Scranton quibbles with the descriptive terms we use because they reflect badly on the industry or on its defense against lawsuits. Specifically, he spends more than a page arguing that we should not use the word “industry” to describe the members of the Manufacturing Chemists Association (MCA). [13] He argues that we “oversimplify” by using that term rather than identifying each company as an independent actor. In general, (Scranton, p. 4), he argues that “it is essential to show through documentation, not assertion, that all firms in the industry concurred in whatever action was projected.” This may be a clever legal tactic, but not a historian’s question. At many points in our book we note diversity of opinion among corporate representatives. But, we also note that they acted as a united industry when it came to official decisions such as telling the government about the potential dangers of vinyl chloride monomer. He chooses to see differences of opinion as noble; we view the same documents as indicating that the industry, or at least some within the industry, understood their ethical lapses when misleading the government. [14]
Scranton claims that our use of the word “industry” is misleading since there were only individual companies: “No where did Markowitz show that there was also an ‘industry’ in the sense of a single-voiced, policy-determining entity,” Scranton argues (Scranton, p.4). But, his attempt to splinter apart the chemical industry is disingenuous and unsupported by the historical evidence.
The use of the term “industry” to describe the chemical and VCM manufacturers is widespread in contemporary documents and is absolutely appropriate when describing how a group of the major chemical companies in the country organized itself through the MCA, its trade association, to forestall government regulation, and to act in concert with European companies to mislead NIOSH.
The chemical companies organized themselves in a trade association that claimed to speak for the “industry” and included virtually all vinyl chloride and polyvinyl chloride manufacturers.
Terry Yosie, the Chemical Manufacturers Association’s spokesperson, in the very document he identified above, talks of the “industry.” (our emphasis)
In 1974, another trade association, the Society of Plastics Industries, represented the “industry” in a suit against OSHA to prevent it from implementing tough new regulations that would lower the standard of exposure to VCM.
The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, in its decision on the vinyl chloride industry’s attempt to get OSHA’s regulations reversed, says (p.1305) “ the records shows what can only be described as a course of continued procrastination on the part of industry to protect the lives of its employees.” (our emphasis)
NIOSH perceived the MCA as representing the “industry” when it met with the MCA in July, 1973.
It was the MCA that organized research efforts, whether they were animal studies or epidemiological studies, on behalf of the chemical “industry.”
Scranton himself is guilty of the same “over generalizations” that he critiques us for. At points he himself refers to the “industry.” More generally, instead of using the term “industry” to describe vinyl manufacturers, he uses “manufacturers,” “vcm/pvc producers,” “European companies,” etc. If Scranton is going to adhere to his own exacting criteria he should list specific companies individually, to avoid any gross generalization.
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[13] This trade association has changed its name first to the Chemical Manufacturing Association and now to the American Chemistry Council.
[14] Scranton seeks to substitute phrasing that will fit a legal argument. See Scranton, p. 5, for example, where he chastises us for using the phrase “what was obvious to all” instead of his preferred, legally more ambiguous, phrasing, “what may have been obvious to all.”