104. The Kepone Shakes (Life Science Products)
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This episode of Swindled may contain graphic descriptions or audio recordings of disturbing events which may not be suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised. Nearly all adults living on Martinique and neighbouring Guadeloupe have traces of Chlordecone in their blood. Tons of the chemical was sprayed on banana crops, contaminating soil, rivers and coastal waters.

Stop me if you've heard this one. In the late 1490s, a Spanish explorer named Christopher Columbus washed ashore a beautiful land inhabited by indigenous people. In a few centuries time, after some resistance, those indigenous people would be eradicated by British and French settlers through violence, disease, or free boat rides to Dominica and replaced with enslaved Africans.

Obviously, I'm talking about the Caribbean archipelago of Guadeloupe in the French West Indies. In a few more bloody centuries, Guadeloupe and the neighboring island of Martinique would officially become French territories. The sugar cane turned into banana plantations. Slavery was abolished, at least on paper anyway. The same people own the land, make the rules, and collect all the money.

At the same time, the approximately 750,000 new natives of the islands suffer from chronic unemployment, widespread poverty, food shortages, and political unrest. In modern-day Guadeloupe, you will also find the natives enjoy the world's highest rate of prostate cancer. It's always been assumed that the diagnoses were related to the 300 tons of chlordocone that covers one-third of the land surface and surrounding waters of the islands.

Chlordocone is a pesticide, a colorless, powdery substance that the maskless workers would apply with their bare hands on the base and surrounding soil of banana trees. Chlordocone was incredibly effective against the banana weevil, a relentless little bugger that has been known to destroy roots and ruin entire crops. In addition to being incredibly effective,

Chlorodacone is also incredibly persistent, meaning the effects of the pesticide are seemingly everlasting in the environment. A selling point because it takes an estimated 400 years for it to degrade in some soils naturally, and it doesn't dissipate in water. Instead, Chlorodacone is ingested by the bottom feeders and bioaccumulates up the food chain until a more concentrated version reaches you.

And as it turns out, Chlordocone is persistent in the human body as well. The pesticide continually reprocesses in the liver and fatty tissue and takes almost 200 days to flush out. Again, Guadeloupe and Martinique are covered in 300 tons of Chlordocone. Almost 95% of the population has traces of it in their blood.

Epidemiological studies have shown that chlorotricone exposure is associated with long-term health problems including cancer, premature births, and cognitive and motor development disorders. Long-term effects have only recently become more understood, but the World Health Organization classified chlorotricone as a probable human carcinogen back in 1979. The United States banned the substance from production and use in 1976.

France, on the other hand, did not ban the use of Chlordocone until 1990. In fact, a French company bought the patent for Chlordocone and began manufacturing it in Brazil for use in Guadeloupe, Martinique, and other locations. Even after mainland France prohibited its use, the government exempted the French West Indies from the Chlordocone ban until 1993.

The owners were also allowed to use their remaining stock up, and when that was depleted, the ban was circumvented by illegally importing Chlordocone to the islands under a different name, a practice that continued until roughly 2003. As usual, it was an entirely financially based decision to keep using this particular pesticide. There were alternatives to Chlordocone, but Chlordocone was cheaper, and again, persistent.

so persistent that tens of thousands of acres of agricultural land in Guadalupe and Martinique remain unusable, leaving the islanders almost entirely dependent on the importation of food. For the first time, a French president has publicly acknowledged Claudicone poisoning in the French West Indies, and he has asked for a report to explain the magnitude of the contamination. If no viable solution is found soon, Martinique's land will stay soiled by this poisonous pesticide for centuries to come.

For years, the French government wouldn't even acknowledge the issue, much less take responsibility. President Emmanuel Macron finally did so in 2018. He visited the islands and labeled the chloro-cone contamination an environmental scandal enabled by "collective blindness."

But Macron stopped short of saying that they should have known better. Quote, "It should not be said that it is carcinogenic." In 2020, widespread protests swept across Guadeloupe and Martinique when the French government ordered mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations.

The islanders did not trust the Parisians to have their best interests at heart. After all, it was the same government that had no meaningful remediation plan or action related to chlortocone until 30 years had passed. The same government that had approved and prolonged the use of chlortocone in the first place

Several environmental organizations had filed a complaint against the government for reckless endangerment back in 2006, but nothing had ever come of it. But then, almost 18 years later, the investigation was complete and the case was finally heard. Marching on an island they say has been poisoned by pesticide. Thousands demand justice for a crime they say is two decades in the making.

and then the case was promptly dismissed. On January 2, 2023, the magistrates from the High Court of Paris condemned the use of chlorotone from 1973 to 1993, calling it, quote, "...an environmental attack whose human, economic, and social consequences affect and will affect for many years the daily life of the inhabitants of Guadeloupe and Martinique."

