Reputation Management Online

Protest against Dow Chemicals

The original post on Dow stirred strong emotions both positively and negatively. The point is made. Whilst advocates of Dow are assured of its commitment to safety and ethical responsibility, critics claim the exact opposite. In the background meantime lurks Bhopal almost like a character from myth.

That Dow has a reputation problem must be admitted. A quick check of the Internet reveals a number of sites that list some of Dow’s issues. Here is a list of 20 areas of concern as Dow fights off it reputation, of which Agent Orange must figure at the top:

1. Agent Orange/Napalm — The toxic herbicide and jellied gasoline used in Vietnam created horrors for young and old alike — and an uproar back home that forced Dow to rethink its public relations strategy.
2. Rocky Flats — The top secret Colorado site managed by Dow Chemical from 1952 to 1975 remains an environmental nightmare for the Denver area.
3. Body burden — In March 2001, the Centers for Disease Control reported that most people in the United States carry detectable levels of plastics, pesticides and heavy metals in their blood and urine.
4. 2,4-D — An herbicide produced by Dow Chemical, 2,4-D is still in used for killing lawn weeds, crop weeds and range weeds, and along utility company rights-of way and railroad tracks. One of the key ingredients in Agent Orange, the toxic defoliant used in Vietnam, 2,4-D is the most widely used herbicide in the world.
5. Mercury — In Canada, Dow had been producing chlorine using the mercury cell method since 1947. Much of the mercury was recycled, but significant quantities were discharged into the environment through air emissions, water discharges, waste sludge and in end products. In March 1970, the governments of Ontario and Michigan detected high levels of mercury in the fish in the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair, the Detroit River and Lake Erie. Dow was sued by state and local officials for mercury pollution.
6. PERC — Perchloroethylene is the hazardous substance used by dry cleaners everywhere. Dow tried to undermine safer alternatives.
7. 2,4,5 T — This is one of the toxic ingredients in Agent Orange. Doyle says that “Dow just fought tooth and nail over this chemical — persisted every way it could in court and with the agencies, at the state and federal levels, to buy more time for this product. They went into a court in Arkansas in the early 1970s to challenge the EPA administrator. They did that to buy some extra marketing time, and they got two years, even though it appears that Dow knew this chemical was a bad actor by then, caused birth defects in lab animals, and was also being found in human body fat by then. But it wasn’t until 1983 that Dow quit making 2,4,5-T in the United States, and 1987 before they quit production in New Zealand. And 2,4,5-T health effects litigation continues to this day.”
8. Busting unions — In 1967, unions represented almost all of Dow’s production workers. But since then, according to the Metal Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, Dow undertook an “unapologetic campaign to rid itself of unions.”
9. Silicone — The key ingredient for silicone breast implants, made by a joint venture between Dow and Corning (Dow Corning), made women sick. Litigation over silicone breast implants — removed from the market more than a decade ago — continues.
10. DBCP — DBCP is the toxic active ingredient in the Dow pesticide Fumazone. Doctors who tested men who worked with DBCP thought they had vasectomies — they had no sperm present.
11. Dursban — Dursban is the trade name for chlorpyrifos, a toxic pesticide, a product that proved to have the nerve agent effects that Rachel Carson warned about. It was tested on prisoners in New York in 1971 and in 1998 at a lab in Lincoln, Nebraska. It replaced DDT when DDT was banned in 1972. A huge seller, in June 2000, EPA limited its use and forced it off the market at the end of 2004.
12. Dow at Christmas — “Uses of Dow plastics by the toy industry are across the board,” boasted Dow Chemical in an internal company memo one Christmas season — “and more and more of our materials are found under the Christmas tree and on the birthday table, make some child, some toy company, and Dow, very happy indeed.” Among the chemicals used in these toys — polystyrene, polyethylene, ethylene copolymer resins, saran resins, PVC resins, or vinyls and ethyl cellulose. And a Happy New Year.
13. The Tittabawassee — The Tittabawassee is a river and river basin polluted by Dow in its hometown, Midland, Michigan.
14. Brazos River, Freeport, Texas — A February 1971 headline in the Houston Post read: “Brazos River is Dead.” In 1970 and 1971, Dow’s operation there was sending more than 4.5 billion gallons of wastewater per day into the Brazos and on into the Gulf of Mexico.
15. Toxic Trespass — Doyle writes: “Dow Chemical has been polluting property and poisoning people for nearly a century, locally and globally — trespassing on workers, consumers, communities, and innocent bystanders — on wildlife and wild places, on the global biota and the global genome. … Dow Chemical must end its toxic trespass.”
16. Holmesburg Experiments — In January 1981, a Philadelphia Inquirer story revealed that Dow Chemical paid a University of Pennsylvania dermatologist to test dioxin on prisoners at Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia. Tests were conducted in 1964 on 70 inmates.
17. Worker deaths — Dow has a long history of explosions and fires at its facilities, well documented by Doyle. One example, in May 1979: an explosion ripped through Dow Chemical’s Pittsburgh facility, killing two workers and injuring more than 45 others.
18. Brain tumors — In 1980, investigators found 25 workers with brain tumors at the company’s Freeport, Texas facility — 24 of which were fatal.
19. Saran Wrap — The thin slice of plastic invaluable to our lives, Saran Wrap was produced by Dow until consumers were looking for Dow products to boycott. Dow decided to get out of consumer products for this reason — it sold off Saran Wrap — and since then the company, now the world’s largest plastics maker, just manufactures the chemical feeds that manufacturers use to make our consumer products.
20. Bhopal — Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we seek to bring to justice those who trespass against us.

The point about this list is the association of Dow with these historical misdemeanours, not necessarily the fact of them.

Dow has disclaimed any responsibility for the Bhopal incident on the basis that it did not own Union Carbide at the time. Dow has stated:

Twenty years ago on December 3, 1984, one of the most tragic incidents in the history of industry occurred in Bhopal, India. Those of us in industry remember that day well, and the following days, when several thousand people died.

Although Dow never owned nor operated the plant, we — along with the rest of industry — have learned from this tragic event, and we have tried to do all we can to assure that similar incidents never happen again.

To that end, the chemical industry learned and grew as a result of Bhopal — creating Responsible Care with its strengthened focus on process safety standards, emergency preparedness, and community awareness. The industry also has worked with governmental regulators to assure that industry best practices are implemented through regulations for the protection of workers and communities.

While Dow has no responsibility for Bhopal, we have never forgotten the tragic event and have helped to drive global industry performance improvements. This is why Responsible Care was created and why these standards are essential for the protection of our employees and the communities where we live and work. Our pledge and our commitment is the full implementation of Responsible Care everywhere we do business around the world.

The real reputation issue for Dow Chemical  is that many people around the world feel that Dow is responsible as the present owners of Union Carbide. Their determination to avoid this responsibilty without regard to culpability is what is under discussion. Almost all chemical companies have skeletons in the cupboard and the chemical industry is dangerous. The company itself admits that a renewed commitment to safety has saved 10,00 lives since 1996.

Dow must stop looking at itself from within and consider what it must do to shake off the reputation issues of Dow Corning Breast implant problems, Bhopal and perhaps largest of all: Agent Orange.

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