The other day I got curious to see what these dispersants were that were being dumped into the Gulf of Mexico — the ones that can break down crude oil. I had a hunch I would find my information, footnoted, right in Wikipedia, and I did. What I was not expecting was for this information to point back to one of the most horrendous scandals in the history of science.<\/p>\n
“On May 1 two United States Department of Defense C-130 Hercules aircraft were employed to spray oil dispersant.[104] The main oil dispersants used were two forms of Corexit 9500 and 9527, made by the Nalco Holding Company, Naperville, Illinois.” <\/p>\n
So — the military is involved; unless they lease their jets out to private industry.<\/p>\n
It continued: “By May 15, 436,000 gallons of Corexit EC9500A and EC9527A had been released into the Gulf. Though these products were neither the least toxic nor the most effective among the dispersants approved by the EPA, they had been stockpiled in advance by BP and were available for immediate use, possibly because of close business relationships between Nalco, BP, and Exxon.” <\/p>\n
Nalco’s shares went up when BP announced that it was buying all available reserves of Corexit even though better chemicals exist for this purpose.<\/p>\n
I sent this information to Carol van Strum, a Planet Waves editor who has been involved with exposing the chemical industry since the 1970s, and with whom I have worked since 1993.<\/p>\n
“[Expletive deleted] — they’re spraying friggin’ antifreeze on the water! Have you ever seen an animal that’s ingested even a tiny bit of antifreeze? It’s fatal and causes a long, painful death and there is no antidote. Haven’t looked at the other ingredients but propylene glycol alone is enough to poison the whole Gulf.”<\/p>\n
Well, spraying “indiscriminately from the skies,” to quote Rachel Carson, and dumping it by the ton — including deep under the water, near the source.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In her next email she said she could not remember who Nalco was, but that they had a connection to dioxin. Five minutes later, she remembered — they were the owners of IBT Labs of Northbrook, Illinois. When I went to fact check this, I found that Planet Waves had already published the information years ago. Though few know this story, IBT Labs is the chemical industry’s equivalent of the church pedophilia scandal, only worse because it reached every household in the US and Canada, and many far beyond. It was where everything that could possibly go wrong was made to go wrong. IBT was a safety testing lab that went into the business of creating fraudulent studies confirming that chemicals were ‘safe’, no matter how many mice or people they killed.<\/p>\n
Substances certified as safe by IBT included food additives, ingredients in soap and cosmetics and chemical agents of every variety. None of the studies were valid. Yes, millions of mice died — but none of the methods were valid and the company took requests to declare deadly chemicals as safe.<\/p>\n
Planet Waves has republished an article on IBT Labs<\/strong><\/a> that is worth reading, though extremely disgusting. This was originally published by the Amicus Journal<\/em>, of the NRDC. I recovered it and re-published it from the basement of the NRDC in Manhattan a couple of years ago.<\/p>\n I also covered IBT Labs, which was involved in the PCB scandal at its peak in the 1960s and 1970s. This was one of the most horrendous angles on the PCB issue, since IBT’s fraudulent studies kept the chemical on the market long after the chemical and electrical manufacturers knew that it was deadly.<\/p>\n IBT’s role was to create fake safety data on PCBs that showed how it was non-carcinogenic. The following is from my article Conspiracy of Silence<\/strong><\/a> from Sierra<\/em> magazine, published in August 1994.<\/p>\n At this point, the crisis entered its darkest hour. In order to maintain its 1971 position that “PCBs are not and cannot be classified as highly toxic,” Monsanto engaged Industrial Bio-Test Labs of Northbrook, Illinois<\/strong>, to do safety studies on its Aroclor PCB products.<\/p>\n Seven years later, IBT Labs would be at the center of one of the most far-reaching scandals in modern science, as thousands of its studies were revealed through EPA and FDA investigations to be fraudulent or grossly inadequate.<\/p>\n One of IBT’s top executives was Dr. Paul Wright, a Monsanto toxicologist who took a job at IBT Labs in part to supervise the PCB tests, and then returned to Monsanto. Wright was eventually convicted of multiple counts of fraud in one of the longest criminal trials in U. S. history – with his legal fees paid by Monsanto.<\/p>\n While fraud on the PCB tests was not raised in the IBT trial, it is strongly suggested by memos and letters that came to light in later civil lawsuits. Several of these show how, at Monsanto’s request, IBT Labs customized its studies. “I think we are surprised (and disappointed?) at the apparent toxicity at the levels studied,” Monsanto’s Elmer Wheeler wrote in March 1970 to IBT president Joseph Calandra. “I doubt that there is any explanation for this but I do think that we might exchange some new thoughts.”<\/p>\n In a letter to IBT Labs two months later commenting on a set of PCB test results, Wheeler wrote, “We would hope that we might find a higher ‘no effect’ level with this sample as compared to the previous work.”<\/p>\n In later years, Monsanto’s requests would become even more blatant. “In two instances, the previous conclusion of ‘slightly tumorigenic’ was changed to ‘non-carcinogenic,'” Monsanto wrote in July 1975. “The latter phrase is preferable. May we request that the Aroclor 1254 report be amended to say ‘does not appear to be carcinogenic.'”<\/p>\n Two weeks later, Calandra responded: “We will amend our statement in the last paragraph on page 2 of the Aroclor 1254 report to read, ‘does not appear to be carcinogenic’ in place of ‘slightly tumorigenic’ as requested.” Testimony about the IBT Labs scandal in a Texas lawsuit against Monsanto indicates that IBT was aware that PCBs caused extremely high numbers of tumors in test rats, with 82 percent developing tumors when fed Aroclor 1254 at 10 parts per million and 100 percent at 100 parts per million. Yet with a stroke of a pen, IBT Labs certified PCBs a noncarcinogen.<\/p>\n Working behind the scenes of such scientific miracles was Paul Wright. In July 1976, after returning to Monsanto, he was given a $1,000 award for “forestalling EPA’s promulgation of unrealistic regulations to limit discharges of polychlorinated biphenyls.” A year later, IBT Labs was found out, and Wright, Calandra, and another IBT exec were eventually convicted of federal fraud charges.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The other day I got curious to see what these dispersants were that were being dumped into the Gulf of Mexico — the ones that can break down crude oil. I had a hunch I would find my information, footnoted, right in Wikipedia, and I did. 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