Response to Philip Scranton's Report On Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution

by David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz

"Until I read Deceit and Denial I certainly believed that I had been an insider, had been well-informed about what had happened in the struggle to regulate vinyl chloride. How little I knew! How little I understood about industry efforts to manipulate the debate and influence the regulatory outcomes. For these classic cases, lead and vinyl chloride, this book tells much more than I knew, perhaps close to the whole story."

-- Anthony Robbins, former Director of NIOSH, 1978-1981. [1]

"The preeminent value of all intellectual communities is reasoned discourse – the continuous colloquy among historians of diverse points of view. A commitment to such discourse makes possible the fruitful exchange of views, opinion, and knowledge."

-- "Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct," American Historical Association [2]

Introduction

In Fall, 2002, our book, Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution, was published jointly by the University of California Press and the Milbank Fund as one in a series that addressed a variety of aspects of health policy. Briefly, the book looked at questions regarding how two industries, the lead industry and the chemical industry, reacted when faced with information regarding the potential dangers of their products to human health during the twentieth century.

The book was unusual in a number of respects, including the fact that much of the chapters on the two primary cases were based on documents historians rarely if ever use in critical evaluations of corporate behavior. These documents included internal company correspondence, memos and minutes of meetings of both the lead and chemical industry trade associations and some of their member companies. This extensive cache of documents became available during the "Discovery" phase of various lawsuits against the Lead Industries Association (LIA) and the Manufacturing Chemists Association (MCA), (today renamed the American Chemistry Council), and some of their member companies.

We have testified as expert witnesses in these legal disputes because the historical record is critical in determining whether the lead and vinyl industries should be held accountable for harm to individuals and communities. The Attorney General of the State of Rhode Island has brought one case against the lead industry.

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[1] Anthony Robbins, Review of Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution, Journal of Public Health Policy, 24(2003), 492-494.
[2] "Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct," American Historical Association, May, 2003.