The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

pcbs: white-collar crime 29PCBs Are EverywhereAccording to accepted estimates, 1.5 million tons of PCBs were producedfrom 1929 to 1989, a significant portion of which ended up in the environment.How much exactly? It is hard to know. The fact remains that PCBsare everywhere and they are a nightmare for us as citizens, but they are alsoa nightmare for Monsanto (and the subsidiary it used, Solutia, which declaredbankruptcy in 2003 largely because of the litigation it had inherited).Here is a brief, not exhaustive, summary: In January 2003, the EnvironmentDepartment of Oslo fined Bayer, Kaneka, and Solutia g7 million forcontaminating the fjord on which the harbor is located with PCBs usedin ship paints. (It should be noted in passing that many experts, includingDavid Carpenter, strongly advise against consuming salmon raised in Norwayand Scotland.) In January 2006, 590 workers in a General Electric factoryin New York sued Monsanto for PCB contamination. 17In 2007, as France was discovering that the Rhône was polluted by PCBs,Wales was shaken by a scandal that had been suppressed for more than fortyyears. 18 Monsanto had a subsidiary in Newport that until 1978 produced 12percent of the PCBs manufactured in the world. From 1965 to 1971, thefactory dumped into the Brofiscin quarry, an extremely porous former limestonequarry, some 800,000 tons of waste contaminated with PCBs. The activityhad been denounced at the time by farmers who had noticed that theircattle were dying mysteriously. The decontamination of the site could costmore than g200 million. For now, Monsanto and Solutia are blaming thecompany that the Newport factory contracted with to transport and dumpthe wastes.At a time when concern for the environment is in the headlines, it is likelythat the ghost of PCBs will haunt Monsanto for a long time to come, justlike dioxin, of which it was an experienced producer.