Poisoning Of Michigan

This program is made possible by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Imagine you're a dairy farmer. Imagine one day you have to dig a trash and shoot every animal you possess. Over the last three years hundreds of farmers in Michigan have been forced to slaughter tens of thousands of dairy cattle, thousands of sheep, steers, pigs and millions of chickens because of one simple catastrophic mistake. A poisonous industrial chemical PBB was mixed into cattle feed instead of the normal feed supplement. Most cattle died slowly after becoming hunchbacked, bald and sterile, scarcely able to walk for monstrous overgrown hooves sometimes a foot long.

Before dying the cows invariably passed on the poison through their milk and on slaughter their meat usually sold as hamburger further infected the food chain. When the disaster began to unfold in the fall of 1973 nobody knew what was wrong. It took almost eight months to discover by which time the entire state had been affected. Now three years later most of Michigan's nine million population will be showing traces of PBB in their bodies many are now sick. The latest animal tests show that PBB and microscopic doses as capable of causing cancer, birth defects and genetic changes the tragedy has only just begun. The first farmer to be hit on September the 20th 1973 was Rick Halbert of Battle Creek with 2,000 acres and a prize winning herd.

There was just no explanation it was as though some old of lightning had hit the farm and suddenly the animals decided that they were going to be cows any longer. Halbert immediately suspected his cattle feed specially mixed foreign by farm bureau his local farm supply organization. After checking everything else without success he began an experiment on some young calves. These dozen calves were fed only this feed for we intended a period of a month but after a couple of weeks they wouldn't eat it so we began to feed them other things. And about six weeks into the experiment these calves began to die and over the period of the next two months most of those calves in fact died. Halbert told the Michigan Department of Agriculture their token tests on laboratory mice didn't isolate the poison so he spent six months and five thousand dollars on independent research into his suspect feed.

It was the eminent wolf institute laboratories in neighboring Wisconsin that finally gave him his biggest clue. The redout from a mass spectrograph machine showed an industrial chemical bromine in his feed. Halbert struck lucky a second time when he double checked with a friendly US government expert. I immediately called up the individual who had to be George Freeze and he said oh it sounds like something I've used. And something I've done some research work on and he pulled out something from his files and he told me that was made by Michigan chemical. The mystery was solved. Michigan chemical were the suppliers of the nutritional supplement nutrient master that should have been in Halbert's feed. By accident they'd supplied farm bureau the feed manufacturer with fire master PVB a fireproofing chemical. The substances look the same and the sacks are almost identical.

Once the consignment of farm master instead of nutrient master left Michigan chemical factory in mid state and was shipped south to the farm bureau feed mill at battle creek a major disaster was almost a certainty. When Halbert's detective work bore fruit in April 1974 he soon discovered that despite farm bureau assurances he wasn't the only farmer with problems. Mr. Grover one of the MDA veterinarians told me that a farmer near Cooper'sville had complained to the feed company and he was having other problems and they found some lymphomas which was a leukemia like disease. And basically the farm was having financial problems so he sent all his animals to market. He essentially sold them all and the MDA people went to the market with them and went to the slaughter plant with them and inspected them. And this farm related told me that the livers were the size of wash tubs. The size of what? He said some of the livers were the size of wash tubs.

As cows died and were ground down into more feed they poisoned further cattle horses cats chickens and even farm yard rats began to die on contaminated farms. The farm families themselves drinking their own milk eating their own meat and eggs began to be poisoned as well. Tom Butler became so exhausted for no reason that he called the doctor. The doctor even said while you're getting older I complain about being lame and tired and so forth. And then while he says you're getting older you know fast forwarding. So you got to have reason for something so they accept it and then actify you think what the heck you know that can't be it. We got to think I knew guys 65 years old it was working better than I was so I'll talk to a little wife and that and it's got to be something wrong here. Nobody had told Tom Butler about PBB but he noticed his cattle's grotesque symptoms resembled those of himself and his family. Tom had their toes turned whole turned up you know and all that's like my fingernails did the same thing.

So that's noticing why I was saying I had the same disease the cows had because their holes are turned up my fingernails are turned up. I was in a proper analogy but that's what I was using. Though the butlers in their herd were poisoned in 1974 after PBB had been identified they were never warned about the dangers of tainted feed and suffered in ignorance like so many Michigan farmers including their neighbors Ron Thomas his wife and three children. Right now I'm 43 and I don't want to ever live to be 65 if I feel like that when I'm 43 I'll tell you because I would never get around. But you know this thing come on so gradual that it just wasn't anything that just hit you overnight like that I've had times when I thought I was going to die just from exhaustion and just doing my farm work I mean I wasn't doing anything else other than my normal farm work. And I said you just don't get in a state like that overnight.

