[Corp. Watch] Corporate terrorism: Depraved indifference to human life

[Corporation Watch]

Bayer Fights Safety Board "Terrorists"

  by Phil Mattera

(Dirt Diggers Digest, April 24) -- Corporations will go to great  
lengths to avoid close scrutiny of their operations, but Bayer  
CropScience reached a new height of brazenness in its behavior  
following a massive explosion last year at its chemical plant outside  
Charleston, West Virginia.

	Company chief executive William Buckner admitted in recent testimony  
before the House Energy and Commerce Committee that Bayer managers  
invoked a 2002 law designed to protect ports from terrorists to  
justify their initial refusal to share information about the accident  
with the federal government's Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation  
Board.

	Apparently, what Germany-based Bayer did not want the "terrorists"  
from the board to learn was that the company's safety procedures were  
a mess: Video monitoring equipment had been disconnected, and air- 
safety devices were not operating.

	What made this disarray more disturbing was that the accident came  
close to causing the release of a large quantity of methyl isocyanate  
(MIC), the same pesticide component that killed several thousand  
people near a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India in 1984.

	The explosion at the West Virginia plant (which was run by Union  
Carbide until 1986, and taken over by Bayer in 2001) resulted in two  
deaths, and injuries to half a dozen emergency responders.

	Shortly after the accident, Bayer managers abandoned the preposterous  
idea that they did not have to cooperate with the safety board, but  
they came up with other forms of obstruction.

	They provided thousands of pages of documents to investigators, but  
labeled them "security sensitive" so that they could not be disclosed  
by the safety board.

	They also claimed that the plant was under the jurisdiction of the  
U.S. Coast Guard, given its use of barges on the Kanawha River, and  
thus it was up to that agency to decide which documents could be  
released.

	The House Energy Committee issued a report charging that "Bayer  
engaged in a campaign of secrecy by withholding critical information  
from local, county, and state emergency responders; restricting the  
use of information provided to federal investigators; undermining news  
outlets and citizen groups concerned about the dangers posed by its  
activities; and providing inaccurate and misleading information to the  
public."

	Among the company documents obtained by the Committee was a  
"community relations strategy" for dealing with a local activist group  
[called People Concerned About MIC] and the local newspaper that  
diligently followed the story.

	"Our goal with People Concerned About MIC", the strategy document  
said, "should be to marginalize them. Take a similar approach to the  
Charleston Gazette."

	All this may come as a surprise to consumers who think of Bayer  
Corporation as a purveyor of aspirin and other benign products such as  
Aleve, Alka-Seltzer, Flintstones Vitamins, and Phillips' Milk of  
Magnesia.

	But the company's ultimate parent, Bayer AG in Munich, has one of the  
most shameful histories of any major corporation: During World War II,  
it was part of the notorious IG Farben conglomerate that made use of  
slave labor to serve the Nazi war machine and produce the lethal gas  
used in the death camps.

	What Bayer did in West Virginia does not begin to approach its war  
crimes during the Nazi era, but it shows that the company still has a  
lot to learn about corporate ethics.