Investigative Reports on the
Chemical Industry
TRADE SECRETS: A MOYERS REPORT (Emmy award winning documentary
for outstanding investigative journalism
and target of a classic smear campaign by the chemical industry): http://www.pbs.org/tradesecrets/
The following is excerpted from http://www.pbs.org/tradesecrets/program/program.html
:
TRADE
SECRETS: A MOYERS REPORT is an investigation of the history of the chemical revolution and the
companies that drove it – and how companies worked to withhold vital
information about the risks from workers, the government, and the public.
Journalist Bill Moyers and producer Sherry Jones rely
on an archive of documents the public was never meant to see –- documents that
reveal the industry's early knowledge that some chemicals could pose dangers to
human health that were not disclosed at the time.
But the documentary also reports a
much larger story – a never- before-told account of a campaign to limit the
regulation of toxic chemicals and any liability for their effects.
Today, every man, woman and child has synthetic chemicals in their bodies. No child is born free of them. Are they safe? Does anyone know?
What is the industry doing to keep us fully informed about the health and
safety effects of chemicals? These are the crucial questions raised by the
documentary and addressed in a panel discussion moderated by Bill Moyers in the program's final half hour.
From http://www.pbs.org/tradesecrets/problem/problem.html:
The chemical revolution of the past
50 years has altered nearly every aspect of our lives. Many of the products we
rely upon every day – from plastic bags to computers – would not exist without
synthetic chemicals. Most of us believe the chemicals in consumer products have
been tested and approved by some government agency. In fact, until they are
proven harmful, most chemicals are presumed safe.
Of the more than 75,000
chemicals registered with the Environmental Protection Agency, only a fraction
have gone through complete testing to find out whether they might cause
problems for human health. Many that are produced in enormous quantities have
never been tested at all. Usually, it takes dramatic episodes of workplace injuries
or wildlife poisonings, combined with rigorous scientific proof of harm and
public outcry, before the government will act to restrict or ban any chemical.
And that is no accident. The current regulatory system allows synthetic chemicals
into our lives unless one is proven beyond doubt to be dangerous.
Today, while scientific research worldwide is finding that every one of us
carries traces of synthetic chemicals in our bodies, scientists know very
little about the risks of these low level exposures. We do know some chemicals
are highly toxic. Some are carcinogenic. Others interfere with the reproductive
system. Many others likely present no health threat at all.
The problem is that for most chemicals, we simply do not know how safe – or
dangerous – they may be. And they are everywhere around us – in the air, soil,
and water; in our homes; and in our bodies. Not a single child today is born
free of synthetic chemicals.
How Do We
Cover Penguins and the Politics of Denial?
by Bill Moyers
Keynote Speech to the Society of Environmental Journalists Convention
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1007-21.htm
(for complete speech)
Excerpted
below is the portion of the speech pertaining to investigative reporting of the
chemical industry:
…What they [corporate and other opponents of the
environmental movement] did to Rachel Carson when Silent Spring appeared in
1962 has been honed to a sharp edge aimed at the jugular of anyone who
challenges them.
I felt the knife's edge
some years ago when I took up the subject of pesticides and food for a Frontline documentary
on PBS. My producer, Marty Koughan, learned that the
industry was plotting behind the scenes to dilute the findings of a
Some
public television managers were so unnerved by the propaganda blitz against a
yet-to-be aired documentary that they actually protested to PBS with a letter
prepared by the chemical industry.
Here's
what most perplexed us: eight days before the broadcast, the American Cancer
Society, an organization that in no way figured in our story, sent to its
three-thousand local chapters a "critique" of the unfinished
documentary claiming, wrongly, that it exaggerated the dangers of pesticides in
food. We were puzzled. Why was the American Cancer Society taking the unusual step
of criticizing a documentary that it had not yet seen, that had not yet aired,
and that did not claim what the Society said was in it? An enterprising
reporter named Sheila Kaplan later looked into these questions for Legal Times.
She found that the Porter Novelli public relations firm, which had several chemical
companies as clients, also did pro
bono work for the American Cancer Society. The firm was able to cash in on some of the goodwill from their
"charitable" work to persuade the communications staff at the Society
to distribute erroneous talking points about the documentary before it aired -
talking points supplied by, but not attributed to, Porter Novelli.
Legal Times headlined the story, "Porter Novelli
Plays All Sides," a familiar
This was just round one. The producer Sherry
Jones and I spent more than a year working on another PBS documentary called "Trade Secrets." This was a
two-hour investigative special based on records from the industry's
own archives. Those internal documents revealed that for over 40 years big
chemical companies had deliberately withheld from workers and consumers
damaging information about toxic chemicals in their products. They confirmed
not only that a shameless and amoral industry knowingly deceived the public.
They also confirmed that we were living under a regulatory system designed by
the chemical industry itself - one that put profits ahead of safety.
Once again the industry
pounced. We found ourselves the target of another public relations firm - this
one noted for using private detectives and former CIA, FBI and drug enforcement
officers to conduct investigations for big business. One of its founders
acknowledged that corporations "sometimes" resort to unconventional
resources, including "using deceit." We were the target of a
classic smear campaign and PBS felt the pressure. Still, the documentary ran,
created a big impact across the country, and a year later received an Emmy from
our peers for outstanding investigative journalism….