Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution / Edition 1

by Gerald Markowitz, David Rosner

Overview

Deceit and Denial details the attempts by the chemical and lead industries to deceive Americans about the dangers that their deadly products present to workers, the public, and consumers. Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner pursued evidence steadily and relentlessly, interviewed the important players, investigated untapped sources, and uncovered a bruising story of cynical and cruel disregard for health and human rights. This resulting exposé is full of startling revelations, provocative arguments, and disturbing conclusions—all based on remarkable research and information gleaned from secret industry documents.

This book reveals for the first time the public relations campaign that the lead industry undertook to convince Americans to use its deadly product to paint walls, toys, furniture, and other objects in America's homes, despite a wealth of information that children were at risk for serious brain damage and death from ingesting this poison. This book highlights the immediate dangers ordinary citizens face because of the relentless failure of industrial polluters to warn, inform, and protect their workers and neighbors. It offers a historical analysis of how corporate control over scientific research has undermined the process of proving the links between toxic chemicals and disease. The authors also describe the wisdom, courage, and determination of workers and community members who continue to voice their concerns in spite of vicious opposition. Readable, ground-breaking, and revelatory, Deceit and Denial provides crucial answers to questions of dangerous environmental degradation, escalating corporate greed, and governmental disregard for its citizens' safety and health.

After eleven years, Markowitz and Rosner update their work with a new epilogue that outlines the attempts these industries have made to undermine and create doubt about the accuracy of the information in this book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520275829
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	01/15/2013
Series:	California/Milbank Books on Health and the Public , #6
Edition description:	First Edition, With a New Epilogue
Pages:	446
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d)
Lexile:	1640L (what's this?)

About the Author

Gerald Markowitz is Professor of History at John Jay College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. David Rosner is Professor of History and Public Health at Columbia University and Director of the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health. They are coauthors of Children, Race, and Power: Kenneth and Mamie Clark's Northside Center (1996) and Deadly Dust: Silicosis and the Politics of Occupational Disease in Twentieth Century America (1994). They are coeditors of Dying for Work: Safety and Health in the United States (1987) and Slaves of the Depression: Workers' Letters about Life on the Job (1987).

Read an Excerpt

Deceit and Denial

The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution

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By Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner

University of California Press

Copyright © 2002 the Regents of the University of California
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0520217497

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Introduction

Industry's Child

In the depths of the Depression, with millions of workers unemployed, Annie Lou Emmers, a mother of eleven children, wrote to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt because of his "interest and sympathy for cripples." Mrs. Emmers's husband, Frank, was an employee of a pesticide subsidiary of the DuPont Company in Gary, Indiana, and had been lead poisoned on the job and laid off by the company. While Mrs. Emmers accepted this terrible fate for her husband, she could not abide the fact that one of her children, Mary Jane, had been born with extensive physical disabilities and severe mental retardation. Mrs. Emmers suspected that her husband had inadvertently brought the lead into their house on his clothing and that the child's development had been affected in utero. Her little girl, now three years old, was unable to raise her head, feed herself, or speak.

Mrs. Emmers called her daughter "industry's child" and was willing to take her before the public if it would help shock industry and the government into taking action to prevent lead poisoning. Was there anything the government could do to help her support her family or to get theindustry to clean up its plant, she asked. "I've heard of similar babies-in the pottery works at Crooksville, Ohio-in the lead mines' 'smelters,' of Colorado and Wyoming-in the large fruit orchards where arsenate of lead is used in powerful spraying machines, and among garage workers, handling tetraethyl, and I recently heard of another one in the chemical industry. How many more are there unheard of? How many babies are crippled each year-by lead?"

Frustrated New Deal administrators told Mrs. Emmers there was absolutely nothing the federal, state, or local government could do except write on her behalf to a local voluntary agency to ask them to help her. Charity, not the regulatory power of the state, was all they could offer.

Since Mrs. Emmers's appeal to President Roosevelt, the arena in which questions regarding industrial pollution and responsibility are considered has broadened. No longer is lead poisoning the problem of one family with no recourse but to write a letter to the president and no outcome but a polite reply saying nothing could be done. Today lead poisoning is the subject of intense concern in state legislatures considering regulation, in a variety of lawsuits brought by individual plaintiffs, in municipalities concerned with recovering costs for housing rehabilitation, in Medicaid reimbursement for damaged children, and in special educational costs for lead-poisoned children. Other substances like tobacco, asbestos, silica, and gasoline additives are also the subject of legislative and legal battles. In many instances those with grievances are getting much more of a response than Mrs. Emmers did-in the form of ordinances, lead poisoning prevention programs, educational programs, and successful lawsuits sometimes resulting in restitution to the tune of millions of dollars from industry.

