104. The Kepone Shakes (Life Science Products)

Support for swindled comes from Simply Safe.

For the longest time, I thought home security meant an alarm going off after someone broke in.

But if the alarm is already blaring, it's too late.

The damage is done.

That's a reactive approach, and it leaves you with that awful feeling of violation, even if the intruder runs away.

That's why I switched to Simply Safe.

They've completely changed the game with Active Guard outdoor protection.

designed to stop crime before it starts.

Their smart, AI-powered cameras don't just detect motion.

They can tell you when there's a person lurking on your property.

That instantly alerts SimplySafe's professional monitoring agents in real time.

And here's the game changer.

The agents can actually intervene while the intruder is still outside.

Talk to them through two-way audio, hit them with a loud siren and spotlight.

and call 911 if needed.

It's proactive security, and that's real security.

I trust SimplySafe because there are no long-term contracts, no hidden fees, and a 60-day money-back guarantee.

They've been named best home security systems by U.S.

News and World Report for five years in a row, and I can see why.

Get 50% off your new SimplySafe system at simplysafe.com/slash swindled.

That's 50% off your new SimplySafe system by visiting simplysafe.com/slash swindled.

There's no safe like SimplySafe.

Support for swindled comes from Honey Love.

It's officially cozy season.

Soft sweaters, layered looks, comfort on every level.

But if your bra still feels like medieval body armor, it's time for an upgrade.

Honey Love makes the best wireless bras you will ever wear.

Seriously.

No wires, no digging straps, no weird bulges, just support that actually feels good.

Think you'll miss the structure of an underwire?

Think again.

Honey Love's smart design does all the lifting and shaping without any of the pain.

Honestly, it's the first bra you won't rip off the second you get home.

You can wear them under a sweater, on a night out, even just lounging around the house.

And every time, you'll forget you're even wearing it.

This is the bra you'll actually enjoy wearing.

Honey Love's crossover bra will be your new go-to.

But their new cloud embrace wireless t-shirt bra sold out in a few days for a reason.

It feels like a cloud against your skin.

And they don't just stop at bras.

They've got shapewear, tanks, and leggings that are just as comfortable and supportive.

Treat yourself to the most comfortable and innovative bras on earth and save 20% off site-wide at honeylove.com/slash swindled.

Use our exclusive link to get 20% off.

Honeylove.com/slash swindled.

After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them.

Please support our show and tell them we sent you.

Experience the new standard in bras with Honey Love.

This episode of Swindled may contain graphic descriptions or audio recordings of disturbing events which may not be suitable for all audiences.

Listener discretion is advised.

Nearly all adults living on Martinique and neighboring Guadalupe have traces of Claudicone in their blood.

Tons of the chemical was sprayed on banana crops, contaminating soil, rivers, and coastal waters.

Stop me if you've heard this one.

In the late 1490s, a Spanish explorer named Christopher Columbus washed ashore a beautiful land inhabited by indigenous people.

In a few centuries' time, after some resistance, those indigenous people would be eradicated by British and French settlers through violence, disease, or free boat rides to Dominica and replaced with enslaved Africans.

Obviously, I'm talking about the Caribbean archipelago of of Guadeloupe in the French West Indies.

In a few more bloody centuries, Guadeloupe and the neighboring island of Martinique would officially become French territories.

The sugar cane turned into banana plantations.

Slavery was abolished, at least on paper anyway.

The same people own the land, make the rules, and collect all the money.

At the same time, the approximately 750,000 new natives of the islands suffer from chronic unemployment, widespread poverty, food shortages, and political unrest.

In modern-day Guadalupe, you will also find the natives enjoy the world's highest rate of prostate cancer.

It's always been assumed that the diagnoses were related to the 300 tons of chlorticone that covers one-third of the land surface and surrounding waters of the islands.

Chlorticone is a pesticide, a colorless, powdery substance that the maskless workers would apply with their bare hands on the base and surrounding soil of banana trees.

Clorticone was incredibly effective against the banana weevil, a relentless little bugger that has been known to destroy roots and ruin entire crops.