But the statute of limitations for any criminal prosecutions had passed, the court ruled. No individuals, businesses or governments could be held responsible. After years of trying to get the state to take responsibility, a French court has dismissed the case, citing that the accusations of poisoning were past the statute of limitations. They did acknowledge that the pesticides used could be considered a health crisis.

Victims are appealing the ruling, calling it a miscarriage of justice. The activists plan to take their case all the way to the European Court of Human Rights if the French government fails to respond. The French court also asserted that nobody knew the harmful effects of the pesticide when it was in use. Even in the 1990s, the court claimed, scientists had not established links between chlordocone and illnesses in people.

This statement appears to be patently untrue.

The reason the World Health Organization labeled Chlordocone a possible carcinogen in 1979, the reason the US banned Chlordocone use in 1976, and the reason the patent was sold to a French company in the first place is because there was a suspected link between Chlordocone exposure and human illnesses even back then. It had all played out in the media and the US courts for everyone to see in a small town called Hopewell, Virginia.

where Chlordocone was solely produced under the brand name Kepone. A chemical company is accused of knowingly poisoning its workers and the environment on this episode of Swindled.

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So many awful things have happened to this town that rude people who don't live here have called it Hopeless Virginia. Once the center of town burned down, twice the economy fell apart, and once a passing barge tore down a bridge leading into town. The keep-on mess is only the latest jinx. A funny little jingle would usually follow any mention of Hopewell, Virginia, if in an earshot of someone familiar. I smell, you smell, we all smell Hopewell.

The clever retort was usually something along the lines of "smells like money to me." Hopewell, about 25 miles southeast of Richmond, Virginia, was initially constructed as a company town for DuPont's dynamite factory, which was strategically built near the lower James River for optimal shipping and dumping.

Allied Chemical Corporation became the town's largest employer when it moved into Hopewell in the 1920s. The New Jersey-based company started out manufacturing ammonium nitrate fertilizer pebbles and then switched to synthetic fibers and then switched again to pesticides in the post-war pesticide craze of the 50s and 60s. By then, according to the welcome signs on the highway leading into town, Hopewell, Virginia was calling itself, quote, the chemical capital of the South.

One of the pesticides that Allied Chemical invented was called Kepone or Chlordocone, the end product of mixing five other chemicals in a steel vat before removing the moisture. The powdery white substance left behind was used domestically in roach and ant traps.

The bulk of it was shipped overseas to banana plantations around Europe, South America, and Central America. United Fruit was a big fan. The gray powder is Kepone, a powerful insecticide much like Aldrin and DDT, and like those other insect killers, a persistent chemical. It degrades slowly in the environment, and when it gets into the human body, it lingers. Kepone crystals enter individual body cells and disrupt their function.

From 1966 to 1974, Allied Chemical produced Kepone in-house in semi-monthly batches like some kind of craft pesticide passion project. Kepone was not one of Allied's best sellers. Its $200,000 in annual sales wasn't even significant enough for its own line item and the $3 billion in revenue Allied listed on the company's financial reports.

Eventually, the company partnered with smaller chemical companies to produce Kepone and sell it back to them, such as Hooker Chemical in Niagara Falls, New York, not yet infamous for burying 20,000 tons of toxic chemicals in Love Canal. Allied would provide all the ingredients and buy all of the finished product. Hooker Chemical agreed to make Kepone for $3 per pound.

But Hooker Chemical lost that exclusive contract in 1973 when a new upstart chemical company called Life Science Products won the keypone production bid at 54 cents per pound.

two former Allied chemical employees founded Life Science. William Moore, the new company's president, retired as Allied's Director of Agricultural Research, and Virgil Huntofti, the former plant manager for Allied's Agricultural Production Unit, became the plant manager at Life Science. At different times in their careers, both men had been responsible for the production of Kepone at Allied.

Drawing on that expertise and a $175,000 loan, the two men hastily threw together an operation in a converted gas station on Randolph Road in Hopewell to become the world's only supplier of Kepone.

Twenty working-class white men, split across two shifts, operated around the clock for $3.75 an hour to produce 6,000 pounds of keypone daily. One woman was employed to work in the reception area. Minorities were not hired, not even to push a broom.

In fact, nobody had been hired to push a broom. The factory floors and surfaces were covered in keypone and its components within days of starting production. Over time, there were piles of it everywhere, up to five inches thick.

