The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

dioxin: a polluter working with the pentagon 35Syntex Agribusiness of Verona, Missouri. This subsidiary of NortheasternPharmaceutical and Chemical Company (NEPACCO) made the herbicide2,4,5-T, a powerful defoliant contaminated with dioxin, of which Monsantowas also a significant producer. But fortunately for Monsanto, it did notmanufacture the defoliant in Missouri. In a settlement with the EPA, Syntexagreed to pay $10 million toward the decontamination of twenty-seventoxic dumps in eastern Missouri, including Times Beach. “The irony of thestory,” said Smoger, “is that at the very moment Syntex was designated as theguilty party, Monsanto was publishing falsified studies to conceal the toxiceffects of its 2,4,5-T herbicide.”The Herbicide 2,4,5-T and DioxinTo understand the tragic irony of this drama of modern times, we have togo back to the origin of dioxin, a toxic substance produced in the processof manufacturing certain chlorinated chemical compounds or duringtheir combustion at high temperatures. The term “dioxin” covers a family of210 related substances (as with PCBs, the term “congeneric” is used), themost toxic of which has the scientific name tetrachloro-p-dibenzodioxinor 2,3,7,8-TCDD, TCDD for short. Long unknown to the public, the existenceof dioxin emerged from the secrecy of industrial and military laboratorieson July 10, 1976, in an episode known to history as the “Sevesocatastrophe.”On that day, an accident in the Italian chemical factory in Icmesa, ownedby the Swiss multinational Hoffmann–La Roche, provoked the formation ofan extremely harmful cloud that spread over the plain of Lombardy, particularlythe town of Seveso. A few days later, more than three thousand domesticanimals died of poisoning, while dozens of residents developed chloracne,the chronic disfiguring skin disease. In the face of the magnitude of the catastropheand the emotion it provoked worldwide, the managers of Hoffmann–La Roche were obliged to reveal the agent responsible: dioxin, a product derivedfrom the manufacture of the herbicide 2,4,5-T, the leading product ofthe Icmesa factory.The identification of this molecule, a pure product of industrial activity,was closely related to the history of the defoliant, invented at about the sametime in British and American laboratories during World War II. In the early