In addition to being incredibly effective, chlorticone is also incredibly persistent, meaning the effects of the pesticide are seemingly everlasting in the environment, a selling point because it takes an estimated 400 years for it to degrade in some soils naturally.

And it doesn't dissipate in water.

Instead, chlorticone is ingested by the bottom feeders and bioaccumulates up the food chain until a more concentrated version reaches you.

And as it turns out, chlorticone is persistent in the human body as well.

The pesticide continually reprocesses in the liver and fatty tissue and takes almost 200 days to flush out.

Again, Guadeloupe and Martinique are covered in 300 tons of chlorticone.

Almost 95% of the population has traces of it in their blood.

Epidemiological studies have shown that chlorticone exposure is associated with long-term health problems, including cancer, premature births, and cognitive and motor development disorders.

Long-term effects have only recently become more understood, but the World Health Organization classified chlorticone as a probable human carcinogen back in 1979.

The United States banned the substance from production and use in 1976.

France, on the other hand, did not ban the use of chlorticone until 1990.

In fact, a French company bought the patent for chlorticone and began manufacturing it in Brazil for use in Guadeloupe, Martinique, and other locations.

Even after mainland France prohibited its use, the government exempted the French West Indies from the chlorticone ban until 1993.

The owners were also allowed to use their remaining stock up.

And when that was depleted, the ban was circumvented by illegally importing chlorticone to to the islands under a different name, a practice that continued until roughly 2003.

As usual, it was an entirely financially based decision to keep using this particular pesticide.

There were alternatives to chlorticone, but chlorticone was cheaper and again, persistent.

So persistent that tens of thousands of acres of agricultural land in Guadeloupe and Martinique remain unusable, leaving the islanders almost entirely dependent on the importation of food.

For the first time, a French president has publicly acknowledged Claudicone poisoning in the French West Indies, and he has asked for a report to explain the magnitude of the contamination.

If no viable solution is found soon, Martinique's land will stay soiled by this poisonous pesticide for centuries to come.

For years, the French government wouldn't even acknowledge the issue, much less take responsibility.

President Emmanuel Macron finally did so in 2018.

He visited the islands and labeled the chlorticone contamination an environmental scandal enabled by, quote, collective blindness.

But Macron stopped short of saying that they should have known better, quote, it should not be said that it is carcinogenic.

In 2020, widespread protests swept across Guadeloupe and Martinique when the French government ordered mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations.

The islanders did not trust the Parisians to have their best interests at heart.

After all, it was the same government that had no meaningful remediation plan or action related to corticone until 30 years had passed.

The same government that had approved and prolonged the use of clorticone in the first place.

Several environmental organizations had filed a complaint against the government for reckless endangerment back in 2006, but nothing had ever come of it.

But then, almost 18 years later, the investigation was complete and the case was finally heard.

Marching on an island they say has been poisoned by pesticide.

Thousands demand justice for a crime they say is two decades in the making.

And then the case was promptly dismissed.

On January 2nd, 2023, the magistrates from the High Court of Paris condemned the use of chlorticone from 1973 to 1993.

calling it, quote, an environmental attack whose human, economic, and social consequences affect and will affect for many years the daily life of the inhabitants of Guadeloupe and Martinique.

But the statute of limitations for any criminal prosecutions had passed, the court ruled.

No individuals, businesses, or governments could be held responsible.

After years of trying to get the state to take responsibility, a French court has dismissed the case, citing that the accusations of poisoning were past the statute of limitations.

They did acknowledge that the pesticide's use could be considered a health crisis.

Victims are appealing the ruling, calling it a miscarriage of justice.

The activists plan to take their case all the way to the European Court of Human Rights if the French government fails to respond.

The French court also asserted that nobody knew the harmful effects of the pesticide when it was in use.

Even in the 1990s, the court claimed scientists had not established links between chlorticone and illnesses in people.

This statement appears to be patently untrue.

The reason the World Health Organization labeled chlorticone a possible carcinogen in 1979, the reason the U.S.

banned chlorticone use in 1976, and the reason the patent was sold to a French company in the first place is because there was a suspected link between chlorticone exposure and human illnesses even back then.

