Word: midlands
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...chilly morning in March 1965, a highly unusual gathering took place at Dow Chemical Co.'s headquarters in Midland, Mich. Without any corporate fanfare, Dow scientists met with colleagues from three rival firms, Hooker Chemical, Diamond Alkali and Hercules Powder. On the agenda that day was a discussion of the effects on human health of a family of chemicals known as dioxin. The chemicals, including Agent Orange, later used by the U.S. to defoliate the jungles of Viet Nam, are an unwanted byproduct in the making of herbicides. At the time, most chemists were only vaguely aware of dioxin...
More signs of distress surfaced last week. MGF Oil of Midland, Texas, said it lost $80.3 million in 1982. The troubled exploration and drilling company, which is trying to restructure its bank debt, already has slashed its work force by two-thirds, from a high of 1,400, and is operating only seven of its 46 rigs. Says Executive Vice President Phillip Marcum: "You should be prepared for a minimum of two years of this. Three to five years would be better...
...Protection Agency, Midwest Regional Director Valdas Adamkus accused John Hernandez, EPA's acting administrator until he resigned last month, of allowing Dow Chemical Co. to censor the agency's 1981 draft report on dioxin contamination in Michigan, including two rivers and a bay near Dow's Midland plant. Particularly alarming to Adamkus was the deletion of one of the draft's conclusions that "Dow's discharge represented the major source, if not the only source, of [dioxin] contamination" in the waterways...
Electricity use in Michigan, for example, has dropped during the past three years as the auto industry has fallen on hard times. Critics now question the necessity of two reactors being built in Midland by Consumers Power and Detroit Edison's Fermi 2 plant nearing completion in Monroe County. Fermi 1, the first plant to sprout from Company Chairman Walker Cisler's vision, was problem plagued from its conception in the 1950s. It was shut down in 1972 after running only 300 days in six years...
...midweek the "fresh start" fizzled. Democratic Congressman James Scheuer, who heads one of the six congressional panels investigating the agency, charged that Hernandez personally intervened to allow Dow Chemical Co. to edit a July 1981 agency report about dioxin contamination of two rivers and a bay near its Midland, Mich., plant. EPA officials agreed to Dow's suggested deletions of critical passages linking the deadly poison to fertility problems and birth defects, as well as the conclusion that "Dow's discharge represented the major source, if not the only source, of [dioxin] contamination" in the waterways...