My fingers were doubled right up I'd get up in the morning my fingers be like this it take me about an hour to get my fingers opened up taken one of the time and it was they were real painful so I thought well I tried sleeping on my hands keeping them straight. Well they weren't doubled up in the morning but they hurt more than if they had been doubled up they're just terrible and I'd get up in the night with Georgia he was a baby and I dropped him two or three times. Fortunately there was always over his bed when I dropped him. You dropped children. They were ingesting the milk and the meat right along with us when they were growing up and Georgia was nursing right through some of the heaviest time that PBB was we probably absorbed it in the animals. I wonder what if they say 15 to 20 years is going to tell the whole story and I wonder what's going to happen to them in 15 or 20 years. We've lived out a good part of our life and they're just starting. What will happen to people poisoned with PBB? It's too early to say but in August America's top environmental health team revealed that PBB victims are now showing reduced ability to fight infection.

The experts first offered their services for nothing to Governor Millican in October 1974 19 months later Millican issued them an invitation. The team chief from Mount Sinai Hospital in New York is Dr Irving Selikov who reported his preliminary findings in January. We now have some very good ideas about what the problems are and will turn out to be. Perhaps where individuals live may not be the whole story. For example one of the highest blood levels we've so far seen of PBB wasn't a man who did not live on a quarantine form but 821x a week. So it may turn out to be that what you ate and thereby what you were exposed to will turn out to be the most important problem. After his press conference I spoke to Selikov.

We found unusual symptoms among farmers who lived on quarantine farms. Farmers who lived on non-quarantine farms. People who didn't live on farms at all but ate food directly purchased from these farms. People who simply were sent to us by other physicians for examination etc. And none of the groups that we examined did we find a complete absence of problems. Do you think that the volume of research into the effects of PBB since the disaster has been adequate? Well no it hasn't been adequate in part because we didn't appreciate the dimensions of the problem in terms of human health. In that way it was almost certain not to be adequate.

Hopefully we'll catch up but we'll never catch up in terms of prevention except for future exposure. From the governor of Michigan William Milliken through the state departments of agriculture and public health nobody grasped the size or the potential of the disaster. A token study of 300 people led the department of public health to conclude in March 1975. There has been no pattern of illness in the exposed individuals which can be attributed to PBB. No real difference has been found in the health state of those exposed and those not exposed. Another public health department study published in the same month reached the conclusion PBB thus far has not been shown to be the cause of any identifiable human ailments. For the next 18 months the official point of view was endorsed by Milliken and repeated by Maurice Ryzen state health director. Assertions of extensive human physical effects attributable to PBB contamination in food are clearly premature and unwarranted.

Men like Dr. John Isbister community health chief emphasized on TV that there was no problem. I have utterly no concern about PBB as a problem in foodstuffs which my wife buys in the supermarkets today. We have never at any time changed our food buying patterns in my home during this situation. Yet in 1976 it emerged during the course of unrelated studies that nursing mothers right across Michigan were by now breastfeeding traces of PBBs their children. Not until August was any serious study begun and then with those same reassurances. According to press reports Dr. Maurice Ryzen state health director emphasized there is no evidence to date that PBB and mother's milk causes babies to become ill. On the contrary babies of such nursing mothers appear to be strong and healthy. The most recent studies have shattered this complacency.

Yet at the very start of the disaster nearly four years ago a University of Michigan scientist Dr. Tom Corbett had pleaded with Michigan state authorities to call in Celecoff warning of possible human health damage but nobody listened. They knew that that helmets heard and other farmers were having trouble with their animals back in the fall of 1973 and that these animals were sick and dying. They looked terrible some of them they're the hair fell all fell out or most of it fell out. Caves were dying or the animals would be still born or the cows would not even carry the ant the calves to term they would abort. They would become emaciated they just dropped dead just they're obviously sick and they're obviously dying in droves. And yet the Michigan Department of Agriculture since they could not diagnose the problem allowed the continued sale of these animals and their products for human consumption. When you don't have to be a doctor or a scientist common sense dictates that you shouldn't eat anything from a sick animal much less the animal itself.

And so for a nine month period they allowed these second dying animals to go to market. And because of this decision most of the people on the state of Michigan now have measurable levels of PBB in their bodies. PBB polybreminated by Fennel had already done its critical damage in the nine months between September 1973 when cows began dying. And May 1974 when the first official action was taken not by the state of Michigan but by the United States Food and Drug Administration based in Washington. Associate Director Dr. Albert Colby. We were informed that there were a variety of herds that were having health problems. And we were informed that these health problems were detectable in some instances much earlier in the previous year. And short we found that there were a fair number of herds involved and of course the numbers of animals involved ran well into the thousands.

