monsanto good or evil :: essays research papers

ANNISTON, Ala. -- On the west side of Anniston, the poor side of Anniston, the quite a little ate dirt. They c alled it "Alabama clay" and cooked it for extra flavor. They also grew berries in their gardens, increase hogs in their back yards, caught bass in the murky streams where their children swam and played and were baptized. They didnt live their dirt and yards and bass and kids -- along with the acrid air they breathed -- were all contaminated with chemicals. They didnt know they lived in one of the most polluted patches of America.      directly they know. They also know that for nearly 40 years, while producing the now-banned industrial coolants cognise as PCBs at a local factory, Monsanto Co. routinely discharged nephrotoxic waste into a west Anniston creek and dumped millions of pounds of PCBs into oozing open-pit landfills. And thousands of pages of Monsanto documents -- some(prenominal) emblazoned with warnings much(prenominal) as &quo tCONFIDENTIAL Read and Destroy" -- show that for decades, the corporate goliath concealed what it did and what it knew.     In 1966, Monsanto managers discovered that angle submerged in that creek turned belly-up within 10 seconds, spurting blood and throw away skin as if dunked into boiling water. They told no one. In 1969, they found fish in another creek with 7,500 times the legal PCB levels. They decided " in that respect is little object in going to expensive extremes in throttle discharges." In 1975, a company study found that PCBs caused tumors in rats. They request its conclusion changed from "slightly tumorigenic" to "does not appear to be carcinogenic."          the Environmental trade protection Agency ordered General Electric Co. to spend $460 million to hang back PCBs it had dumped into the Hudson River in the past, perhaps the Bush administrations boldest environmental action to date. The decision was bitter opposed by the company, but hailed by national conservation groups and many prominent and prosperous residents of the picturesque Hudson River Valley.          Anniston is not much of a lay city anymore. The EPA officials who set up an Anniston satellite office to deal with the PCB line of work are now alarmed about widespread lead poisoning as well. The Army is building an incinerator here to burn 2,000 tons of plaguey sarin and mustard gas. And the Anniston Star has been questioning Monsantos past mercury releases.     Officials at Solutia Inc., the name given to Monsantos chemical operations after they were spun off into a separate company in 1997, acknowledge that Monsanto made mistakes.