There were concrete-like balls in the parking lots next to the annex buildings where the Kipone had mixed with water. Even the picnic tables where the Life Science employees ate lunch and drank coffee were covered in the stuff. "The Kipone was very thick in here. You couldn't see

Let's do it. Let's see. It was more like a fog. The keep home was all over the working area, all over the break area. It was just virtually impossible for anybody to walk in the plant and go straight through and come back out without getting keep home all over.

Gloves and masks were not required or provided by Life Science Products. There were no company-issued boots. But the money was good. Overtime was easy to come by because demand for the product constantly increased and turnover at the plant was high. Most workers quit because they couldn't "take it anymore." "Take what anymore?" a new hire would ask. "The Kipone Shakes," replied an old-timer who had been working there for at least two weeks.

The keypone shakes.

You know the physical symptoms from being smothered in a pesticide for up to 80 hours a week. It starts with dizziness and rashes. Then your joints and liver begin to ache. Your speech gets slurred. Your breath gets short. You start dropping pounds. Your eyes twitch rapidly. And your hands begin to shake uncontrollably. They said, wait till you get the shakes because you're going to be, you know, everybody else had the tremors the same. And they said, well, you're going to get them. And I thought it was a big joke.

- Right, and then when it started, it got real bad. I went and I got to where I had to miss work a lot.

Some employees were instructed to rub Vaseline on their faces to keep the dust off their skin as a precaution. It was discovered later that Vaseline did nothing but assist the key-pone in penetrating the skin. Local physicians did not have a clue.

Several employees had sought medical attention for the Kepone shakes but were often accused of drinking too much or they reckoned it was stress related. The sick employees were prescribed tranquilizers or a shot of Valium in the ass as one former employee described it to Gregory S. Wilson, the author of Poison Powder, a great new book about the Kepone disaster.

When Dale Gilbert, the 34-year-old operations supervisor at the life science facility, was told by a doctor in June 1975 that stress was causing the physical ailments that he shared with the others, Dale did not believe it. He had been working in the plant full-time for about six months. He had lost up to 40 pounds in a matter of weeks. Eventually, he was shaking so severely that he couldn't even go to work. The only thing stressing out Dale was his failing health.

People think of the word disabled and they think he doesn't get up and go to work, but that's only like the tip of the iceberg, Dale Gilbert told the Washington Post. I'll tell you, it's quite ego-shattering. I've always, since I was a kid, had my own responsibility, making money, and all of a sudden you can't go out and rake leaves. That's a terrible thing. I don't think you can describe it unless you go through it.

Dale Gilbert's wife set up an appointment for him with Dr. Yinan Chao, a local cardiologist who had just immigrated to the area. "I never saw anything like it before," Dr. Chao told the New York Times. "I put him in the hospital and sent a blood sample to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta." The CDC called Dr. Chao back after a few days with alarming results. Dale Gilbert had Kepone in his blood, they reported.

It was basically a new disease with unknown consequences. Initially, only the symptoms could be treated. They told me, you know, that I'm sterile, that I have an increased chance of cancer, and I've had some damage to my liver, my eyes, and some brain damage. The Centers for Disease Control also reported the findings to Dr. Robert S. Jackson, an epidemiologist at the Virginia Department of Health.

Dr. Jackson scheduled a surprise visit to the Life Science Products Facility for July 23, 1975. He arrived to find raw materials and finished products scattered throughout the facility. "Keypone was everywhere," Dr. Jackson told the New York Times. "They were sloshing around in it with no boots, gloves, or respirators on."

Dr. Jackson said that the first worker he saw could barely stand on his feet. The 23-year-old worker's eyes moved rapidly and abnormally. He complained of chest pains. Dr. Jackson arranged for the man to be sent to the hospital and started to examine the others. Several of them were in just as bad of shape.

By that evening, Dr. Jackson had admitted seven Life Science Products employees to the hospital. Hundreds more awaited testing, but Dr. Jackson had seen enough. He met with the owners of Life Science, William Moore and Virgil Hentofte, and informed them that if they did not voluntarily shut down the plant, he would act on behalf of the Department of Health and do it for them. Moore and Hentofte agreed but were granted an exemption to deplete their remaining stock of ingredients.

as long as proper safety equipment was used. The crisis was only beginning. Support for Swindled comes from Rocket Money. Most Americans think they spend about $62 per month on subscriptions. That's very specific, but get this, the real number is closer to $300. That is literally thousands of dollars a year, half of which we've probably forgotten about.

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Bill Moyer brought the keypone dust home on his clothes and it wound up in the bodies of his wife and child. Mrs. Moyer, like other wives, is showing signs of the poisoning. I've got a two-year-old son at home and my husband is sterile. He's the only child I've got and he's got just about half as much keypone in his system that I have. As far as I know, he might be sterile. He may not be able to have a family of his own.

