce the volume of effluent carried into the river.”

22.
“Report: Consideration of Location of Vat Colors Project at St. Bernard and Toms River,” May 2, 1949, page 4. It was written by an unidentified Ciba executive. Similarly, in a “Report on Toms River Property,” dated December 30, 1948, Ciba executives Fritz Max and Philip Kronowitt wrote: “The acreage available is fairly level, sand and gravel soil, good for construction, easy to excavate, and level and very suitable for construction of sedimentation basins and filtration of such effluent which we do not want to dispose of into the stream.”

23.
January 19, 1949, letter to the New Jersey Department of Health from Philip Kronowitt. In a five-page report he prepared for the state two days earlier, Kronowitt asserted that “according to experience” from other dye factories, the Toms River plant’s wastewater discharges would be “clear and transparent,” “have no odor,” and “be free of substances harmful to fish, animal or wild life.”

24.
Memo from Morris Smith to Philip Kronowitt, November 25, 1955. See also report entitled “Waste Disposal Plant Operations: Year 1955.”

25.
Anthony Travis, a leading chemical industry historian, told the author: “Back in ’48 and ’49, [Ciba] felt Toms River was a good site because the ground was sandy, they could dig a long trench and most of the wastewater would be gone before it even got to the river, and there were lots of trees they could hide behind.”

26.
For a detailed description of the wastewater treatment process at the Toms River plant, see John J. Baffa, “Treatment of Waste from Dye Manufacture at the Ciba States Ltd. Plant at Toms River, New Jersey,”
Proceedings of the Ninth Industrial Waste Conference, May 10, 11 and 12, 1954
(Purdue): 560–66. A consulting engineer who helped design the treatment process in Toms River, Baffa presented the paper at the industrial waste conference hosted annually by Purdue University.