It had all played out in the media and the U.S.

courts for everyone to see in a small town called Hopewell, Virginia, where chlorticone was solely produced under the brand name Keepone.

A chemical company is accused of knowingly poisoning its workers and the environment on this episode of Swindled.

They bribed government officials by accounting for violations of declaring state law earlier in the past.

Millions of taxpayer dollars that were wasted.

Support for swindled comes from Delete Me.

Delete Me makes it easy, quick, and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable.

It's easier than ever to look up someone's home address, phone number, even their relatives' names with just a few clicks, and that information can have very real consequences, whether it's identity theft, harassment, or being targeted just for voicing an opinion online.

As someone with an active online presence, I know how unsettling it feels to realize that strangers might have access to details about my personal life.

That's why I use DeleteMe to help keep that information off the internet and protect my privacy before it can be exploited.

Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me now at a special discount for our listeners.

Get 20% off your Delete Me plan when you go to join deleteme.com slash swindled and use promo code swindle at checkout.

The only way to get 20% off is to go to joindeleteme.com slash swindled and enter code swindle.checkout.

That's joindeleatme.com slash swindled code swindled.

So many awful things have happened to this town that rude people who don't live here have called it hopeless, Virginia.

Once the center of town burned down, twice the economy fell apart, and once a passing barge tore down a bridge leading into town.

The keep on mess is only the latest jinx.

A funny little jingle would usually follow any mention of Hopewell, Virginia, if an earshot of someone familiar.

I smell, you smell.

We all smell, Hopewell.

The clever retort was usually something along the lines of smells like money to me.

Hopewell, about 25 miles southeast of Richmond, Virginia, was initially constructed as a company town for DuPont's dynamite factory, which was strategically built near the lower James River for optimal shipping and dumping.

Allied Chemical Corporation became the town's largest employer when it moved into Hopewell in the 1920s.

The New Jersey-based company started out manufacturing ammonium nitrate fertilizer pebbles and then switched to synthetic fibers and then switched again to pesticides in the post-war pesticide craze of the 50s and 60s.

By then, according to the welcome signs on the highway leading into town, Hopewell, Virginia was calling itself, quote, the chemical capital of the South.

One of the pesticides that Allied Chemical invented was called called kepone or chlorticone, the end product of mixing five other chemicals in a steel vat before removing the moisture.

The powdery white substance left behind was used domestically in roach and ant traps.

The bulk of it was shipped overseas to banana plantations around Europe, South America, and Central America.

United Fruit was a big fan.

The gray powder is ketone, a powerful insecticide, much like Aldrin and DDT, and like those other insect killers, a persistent chemical.

It degrades slowly in the environment, and when it gets into the human body, it lingers.

Kipone crystals enter individual body cells and disrupt their function.

From 1966 to 1974, Allied Chemical produced Kepone in-house in semi-monthly batches like some kind of craft pesticide passion project.

Kepone was not one of Allied's best sellers.

Its $200,000 in annual sales wasn't even significant enough for its own line item and the $3 billion in revenue Allied listed on the company's financial reports.

Eventually, the company partnered with smaller chemical companies to produce Kipone and sell it back to them, such as Hooker Chemical in Niagara Falls, New York, not yet infamous for burying 20,000 tons of toxic chemicals in Love Canal.

Allied would provide all the ingredients and buy all of the finished product.

Hooker Chemical agreed to make Kepone for $3 per pound.

But Hooker Chemical lost that exclusive contract in 1973 when a new upstart chemical company called Life Science Products won the Kipone production bid at 54 cents per pound.

Two former Allied Chemical employees founded Life Science.

William Moore, the new company's president, retired as Allied's Director of Agricultural Research, and Virgil Huntofti, the former plant manager for Allied's Agricultural Production Unit, became the plant manager at Life Science.

At different times in their careers, both men had been responsible for the production of ketone at Allied.

Drawing on that expertise and a $175,000 loan, the two men hastily threw together an operation and a converted gas station on Randolph Road in Hopewell to become the world's only supplier of ketone.

20 working-class white men, split across two shifts, operated around the clock for $3.75 an hour to produce 6,000 pounds of ketone daily.

One woman was employed to work in the reception area.

