Word: dioxins
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...dollar lawsuit by some 20,000 Viet Nam veterans and their relatives against Dow Chemical and four other companies that manufactured Agent Orange. One of the substances present in the herbicide, used in the Viet Nam War to defoliate enemy crops and jungle hiding places, is the dangerous chemical dioxin. The documents reveal that Dow officials had knowledge even before the mid-1960s that exposure to dioxin might cause people to become seriously ill. Even so, the company continued to sell herbicides containing dioxin...
Court documents reveal manufacturers knew dioxin's perils
...confidential letter written in 1965, during a time when the Government was purchasing millions of pounds of Agent Orange, Dow's toxicology director wrote to another Dow official that dioxin "is exceptionally toxic; it has tremendous potential for producing chloracne [an ugly skin disease] and systemic injury. . . I trust that you will be very judicious in your use of this information. It could be quite embarrassing if it were misinterpreted or misused." A postscript added, "Under no circumstances may this letter be reproduced, shown or sent to anyone outside...
Following a 1964 dioxin spill and outbreak of chloracne at Dow's Midland, Mich., plant and complaints from consumers, Dow met with other chemical companies to discuss "problems of health" associated with dioxin. Dow says that the get-together was an attempt to police the industry from within and coordinate methods to keep the level of dioxin in Agent Orange below the danger point. In 1970 Dow recommended to then Defense Secretary Melvin Laird that the Government set a safer maximum level of dioxin content in Agent Orange...
...spread is coveted by a clutch of corporations, and the family is divided on whether to sell. The only kinsman making real money from the acreage is Tanner's nephew Billy, raising bumper crops of marijuana on the back 40. An embittered Viet Nam veteran and victim of dioxin burns, Billy has succeeded in exposing several of Chaldea's leading villains. When he is found hanging from a tree, town and family are only too happy to accept the official verdict of suicide. Tanner is convinced his nephew was murdered...