Or he might have brain damage. And he just might not make it. I don't know. And he's all I've got. And since he's sterile, I can't have any more. He was making good money. But now that I look back, it wasn't worth it. Not what we're facing right now. It's just, I can't believe it. I'm going to quit.

After the discovery of keypone poisoning and several employees at the Life Science Products facility, widespread blood testing took place in Hopewell, Virginia during the summer of 1975. The story became national news. 216 residents tested positive, including 149 current Life Science employees. 76 of those employees had visible symptoms.

28 of them were hospitalized. 14 of the men, the most exposed, were diagnosed as sterile, including Nicky Schoen, the 24-year-old high school dropout that had just gotten out of jail and was trying to get his life back on track by taking a job at the life science plant in Hopewell. A few months later, he was in the hospital getting his head scanned to see if the pesticide had been embedded in his brain.

Nikki turned violent and suicidal. All hope was lost. "Who in the hell wants a man that's got Kepone and can't have kids?" he rhetorically asked the Washington Post. "Nikki Schoen has the highest Kepone count on his body of any of the victims. One doctor says he has 37,000 times more Kepone in his liver than is permitted in a public sewer.

Now the doctors here at the Medical College of Virginia wonder whether the abnormal readings they've gotten through this brain scan machine can explain Nicky's loss of memory, his talk of suicide, the sometimes violent outbursts that caused Nicky to smash his fist through a hospital window. Other patients, normally calm and responsible, have recently turned violent too, injuring their wives or children.

In many cases, Kepone beat them to the punch. Dale Gilbert's wife, Jan Gilbert, was hospitalized with an enlarged liver and an enlarged spleen. Jan had simply greeted her husband daily when he returned home from work and washed his clothes.

I would wash those clothes, his keep home clothing, and then right after that I would put a load of my little girl's clothes in and my clothes. Well, it was still in the washing machine and the water wasn't dissolving it and as a result we both would break out into a rash.

Kipone was also found in the blood of 10 children and wives of life science workers. According to the New York Times, of five known pregnancies among life science personnel, two resulted in stillbirths and one in spontaneous abortion. Some were born exposed.

Some of them were exposed later. Kepone is transmissible through breast milk and skin contact. As a reminder, it is not recommended to hand your baby to a man who's covered in pesticide and shaking like a leaf. When the effects started on you, I could tell it in my nervous system on my hand. They would start shaking real bad like that. And then when they got to a peak, you couldn't hold yourself still. You couldn't drink a cup of coffee without pouring it on you. Do the symptoms last forever?

In 1975, nobody really knew. Dr. Robert S. Jackson at the Virginia Department of Health at the time said, "...we have little to no information on the long-term effect of human exposure to low levels of the material or what level represents risk."

The fact that there was any risk at all was news to Delbert White, the plant supervisor at Life Science Products. Del White was in constant contact with Kepone. He was now sterile. His wife and 9-year-old son had traces of it in their blood. The former Marine claims he had concerns about the toxicity of Kepone earlier in the year, and he brought those concerns to Life Science ownership. Mr. White says they "lied" to his face.

I trusted two men that sat in a room and told me that there was absolutely nothing out there that could hurt me. I trusted in the fact that we have enough protection agencies now that

A man shouldn't have to walk into a plant and wonder whether it's safe to work. The two men you trusted were the two men who owned the plant. Mr. Moore and Mr. Huntofta said and told me that there was absolutely nothing back there that would hurt a human being. They let me down. They lied to me. And for that reason, I feel like that they lied to these men also through me. They lied to me. That's a serious accusation to make against any man. I just made it, and without regret.

On the December 14th, 1975 episode of the CBS News show 60 Minutes, host Dan Rather asked Life Science Products president William P. Moore about that conversation with plant supervisor Dale White. According to him, it never happened. Did you tell him that Kepone was harmless? No. That's for sure that Kepone

William Moore would not say that because he knew Kepone wasn't harmless. Or did he?

Moore told Dan Rather that he had never seen Allied Chemical's blue book on Kepone, which is an extensive document that Allied had provided to him that outlined the safety precautions for dealing with the toxic substance. It was published in 1961, 13 years before Life Science Products started producing the chemical. Are you familiar with these materials? No.

Never seen them. Never seen them. Right in the summary, very top, the characteristic effect of this compound is the development of DDT-like tremors, the severity of which depends upon dosage level and duration of exposure. Quote, unquote, from the first sentence of the summary. You didn't know about this? No, no.