But during the process of trying to discover what it was that had been making the animal sick you hadn't been cooled in at all. To the best of our knowledge now why do you think you weren't cooled in earlier? I really can't say because I don't know. My impression I guess might be that perhaps it was not appreciated at that time. The implications of what could happen if in fact the substance was a highly toxic one. I think they thought that perhaps they were dealing with a problem that while acute to some animals was perhaps of minor relevance to human health. Unfortunately I don't know that that is the case. From our calculations farmers who consume food products derive from their own animals.

And those animals having in some instances extraordinary high levels are bruminated by fennels. We've calculated that some individuals on farms may have been exposed to as much as 80 milligrams are bruminated by fennels each day. Simple mathematics leads you to the conclusion that many individuals on some of those contaminated farms likely were exposed to quantities of bruminated by fennel that almost boggle the imagination. And simply stated I'm quite amazed that some of the health problems that have been identified or suspected so far in this point in time are considerably less than what I really expected to see. Did you expect to see people dying beside you? Nine months after the poison left Michigan chemical for the battle creek mill a quarantine was imposed to check its spread too late. It was everywhere.

A PBB tolerance level was set for meat and eggs supposedly safe for human consumption. A hit or miss exercise since nobody knew how toxic PBB was. And farmers with animals showing PBB traces above one part per million were forbidden to move or sell them. They were sent for destruction. Soon the 15 foot trench dug by the Michigan authorities at Cal Cascade in an upstate forest filled to overflowing. The pit was enlarged to 13 acres and insurance companies paid the bill. To men like Rick Herbert full compensation was paid and he's now rebuilding his herd. But many others are still waiting. They are the farmers whose animals were held to be healthy because they showed supposedly insignificant PBB contamination, that is below the 1974 tolerance level. Not only did these low level farmers not qualify for automatic damages from farm bureau and Michigan chemical, they were derided and abused by the MDA who labeled them as frauds even though their animals were sick.

A handful of farmers chose to shoot their herds despite the fact that sick as they were the animals could legally have been sold in eaten. These people were then left with no livelihood and no compensation unless they borrowed money, hired lawyers and started a legal battle with farm bureau and Michigan chemical. Some low level farmers are now on food stamps. Others sell timber off their farms to stay alive. Others still have quit completely and moved off their farms. One man who shot his herd and was finally paid compensation has Gary Zyderveen. They just wouldn't grow. They were terribly thin and in many cases the hair with cad came off their backs and they had runny noses and they had all three eyes. They were just a mess. They were just a physical mess. Economically they were impossible to care for and take care of.

And yet because they were below the tolerance level, they were officially not sick. That's right. I mean, that strike here is a farm. It doesn't make any sense. What did you do in the event? Well, we shot our cattle. I mean it hurts me to say that. I mean, it was a awful day. I'll never forget that day as long as I live. We dug a big hole about 0,250 feet long and about 20, 30 feet wide and we'd run the cattle in there 8 or 10 to a time. And my son and the neighbor voiced on the side and they destroyed the cattle. They were done painlessly. The cattle did not suffer. But it's a dark day of my life to have to shoot our own cattle. The feed agencies are wrong that they force a farmer to make that kind of a decision to destroy his own cattle. It's wrong. I mean, it's morally wrong to place that kind of a burden upon a farmer. They should have been cared for by the agencies. This way it's terrible to do this.

Tom Butler couldn't afford to shoot his animals. He sent them to market because the MDA pronounced them healthy even though they looked terrible. A lot of bloodshot eyes and cows had sores on them. Someone had, well, a pelvis. It just degenerated and twisted and shifted right down to tail settings. It kind of slid right off sideways and it looked like the thing had been in Iraq, you know. But they couldn't see that wrong with them. So the MDA said there was nothing wrong with the cows. Right. And what's your view as a farmer? Well, of course, like anything you get used to the actor file, but it was just disgusting to us that they didn't even try to find anything wrong with them. They didn't want to find anything and they didn't. We didn't feel right about it. But all the authorities that were supposed to be interested in this thing, the governor all just didn't seem concerned whatsoever. So we had to do something and we printed and took them out and shot them. Different ones were doing that.

And then we decided we studied the situation over as well. Shoot. We fired you by a couple of years if we saw them even at the reduced price you get for hamburger, you know. It helped us survive a couple of years without even having any income. So we was mixed emotion and shipped them to market. Tom Butler is in health to damage to farm and his car is gone. He's now living off capital. He's wondering about suing Michigan chemical who manufactured the poisonous farmmaster and farm bureau who put it in his feed. One ally is Grand Rapids Lawyer Gary Schenk who's already acting for several high level farmers. You see, we represented initially people who had herds who were quarantined and destroyed. That's the best of all possible worlds. That is an absolute winner in a lawsuit. They poisoned their cattle, they destroyed them. But we had people who kept calling us and saying, well, they tell me I'm a low level herd. But my cows are dying and they look like these other cows and we didn't believe that at first but we started looking.

