Number one in chemical sales in the U.S. $35 billion. 141,000 employees. Headquarters Wilmingon, Delaware.

The definitive text on this transnational has been written by Gerard Colby. It is called Du Pont Dynasty: Behind the Nylon Curtain (1984 Lyle Stuart).

Colby and Ralph Nader agree that Du Pont owns Delaware. Sixty percent of the state works for a Du Pont asset of some kind.

"Predictably", Colby writes,

"the long arm of Du Pont can also be found inWashington, D.C. Du Pont family members have represented Delaware in both houses of Congress. In the last 40 years Du Pont Lieutenants have served as representatives, senators, U.S. Attorney General, secretaries of Defense, Directors of the CIA and even Supreme Court Justices. With this power 'the armorers of the Republic', as they like to call themselves, have helped drive America into world wars, sabotaged world disarmament conferences ..."

Co-owner of the Salem nuclear power plant in the Delaware River, the Du Pont asset Delmarva Power and Light has supported a facility literally built on sand. The plant has had structural cracks, radioactive water leaks and incidents of over-pressurization.

"The Du Ponts," writes Colby,

"have a big stake in nuclear power. Their chemical company helped make the atomic and hydrogen bombs for the government, operates the nation's only processor of heavy water, tritium, and weapons grade plutonium . . . For years Du Pont has been one of the government's largest nuclear contractors, and its recently acquired oil subsidiary Conoco (Continental Oil Company) owns one of the largest uranium reserves and processing mills in the United States."

Therefore, Du Pont is one of the major major guilty parties in the nuclear waste disposal problem -- which, of couse, as any jackass can see by now, is insoluble and sets up the planet for more and more radiation leaks and spills.

Du Pont's Deepwater manufacturing complex in southern New Jersey consists of over 400 buildings. It was first closed down, Colby states, in the 1920's by the U.S. Surgeon General,

"... for poisoning its workers.

Deep within its bowels, embedded in plants and buildings, uranium oxide residue left behind by Du Pont's involvement in producing the first atomic bombs for the Manhattan Project slowly penetrates the lives of thousands of workers, who are either unsuspecting or to terrified of unemployment to allow themselves to wonder. Other chemical poisonings of workers at Deepwater have already contributed to New Jersey's Salem County's having the highest bladder cancer death rate in the nation."

Du Pont owns the drug firm Endo Labs. Endo has sold a pain reliever Dipyrone (Valpirone in Latin America). This drug, outlawed for most uses in the United States, and all uses in Australia, can and does cause death by altering blood composition and attacking the bone marrow. However, no heavy warnings are displayed on the bottle in Latin America. Death is an acceptable end result.

• Du Pont has fought health on all fronts when it's bad for business, and it frequently is.

• Du Pont objected to the EPA lowering lead content in gasoline. It was and is a major manufacturer of leaded gasoline, despite solid evidence that lead causes brain damage.

• It stonewalled widespread warnings about the danger of workers; exposure to low level radiation at its Savannah River nuclear plant, where they make all the weapons grade plutonium in the western hemisphere.

• It stonewalled evidence of the plant's radioactive contamination of the Tuscaloosa, south Carolina, aquifer.

• It denied the cancer causing effects of its Alpha-nepthylamine in dye and pigment manufacturing.

• It held back employee medical data to stop a federal investigation of a Du Pont plant at Belle, West Virginia, where the cancer rate was high.

• Its director of R&D, Dr. Ted Cairas, "successfully refuted" charges that the famous outbreak of Legionnaires' Disease actually came from leaks in the Bellevue Stafford Hotel's air-conditioning system -- which contained Du Pont's F-11 Flurocarbon refrigerant. F-11, which, with a tiny amount of heat, breaks down into phosgene, a nerve gas.

In 1980 Du Pont issued a confidential book on manipulating its own troublesome workers (and busting unions). This was part of its answer to revelations

• that at its Chambers facility in Northern Delaware, carciogens like chlorobenzene, toluene, and D-dichlorobenzene were being wafted into the atmosphere;
• that Du Pont's Newport pigments plant was poisoning the Potomac aquifer, "a major source of drinking water for Northern Delaware" (Colby);
• that Newport and Cherry Island and Tybouts Corner and Llangollen were all being cited by a Congressional Report as dangerous landfills used by Du Pont.

In 1992, ( the most recent year available for figures) Du Pont produced three quarters of billion pounds of toxic and/or carcinogenic industrial waste.

(Note: All these corporate industrial waste figures come from the astonishing report Toxic Wastes '95 issued by Inform Inc., 120 Wall Street, New York, New York 10005.)

Colby concludes that the inner-core of the Du Pont family -- about fifty men and women -- own assets worth 211 billion dollars (as of 1984!).

Is there any field in which this super-rich empire of companies has not caused toxic trouble? Colby writes:

"Du Pont in May 1977 confirmed that its own studies indicated 'excess cancer incidents and cancer mortality among workers exposed to Acrylonitrile at a Du Pont textile fibers and synthetic rubber; the chemical was also suspected by the Food and Drug Administration of migrating into beverages in plastic containers made with Acrylonitrile. The FDA has already closed three Monsanto plants that made such plastic bottles. Some 120,000 workers in the United States were exposed to Acrylonitrile manufacturing. When the number of consumers who used plastic bottles made with the chemical were also included, the figure ran into the millions with incalculable long-term effects."

The Crimes have never stopped. A 1964 (!) internal memo from Du Pont physiologist, G.J. Stoops, revealed that even then, sixteen years before Du Pont would face a suit by six of its workers suffering from terminal lung cancer -- asbestosis -- the company knew that its widespread use of asbestos insulation was a major health hazard.