That blue book on Kepone also included the results of studies in which Kepone gave cancer to rats and mice. Another test at Ohio State University in 1962 determined that Kepone had the same adverse effects on the human reproductive system as it did on quail and other birds. An internal memo from Allied acknowledged the results too. The investigation of this compound reveals it to be a very toxic material if chronically ingested with possible malignant effects.

The National Cancer Institute performed its own key-pone test in 1971 and again found that the chemical caused cancer in rats along with impaired fertility, tremors, and other ill effects. The results of those particular studies were never publicly revealed until after the Hopewell incident.

The rumors that allied wanted the results buried. Otherwise, in order to sell Kepone, it would have had to spend more time and money on more tests to get it approved. Instead, Allied Chemical listed Kepone as a single ingredient for other pesticides, which allowed for more efficient maneuvering of governmental red tape. Also explains why the company decided to ship the bulk of it overseas.

So, if Allied Chemical was aware of Kepone's toxicity, one could safely assume that Life Science Products, the manufacturer of the pesticide, would also be familiar. Not so, according to company president William Moore. Neither he nor Virgil Huntofti, two men at one time responsible for manufacturing Kepone at Allied, were aware of how dangerous it could be.

And despite having all of the knowledge at his fingertips and a big blue book with a warning on the cover, he didn't bother to even thumb through it. Was he ignorant and lazy or was he a liar? According to Allied Chemical, whose spokesperson referred to William P. Moore as the "principal expert on Kepone", he was lying. The fact that Moore and Huntofty were so knowledgeable about the substance was "one of the reasons that led the management to give the contract to this company."

Allied Chemical was not so subtly shifting the blame. The company was quote, "very much distressed by the Kepone matter, but legally we don't feel responsible." That would be for a court to decide.

Multiple lawsuits from 56 workers, their wives and children, were filed against Allied Chemical, Life Science Products and Hooker Chemical, seeking more than $100 million in combined damages. Until then, many of the sick workers and their families lived on workman's compensation, about $149 a week.

but that would run out sooner than later. Most were hoping just to live long enough to see that day. I mean, I'm asking myself in three years, am I going to have a terminal case of cancer? In two years, will I have it? Maybe, you know, a lot of it gives the rats the cancer.

that they give it to, but a lot of things give rats cancer, don't give humans cancer, but I gotta figure my odds of having cancer in the future is a lot better than maybe yours. Maybe, but the results of a parallel environmental investigation revealed that nobody's future in Hopewell looked promising. The scope of the crisis suddenly ballooned. We have measured cupone in the river,

in the sludge or the slurry at the bottom of the river in the dirt. We've measured it in shellfish and fish miles and miles and miles downriver from the plant, 30 to 40 miles. All of this area in which Hopewell resides provides the aquifer for the entire southeastern Virginia and tidewater area. Whether it will be now or six months from now or 10 years from now, Keepo and Willby and their water supply.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Virginia State Water Control Board found traces of keypone in the fish and sediment in the James River. It was later found miles downriver from Hopewell in the Chesapeake Bay. Fish sold in markets on the East Coast were discovered to have been contaminated. The problem was worsening by the day. Russell Train, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, said today the problem is worsening. Present indications...

are that it does migrate. There are indications that it is moving up the bay, at least somewhat at the present time. If you assume that this trend continues, then you've got a problem for the entire Chesapeake Bay. Let's be honest, when Life Science products began production in 1974, the James River was already polluted.

By then the river had served as a chemical toilet for the local factories for years. But that pollution was exacerbated because Allied Chemical, when it was producing keypone under its own roof, dumped its poison waste directly into the James River. They knew it was wrong. There were internal memos at Allied, some authored by Virgil Hentofte, who would later co-found Life Science Products, discussing how Corv engineers regulations required them to report any discharge of a toxic substance

They realized that discharging thousands of gallons of bad batches of Kepone at once would never be approved. The core would probably require an expensive pre-treatment process, which wouldn't look good on a balance sheet. "Well, the thing to do is do nothing," one of the Allied bosses wrote. So Allied kept dumping quietly into the James.

When Life Science Products took over Kepone Production, the waste was dumped directly into the sewer. That's called progress. The only problem was that the company's discharges far exceeded the agreed upon levels with the city of Hopewell, both in volume and toxicity.

According to the Richmond Times Dispatch, the Life Science Products discharges were equivalent to a chemical version of the atomic bomb, for commercial Kepone is diluted to 1/8th of 1% strength, while the Kepone discharge from the plant was 88-94% pure. So pure that in February 1974, just a month into production, Life Science Products accidentally shut down the Hopewell Sewage Treatment Plant.

