Andrew Gibbs, outside Dow AgroSciences

(This is the last of four blogs about the government cover-up of major health problems related to the production of dioxin-related chemicals at Dow AgroSciences in New Plymouth between 1948 and 1987.)

“I have long dreamed of buying an island owned by no nation and of establishing the world headquarters of the Dow company on truly neutral ground of such an island, beholden to no nation or society.” Dow chairman Carl Gerstacker 1972 (Exporting Environmentalism).

The above comment by the head of Dow in a1972 speech is extremely illuminating. His company came pretty damned close, in essence buying New Zealand, when they bought into Ivon Watkins Dow in 1964.

Beyond the statistical manipulations and ethical flaws, the infamous 2004-2005 study in which the New Zealand government proved that dioxin doesn’t cause cancer and birth defects, had serious underlying design flaws:

1. The Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR) study diluted any measurable effect size by analyzing cancer, mortality and birth defect rates for all of New Plymouth, rather than limiting their analysis to the 500 families living adjacent to Ivon Watkins Dow. In fact the records they examined only included a tiny cohort of residents with heavy dioxin exposure. The seventies, eighties and nineties saw a substantial number of Paritutu/Motorua residents leave New Plymouth – and New Zealand. Neither Taranaki District Health Board (TDHB) nor the Minister of Health made any effort to trace them and investigate their health outcomes.

2. Both Ministry of Health and TDHB studies (and a 2008 University of Otago study) used residents from other areas of New Zealand as a control. It has already been well established that all Kiwis experienced massive dioxin exposure (through a largely meat and dairy-based diet) in the fifties, sixties, and seventies, which was accompanied by record birth defect and cancer rates and fertility problems. Surely a more appropriate control group would have been Kiwi urban vegans or residents in developed countries that didn’t employ massive amounts of 2,4,5-T to grow food.

Marginalizing and Harassing Local Activists

The deliberate marginalization and demonization of local dioxin activists is also a largely untold story. Both complaining residents and members of the Dioxin Investigation Network (DIN) were repeatedly attacked by the Taranaki Daily News (Taranaki News Ltd coincidentally owned 1300 shares in Ivon Watkins Dow) as paranoid alarmists. They also came under attack from New Plymouth District Council and Taranaki Regional Council members for threatening to New Plymouth’s reputation as a “clean, green” tourist destination.

This repeated portrayal of local activists and the demands they were making on TDHB as paranoid is evidenced by the ambush visit by the TDHB crisis team to DIN president Andrew Gibbs and a diagnosis of obsessive paranoid schizophrenia.

The Government Compromise: Free Health Checks

Gibbs, who has recently had his diagnosis officially reversed by a Canadian psychiatrist, continues to fight to get Dow and the New Zealand government to acknowledge the health problems of Paritutu and Motorua residents. Ironically one month after the University of Otago released a second flawed study “proving” that dioxin exposure wasn’t responsible for their health problems, the government granted Paritutu survivors three free health checks as of July 1, 2008. Gibbs dismisses the government move as a PR ploy, mainly because it denies, without any investigation, the possibility of intergenerational effects (i.e. birth defects in subsequent generations). This directly contradicts a 2006 study showing that New Zealand veterans had DNA damage as a result of dioxin (Agent Orange) exposure in Vietnam (see DNA Injury Confirmed).

The Cover-up that Cost More Than the Truth

The question yet to be answered is why the New Zealand government was so determined to cover all this up. Why spend millions of dollars on PR consultants, a “financial risk” management unit, flawed research and a vexatious Broadcast Standards Authority (BSA) complaint, when it would have cost far less to acknowledge and treat the health problems of the 500 New Plymouth households who experience dioxin exposure between 1960-1973? The ParitutuIWD website (http://paritutuiwd.hostzi.com/ suggests that government admission of dioxin-related health problems would open them to liability – both from New Zealand veterans and Vietnamese civilians exposed to Agent Orange. Because the New Zealand government was a share holder, as well as subsidizing 2,4,5-T production from 1969 on, they are co-liable with IWD.

I think the motivation for the cover-up is much more complex. The US government faces exponentially higher financial liability for spraying tens of thousands of US vets and Vietnamese veterans with Agent Orange. Yet they acknowledged back in the early nineties that dioxin was responsible for major health problems in Vietnam veterans and their children and grandchildren. The New Zealand government, in contrast, continued to suppress the truth and demonize and harass activists for another twenty more years.

