NIDAN - DuPont - Part 1 - History

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DuPont is the third-largest chemical maker in the U.S., behind only Dow and Exxon Mobil Chemicals. In addition to chemicals, Dupont produces genetically modified seeds, synthetic fibres, coatings, electronics and security devices. DuPont's revenues totalled over $26.6 billion in 2005.

There is hardly a single chemical toxin in which DuPont has not played a major role in developing. The company pioneered the production of sulphur dioxide, leaded petrol, CFC's, and recently deep well injection of hazardous waste. The company then used dubious science, political manipulation and cover up, to avoid restrictions on their use. During its 200 years of existence, DuPont has committed a staggering amount of corporate crimes.

In the 1920s, DuPont and General Motors developed Tetraethyl Lead, or ethyl, to help car engines run more smoothly. The product has been labelled by the World Health Organisation as "the mistake of the 20th Century." The lead ingredient of leaded petrol, TEL, is said to account for 80-90% of all environmental lead contamination, and is known to retard the mental development of children, cause hypertension in adults and impair coordination. Leaded gasoline has irrevocably damaged the intelligence of two generations of American children, and is responsible for 50,000 deaths a year by heart attack and stroke.

The chemical was discovered to be dangerous to human health quite early on. In 1924, reports broke out that 80 percent of workers involved in the production of TEL, at DuPont and Standard Oil plants had been killed or severely poisoned. When TEL was pulled off the market, DuPont ran a series of advertisements in Life magazine, and managed to reverse the decision after a hearing, in which it called TEL "An Apparent Gift of God."

To entrench its market position, DuPont introduced a new car engine, that ran only on leaded petrol. The product was finally banned half a century later, after scientists conclusively proved its detrimental effects. In December 1988, the US Department of Justice sought to collect $9.2 million from DuPont, for illegally blending excessively high levels of lead, into gasoline between 1983-1985.

Once banned in the US in the 1980s, DuPont exported TEL to other countries where it was not banned. With Pemex, the Mexican Oil Company, it exported TEL to Latin America. DuPont finally sold its 40% shares in the production plant in Coatzacoalcos, Mexico in 1992. According to the Council on Economic Priorities 1993 report on DuPont, the company has "aggressively promoted the use of leaded gasoline."

In 1990, it was revealed that a former DuPont landfill site, in Newport, New Castle County, Delaware had contaminated the groundwater, both on and off the site, with heavy metals. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, the pollution potentially threatened the water supply of 131,000 people.

In March 1991, the area around DuPont's Quimica Fluor plant, in Matamoros, Mexico, was judged so toxic, that the Mexican President ordered 30,000 people to give up their homes in order to create a two mile buffer zone around the site.

In 1996, DuPont's proposal to dispose of 85 tons of toxic pollutants a year, into the Guadalupe River in Texas, prompted a local shrimper, Diane Wilson, to go on hunger strike for 31 days. The proposal related to a DuPont facility, which already disposed of 20 million gallons of wastewater a day, mainly through seven underground injection wells. Independent research has demonstrated that virtually any petrochemical plant can go to zero water discharge, with an additional capital investment of about 2 percent.

In 1998, DuPont was ordered by the US Environmental Protection Agency to carry out a $65 million clean up of its Necco Park landfill site, near Niagara Falls. This was necessary due to concerns regarding hazardous liquid seepage from the site.

In 1999, DuPont was listed by the US Public Interest Research Groups as one of the ‘Dirty Five’, the five biggest polluters in the U.S., that together spent $6,523,677 over the period 1991-1998, in lobbying Congress, the House of Representatives and Super fund-related committees, in order to prevent stricter legislation.