Kepone, the very effective pesticide, killed all the natural bacteria used to break down any solid waste in the water. The digester systems at the treatment facility became overwhelmed and failed. The system was inoperable. The city officials traced the problem back to Life Science. The company essentially crossed its arms and threatened to shut down the facility and eliminate all the jobs it had brought to the town rather than work on a solution.

The city of Hopewell took no action, nor were the state or the EPA alerted to the matter. But what about the government agencies who should have stopped the key bone spread before it started? With the exception of Virginia State epidemiologist Robert Jackson, who probably exceeded his authority by shutting down life science within hours of getting a report that workers were being poisoned.

None of the city, county, state, or federal agencies charged with protecting the public took corrective action during the 16 months Life Science was making key phones.

So the dumping continued, and some say life science products became even more emboldened. There are reports that company pickups were spotted draining entire tanks of a smoking substance into unlined holes in the ground, in broad daylight, just absolutely disrespecting Mother Earth. At the moment, we estimate there's 100,000 pounds of keepone in the James River sediments.

On the bottom of the James River. On the bottom of the James River. In December 1975, the James River was shut down for 100 miles, from Richmond to the Chesapeake Bay. They had no choice, according to Virginia Governor Mills E. Godwin. To close this great and historic river was indeed a drastic step, but I felt the public interest required action forthwith, and I could do nothing else.

Soon after, the chemical capital of the South Signs were taken down and thrown in the dump where they joined whatever was left of the local fishing industry. The closure of the James River decimated people's livelihoods, seafood, hospitality, tourism, right down the drain like a

like a bad batch of keypone. August and September, I dropped from 34 trips to six trips. I dropped from 28 trips to four trips for this month. Everybody is scared to death and the name of it is keypone. The environmental disaster gave rise to more civil lawsuits against Allied Chemical Life Science Products et al.,

The fishing industry's railroad workers who handled Kepone, the state of Virginia, and others sought damages of their own. Combined with the lawsuits from former workers and families, the claimants sought more than $200 million, and criminal charges lingered. I think we should not fool ourselves into thinking that legislative changes or procedural changes can really provide any ultimate protection

against willful acts by the very people who have the most knowledge of the probable effects of those acts, any more than laws against murder can keep people from committing murder.

In January 1976, the United States Congress held Senate Subcommittee investigations and public hearings into the key-pone contamination of Hopewell, Virginia, which had featured a collection of failures shared by governments, industry, regulatory agencies, and the medical community.

The subcommittee hearings aimed to determine the roles and awareness of those involved. Management admitted that the reason that everybody was shaken was because of Kepone. However, it was supposed to be something about the Kepone would cause you to

to shake but it wasn't anything to worry about. Former employees of Life Science Products testified and recounted their experiences and reiterated that upper management never warned them that Kepone was dangerous to humans. Co-founders William Moore and Virgil Hentofte also testified and again downplayed their knowledge claiming not to have known the extent of the danger or the severity of their employees illnesses. What was done for the people inside the plant

Well, we, as I mentioned, we had no contact that I'm aware of from either OSHA or the... Never mind OSHA. What about your own corporate responsibility? What about the people in the plant? Did you ever go around and talk to the people in the plant? Somebody must have known these people in the plant were having problems. Who went and talked to them? Actually, this was not brought to my attention. You knew that you had a very toxic material that you were dealing with.

Is that a fair statement? No, I don't know that that... I knew we had a toxic material. When did you first become aware of the total toxic nature of Kepone? Well, I don't know if I'm totally aware now. It seems to be more toxic than I was aware of. We know it's not a very benign substance. I mean, we know that. Well, that's right, and this may be one of the real problems.

When a person is working with, let's say cyanide, one tends to know that if he gets it on him, he is dead. Apparently, Kepone is not this type of poison. Well, Kepone is a poison, however. Yes, it is. I am vitally concerned, and there's not one human suffering that doesn't concern me very, very vitally.

William Moore, the president of Life Science, said he usually worked in the lab 25 miles away from the Kepone plant. He rarely interacted with the substance or the workers who handled it. He claimed there was no way for him to know the severity of the situation. Virgil Hentofte, on the other hand, said he was working near the Kepone every day with a pregnant wife at home. He had symptoms of his own. Proof, he says, that he wasn't aware of the danger.

Even if the chemical producers were oblivious, as they claimed, there were more than enough warning signs to prevent widespread contamination. Orban DuBose was the first to complain. He got fired for refusing to work where there was keep on dust floating around in the air, but he still got sick. Well, I had got to the point where I was nervous and I snapped at my wife and family and

At the life science plant in 1974, a year before Dale Gilbert went to the doctor, worker Orban DuBose refused to unclog a rotor. He was tired of getting keypone all over him.

so he was fired for insubordination. In return, Orban filed a complaint with OSHA detailing the hazardous work environment and his related health issues. OSHA dismissed Orban-Dubose's complaint without investigation after Life Science told them he was nothing more than a disgruntled worker and they never followed up.

