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By Root 1035 0

detergents, paints, film … The list was endless but, because the chemical industry is not quite like any other, the revolution had its price. Many of the substances that go into these workaday goods are as dangerous as the radiation produced by the nuclear industry. Ethylene oxide, involved in the manufacture of automobile antifreeze, is potentially as deadly as plutonium dust. Phosgene, one of the components currently used in the production of fertilizers, killed thousands of World War I soldiers. Hydrogen cyanide, a gas with a pleasant almond smell and used in medicines, was adopted by a number of American prisons to execute those condemned to death. In its Kanawha Valley factories, Carbide alone produced two hundred chemical substances, many of which, like chloroform, acrylonitrile, benzene and vinyl chloride, are known or suspected carcinogens.

Like its competitors, Carbide devoted substantial sums to maintaining the safety of its staff and a strict policy of environmental safeguards. Chemical companies operating in the Kanawha Valley did not hesitate to award themselves certificates of good conduct, even as their toxic wastes were insidiously poisoning the lush countryside. Although their policy to protect the environment was widely reported by complacent medias, it didn’t always keep them out of court. Carbide was fined several times for pouring highly carcinogenic substances into the Kanawha River and the atmosphere. An inquiry conducted in the beginning of the 1970s revealed that the number of cancers diagnosed among the occupants of the valley was 21 percent higher than the national average. The incidences of lung and endocrine cancer, and leukemia in particular, were among the highest in the country. One study carried out by the state of West Virginia’s health department found that people living in areas downwind of the South Charleston and Institute factories presented twice as many cancerous tumors as the national average. Such concerns would not, however, prevent Carbide from constructing on its Institute site a completely innovative factory to facilitate the manufacture of the revolutionary insecticide the company wanted to distribute throughout the world—Sevin.

This high-tech project modified the procedure that the three researchers at the Boyce Thompson Institute had used to invent Sevin. It introduced a chemical process that would both substantially reduce production costs and eliminate waste. The manufacturing process involved making phosgene gas react with another gas called monomethylamine. The reaction of these two gases produced a new molecule, methyl isocyanate. In a second stage the methyl isocyanate was combined with alpha naphthol to produce Sevin. More commonly known by its three initials, MIC, methyl isocyanate is without any doubt one of the most dangerous compounds ever conceived by the sorcerer’s apprentices of the chemical industry. When toxicologists had tested it on rats, the results were so terrifying that the company banned their publication. Other experiments had shown that animals exposed to MIC vapors alone died almost instantaneously. Once inhaled, MIC destroys the respiratory system with lightning speed, causes irreversible blindness and burns the pigment of the skin.

German toxicologists had dared to conduct further tests by subjecting voluntary human guinea pigs to minute doses of MIC. Although disapproved of by the scientific community, these experiments did make it possible to determine the threshold of tolerance of exposure to MIC, in the same way that the level of tolerance to nuclear radiation had been established. The research was all the more helpful because thousands of workers making synthetic foam products, such as insulation paneling, mattresses and car seats, found themselves in daily contact with other isocyanates, cousins of MIC. Thanks to its new factory, Carbide could conceivably sell MIC to all those manufacturers who used isocyanates, but who were reluctant to take on the dangers involved in their production. Most important of all, with a more affordable supply,