Low level and therefore not liable for compensation. Not liable for compensation but the Department of Agriculture did even more than that. They equated low level with not being sick. At least that was the public image as they tried to convey. One state officials stood right over here in our federal building and said that the low level herds are not sick, they're being starved to death. Lifelong farmers starving their cattle to death. A glib and incredible explanation believed by no one. And the problem just wouldn't go away. So far without going to court, high level farmers have been paid off with nearly $40 million by Farm Bureau and Michigan Chemical. But hundreds of low level farmers, angry and near bankruptcy, have been forced to sue for anything at all. As their cows sickened, they were branded as frauds until that PBB was not to blame.

And for nearly a year after PBB had been identified, upstate vets like Doc Clark were given the same run around as their farmers. I was very depressed. I thought that something I was doing wrong and I'd come home and talk to my wife about it, especially in July of 1974. And I said, I wonder if I should quit. The cows wouldn't respond or treat them up to 42 times. And you don't normally treat a cow up to 42 times. You treat her three times. You treat her once, you leave medicine and that's all you have to do. I would come home and talk to my wife and I'd say, I wonder if something's going wrong. I wonder why I'm not getting the results. So as the time went on in July, I started to wonder about this feed situation, even though they had sent a letter out. And several of my clients, cows, vets, cows were dying.

Clark's farmers had been told that problem feed hadn't reached their area untrue. And Rick Halbert was told that he was the only farmer affected, also untrue. They said that nothing was happening in other farms and weren't in other complaints specifically, because we'd ask, well, is it someone else complaining that's getting feed in the answer was no. Was anybody else getting the same feed formula as you, though? Yes, there were some people in the thumb of Michigan and some others. I learned about those about four months later and I learned that they'd also complain. Halbert then found that no Michigan state organization wanted to do any research into his problem. First, he took dead calves to Michigan State University in Lansing. We took them up to the university and asked them to knee-crab see them, which is a process of cutting them apart, looking at the organs. And the result of that was when they wrote up the report, it said, died of starvation. And how did you react to that as a farmer?

Well, we fell in solid for one. It's one thing to say that they died of starvation, but the problem was they wouldn't eat. And that's what we wanted to know why they wouldn't eat. And so their help was really no help in fact. It was an insult. As the disaster escalated through 1974, B. Dale Ball, director of Michigan Department of Agriculture, insisted to the press that he'd known nothing of the problem until March 1974, six months after Halbert had gone to his department for help. Ball's Lieutenant Dean Love It, who had exclusive responsibility for animal feed, claimed the same ignorance until May 1974, nine months after the problem began. B. Dale Ball held on doggedly to his stance that PBB wasn't to blame. Take this ball press release, for instance. Common table salt can be lethal if consumed in large amounts. It's not unusual for animals to die from salt poisoning. Ball's experts, like veterinary chief Dr. Cole, lectured worried farmers on irrelevances as Doc Clark recalls.

In December of 1975, Dr. Cole was up here to a meeting trying to tell my dairy farmers that had low level herds instead of holding them or shooting them, that go to go ahead and dump them on the market. Because we weren't sure what was causing the problems. And he made a statement that if you fed those cows too much pickles, you might get the same problem. When Dr. Tom Corbett provided independent PBB research giving calls for human health concern at an early date, Farm Bureau were less than anxious that he should spread the news. After I presented my data, one of the officials from the Farm Bureau, unfortunately I can't remember his name, came up to me and it really told me that they would not allow me to present any of my data to the press or that any of this material should get out for public knowledge. And I was quite surprised. In fact, I couldn't believe that this man was saying this to me.

And I told him on no uncertain terms that they did not sponsor the project. They had no claim on any of the information whatsoever. And that I would tell whoever I pleased, in fact the more people I would tell I thought would be the better because the people had a right to know what potential has had for harming the population in the state. Doc Clark came under similar but nastier pressure from the Department of Agriculture when he began taking body fat samples from a thousand cars to double check the position that tainted feet hadn't reached his area. First he sent the samples for PBB analysis to the MDA. They told him there were no serious levels, but he was deeply suspicious. So what I did was go back and test 40 cows over again. I went back and did the same process over again. Took fat samples alongside the tail, put it in, identified it, and froze them up. And this time instead of sending the MDA, I sent them to War of Institute. And the first ones I got back I couldn't believe it. They were tenfold higher. The same cows. It was just as Clark suspected. Warf Institute in Wisconsin, independent, eminent, showed the MDA had grossly underestimated PBB levels. Warf asked Clark if they could forward copies of their findings to the MDA.