As a newcomer to new Zealand, I think the actions of successive governments (both National and Labour) in the dioxin scandal stem from a mindset typical of small countries that depend on volatile industries, such as agricultural exports and tourism, to drive their economy. In addition to extreme weather events and novel pests (such as pseudomonas synringae actinaedae, which threatens to wipe out our kiwifruit industry), New Zealand is subject to the heartbreaking effects of the speculative global commodities market and a high New Zealand dollar. The former can suddenly, and without warning, drop the price of milk and other exports below the cost of production. The latter can wipe out entire markets, in favor of countries with a more favorable exchange rate.

All industrialized countries face massive pressure to allow corporations to externalize (i.e. pass them on to someone else) the costs of the environmental degradation and human health problems they cause. In large economies like the US, there is still scope for the public (usually the federal government) to assume some of these externalized costs. This is far more difficult in small countries like New Zealand, which are desperate for foreign investment to meet the growth targets that will stabilize their overseas debt. Believing our country’s very economic survival is at stake, the government response to ordinary Kiwis who are harmed by foreign companies has become more or less automatic: deny, spin, marginalize and demonize.

(For additional background and sources, see http://paritutuiwd.hostzi.com/?q=node/2).

(This is the third of four blogs about the government cover-up of major health problems related to the production of dioxin-related chemicals at Dow AgroSciences in New Plymouth between 1948 and 1987.)

In 1987, in response to local pressure and scores of studies documenting dioxin-related health problems in Vietnam veterans, Ivon Watkins Dow (IWD) shut down all 2,4,5-T production. It’s of note this occurred without Dow or the New Zealand government acknowledging any negative health effects from dioxin exposure. Former IWD employees and Paritutu and Motorua residents in close proximity to the plant were left with a legacy of chronic health problems and nowhere to turn for help. In New Zealand, all specialist care is free under the national health service. However Kiwis can only access specialty care via their GPs. Patients pay privately for GP visits, which have yet to be incorporated into the national health scheme.

The Public Relations Firm that Got Rich Off Dioxin

The battle to obtain government recognition of the major health problems of dioxin-exposed Paritutu and Motorua residents first began in 1973 and escalated in 1980, when Friends of the Earth launched the first campaign to halt 2,4,5-T production at Ivon Watkins Dow. Instead of attempting to understand and address residents’ health problems, IWD and the New Zealand government, IWD’s partner though major share holdings and subsidization, became the first clients of New Zealand’s first public relations firm (Consultus). Records show that Consultus was hired to ensure the ongoing availability and use of 2,4,5-T. A 1981 case study from the international journal PR News – about Consultus’ first PR campaign – is entitled  “Countering an Activist Campaign to Have a Product Banned from Use” (http://paritutuiwd.hostzi.com/PDF/C1a.pdf). This “media management” reassurance response seems to be very typical of New Zealand’s approach to toxic waste management. In the words of one Paritutu survivor, the goal is to “delay and deny until we die.”

In the mid to late nineties, a friend and local activist named Andrew Gibbs helped found a new research group, the Paritutu Dioxin Investigation Network. When his de facto partner, a long term resident of Paritutu, developed chronic fatigue syndrome and unexplained anemia, her family and friends informed him of widespread reproductive and immune problems of families living near IWD. Gibbs, alarmed by 1985 Paritutu studies showing dioxin residues as high as in Vietnamese regions sprayed with Agent Orange, tried to get the government to test her blood and that of other Paritutu residents. However both National and Labour were still more interested in managing public opinion about dioxin than in helping New Plymouth residents with major health problems.

The Government Gives in to Grassroots Pressure

In 1998 the Dioxin Investigation Network persuaded local MP (and now mayor) Harry Duynhoven to ask the Minister of Health (under a National-led government) to investigate the health problems of former Paritutu and Motorua residents. His request was declined. In 2000 a similar request to the Minister of Health of the newly elected Labour government was also dismissed.

In 2001, Minister of Health Annette King finally agreed to test the serum levels of 100 Paritutu survivors. When many were found to have elevated dioxin levels, the Labour-led government responded by setting up a Ministry of Health unit to manage “financial risks” related to potential government liability (see http://paritutuiwd.hostzi.com/PDF/01.PDF).