Du Pont is chemicalization of life in this world. There is hardly a field of commercial toxicity in which Du Pont has not played a major role.

Although now, in 1996, we can try to say that all of Gerard Colby's revelations are "history", in fact the long-term effects of chemical lunacy live on. That is one of the points about chemical hazards -- they tend to persist.

Du Pont in 1988 decided it would phase out its world leading production of CFC's (chlorofluorocarbons), which are said to be the major source of depletion in the ozone layer. Not only has it continued to stonewall the issue while producing CFC's, it has put forward a likely successor to this compound, HFC-134A is in part made out of CFC's and in addition produces carbon tetrachloride, a poison, as a byproduct.

Karen Lohr, a spokesperson for Ozone Action, told reporter Beth Burrows in her fall 1993 Boycott Quarterly article on Du Pont, ". . . Du Pont announced on March 8, 1993, that they plan to continue to produce and profit from ozone destroying chemicals until 2030. They will only do a partial halt of manufacturing CFC's, having agreed only to end production in developed countries."

In a ten-year fiasco and tragedy (1985-1995), Du Pont set out to build a nylon factory in Goa, India. Du Pont, to address Bhopal-like concerns of local people, placed an ad in a Goa newspaper which said, "We will not handle, use, sell, transport or dispose of a product unless we can do it in a environmentally sound manner."

Of couse, Du Pont had already made an ironclad pact with its Indian subsidiary that any damage claims resulting from a toxic incident at the Goa plant would be settled entirely at the local level with no money drain on the parent company.

Then Goa activists discovered a Du Pont memo form the U.S. to its Goan company. The memo admitted that ground water around the new plant, waste water from manufacturing, recycling processes and air quality were all issues up for grabs -- safegauards were not up to proper standards.

Four months of confrontations at the plant with local police ensued. In January 1995, the police fired into a crowd and killed a twenty-five year old man.

Du Pont decided to move the plant. It chose a new site near Madras. Opposition there is also building . . .

In the Multinational Monitor of October 1991, Jack Doyle writes in a story title "Du Pont's Disgraceful Deeds":

"Du Pont is the single largest corporate polluter in the United States. In 1989, the latest year for which data are available from the U.S. EPA, Du Pont and its subsidiaries reported discharging more than 348 million pounds of pollutants to land, air and water . . . Much of the company's current waste is disposed of by deep-well injection. Du Pont leads all other companies in the use of this technique, injecting 254.9 million pounds of toxic wastes into underground geologic formations in 1989 . . . but underground injection is an uncertain science at best . . . Thus far the U.S. GAO reports there have been at least 23 cases in which drinking water contaminations is known to have been caused by deep well injected oil and gas wastes.

"Du Pont has had operational problems with deep well injection . . . acid waste corrosion of well casings and weldings has . . . been reported at some of Du Pont's Ingleside Wells."

What other toxic products does Du Pont make? Their pharmaceutical operations are replete with them.

• Du Pont Pharma Company manufactures several strong anti-cough medicines including Hycodan, a drug for the symptomatic relief of cough. The Physicians' Desk Reference (PDR) (note: all quotes on drug info are from the PDR) issues this warning: "may be habit-forming . . . can produce drug dependence of the morphine type." Adverse reactions include mental clouding, lethargy, dizziness, mood changes, vomiting, urethral spasm, respiratory depression.

• Percocet and Percodan are two well-known pain killers. They can "produce dependence of the morphine type." Adverse reactions include dizziness and vomiting.

• Revia is used in the "treatment" of alcohol dependence. "Its use in patients with active liver disease must be carefully considered in light of its hepatoxic effects . . . Patients should be warned of the risk of hepatic injury and advised to stop the use of Revia and seek medical attention if they experience symptoms of acute hepatitis".

• Sinemet is used to treat Parkinson's disease (not a cure). Adverse reactions include involuntary movements, paranoid ideation, psycotic episodes, depression with or without development of suicidal tendencies, dementia, numbness, nightmares, abdominal pain, malignant melanoma, loss of hair, dark sweat, blurred vision, bizarre breathing patterns, and a life-threatening neurologic syndrome called NMS.

• Symmetrel is used for the "prevention" and treatment of signs of infection by strains of influenza type A virus. Adverse reactions include suicide attempts, blurring of vision, sporadic incidents of the life-threatnening NMS (neurologic) syndrome. Upon dose reduction or withdrawal of the drug, nausea, dizziness and insomnia can occur.

Du Pont and Merck are partners in pharmaceutical research. Other researchers correctly linking these two megaliths may want to document the toxicity of the major drug output of Merck.

Du Pont makes Comforel pillows, comforters and mattress pads; the fibers Lycra, Dacron, Nomex and Tyvek; Teflon; refined petroleum products are sold under the brand names Conoco, Jet and Seca; Remington firearms products. A Du Pont fungicide Benlate destroyed wholesale growers ornamental plants in 1993. In August 1995, the case concluded. A federal judge determined that Du Pont had kept vital soil testing info from the growers. The judges in rendering a verdict against Du Pont to the tune of $115 million said, "Put in laypersons' terms, Du Pont cheated, . . . consciously, deliberately and with purpose."

In April, 1996, a U.S. family will go to court against Du Pont charging that their use of this same home fungicide Benlate caused their son to be born without eyes (see Multinational Monitor, December 1995).

Earlier in October 1995, two other Du Pont fungicides, Benomyl and Cardazim, became the focus of a court case filed in Florida. The lawyers representing families in Scotland are claiming extreme physical damage to their clients from these fungicides' use.