In another instance of regulatory failure, there was an air pollution monitoring station located 200 yards away from the Kepone plant, collecting data that would have shown there had been a dust problem since day one. The only problem was that no one ever looked at it, despite everyone in the area having to sweep Kepone dust off of their windshields every time they drove home.

It may strike you as incredible because it is, but this air pollution control monitoring device is located only a block away from the plant, right down there. But nobody caught the fact that keyphone was literally being poured into the air. All officials did was measure the dust around. Nobody analyzed it. Nobody knew or cared about keyphone. When they finally got around to analyzing some old samples a few weeks ago, it turned out that half the dust was keyphone.

By the spring of 1976, the former Life Science Products building had been demolished. Cleanup was well underway. Much of it was spearheaded by Allied Chemical, who spent almost $400,000 gutting the problematic plant.

The company also funded studies at the Medical College of Virginia to help find a cure for the poisoned workers. Not because a grand jury was about to convene to determine if Allied Chemical was legally responsible for the disaster and the optics were good, no. It was about the goodness of their corporate hearts.

However, the company did want to make it clear that their good deeds were not a sign of guilt. According to G.C. Matheson, president of Allied's Agricultural Division, "...we do not wish our cooperation to be misinterpreted as a concession that we are to blame or that we are legally responsible for the activities of persons not under our control."

A grand jury convened in May 1976 and in a series of indictments, the Allied Chemical Corporation was charged with a thousand plus criminal charges for violations of the Clean Water Act and the Refuse Act for discharging its poison into the river and conspiracy counts for violating federal pollution laws. Allied Chemical was faced with a possible fine of 17 million dollars

Five allied employees were charged with one count of conspiracy for interfering with pollution control programs. In addition to fines, those individual defendants faced a year in jail.

Life Science Products and its owners William Moore and Virgil Hentofte were indicted on 153 charges of violating the Water Pollution Control Act, as well as a conspiracy count to violate federal pollution regulations. Both individuals and the company were facing fines of $3.8 million each.

The city of Hopewell was also named in 153 counts for allowing the discharge of keypone waste in the sewer system and three additional counts for failing to report it. The city faced a fine of $3.9 million. Hours after the indictment, Allied Chemical released a statement criticizing the decision.

The scope of the criminal actions was unwarranted and unprecedented. The extreme reaction shown by the indictments appears to reflect our official frustration over the failure of regulatory agencies to do their proper job. Allied denies the allegations that have been reported and intends to defend vigorously the interests of the company, its employees, and stockholders. The company's general record on environmental and safety policies has been excellent.

The city of Hopewell did not defend vigorously. On June 25th, 1976, it pleaded no contest to 10 of the 156 charges against it. Hopewell, a city, was fined $10,000 and put on five years probation. All the remaining charges were dismissed. U.S. District Judge Robert R. Murthage later said he regretted fining the city of Hopewell such a small amount.

because later litigation revealed just how truly negligent it had acted. On August 10th, 1976, Life Science Products co-founder Virgil Hentofte pleaded no contest to 79 of the 153 counts against him. He agreed to testify against Allied and received a $25,000 fine and five years probation.

The other co-founder William Moore eventually pleaded no contest for himself and Life Science Products. He was fined $25,000 and sentenced to five years probation. Life Sciences was fined the entire $3.8 million which was entirely symbolic because the company was utterly insolvent.

The individual allied employees charged with the conspiracy were all dismissed or acquitted. The judge did not want to pin the blame on what happened to what he called lower-level employees. Because of this ruling, not a single person in the Keep On scandal would serve jail time.

and other surprising moves. Allied Chemical gave up on its vigorous defense later that month and pleaded no contest to the 940 pollution charges. The company was losing the public relations battle and wanted to end the chatter quickly. As a bonus, the plea could not be used as an admission of fault in its pending civil litigation. The 150 conspiracy charges were eventually dismissed.

as punishment for the pollution charges judge murhidge enforced the maximum a fine of 13 million 215 000 was the largest fine ever imposed in a federal pollution case

He believed Allied was acutely aware that it was polluting the river. Quote, Quote,

I think it was done because of what it considered to be business necessities and money took the forefront. A federal judge today imposed the maximum fine of $13 million on Allied Chemical for polluting the James River in Virginia with the insecticide Capone. Allied used to make Capone in Hopewell, Virginia. Later it got its Capone supply from Life Science Products Company of Hopewell. However,

Judge Merhage hesitated to hand over the entire $13 million fine to the U.S. Treasury. The judge announced he would, quote, be interested in any legal method to keep that money in Virginia to help the people directly injured by Kepone. Allied Chemical had an idea. How about they use $8 million of the fine to establish an environmental endowment fund which would be spent on projects to enhance the environment in the Commonwealth of Virginia?