Spin, Cover-up, and Statistical Manipulation

They subsequently commissioned a 2004-2005 study by Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) to “analyze” Taranaki District Health Board cancer and birth defect records for a possible link to dioxin exposure. The researchers the Minister of Health engaged subjected the data to a number of bizarre statistical manipulations to produce the desired conclusion: that high rates of cancer and birth defects in Paritutu and Motorua households were totally unrelated to dioxin exposure. For example, the Ministry of Health (MOH) deliberately re-targeted the study design to focus on residents living in Paritutu between 1974-87, who were known to have lower exposure levels on the basis of initial serum results and production changes between 1969 and 1973 that reduced dioxin contamination. The MOH also altered 2005 data reporting to make it appear ongoing exposure occurred between 1974-87, as well as using inaccurate half-life figures to skew pre-1974 results. Moreover they excluded high rates of diagnosed cancer between 1970-74 as being too close to the period of toxic exposure, which they misreported as occurring between 1962-87 (diluting the effect by including 14 years in which residents experienced minimal dioxin exposure), rather than between 1960-73. See (*) below for actual data.

When these statistical manipulations were challenged in a 2006 TV3 documentary entitled “Let us Spray,” the government and their risk management unit dismissed the bulk of the alleged misrepresentations and blamed others on “typographical” errors. The government subsequently laid a (successful) complaint with the Broadcast Standards Authority (BSA) about the documentary, which had won a Qantas Television Award. It subsequently came out that the Minister of Health omitted the statistically manipulated data when they subjected their study for peer review. The only peer review conducted in conjunction with the offending data was ignored. The peer reviewer, Dr Marie Sweeney from the (US) National Institute for Occupation Safety and Health, recommended several corrections to the text and tables which were never made.

After New Zealand health officials repeatedly ignored recommendations by ESR and the local ethics review board that they undertake a geo-spatial study of families with elevated dioxin levels, Gibbs himself undertook a study on residents living within 500 meters of IWD between 1963-66. He achieved his primary goal – proving that a historical cohort could be identified – at a total cost of $1000. This was in contrast to the hundreds of millions of dollars the New Zealand government had paid Consultus, ESR, their “financial risk” management unit and the legal team that filed their vexatious BSA complaint.

*A look at the Taranaki District Health Board (TDHB) 2002 data reveals a large increase in neural tube birth defects in Moturoa and Paritutu residents between 1965 and 1972. It also reveals that New Plymouth rates of hydrocephaly, hypospadias, spina bifida and anencephaly recorded at New Plymouth Maternity Hospital between 1965 and 1971 were respectively 3.2 times, 3.8 times, 4.2 times and 9.7 times the crude rates found in offspring of US Vietnam veterans:

“The 1966-1972 rate of still-births was 1 in 7 versus the expected N.Z rate of 1.1 still-birth in 100 births. The 1966-72 rate of linked NTD (neural tube development) defects was 1 in 10.5 vs the N.Z range of 1 NTD in 222 to 1 NTD in 400. The 1966-72 rate of birth defect cases was *1 in 7 versus the N.Z expected rate of 1 case in 50 births  This conservative rate is based on the 2002 TDHB review of addresses for only 17 of 167 birth defect cases 1965-70 so does not include the other 150 defects or three defects reported by Zone A mothers.” See http://www.nzbdmp.ac.nz/assets/FILES/Birth%20Defects%20in%20the%20New%20Plymouth%20District.pdf and http://paritutuiwd.hostzi.com/PDF/B38.PDF.pdf).”

The TDHB data also reveals a significant increase in 1976-85 cancer rates living within 500 meters of IWD in 1963-1966:

“Study of 165 Paritutu Zone A 1963-1966 residents living within a 500 metres of Ivon Watkins Building 03 plant: 1976-85 rate of 0-64 year age group cancer mortality was 4.5 times expected. Five deaths where 1.1 was expected based on mean of 1976 and 1985 NZ census rates. Four of the 5 deaths were in 1981 and 1982. Two in five NZ 1976-85 cancer deaths were in 0-64 ages. All five Zone A cancer deaths were in 0-64 ages. Two 1981 cancer deaths were parents aged 35 and 48 of 1969 and 1970 miscarriage and still-birth cases. There were 13 deaths 1976-85 for Zone A 1963-66 residents with 13.4 all cause deaths expected, 5 were cancer deaths with 2.9 expected and there were 3 lung cancer mortalities where less than 1 was expected (see http://paritutuiwd.hostzi.com/PDF/60.pdf/).”

(For additional background and sources, see http://paritutuiwd.hostzi.com/?q=node/2).

To be continued.