Minorities were not hired, not even to push a broom.

In fact, nobody had been hired to push a broom.

The factory floors and surfaces were covered in ketone and its components within days of starting production.

Over time, there were piles of it everywhere, up to five inches thick.

There were concrete-like balls in the parking lots next to the annex buildings where the ketone had mixed with water.

Even the picnic tables where the life science employees ate lunch and drank coffee were covered in the stuff.

The keyphone was very thick in the air.

It was,

you couldn't see through it.

It was more like a fog.

The keep on was all over the working area, all over the break area.

It was just virtually impossible for anybody to walk in the plant and go straight through and come back out without getting keep on all over.

Gloves and masks were not required or provided by Life Science Products.

There were no company-issued boots.

But the money was good.

Overtime was easy to come by because demand for the product constantly increased and turnover at the plant was high.

Most workers quit because they couldn't take it anymore.

Take what anymore?

A new hire would ask.

The keypone shakes, replied an old-timer who had been working there for at least two weeks.

The keypone shakes.

You know the physical symptoms from being smothered in a pesticide for up to 80 hours a week.

It starts with dizziness and rashes.

Then your joints and liver begin to ache.

Your speech gets slurred.

Your breath gets short.

You start dropping pounds.

Your eyes twitch rapidly, and your hands begin to shake uncontrollably.

They say, Wait, you get the shakes because you're going to be, you know, everybody else had the tremors the same.

And they say, well, gradually you're going to get them.

And I thought it was a big joke.

Right.

And then when it started, it got real bad.

I went and I got to where I had to miss work a lot.

Some employees were instructed to rub Vaseline on their faces to keep the dust off their skin as a precaution.

It was discovered later that Vaseline did nothing but assist the ketone in penetrating the skin.

Donald Fitzgerald, who twice had to be taken from work to the hospital, said doctors couldn't diagnose his shakes.

One suggested it was nerves and told him to see a psychiatrist.

Local physicians did not have a clue.

Several employees had sought medical attention for the kipone shakes, but were often accused of drinking too much, or they reckoned it was stress-related.

The sick employees were prescribed tranquilizers, or they shot a valium in the ass, as one former employee described it to Gregory S.

Wilson, the author of Poison Powder, a great new book about the ketone disaster.

When Dale Gilbert, the 34-year-old operations supervisor at the Life Science Facility, was told by a doctor in June 1975 that stress was was causing the physical ailments that he shared with the others.

Dale did not believe it.

He had been working in the plant full-time for about six months.

He had lost up to 40 pounds in a matter of weeks.

Eventually he was shaking so severely that he couldn't even go to work.

The only thing stressing out Dale was his failing health.

People think of the word disabled and they think he doesn't get up and go to work, but that's only like the tip of the iceberg, Dale Gilbert told the Washington Post.

I'll tell you, it's quite ego-shattering.

I've always, since I was a kid, had my own responsibility, making money, and all of a sudden you can't go out and rake leaves.

That's a terrible thing.

I don't think you can describe it unless you go through it.

Dale Gilbert's wife set up an appointment for him with Dr.

Yinan Chow, a local cardiologist who had just immigrated to the area.

I never saw anything like it before, Dr.

Chow told the New York Times.

I put him in the hospital and sent a blood sample to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta.

The CDC called Dr.

Chow back after a few days with alarming results.

Dale Gilbert had ketone in his blood, they reported.

It was basically a new disease with unknown consequences.

Initially, only the symptoms could be treated.

They told me, you know, that I'm sterile, that I have an increased chance of cancer.

And I've had some damage to my liver, my eyes, and some brain damage.

The Centers for Disease Control also reported the findings to Dr.

Robert S.

Jackson, an epidemiologist at the Virginia Department of Health.

Dr.

Jackson scheduled a surprise visit to the Life Science Products Facility for July 23rd, 1975.

He arrived to find raw materials and finished products scattered throughout the facility.

Kipone was everywhere, Dr.

Jackson told the New York Times.

They were sloshing around in it with no boots, gloves, or respirators on.

Dr.

Jackson said that the first worker he saw could could barely stand on his feet.