And I said, I didn't care. I thought if there was a mistake being there they might as well know it too. In the moment, the moment that they seemed that I had found out that there was a difference. I was stopped alongside the road in a MDA official that was on sort of down on the mice level of tests or running, running around here and checking meat samples told me, I think you're doing a terrific job. But I want you to know the MDA is after your ass. And that's exactly what he told me. And I got back in my car and I wasn't very happy that a power of this large could try to come down on you. So, with verbal permission from the MDA, he shipped some live local cattle out of state to Purdue University in Indiana for more testing. Before the results came through, he read in the paper that he was on the point of arrest and losing his license for shipping PBB cattle out of Michigan.

It was a blatant smear. And when clocks local farmers already incensed at the MDA read the story, they called Gary Shank. I got a call saying my office from a farmer, a person whom we represent. And he said, Gary, we're having a meeting at my house is, well, who's having a meeting? And he named the names and there were about 15, 20 farmers there. And I said, well, what are you meeting about? He said, well, we want you to answer a question and we want it. Yes or no? He said, are they coming to get Doc? I said, what are you talking about? He said, well, they said they're investigating him for being a criminal, for taking those calls to Purdue. I said, no, wait a minute. He said, I just want to tell you one thing. You call your friends and you tell them if they're coming to get Doc, they better bring their guns because we're going to be waiting in front of his house with ours. And I said, wait a minute. Wait a minute. And he said, we're all here and we got our rifles. We've just had it. Now this is as close as we've ever come on this thing to violence. And I was scared. I called Paul and I said, we got to do something.

And I called them back and I said, don't anybody do anything. We'll come up and tell you what's going on. And we did. I mean, we took offer up there and had to get everybody calm down because they thought that these guys were coming after their doctor. And I'm going to tell you something, my friend. There ain't no way that that was going to happen because when a farmer starts talking about his dear rifle, he means business. And you know, I think it's an example of what has happened to these people. You know, they've been laughed at. They've been lied to. They've been ridiculed. They've been called liars and phonies and fakes and cheats and frauds. You know, and they can put up with all that. But I think that was the straw that broke the camel's back when they were trying to take out the only man that had ever been interested enough to believe in them. At least the only man they knew. Doc Clark wasn't taken out. A telephone call from the Agriculture Department, allowing him to send live animals from out of state research. Unfortunately, been tape recorded and the attempt to discredit him failed.

It's a sad reflection on the state agency that it should stoop to such skull doggery. But saddest of all is the fact that much of the important experimental research into PBB now going on is being paid for not by the state of Michigan, whose public health slogan is equal health opportunity for all, nor by the people who made the poison Michigan chemical, nor by farm bureau who distributed it, but by the low level farmers who face ruin as a result of PBB. They are the people who are financed top by a chemist like Professor Steven Saif of the University of Guelph outside Toronto. I didn't become directly involved until I was approached by some of the people in Michigan about nine months ago, I think. The people who approached you, I assume that that was the governor or Department of Agriculture. No, the lawyers for the low level farmers. There have been no official requests for you as somebody working in this area to go help and see what you could do.

None at all. None at all. So far, Professor Saif has traced PBB's path through animals' bodies, charted the chemical changes as their systems tried to excrete it, and explored the effects of the traces that inevitably remain behind. Is fighting so far a preliminary but frightening? What we've come up with essentially is a positive in a first stage cancer screen, a very low level cancer screen. It could cause cancer. That's right. It causes cancer or can cause mutations, birth defects, things like that. No, I'm not saying that PBB will do this, but in our first screen or stage examination of PBB, it looks like it has the potential. For the nine million people in Michigan, what it amounts to is that they're going to add to their bodies another foreign chemical, another chemical that shouldn't be there. We all have these chemicals in us now. They've got another one that most of us don't have. They may or may not be affected.

You'd have to do a general population study 10 or 15 years from now. But the farmers and the farm families, they have relatively large quantities of this material, and I think the results are already obvious. What do you think the results are? Well, all I know is that when Dr. Selekov and his team came to Michigan, they looked at 1100 people, and about what, 35% or so, had abnormal symptoms. They were suffering from something, and it looks like PBB is a culprit. That's a pretty large percentage. To Dr. Courbet, the predictions are no surprise. His own research on pregnant mice and rats dates back over three years. We found that we did produce birth defects in the mice. We found cleft palates in 5% of the babies, and we found a condition called exencephaly in a little over 2% of the animals. What exactly is that?

Exencephaly is a defect where the brain protrudes through the skull, and you can see it protruding through the top of the head, grossly. That's a rather grotesque deformity. What was the timing of this? When did you conclude this? We found the first results actually in late June of 1974. So your information is available to the authorities or anybody else interested? It's a fairly early date. Indeed. In fact, I made sure that they were aware of it. At two meetings, one in September of 1974, which was held at the Farm Bureau building, attended by the regulatory agency members and scientists and other people. And again, in October of 1974, at a meeting held by the Michigan Department of Agriculture. Nobody listened. Why not? I would prefer to think that it was just a combination of ignorance and stupidity. I think they had no knowledge or conception of the potential harm that could come from these extremely toxic chemicals at such low doses. I think they felt initially that, you know, how can one or two parts per million hurt anybody? I think this sort of the attitude, just a complete ignorance of the toxicity of this whole class of chemicals.