Images from New Plymouth Maternity Hospital

from

http://www.dioxinnz.com/let-us-spray/L_U_S_part-02k.html

(This is the second of four blogs about the government cover-up of major health problems related to the production of dioxin-related chemicals at Dow AgroSciences in New Plymouth between 1948 and 1987)

It’s fairly common for the US and other European countries to ask New Zealand, owing to our lax environmental regulations, to manufacture and or test hazardous substances that are too controversial in their own countries. In 2005 the former MP and current mayor of New Plymouth claimed to have leaked documents revealing that New Plymouth’s Ivon Watkins Dow (IWD) plant secretly manufactured 2,4,5-T and 2,4 D for the Pentagon for use as “Agent Orange” in Vietnam. When combined, the two chemicals form large amounts of 2,3,7,8 TCDD, also known as dioxin. In 1969, around the same time the US embassy complained about high dioxin residues in beef and lamb exports, the US ended their use of Agent Orange to defoliate Vietnamese jungles. Contrast New Zealand, where the Government introduced a subsidy (in 1969) to encourage increased production and use of 2,4,5-T

Birth Defects: An Early Warning Sign

Meanwhile all kinds of alarm bells should have been going off, owing to a staggering increase in severe birth defects in families downwind of IWD. In the early 1970s, the New Plymouth Maternity Hospital Matron informed the local health department that between 1965 and 1971, one out of thirty newborns hospital had birth defects. These included a strikingly high proportion of neural tube defects commonly associated with dioxin exposure, such as anencephaly (the absence of a brain), hydrocephalus and spina bifida.

During the same period, New Plymouth officials noted that (illegal) liquid emissions had a corrosive effect on drain pipes, and residents who got the stuff on their skin developed orange blisters that never healed. Downwinders complained that the veggies they grew were misshapen. While, as in Love Canal, there was a spate of miscarriages, stillbirths, deformed newborns and kids with chronic health problems.

Declining Sperm Counts and Toxic Breast Milk

During a period that New Plymouth had the highest rate of birth defects in the country, the overall rate in New Zealand was one of the highest in the world. Everyone ingesting New Zealand meat and dairy products during the sixties and seventies accumulated substantial blood and fatty tissue concentrations of dioxin, owing to the massive amount of 2,4,5-T Kiwi farmers used to clear gorse and scrub. There is a presumptive link between this exposure and declining sperm counts and spiking cancer rates Kiwis experienced in the decades that followed. Even more alarming, a 1972-73 study of Dunedin infant published in the Lancet suggested that breast milk (which also accumulates dioxin) was less healthy than formula. In a survey of 1000 children, those breastfed four weeks or longer were twice as likely to suffer from allergies or asthma in later childhood.

The US Bans 2,4,5-T in All Crops But Rice

In 1969, IWD upgraded their 2,4,5-T plants “rudimentary” emission controls to reduce dioxin levels in their air emissions and the herbicide they produced. From 1973 on, after the US banned 2,4,5-T in all food crops except rice, the NZ government required IWD to treat their herbicide with a solvent that reduced dioxin levels levels even further.  The fate of the dioxin IWD extracted between 1973 and 1987 remains unclear. Both national and regional agencies were charged with monitoring the dioxin content of IWD’s incinerator emissions. However according to available records, monitoring was sporadic, if it happened it all.

Cancer Rates Climb

Meanwhile studies continued to be published overseas linking dioxin exposure to many of the health problems residents of Paritutu and Motorua (the suburbs closest to IWD) were describing. In addition to birth defects, miscarriages, crib deaths and chronic childhood illnesses, downwind families were experiencing unprecedented levels of brain and spinal tumors, sarcomas, lymphomas, prostate and respiratory cancers and multiple sclerosis, as well as neurodevelopmental (mainly autism, Asperger’s disorder, mental retardation and ADHD) problems in their kids

Economic Viability Trumps Health

In 1972 an explosion at IWD (resulting in a massive ash emissions release), coupled with the documented increase in birth defects, led the Environmental Defense Society to call for a total New Zealand ban on 2,4,5-T production. Following a campaign by Residents Against Dioxin and a second explosion in 1986, a Ministerial Committee of Inquiry was convened. Unfortunately the Inquiry ignored the report by the Health Department of Regional Air Pollution Control officer who performed soil testing in Paritutu and Motorua. His 1985 report concluded that airborne IWD emissions during the sixties had resulted in soil dioxin residues comparable to those of Vietnamese regions sprayed with Agent Orange.

The conclusion reached by the Committee of Inquiry: that New Zealand had no “economically viable” alternative to 2,4, 5-T.

(For additional background and sources, see http://paritutuiwd.hostzi.com/?q=node/2).

