I’m going to write a letter to the CEO and ask why testing of their products does not run through the entire life cycle of the product, across the ecosystem. It sounds to me as if this is what happened, on the face of it; mind you, I am not a chemist or chemical engineer or an actuary or any such thing, and only worked as an office/IT jockey, and I have not worked at Dow for years now. But I can see where the organization would have tested it for safety around livestock (obviously it had little impact on the livestock – so far), for safety in its intended application (did it hurt the farmer applying it to fields only, for example), and for efficacy. But I can see where the system as it’s designed today wouldn’t test for systemic effect on an ecosystem over a period of time; frankly, I cannot believe that any similar company would do any differently.

This is where the public needs to demand different regulations from governing bodies — in this case, the EPA and from state agencies — if the corporate organizations cannot “see” the problem from the beginning. Unfortunately, we have put up with the corruption of these institutions for too long.’

And now after that mea culpa, I’m going to say something very unpopular. Dow Chemical did not create Bhopal. I can tell you that Union Carbide was a very poorly run organization in terms of its safety based on feedback I received from coworkers; my friends that were deployed to UCC sites during the integration process in 2001 after Dow acquired UCC were utterly appalled at what they found. They said that UCC still operated as if it were in the 1950’s. That is not and has not been the way Dow operated its facilities in the 20 years that I’ve been an employee or former employee. I can tell you that at their American facilities they are freaks about safety (in no small part, either, because of their unionized labor force). When Dow negotiated the purchase of UCC, they did not want anything to do with the Indian entity; shareholders were extremely upset about it. What’s not clear now is whether Dow assumed any liability for that site; it’s not as though Dow needed any more trouble than it had from existing product liability exposures. It turns my stomach any time I read or hear people blame Dow for Bhopal because of what I know to be their standards of operation here, and how concerned and careful my coworkers were across the organization. (Christ, you could get fired for smoking in a company car, or for failing to park nose out every day as required for evacuation preparedness, or for failing to attend monthly safety meetings and other required training events, or for doing anything that was considered a safety defect, like failing to use a ladder properly or get a licensed union electrician to replace lightbulbs.)

Hence my perturbation about this herbicide aminopyralid; how does an organization with such intense safety protocols commercialize a product like this? How came there to be such a disconnect? Was it just as I suspect, that the chemical industry as a whole including Dow does not look at the impact of a product on the entire ecosystem?

The hard part is knowing this kind of failure damages Dow and the people that work for it. They make incredible products that people take for granted every day — like the deicing agent sprayed on the plane you took this past winter, or the hormone bait piles that keep your home safe from termite damage and keep you from having to chemically treat your home (yes, that well-known product is manufactured by Dow, sold by a pest killing firm). Or the super-absorbent baby diaper technology, or the water filtration and purification system that provides clean water for all of Paris, or a certain brand-name OTC allergy medication sold by a major pharmaceutical firm. Or Styrofoam insulation, which reduces energy consumption. All the goodwill these products generate goes right out the window with one bad chemical. Makes me so very sad.

I just wish I could figure out how we can really, truly take our country back from the corporate interests who think things like this is a great idea. Sadly, I’m not feeling nearly as optimistic that we’ll be able to as I was during the 2006 election cycle. It’s going to involve a wholesale change in our societal structure & attitudes & a return to an older, now outmoded, way of doing business where thinking about the long-term health of your industry & the long-term consequences of your actions (on your workers, your customers, your community, your world) is automatic. Somehow this attitude has been flipped around completely (read as “was carefully crafted & spun to flip around”) & the daily stock market report & quarterly earnings are now more important than anything else, even the health of our economy, our world, & our children. I still haven’t quite figured out how Reagan & his merry band of Republican spinners managed to change the societal norm so utterly.

And now that I’ve managed to get all riled up at the larger picture your post paints, I’m going to go read some light fluffy escapist fiction to wind down or I’ll never sleep.

Conventional food is very very very expensive, but you pay the cost down stream

Please compare the cost to cleaning up the environment and human health tragedies caused by toxic chemicals when you support conventional farming.

I grieve, I was an integral piece of the machine. Worse yet, I was good at my job. How I wasted my life, believing myself a true patriot and now the reality is so terrible to face. I really, truly, thought we were the good guys, doing all these poor people a favor. Little did I know then what I know now, and facing up to it all now is the kind of shit that tilts planets.

Always late to your posts, but I read them all !