The 23-year-old worker's eyes moved rapidly and abnormally.

He complained of chest pains.

Dr.

Jackson arranged for the man to be sent to the hospital and started to examine the others.

Several of them were in just as bad of shape.

By that evening, Dr.

Jackson had admitted seven Life Science Products employees to the hospital.

Hundreds more awaited testing, but Dr.

Jackson had seen enough.

He met with the owners of Life Science, William Moore and Virgil Huntofti, and informed them that if they did not voluntarily shut down the plant, he would act on behalf of the Department of Health and do it for them.

Moore and Huntofti agreed but were granted an exemption to deplete their remaining stock of ingredients as long as proper safety equipment was used.

The crisis was only beginning.

Support for swindled comes from Bombas.

Falls here.

The kids are back in school, vacations are done, and cozy season has officially started.

Which means, time to slide into some bombas.

You know bombas, the most comfortable socks, slippers, tees, and underwear out there, all made from premium materials built for this time of year.

We're talking merino wool that keeps you warm when it's cold, but cool when it's warm.

Sapima cotton that's softer, stronger, and more breathable than the regular stuff.

And even rag wool, the thick, durable, classic cozy sock that's practically made for fall.

And it's not just socks.

Bombas has slippers too.

The sharper lined Sunday slippers that make it hard to leave the house.

The gripper slippers, perfect for travel, even waterproof Friday slides.

But here's the best part.

For every item you buy, Bombas donates one to someone experiencing homelessness.

That's over 150 million items donated so far.

And with their happiness guarantee, If you're not 100% satisfied, they'll make it right.

No risk, all reward.

I've worn bombas for years, and honestly, they've outlasted every pair of socks in my drawer.

They stay soft, they don't sag, and it feels good knowing my purchase helps someone else.

Head over to bombas.com/slash audio and use code audio for 20% off your first purchase.

That's bombb-as.com/slash audio.

Code audio at checkout.

Bill Moyer brought the keep home dust home on his clothes, and it wound up in the bodies of his wife and child.

Mrs.

Moyer, like other wives, is showing signs of the poisoning.

I've got a two-year-old son at home.

And my husband is sterile.

He's the only child I've got.

And he's got just about half as much ketone in his system that I have.

As far as I know, he might be sterile.

He may not be able to have a family of his own.

or

he might have brain damage, and he just might not make it.

I don't know.

And he's all I've got.

And since he's sterile,

I can't have any more.

He was making good money,

but now that I look back, it wasn't worth it.

Not what we're facing right now.

It's just, I can't believe it.

After the discovery of kapone poisoning and several employees at the Life Science Products facility, widespread blood testing took place in Hopewell, Virginia during the summer of 1975.

The story became national news.

216 residents tested positive, including 149 current Life Science employees.

76 of those employees had visible symptoms.

28 of them were hospitalized.

14 of the men, the most exposed, were diagnosed as sterile, including Nikki Schoen, the 24-year-old high school dropout, had just gotten out of jail and was trying to get his life back on track by taking a job at the life science plant in Hopewell.

A few months later, he was in the hospital, getting his head scanned.

to see if the pesticide had been embedded in his brain.

Nikki turned violent and suicidal.

All hope was lost.

Who in the hell wants a man that's got kapone and can't have kids?

He rhetorically asked the Washington Post.

Nikki Schoen has the highest kipone count on his body of any of the victims.

One doctor says he has 37,000 times more ketone in his liver than is permitted in a public sewer.

Now the doctors here at the Medical College of Virginia wonder whether the abnormal readings they've gotten through this brain scan machine can explain Nikki's loss of memory, his talk of suicide, the sometimes violent outbursts that caused Nikki to smash his fist through a hospital window.

Other patients, normally calm and responsible, have recently turned violent too, injuring their wives or children.

In many cases, Kipone beat them to the punch.

Dale Gilbert's wife, Jan Gilbert, was hospitalized with an enlarged liver and an enlarged spleen.

Jan had simply greeted her husband daily when he returned home from work and washed his clothes.

I would wash those clothes, his kipone clothing, and then right after that I would put a load of my little girl's clothes in and my clothes.