To be continued

Paritutu and Ivon Watkins Dow smokestack

(This is the first of four blogs about the government cover-up of major health problems related to the production of dioxin-related chemicals at Dow AgroSciences in New Plymouth between 1948 and 1987)

When is corruption not corruption? The anti-corruption campaign in India has received substantial international coverage. Likewise complaints of extensive government corruption in debt-ridden Spain and Greece. Yet massive electoral fraud by Republican-controlled states in 2000 and 2004 goes virtually unreported, even in the so-called alternative media. Likewise allowing corporations to bribe elected officials by paying for their election campaigns is rarely referred to as corruption. Neither is the CIA’s involvement in narcotics trafficking. Nor rewarding banksters with billion dollar bailouts rather than jailing them. Surely any government that openly engages in such activities is deeply corrupt. So why does the world media point the finger at India, Greece and Spain and not the US?

This paradox seems to revolve around the specific nature, not severity, of corrupt practices. What passes for corruption in India, and to some extent Spain and Greece, is major tax avoidance and the expectation that applicants for passports, visas, drivers and business licenses and construction permits will pay a bribe on top of the application fee. All relatively minor stuff, compared to American-style corruption, but fairly common in poor countries where government bureaucrats don’t earn enough to live on.

Since coming to New Zealand, I’ve learned there is a third variety of corruption typical of struggling second world countries. Numerous safeguards make electoral fraud very difficult here. Likewise public officials who accepted bribes would be harshly punished, owing to the disastrous effect it would have on foreign investment. In fact, New Zealand is widely promoted in the global community as being corruption-free. It also enjoys the dubious distinction of being the most regulation-free for overseas corporations, especially when it comes to hazardous corporate waste.

This is the conclusion I have come to: what the corporate media refers to as “corruption” are extra legal activities that interfere with the ability to conduct business. Corruption that results in environmental degradation or destroys the lives or health of ordinary people doesn’t count.

New Plymouth: the Dioxin Capitol of New Zealand

The whole issue of chemical trespass and inadequate toxics regulation is of particular concern to me as a New Plymouth resident. I have numerous friends and former patients who have had their health and lives ruined by the government;s total refusal to oversee or regulate the activities of Dow AgroSciences (formerly known as Ivon Watkins Dow).* The latter produced extremely hazardous dioxin-related compounds between 1948 and 1987. After World War II, chlorinated hydrocarbons (aka organochlorines), such as 2,3,7,8 TCDD (dioxin), 2,4,5-T and 2,4 D were developed as herbicides (weed killers). Dioxin, also known as Agent Orange, was extensively sprayed during the Vietnam War to expose guerrilla positions by defoliating the jungles. The damaging health effects of these compounds were noted in many returning GIs and Vietnamese civilians and their children and grandchildren.

New Zealand, which has long had an economy driven by agricultural exports, relied heavily on the toxic petroleum-based insecticides and herbicides that came out after the war. As early as 1957, the New Zealand Royal Society cautioned that these chemicals needed to be thoroughly investigated, owing to the potential hazard they posed to human health. The warning went unheeded. In the 1950s and 1960s New Zealanders experienced the highest per capita exposure to DDT and related pesticides and 2,4,5-T in the western world. This appears to be the major culprit in the doubling of New Zealand’s cancer rate between 1960 and 2012 – and the halving of Kiwi sperm counts between 1987 and 2007. This drop is the most dramatic fall in the developed world. Neither Australia nor the US experienced a comparable decline in sperm counts during the same period.

The New Zealand government got their first wake-up call regarding their heavy use of these chemicals in 1961, when the US issued a ban on New Zealand beef exports, owing to excessive residues of chlorinated hydrocarbons, such as DDT, aldrin, dieldrin, and BHC, which were used extensively as soil insecticides to combat ‘grass grub’. In 1969 the US notified the New Zealand government of their intention to test beef and lamb exports for TCDD (dioxin), based on research showing that dioxin contaminated 2,4,5-T had caused birth defects in animal studies. A confidential 1960s Dow internal memo reveals that Dow knew TCDD contaminated 2,4, 5-T was hazardous to human health: “The material presents a definite hazard. It shouldn’t be sold until animal tests show these products to be free of significant hazard from dioxin-related materials.” (For additional background and sources, see http://paritutuiwd.hostzi.com/?q=node/2).

*While Ivon Watkins (incorporated in 1944) prided itself on research and development geared towards New Zealand conditions, several major international chemical firms had substantial financial interests in the company including Monsanto (USA), the American Chemical Paint Company (USA), Geigy (Switzerland), Cela (Germany) and the Union Carbide Corporation (USA). Solidifying such connections, the company became Ivon Watkins-Dow Ltd (IWD) in 1964 after Dow Chemicals USA bought a 50% interest (Sewell 1978 – see http://www.dioxinnz.com/pdf-NZ-RAD/RAD-Thesis-BWC.pdf).

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To be continued.