That way the federal government wouldn't receive all the money and it would count as a charitable contribution for the company, a tax-deductible disaster. Judge Merhage loved this idea and called it, quote, a very generous gesture by the Allied Chemical Corporation, who he referred to as, quote, good guys in my book.

Judge Merhage also reduced Allied's remaining $5 million fine to $1.4 million. The day after the endowment was created, Allied issued a statement of regret for its part in the Kepone contamination. Soon after, the bulk of the civil litigation was settled out of court for undisclosed sums. Reportedly, these settlements totaled about $3 million, mostly covered by the company's insurance.

The former workers, families, fishermen, and others initially sought nearly $200 million. In total, the Keep Home disaster cost Allied Chemical about $30 million. The following year, 1977, the company recorded $3 billion in sales.

To their credit, the Virginia Environmental Endowment was a good idea. The monies had been used to fund studies on the health effects of capone exposure, bail out the seafood industry, and helped build a new sewage treatment plant for the city of Hopewell, which opened in August 1977. The following year, the new sewage plant malfunctioned, resulting in discharge that was actually dirtier than before it had entered treatment. The plant was adding excessive amounts of chemicals of its own to the water,

They were fined $1,600. Fortunately, none of those added chemicals was Kepone. The Federal Environmental Protection Agency has ordered a ban on a dozen pesticides containing Kepone, the chemical suspected of poisoning production workers. The pesticides are made by Allied Chemical Company, which agreed to the ban, although it argues with the findings that Kepone causes liver cancer. The remaining reserves of Kepone were eventually shipped and buried in a former salt mine in West Germany.

The state of Idaho and the country of Wales rejected disposal offers. South Wales is not prepared to become a receptacle for the excreta of an incontinent sector of American capitalism, a Wales member of parliament told Fortune magazine.

Speaking of excrement, "We found that in humans, cholestyramine increases the rate of disappearance of Kepone from the blood and from the fat." "It draws it out of the body." "It draws it out of the body and eliminates it from the tissues." In February 1978, Dr. Philip Gazalian at the Medical College of Virginia discovered that the cholesterol drug cholestyramine sped up the elimination of Kepone from the body by 50%.

by preventing reabsorption and allowing it to exit through the bowels. This discovery virtually eliminated the short-term effects of Kepone poisoning. However, at the time, the long-term effects remained completely unknown. For most former life science products workers, the symptoms have dissipated. Others still exhibited signs 10 years later. They all worry about cancer.

To decrease everyone else's chances in the wake of the Kepone scandal, the state passed the Virginia Toxic Substances Information Act and the federal government passed the Toxic Substances Control Act, which has been widely criticized for falling short.

The James River slowly recovered. The fishing ban remained in effect for 13 years until everyone just kind of got tired of it. According to the Newport News Daily, even a member of the agency enforcing the ban was caught fishing illegally.

By all accounts, the James River is cleaner than before the Kepone pollution. Kepone levels in fish have dropped significantly. However, an advisory about eating fish from the James River remains on the Virginia Department of Health's website because the Kepone remains in the James River. According to a report by the Environmental Protection Agency, the James River in Virginia has so much Kepone chemical poison it would cost $7 billion to clean it up.

Before the industrial dumping of keypone, the James used to support a large fishing industry. The plan to remove the keypone from the James River was abandoned because the EPA warned it, quote, "may not be technically feasible or financially possible."

There was no guarantee it would work and could possibly result in more problems by dredging it up. Other ideas included diverting the entire James River around the problem area. Another included deploying hordes of a keypone-eating bug until it was discovered that that bug could not swim. So instead, it was decided that the safest option would be to let the keypone settle. It's still there, 20,000 to 40,000 pounds of it.

Buried a few feet under the sediment like a sleeping monster waiting to be beckoned by rising sea levels, a tropical storm, or the slightest little shudder from Mother Earth. Swindled is written, researched, produced, and hosted by me, a concerned citizen, with original music by Trevor Howard, aka Deformer, aka the Chemical Capital of the West.

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My name is Hillary from Denver, Colorado. My name is Karen from New Orleans. My name is Shannon from Newark, Delaware. And I'm a concerned citizen and a bad youth listener. And this is the third year I've tried. So let's see if I make it on the recording this year. Great job you're doing. Thanks. Bye.

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