Monsanto sold for years a highly polluting chemical despite knowing its effects

Documents show that the multinational continued to market polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) eight years after verifying their toxic consequences for health.

Yves Herman / Reuters

Bill Sherman, deputy attorney general for the state of Washington, USA, is suing the multinational Monsanto, now owned by Germany's Bayer. The official accuses the company of having produced and sold polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) for years, knowing their harmful effects on health.

The complaint is based on more than 20,000 internal memoranda, minutes of meetings, letters and other documents that have recently come to light. Most of them were obtained thanks to the Posion Papers Project , an initiative that seeks to reveal "the hidden history" of the production of chemicals and pesticides in the United States.

"If they are authentic, these records confirm that Monsanto knew that PCB was environmentally harmful, and continued to sell it despite that," Sherman told The Guardian . The company "knew the dangers, but hid them to the public for profit, " he added.

The company, which is perhaps the largest agri-food multinational, faces not only Washington state lawsuits, but also lawsuits filed by authorities in other US locations, including Spokane, Long Beach, Portland, San Diego, San Jose, Oakland, and Berkeley. In case of being found guilty, the sanction will fall on the German company Bayer, which Monsanto bought last year.

All legal

Scott Partridge, Monsanto's vice president of global strategy, said in the Guardian's article that "more than 40 years ago," his company "voluntarily halted the production and sale of PCBs before any federal requirement to do so."

According to Partridge, during the years that the substance was manufactured "it was a legal and approved product, used in many useful applications", so the company would have "no responsibility for pollution caused by those who used or discharged PCBs in the environment".

False truths

Indeed, PCB was not banned entirely in the USA. Until 1979, when it was determined that it generated different types of diseases - among them cancer - and environmental damage. Monsanto had stopped producing the product in 1977. However, the Washington state prosecutor's investigation found that eight years earlier, in 1969, internal company documents warned of these dangers.

Bayer and Monsanto, a marriage of giants

One of the company's reports , titled "Damage to the Ecological System by PCB Contamination", pointed out that "the evidence demonstrates the persistence of these compounds and their presence in the environment." Without further epidemiological considerations, there was the possibility that "direct demands" were filed with the company, since customers who used the product had not been "officially notified about known effects, nor did [our] labels carry this information" .

Finally, in its conclusions, the document offered three possibilities: "Do nothing", "discontinue the manufacture of PCBs" or "respond in a responsible manner", admitting contamination and taking action.

Other texts and documents, revealed by internal investigations , show that the company decided to stick to the US government authorities. The responsibility to prove "case by case"and meanwhile continue to sell the product for another eight years, despite being the potential cause of "a global ecological problem."