Sprol

What happens when you mix a small, Texas town near the Houston Shipping Channel with a conglomerate of over fifty chemical plants? You get children born with birth defects and people with respiratory problems under virtual house arrest.

Interested in moving there? A French-owned chemical company known as Elf Atochem North America was certainly eager to take up residence in the Bayport area in late 1998. Elf Atochem has plants throughout the United States and Canada, with headquarters in Philadelphia. The North American unit is part of Elf Atochem, which in turn in part of Elf Aquitaine. Did you follow that? That final link to this lovely chemical quagmire is headquartered in Paris, but don’t expect to find much contact information for this multi-national corporation.

They don’t even have a website for their North American operations. The French equivalent website does not open—maybe you need the secret decoder ring to make it work. The only real way to find out much about them is through the “chemical yellow pages” or court documents.

In other words, only those interested in purchasing any of the array of chemical products Elf Atochem has to offer should consider contacting them. Sickened homeowners or concerned citizens need not apply.

For those of you who get giddy over pondering the Periodic Table, here’s a small list of some of the products Elf offers to their fellow chemical companies:

• Organic Peroxides
• Dialkyl Peroxides
• Hydrogen Peroxide
• Peroxy esters (both t-amyl and t-butyl)
• Dimethyl Isopropylamine
• Diethyl Hydroxyalamine
• Adhesives
• Fluoro chemicals
• Chloroalkali
• Chlorate

Did I forget to mention Elf is primarily in business in the Bayport area to provide chemicals to other chemical companies? I know it sounds like some type of twisted supply and demand food chain, but it’s all true.

Consider the residents of the El Jardin neighborhood in Bayport who have been fighting Elf for several years now. Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t jardin mean garden? In a twist on the grand American tradition of naming communities after what they replace, El Jardin now refers to an exotic garden of dangerous chemicals.

The environmental group Texas PEER kindly interviewed some of the folks in El Jardin regarding their feelings about Elf. PEER quoted Ruth Lange, an El Jardin resident as saying, “there’s a long history of people complaining of sore throats, bleeding noses, nausea, and rashes. Allergies, asthma, and chemical sensitivities run rampant in the neighborhood.” It appears rather routine to have someone in the Bayport area treated for exposure to chemicals. Unfortunately, often the chemicals are not disclosed since the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission has a habit of letting Elf only disclose a few of the chemicals it produces—the others are treated as trade secrets.

It seems that more often than not, the people who are charged with protecting the public welfare are more responsive to the needs of the polluters than the citizens. Nowhere is this more apparent than Texas. The Lone Star State is known for its wide-open vistas and seemingly endless supply of land. Too bad so much of it is polluted.

The Texas Natural Resource Conservation Council is supposed to make sure Texas’s resources are conserved—probably why they chose that name. It makes you wonder why, then, this very same organization would allow Elf to keep 37 of the 49 chemicals it produces in the Bayport plant a secret to the public. To add insult to injury, it is possible that the very same chemical that was released in Bhopal, India, Methyl Isocyanate (MIC), is being manufactured in Elf’s facilities. Houston is overcrowded; maybe Elf and the TNRCC figured fewer angry constituents wouldn’t be missed anyway.

You’re probably wondering at this point how Elf can be pumping an estimated 427,540 pounds of pollutants into the air without being fined. That’s the beauty of Texas. Under legislation signed into law by our environmentally-friendly President George W. Bush, when he was governor of Texas, chemical companies can self-audit their emissions (Texas HB 2473, 74th Session).

Actually, it goes for all the polluters in Texas, so Elf Atochem should not feel special or in any way privileged. I’m sure that helps the approximately 4000 people who call themselves Elf Atochemers, or more appropriately employees, sleep more soundly at night. I guess the 2.2 billion the company makes each year worldwide also helps everyone get closer to their comfort zones. And I’m sure not much of that money went into the campaign of then-Governor George W. Bush or to the man who deserves the real credit for writing HB 2473, Kinnan Goleman.

Goleman is actually a lobbyist for chemical companies in Texas. Who better to write the law governing chemical companies than a chemical lobbyist? It all makes sense. Of course the EPA under the Clinton Administration did take exception to this law and made a few subtle changes. The agency never publicly accepted the idea of polluters self-auditing their emissions, but that all ended when President Clinton left office. Fortunately, now the former governor gets to tell the people at the EPA what to do now, too, instead of just the TNRCC. We certainly are a fortunate country.

Thanks to a historical record, we know that Elf Atochem did once-upon-a-time get in trouble with good ole’ Uncle Sam. In 1995 to 1999, Elf Atochem engaged in something more knowledgeable types refer to as “price fixing.” According to the plea-bargin reached with the US of A, Elf and some of its fellow chemical producers attempted to “suppress and eliminate” competition in the monochloroacetic acid and sodium monochloroacetate (MCAA) market. Being the good self-auditors they are, Elf immediately made good on their transgression and paid 8.5 million dollars in fines and their president, Patrick Stainton, agreed to serve a ten month jail term in the US.

In 2003 the former CEO and General Affairs Manager were sent to prison for stealing over 300 million pounds in France’s biggest corporate crime trial.

That’s after independent auditing to reduce the risk of financial crime.

Imagine self-auditing for other kinds of crime. In fact, you’ve probably participated in self-auditing for crime if you flew anywhere in the United States when the ticket agents would ask you those two silly questions. They’ve since stopped doing that.

So, are you ready to move? Don’t let the smell of rotten eggs, super glue, or vinegar stop you. Oh, and if your lungs start burning, don’t blame President Bush, Kinnan Goleman, or Patrick Stainton. It’s all probably due to your overactive imagination, like global warming.

1. Texas PEER Organization, accessed 31 July 2005.
2. Chemical Register: The Yellow Pages for the Chemical Industry, accessed 31 July 2005.
3. Texas PEER Organization
4. Ibid.
5. Texas PEER Organization, accessed 31 July 2005.
6. Texas PEER Organization, accessed 31 July 2005.
7. Ibid.
8. United States Department of Justice.
9. Houston Chronicle, Business Briefs US and Nation, 16 March 2002.