Well, it was still in the washing machine and the water wasn't dissolving it and as a result we both would break out into a rash.

Kepone was also found in the blood of 10 children and wives of life science workers.

According to the New York Times, of five known pregnancies among life science personnel, two resulted in stillbirths and one in spontaneous abortion.

Some were born exposed.

Some of them were exposed later.

Kepone is transmissible through breast milk and skin contact.

As a reminder, it is not recommended to hand your baby to a man who's covered in pesticide and shaking like a leaf.

When the effects started on you, I could tell that in my nervous system on my hand, they would start shaking real bad like it.

And then when they got to a peak, it was just...

You couldn't hold yourself still.

You couldn't drink a cup of coffee without pouring it on you.

Do the symptoms last forever?

In 1975, nobody really knew.

Dr.

Robert S.

Jackson at the Virginia Department of Health at the time said, quote, we have little to no information on the long-term effect of human exposure to low levels of the material, or what level represents risk.

The fact that there was any risk at all was news to Delbert White, the plant supervisor at Life Science Products.

Del White was in constant contact with Kipone.

He was now sterile.

His wife and nine-year-old son had traces of it in their blood.

The former Marine claims he had concerns about the toxicity of Kepone earlier in the year, and he brought those concerns to life science ownership.

Mr.

White says they lied to his face.

I trusted two men that sat in a room and told me that there was absolutely nothing out there that could hurt me.

I trusted in the fact that we have enough protection agencies now that

a man shouldn't have to walk into a plan and wonder whether it's safe to work.

The two men you trusted were the two men who owned the plant.

Mr.

Murray and Mr.

Hunt Ofta said and told me that there was absolutely nothing back there that would hurt a human being.

They let me down, they lied to me, and for that reason, I feel like that

they lied to these men also through me.

They lied to me.

That's a serious accusation to make

against any man.

I just made it and without regret.

On the December 14th, 1975 episode of the CBS News show 60 Minutes, host Dan Rather asked Life Science Products president William P.

Moore about that conversation with Plant Supervisor Dale White.

According to him, it never happened.

Did you tell him that Kipone was harmless?

No.

That's for sure, that

we would not have said a thing like that.

You didn't say that Keepone was harmless to humans?

No.

William Moore would not say that because he knew kepone wasn't harmless.

Or did he?

Moore told Dan rather that he had never seen Allied Chemicals' blue book on kipone, which is an extensive document that Allied had provided to him that outlined the safety precautions for dealing with the toxic substance.

It was published in 1961.

13 years before Life Science Products started producing the chemical.

Are you familiar with these materials?

No.

Never seen these.

Never seen them.

Right in the summary, very top, the characteristic effect of this compound is the development of DDT-like tremors, the severity of which depends upon dosage level and duration of exposure.

Quote unquote, from the first sentence of the summary.

You didn't know about this?

No.

No.

That blue book on ketone also included the results of studies in which ketone gave cancer to rats and mice.

Another test at Ohio State University in 1962 determined that ketone had the same adverse effects on the human reproductive system as it did on quail and other birds.

An internal memo from Allied acknowledged the results too.

The investigation of this compound reveals it to be a very toxic material if chronically ingested with possible malignant effects.

The National Cancer Institute performed its own ketone test in 1971 and again found that the chemical caused cancer in rats along with impaired fertility, tremors, and other ill effects.

The results of those particular studies were never publicly revealed until after the Hopewell incident.

The rumors that Allied wanted the results buried.

Otherwise, in order to sell ketone, it would have had to spend more time and money on more tests to get it approved.

Instead, Allied Chemical listed ketone as a single ingredient for other pesticides, which allowed for more efficient maneuvering of governmental red tape.

also explains why the company decided to ship the bulk of it overseas.

So, if Allied Chemical was aware of Kepone's toxicity, one could safely assume that Life Science Products, the manufacturer of the pesticide, would also be familiar.

Not so, according to company president William Moore.

Neither he nor Virgil Huntofti, two men at one time responsible for manufacturing kipone at Allied, were aware of how dangerous it could be.

And despite having all of the knowledge at his fingertips and a big blue book with a warning on the cover, he didn't bother to even thumb through it.