But I think overall, with 9 million people exposed to this chemical, and about 10,000 exposed to fairly high doses, I think it's quite likely that we will see an increase in the incidence of cancer in this state in the next 15 or 20 years. To provide further evidence, PBB and concentration similar to those absorbed by some Michigan families is already being fed to apes, the closest animal to mom, at the University of Wisconsin. The experiments which involve regular fat sampling began only recently, again with money from low-level farmers, because neither the state of Michigan nor the United States authorities have yet provided any cash for this kind of PBB research. The team is headed by Dr. James Allen. I think that the point that we are concerned about at the present time are the effect that it may have upon the future generations, whether this be the possibility of teratogenic or mutagenic effects that may arise as a result of the exposure to children. The informed children or alteration, the germplasm, sufficiently, to be transmitted from generation to generation, or the possibility of cancer.

I think all of these are possibilities. What requests have you had from the Michigan authorities to help out in this whole matter? Our request from the Michigan authorities, we have not been requested to assist in this particular aspect. Only from private individuals have we been contacted about the possibility of conducting research on the PBBs. So where were the state and government agencies? Well, I think that certainly this is a problem that the people in Michigan should be concerned. I think it's a problem that the federal government should be concerned about. And I think that these two groups can get together and I'm sure establish a plan to really get at the problem in a very systematic manner. But I hope this is taking place.

Well, this, of course, is three years off of the event. We're talking isn't it? Sometimes things move slowly. Need the poisoning of Michigan ever have happened? How and why did it take place? The answers lie here at St. Louis, Michigan, headquarters of Michigan Chemical Corporation, where this ramshackle factory pollutes the atmosphere, has poisoned the water up to 35 miles downstream in the Pine River, and also offers most of the jobs in an area of 19% unemployment. Michigan Chemicals owners have changed its name, but the factory still operates under the original management. Now as previously, it forms part of Velsecol Chemical Corporation, which in turn is controlled by Northwest Industries, a Chicago-based conglomerate that this year expects record profits on sales of $1.6 billion. Velsecol's recent record is notable for three things, high profitability,

the manufacture of Chris BP, a flame retardant chemical banned this year as a possible cause of cancer, and the manufacture of Fozville, a pesticide that's reduced workers handling it to zombies. Inside the St. Louis operation, conditions are just as bad as they look from the outside. Here amid broken sacks, inadequate labeling and hit or miss stop checking, the bags of Firemaster containing PBB were confused with bags of Nutrimaster and shipped off to Farm Bureau's Feed Mill. So far, it's always been assumed that the PBB disaster involved only one ton of Nutrimaster, in place of which a ton of Firemaster had been sent, but it's now been discovered that in 1975, no less than 19 tons of Firemaster were missing, and there's still an accounted for. Michigan Chemical refused to discuss their product or the tragedy itself, and refused as permission to film inside the premises.

One of the many questions that's remaining unanswered is why Michigan Chemical ever made PBB in the first place. For a 1971, DuPont, the biggest American chemical company, rejected a similar compound on safety grounds. DuPont's scientists found that this group of chemicals caused his liver enlargement at low chronic doses, concentrates and remains in fat, and has low oral skin absorption and inhalation safety factors in use. Yet at the same time, in sales literature-headed Michigan masters of flame retardant chemistry, Michigan Chemical claimed their product was safe. Over 5,000 tons of Firemaster have been shipped worldwide, as harmless, and used in household goods. Yet the raw product diluted a million times, wrought damage like this. Michigan Assistant Attorney General describes conditions in the factory.

There appears to have been a total lack of comprehension of how dangerous some of these things were. Around the loading areas, for example, where trucks were loaded, PBB and other things are found in the soils, which indicates that things were being slopped around, spilled, lost, but these are dangerous chemicals. I can tell you that it was necessary for the state to require the company to remove the dirt down to a depth of 18 inches in the area of the loading dock. It was that contaminated, and then to safely dispose of that in a place designated by state geologists. There are other examples from all over the plant, and of course the fact that the whole network of pipes is contaminated with PBB. How does it get to be like this? The regulatory agencies have been very, very lax in the enforcement of these laws.

The chemical companies, some of them, have shown an appalling lack of social responsibility. That's a bad combination, those two. That's the combination we've had in the state. It was a bad combination for many inside Michigan chemical, PBB line workers like Ron Evans. What kind of instruction did you get on handling it? Well, they said it wouldn't hurt you. You know, you could eat it, and it still wouldn't affect you or anything like this. They said you could eat it? Yeah. But they didn't say, you know, come right on, say exactly how much, but they said it was relatively safe, you know. There's one state agency charged with protecting the health of the workers. There's another charge with protecting the river. There's another charge with protecting the air. Where were they? They were there. They were on premises. I can't tell you why they didn't identify it. All I can tell you is that our first knowledge came from newspaper accounts.