The question so humbly expressed by Mrs. Emmers-was there anything government could do to help her support her family or to get the industry to clean up-has been magnified a hundredfold, with consumer groups, political activists, law firms, and even governments addressing these issues. As was evidenced in the November 1999 protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle, the demonstrations in Geneva at the G-8 summit in July 2001, and the protests at the New York world economic forum in February 2002, the campaign to protect consumers and ordinary citizens is waged not by individuals but by a coalition of groups-unions, environmental activists, and consumer organizations-that had previously worked separately and sometimes at cross-purposes. This campaign is no longer even focused on a particular industry but on international economic and social policy.

Such protests raise important and difficult questions. How can the physical environment be protected from the actions of huge multinational corporations whose activities have, until recently, gone virtually unchallenged and unregulated? How can people separated by language, politics, nationality, and culture come together to challenge corporations whose power transcends national boundaries? How can the poor and disenfranchised have their voice heard when they express outrage at the unequal share of the burden of industrial pollution their countries and communities have had to bear?

Although these large questions of corporate responsibility sound rather new, in fact they are the result of a centurylong conflict over the costs of industrial progress and the responsibilities of industry to the general population. How much should government regulate private companies to ensure that they act responsibly and in accord with the broader public interest? How can government and industry create incentives for responsible corporate behavior? Industry has long responded to calls for corporate responsibility by arguing that voluntary compliance was sufficient to ensure that it acted responsibly. But there have always been those inside and outside of government who believed that voluntary compliance on the part of industry is not sufficient to safeguard the public's health for the reason that industry's financial interests often prevent it from doing what would be socially responsible.

As early as 1905, federal action was taken to protect the consumers and the environment from the irresponsible actions of industry. That year Theodore Roosevelt and other conservationists established the principle of federal protection of national forests. In 1906 Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act that extended its authority to inspect and test for adulterated consumer products. In 1970 the federal government established the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to protect the environment and the workforce. Unfortunately, these measures have not always been adequate. At times, the federal government under pressure from industry lobbyists and legal challenges, has exercised its regulatory powers selectively or without sufficient resolve.

It is a tenet of democracy that citizens should have full access to information so they can make informed decisions about policies that affect their lives. In the case of industrial toxins, such information has been regularly denied to workers and the general public. As a result, factory workers have been assailed by noxious fumes and dangerous chemicals even while beseeching industry for information and protection. Over time these toxins have been vented into the air, spilled into waterways, and dumped onto the land, both legally and illegally, making industrial pollution an issue of widespread public concern. But the general public, like workers before them, has not been given sufficient information to understand the danger that exists all around them. It has taken catastrophes like Love Canal in Niagara Falls, New York, Times Beach, Missouri, and Bhopal, India, to bring home to people the danger industry poses to their lives and the environment and the public's need to have free access to information about toxic substances in the environment. Despite all this, industry has continued to hide and obfuscate information it had about the toxic characteristics of some of its products and, in the wake of the attack on the World Trade Center, the Bush administration has further undermined the Freedom of Information Act. As a result, people have been denied information about the toxins they have been ingesting and inhaling every day.

Nonetheless, a great deal has happened outside of industry (often in spite of industry manipulation) to educate the public about the dangers of pollution and to begin to confront industry's negligence. In 1962 Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, which publicized the harm pesticides caused the environment. Ralph Nader began his crusade as a consumer advocate by exposing the willingness of General Motors to sacrifice human beings for profit, as exemplified in its promotion of the dangerously designed Corvair. Paul Brodeur and Barry Castleman dramatized the duplicity of the asbestos industry's willingness to expose workers and entire communities to asbestos, despite the known risk of cancer and lung diseases. By the 1970s questions were raised about the safety of a host of products: DES growth hormone, red dye No. 2, phosphates, Firestone radial tires, the Ford Pinto, tampons, Dalkon Shields, cyclamates, and saccharine. The Three Mile Island disaster led to widespread skepticism about the safety of the nuclear power industry.