Was he ignorant and lazy?

Or was he a liar?

According to Allied Chemical, whose spokesperson referred to William P.

Moore as the, quote, principal expert on keypone, he was lying.

The fact that Moore and Huntofti were so knowledgeable about the substance was, quote, one of the reasons that led the management to give the contract to this company.

Allied chemical was not so subtly shifting the blame.

The company was quote, very much distressed by the Keepon matter, but legally, we don't feel responsible.

That would be for a court to decide.

Multiple lawsuits from 56 workers, their wives and children, were filed against the Allied Chemical, Life Science Products, and Hooker Chemical, seeking more than $100 million in combined damages.

Until then, many of the sick workers and their families lived on workmen's compensation, about $149 a week.

But that would run out sooner than later.

Most were hoping just to live long enough to see that day.

I mean, I'm asking myself: in three years, am I going to have a terminal case of cancer?

Or in two years, will I have it?

Maybe, you know, a lot of it gives the rats the cancer that they give it to, but a lot of things give rats cancer, don't give humans cancer.

But I got to figure my odds of having cancer in the future is a lot better than maybe maybe yours.

Maybe.

But the results of a parallel environmental investigation revealed that nobody's future in Hopewell looked promising.

The scope of the crisis suddenly ballooned.

We have measured ketone

in the river, in the sludge or the slurry at the bottom of the river, in the dirt.

We've measured it in shellfish and fish

miles and miles and miles downriver from the plant, 30 to 40 miles.

All of this area in which Hopewell resides provides the aquifer for the entire southeastern Virginia and tidewater area.

Whether it will be now or six months from now or 10 years from now, ketone will be in their water supply.

The U.S.

Environmental Protection Agency and the Virginia State Water Control Board found traces of ketone in the fish and sediment in the James River.

It was later found miles downriver from Hopewell in the Chesapeake Bay.

Fish sold in markets on the east coast were discovered to have been contaminated.

The problem was worsening by the day.

Russell Train, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, said today the problem is worsening.

Present indications

are that it does migrate.

There are indications that it is moving

up the bay, at least somewhat at the present time.

If you assume that this trend continues, then you've got a problem for the entire Chesapeake Bay.

Let's be honest, when life science products began production in 1974, the James River was already polluted.

By then, the river had served as a chemical toilet for the local factories for years.

But that pollution was exacerbated because Allied Chemical, when it was producing chemone under its own roof, dumped its poison waste directly into the James River.

They knew it was wrong.

There were internal memos at Allied, some authored by Virgil Hintofti, who would later co-found Life Science Products, discussing how Corps of Engineers' regulations required them to report any discharge of a toxic substance.

They realized that discharging thousands of gallons of bad batches of ketone at once would never be approved.

The Corps would probably require an expensive pre-treatment process, which wouldn't look good on a balance sheet.

Well, the thing to do is do nothing, one of the Allied bosses wrote.

So, Allied kept dumping quietly into the James.

When Life Science Products took over Kepone production, the waste was dumped directly into the sewer.

That's called progress.

The only problem was that the company's discharges far exceeded the agreed-upon levels with the city of Hopewell, both in volume and toxicity.

According to the Richmond Times Dispatch, the Life Science Products discharges were equivalent to a chemical version of the atomic bomb, for commercial ketone is diluted to 1 eighth of 1% strength, while the kepone discharge from the plant was 88 to 94% pure.

So pure that in February 1974, just a month into production, Life Science Products accidentally shut down the Hopewell Sewage Treatment Plant.

Kipone, the very effective pesticide, killed all the natural bacteria used to to break down any solid waste in the water.

The digester systems at the treatment facility became overwhelmed and failed.

The system was inoperable.

City officials traced the problem back to life science.

The company essentially crossed its arms and threatened to shut down the facility and eliminate all the jobs it had brought to the town rather than work on a solution.

The city of Hopewell took no action, nor were the state or the EPA alerted to the matter.

But what about the government agencies who should have stopped the keyphone spread before it started?