What happened when the firemaster, instead of Nutrimaster, was sent to the Farm Bureau feed mill. Apparently, the Farm Master sat there for three months before being mixed into the cattle feed. Two Farm Bureau employees noticed the different name on the sacks, and one of them, George Saluga, has testified that when he reported to the plant manager that the sacks weren't Nutrimaster, he was told it's the same thing as the Nutrimaster. Put it together on one side, inventory them as one. Farm Bureau's links for the Michigan Agricultural Commission assured it of a sympathetic air after the disaster. All five commissioners have present or passed Farm Bureau members and there the people that have to approve any lowering by the state of the PBB tolerance level. And since lowering the level means paying more compensation, Farm Bureau also hired lobbyists to work on the state legislators. Until July this year, all attempts to lower the tolerance levels failed. Prior to the 1976 attempt, Elton Smith, Farm Bureau President,

circularized his statewide membership, Act Today, Contact Director B. Dale Ball and members of the Agriculture Commission and urged them not to yield to political pressure. In fact, of course, the political pressure was coming from Farm Bureau itself. But over the last two years, an increasingly angry public has applied counter pressure through demonstrations against state inertia. At one point, Farm has tracked sick cattle to the state capital building in Lansing which literally dumped them on the doorstep of the Republican state governor, William Milliken, who now freely admits that the situation has never been under control. Why don't think it's under anyone's control in the sense that we presume that the illnesses reported by farm families is related to PBB. We are not going to know based upon the scientific information available to us. What the long-term results are for another 10 years, 25 years, 50 years, maybe 100 years.

In short, it's conceivable that we can be living with this problem for many generations to come. What do you say to the criticism that the whole thrust of the effort of your various agencies, Department of Agriculture and Department of Public Health, has been to try and voice on people the idea that PBB is not responsible for the bulk of the ailments of which they are complaining. The Department of Public Health has taken the position that there are PBB related illnesses. They don't know the dimensions of it. They do fully acknowledge it and they, going back to 1974, have been actively involved in the field in testing and working with people. Well, they any began testing mothers milk in late 1976. They any began testing breast milk from mothers grains, but they were testing in many other directions. The physical ailments of individuals.

For a long time, Milliken's position as Michigan's chief executive has been uneasy. For the first two years of the PBB disaster, he followed the line of his agriculture and public health departments that there was no serious public health problem. But in 1976, public pressure forced him to appoint an expert panel to re-examine the PBB tolerance levels. I have charged this panel to review all of the available data, all of the knowledge, background information, to receive all of the comments from authorities in the field and to come back with a report on the various levels which are being discussed in the state and outside the state. Within weeks, the panel urged the lowering of the tolerance to the smallest amount that instruments could measure. But it was only a recommendation. The State Agriculture Commission appointed by the governor, which bus by law approved such a change, ignored the experts. They came up, as you know, with their report recommending a very substantial reduction in the tolerance levels.

My one great regret is that the department of agriculture, the commission of the department and the director of the department, did not in action subsequently take and reduce those tolerance levels. You strike me as being unhappy about that situation. Well, you've done nothing about it. I feel that the decision made by the commission was a wrong one. The action was subject under law to action by the commission. They could have taken it. They did not take it. I think in retrospect, and even at the time I felt that it was a serious mistake by the commission. But Milliken took no executive action either to override the commission, which he himself appointed, or fire any of its members. In fact, one has since been reappointed for a further term of office. Milliken has also shown little inclination to correct misleading public statements from his agriculture department on critical questions like feed monitoring.

Over 200 elevators hold the key to massive secondary contamination right across the state. The Agriculture Department claims that routine checks have shown no contamination. But how many elevators have been checked? He tested all the elevators in the state of Michigan. Do you understand you correctly? I didn't say that. I said there are 12 that had a problem. There were fire and bureau elevators that were given their feed from fire and bureau where the problem was. I can't honestly say whether we tested all the elevators. But I can say that the 12 that had a problem are being monitored once a month. Somewhere here I have a report on the feed ingredients and since July of 1975, there are all zeroes and they've been tested over a month. None detected at any level in the elevator since July 75.

I have figures showing that at the end of 76 the battle creek was still contaminated. Well, not the feed. You may have found some in the dust around the elevator. Somebody may have given us some figures but as far as the feed that we tested. I'd just like to double check with you so I understand perfectly clearly. You've tested 12 elevators in the state of Michigan. I'm telling you that there were 12 where the problem was considered to be and those we've continued to monitor. So I can assume from that that there was no problem on any of the others. But I don't want you to assume anything and unfortunately this is quite a large department and we have a division that works on the feed and one that works on the meat and one that works on something else. But I talked to the assistant chief of the division that handles the feed this morning and I said what's the situation on elevators. We said of the 12 where there was a problem we're testing them monthly.