By the 1980s, civil rights groups developed the concept of "environmental racism" to describe the tendency of industry to situate polluting plants and toxic waste dumps primarily in poor and minority communities. Environmental activists made "environmental justice" a rallying cry when demanding that industry redress the race and class bias in many industry decisions. In the 1990s citizens became aware of perhaps the most serious breach of the social contract with corporations: major players in the tobacco industry, after decades of denying that cigarettes were addictive and carcinogenic, were finally forced to admit that they had manipulated the nicotine content of its products for the specific purpose of keeping smokers addicted and that they had falsified scientific research, thereby lying to the public about the deadly effects of smoking tobacco. Companies like Johns Manville, which mined and processed asbestos, and Philip Morris, which grew and marketed tobacco products, were notorious for their willingness to hide information about the dangers of their products. Although it might be maintained that these were rogue corporations acting outside the norms of industrial practice, the history of industry points to a different conclusion. In the case of lead and vinyl, entire industries have banded together to deny and suppress information about the toxic nature of their products and to call into question results by outside researchers that indicated their products pose a danger to the health of individuals.

In addition to withholding information, some industries, including lead and vinyl, have reassured the public that their products are benign by controlling research and manipulating science. Throughout much of the twentieth century, most scientific studies of the health effects of toxic substances have been done by researchers in the employ of industry or in universities with financial ties to members of that industry. At times their results were subject to review by industry; if the results indicated a problem, the information was suppressed. At times the independence of the academy has been undermined by industry's influence through grants and other support for research. As Marcia Angell, editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, has argued, "When the boundaries between industry and academic medicine become as blurred as they now are, the business goals of industry influence the mission of the medical schools in multiple ways." Dr. Linda Rosenstock, head of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in the Clinton administration, observed that "efforts of powerful constituencies to manipulate researchers and scientific organization may constrain vital research on health risks." A recent study of corporate funding of academic research revealed that "more than half of the university scientists who received gifts from drug or biotechnology companies admitted that the donor expected to exert influence over their work." The concern about corporate corruption of science is so widespread that many scientific journals, including the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, now require that the source of support for the investigator's research be clearly identified. Even NIOSH's own "scientific work continues to be attacked by special interests on an issue by issue basis," Rosenstock asserted, such that "in many cases of public health science, politics is winning out over research because of the carefully executed tactics of special interest groups."

Since the establishment of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), NIOSH, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970 and of independent foundations working with university researchers and public interest groups, a new generation of scientists not employed by industry are highlighting the risks and discounting industry's assurances about their products and production processes. They are providing research for the public and the public health community to consider. Newspaper articles, television specials, and presentations in other media bring home the personal toll that industry practices take on people's lives. Increased knowledge has become a powerful weapon in the battle to hold corporations accountable for their impact on public health.

At the heart of the current struggle is the very difficult question of how industry or the government decides what is safe. Industry has always taken the position that there is no reason to hold up production of useful products if no danger has been proven. But the history of the twentieth century is riddled with disasters resulting from industry's moving forward with products whose danger only became apparent over time. Lead, asbestos, tobacco, and radioactive materials became widely used because scientific studies could not prove with certainty that these substances caused harm. In the realm of environmental health, it is extremely difficult to say that a particular substance causes a particular health problem; usually only after decades of observation can a statistically significant correlation be made between exposure to a chemical and increased death and disease in a large population. Even then it may not be possible to establish a connection conclusively and to the satisfaction of the entire scientific community.

As a result, the battle being waged today by public health advocates is to establish a different method for deciding how and when industry should proceed with the introduction of new substances or products. Many argue for the precautionary principle, according to which suspect substances must be held off the market until their potential dangers are more clearly understood and their safety is better established. Public health officials and some politicians are increasingly aware that the threats from dioxins, chlorinated hydrocarbons, and greenhouse gases in the environment are so high that social policy demands regulatory action-even before the existing data absolutely proves danger. Many argue that we should protect our citizens and not wait for "objective studies" to prove further danger.

Continue...

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Excerpted from Deceit and Denial by Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner Copyright © 2002 by the Regents of the University of California
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Table of Contents

Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Industry's Child

1. The House of the Butterflies: Lead Poisoning among Workers and Consumers
2. A Child Lives in a Lead World
3. Cater to the Children: The Promotion of White Lead
4· Old Poisons, New Problems
5· Better Living through Chemistry?
6. Evidence of an Illegal Conspiracy by Industry
7· Damn Liars
8. 01' Man River or Cancer Alley?
9· A Hazy Mixture: Science, Civil Rights, Pollution, and Politics
10. Science and Prudent Public Policy

Conclusion
Epilogue
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Provides a most readable narrative history. . . . Even for those unfamiliar with the players, this is a riveting account that can convey a better understanding of the complex influences of corporate-government interactions and the cost to health."

JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association

Twenty of the biggest chemical companies in the United States have launched a campaign to discredit two historians who have studied the industry's efforts to conceal links between their products and cancer. In an unprecedented move, attorneys for Dow, Monsanto, Goodrich, Goodyear, Union Carbide and others have subpoenaed and deposed five academics who recommended that the University of California Press publish the book Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution, by Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner. The companies have also recruited their own historian to argue that Markowitz and Rosner have engaged in unethical conduct. Markowitz is a professor of history at the CUNY Grad Center; Rosner is a professor of history and public health at Columbia University and director of the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at Columbia's School of Public Health.

The Nation

This ably written book makes a strong case for a precautionary approach toward the regulation of toxic hazards.

The Lancet

Like any solid work of history, Deceit and Denial stands on the strength of its evidence and argument. Rosner and Markowitz marshal a devastating case, and the overarching question of culpability gives their account a narrative power and an analytical precision too often missing in historical scholarship.

Reviews in History

The authors . . . write authoritatively and persuasively, marshaling an impressive array of sources. . . . It raises numerous issues related to the manufacture and marketing of potentially toxic products. The book has potential as a [course] text.

Technology and Culture

Chronicles the history of poisoning by environmental lead and vinyl chloride. . . . [The book shows] how that the lead industry in the United States was well aware of the hazard decades before the publication of the article by Byers and Lord but chose to respond to it primarily as a public-relations problem.

New England Journal of Medicine

An important work . . . A wonderful depiction of the difficulty of combating a well-funded corporate culture.

Enterprise & Society

"Provides a most readable narrative history. . . . Even for those unfamiliar with the players, this is a riveting account that can convey a better understanding of the complex influences of corporate-government interactions and the cost to health."-- "JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association"

"An important work . . . A wonderful depiction of the difficulty of combating a well-funded corporate culture."-- "Enterprise & Society"

"Chronicles the history of poisoning by environmental lead and vinyl chloride. . . . [The book shows] how that the lead industry in the United States was well aware of the hazard decades before the publication of the article by Byers and Lord but chose to respond to it primarily as a public-relations problem."-- "New England Journal of Medicine"

"Like any solid work of history, Deceit and Denial stands on the strength of its evidence and argument. Rosner and Markowitz marshal a devastating case, and the overarching question of culpability gives their account a narrative power and an analytical precision too often missing in historical scholarship."-- "Reviews in History"

"The authors . . . write authoritatively and persuasively, marshaling an impressive array of sources. . . . It raises numerous issues related to the manufacture and marketing of potentially toxic products. The book has potential as a [course] text."-- "Technology and Culture"

"This ably written book makes a strong case for a precautionary approach toward the regulation of toxic hazards."-- "The Lancet"

"Twenty of the biggest chemical companies in the United States have launched a campaign to discredit two historians who have studied the industry's efforts to conceal links between their products and cancer. In an unprecedented move, attorneys for Dow, Monsanto, Goodrich, Goodyear, Union Carbide and others have subpoenaed and deposed five academics who recommended that the University of California Press publish the book Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution, by Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner. The companies have also recruited their own historian to argue that Markowitz and Rosner have engaged in unethical conduct. Markowitz is a professor of history at the CUNY Grad Center; Rosner is a professor of history and public health at Columbia University and director of the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at Columbia's School of Public Health."-- "The Nation"

From the Publisher

The authors are prominent historians of public health and their thesis is forcefully articulated and massively documented. . . . They are muckrakers, but extraordinarily well-informed practitioners of that traditional American art. And they have found a good deal of muck to uncover.

Science

[O]ught to give thousands of corporate executives insomnia.

St. Louis Dispatch

This is a historical account of corporate control of the lead, plastics, and petroleum industries and the campaign of denial regarding the toxic effects on workers, consumers, and the general public of chemicals used in the manufacture of paint, toys, furniture, plastics, and other products. Coauthors of Deadly Dust: Silicosis and the Politics of Occupational Disease in Twentieth Century America, Markowitz (history, John Jay Coll. of Criminal Justice, CUNY) and Rosner (history and public health, Columbia Univ.) conducted interviews, examined documents, and pursued additional investigations to expose corporate greed and deception and governmental foot dragging that disregarded public-health risks through much of the 20th century. They allege that industry officials lied about the dangers, failed to protect workers, fooled the public, and kept regulators at bay. Corporate control over scientific research also undermined efforts to inform the public about the relationships between toxic chemicals and disease. However, this is not another diatribe about industrial pollution. Instead, it is a well-researched work that analyzes the conflict between industry's need to provide products that make life easier for consumers and the public's demand for legislation and standards to protect them from toxic pollution caused by the manufacture of these products. Recommended for health, environment, and law collections.-Irwin Weintraub, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., NY Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

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