We're taking three or four samples from every one and we haven't found anything since July of 1975 in those elevators. So I'm telling you exactly what I know. As we spoke to Ball, the news broke that his department's latest food samplings were erroneous. They showed that no PBB-tainted products were reaching the marketplace. But the press revealed that two samples showing contamination had somehow been lost. Ball had a simple answer. We told him ever sample that we had found and the level we had found it. But we missed two. And when you shop on thousands of papers, I think you can make a human error. That's what it was. No suppression. There was no suppression. I think it was a human error. And as long as you have people, you're going to have human errors. And recent reports, for example, of the Department of Agriculture withholding information about testing results of animals. I have asked the department for a report on the allegations that have been made publicly.

I have received a temporary or an interim report. I'm frankly not satisfied with it. The full report apparently did satisfy Millican, but not before the allegations that aroused the suspicions of Don Al-Bosta, a former member of the Michigan House of Representatives, who last year set up a special committee to probe the MDA. Right from the start, everything that they did, they tried to prove it was something other than PBB that was causing this problem. The University was in on it. The Michigan Department of Agriculture was in it. The Michigan Department of Public Health was in on it. That seemed like right from the word go that it was pretty well covered out. Al-Bosta began by inviting anyone interested to attend public hearings and hundreds turned up with dramatic personal tales. Now this whole PBB mess. This isn't PBB. This is cattle gate. Mr. Call, Mr. Reesner, and the rest of these trips ought to go to jail.

Because right here is the sheet that I told you that I have proofs. The same cows that they tested ten days before were completely cured of PBB, but they're dead. But partway through his probe, the cash was cut off by the legislature. So Al-Bosta never did get to investigate the MDA. I would have hired investigators that would have had the power to have gone and pulled all the records, bank records, all these people, seen if there was any large amounts put into their checking accounts or savings accounts anytime long. But it takes investigative people to do that. Al-Bosta's report turned up nothing new, but his past is files to the Michigan Attorney General. In the meantime, PBB runs its poisonous course. This deformed calf is the second generation offspring of a low-level PBB cow which is still classified as healthy. Doc Clark has kept it deep frozen as evidence that the problem will just not go away. I remember there was a deformity in the jaw.

We go back here and we had a spinal column problem. Then, as we come around, we see that the legs, especially this leg, is all out of shape. This one probably is normal. As we spin this calf, we can see that the one on the right is somewhat normal. This calf's leg is bent way to the back along with the fact that it doesn't only have half of a tail. It looks like it's a doc tail. So if you take the legs, the limbs, the tail, this limb here, the problem in the spinal column and you've got a calf that's pretty deformed. I'm keeping these to go to court. If we can preserve them well enough, we're going to take them in the court room and let the jury see them. I think the jury should see them because each one of the jurists has got PBB in them. If they come from this area and each one of the jurists, grandkids, great-grandkids, they have this capability of getting these.

Juris, courts, lawsuits, almost four years on, as officially healthy cars deliver offspring like this. The PBB tragedy generates fear for human health, anger, bitterness and disgust. I think the word that best describes the state agency's actions is... Ah, gracious, I can't even think of a word to describe it. They screwed up right from day one as far as I'm concerned. Right in our own state, they were pulling the wool over the farmer's eyes and I still think it's going on right today. There's still some farmers believe that there isn't a bit of cover-up. I mean, they'd trust them with their life up there, but I wouldn't trust them with a nickel. They treated them like third-grade citizens. That's what the official attitude was, and it still is. They're a bunch of dumb farmers.

Well, let me tell you something. Those people have got way more on the ball than any bureaucrat in Lansing and all those bureaucrats are feeding on these poor people like jackals on society. They run around pat themselves on the back, tell themselves they're doing a good job. These farmers are so much better off than people. They shouldn't even... They can't even look to these farmers. There are a bunch of assholes. These people are honest people. Since this film was made, the Environmental Protection Agency has begun checking factories making or using PVB and their surrounding areas. So far, PVB has been found in human hair, fish, plants, and soil in Staten Island and Northern New Jersey. It's also been found in the Ohio River in West Virginia.

In Michigan itself, four years after Albert's cars began dying, a new law took effect on October 3rd. It lowers the PVB tolerance level to 20 parts per billion and provides money for further meat and milk checks. Thousands more cattle will have to be destroyed and this time their owners will be compensated. But to farmers who have already lost everything, the new law offers nothing. They must wait and wait for their day in court. It's still perfectly legal to make and use PVB. This program was produced by Thames Television and WETA, which are responsible for its content and was made possible by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.