With the exception of Virginia state epidemiologist Robert Jackson, who probably exceeded his authority by shutting down Life Science within hours of getting a report that workers were being poisoned, none of the city, county, state, or federal agencies charged with protecting the public took corrective action during the 16 months Life Science was making keyphones.

So the dumping continued, and some say Life Science products became even more emboldened.

There are reports that company pickups were spotted draining entire tanks of a smoking substance into unlined holes in the ground in broad daylight, just absolutely disrespecting Mother Earth.

At the moment, we estimate there's 100,000 pounds of ketone in the James River sediments.

On the bottom of the James River.

In December 1975, the James River was shut down for 100 miles.

from Richmond to the Chesapeake Bay.

They had no choice, according to Virginia Governor Mills E.

Godwin.

To close this great and historic river was indeed a drastic step, but I felt the public interest required action forthwith, and I could do nothing else.

Soon after, the chemical capital of the South Signs were taken down and thrown in the dump, where they joined whatever was left of the local fishing industry.

The closure of the James River decimated people's livelihoods: seafood, hospitality, tourism, right down the drain, like a bad batch of keypone.

August and September I dropped from 34 trips to six trips.

I dropped from 28 trips to four trips for this month.

Everybody is scared to death and the name of it is keypone.

The environmental disaster gave rise to more civil lawsuits against Allied chemical life science products at all.

The fishing industries, railroad workers who handled keypone, the state of Virginia, and others sought damages of their own.

Combined with the lawsuits from former workers and families, the claimants sought more than $200 million, and criminal charges lingered.

Support for Swindled comes from Simply Safe.

For the longest time, I thought home security meant an alarm going off after someone broke in.

But if the alarm is already blaring, it's too late.

The damage is done.

That's a reactive approach, and it leaves you with that awful feeling of violation, even if if the intruder runs away.

That's why I switched to Simply Safe.

They've completely changed the game with Active Guard outdoor protection, designed to stop crime before it starts.

Their smart, AI-powered cameras don't just detect motion.

They can tell you when there's a person lurking on your property.

That instantly alerts SimplySafe's professional monitoring agents in real time.

And here's the game changer.

The agents can actually intervene while the intruder is still outside.

Talk to them through two-way audio, hit them with a loud siren and spotlight, and call 911 if needed.

It's proactive security, and that's real security.

I trust SimplySafe because there are no long-term contracts, no hidden fees, and a 60-day money-back guarantee.

They've been named best home security systems by U.S.

News and World Report for five years in a row, and I can see why.

Get 50% off your new SimplySafe system at simplysafe.com slash swindled.

That's 50% off your new simply safe system by visiting simplysafe.com slash swindled.

There's no safe like simply safe.

I think we

should not fool ourselves into thinking that

legislative changes or procedural changes

can really provide any ultimate protection against

willful acts by the very people who have the most knowledge of the

probable effects of those acts

any more than laws against murder can keep people from committing murder.

In January 1976, the United States Congress held Senate subcommittee investigations and public hearings into the ketone contamination of Hopewell, Virginia, which had featured a collection of failures shared by governments, industry, regulatory agencies, and the medical community.

The subcommittee hearings aimed to determine the roles and awareness of those involved.

Management admitted

that

the reason that everybody was shaking was because of ketone.

However, it was supposed to be

something about the keypone would cause you to

shake, but it it wasn't anything to worry about.

Former employees of Life Science Products testified and recounted their experiences and reiterated that upper management never warned them that keypone was dangerous to humans.

Co-founders Will Moore and Virgil Hentofti also testified and again downplayed their knowledge, claiming not to have known the extent of the danger or the severity of their employees' illnesses.

What was done for the people inside the plant?

Well, we, as I mentioned, we had no

contact that I'm aware of from either OSHA or the

never mind OSHA what about your own corporate responsibility what about the people in the plant did you ever go around and talk to the people in the plant somebody must have known these people in the plant were having problems who went and talked to them

actually

this was not brought

to my attention.

You knew that you had a very toxic material that you were dealing with.

Is that a fair statement?

No, I don't know that that.

I knew we had a toxic material.

When did you first become aware of the total

toxic nature of ketone?

Well, I don't know if I'm totally aware now.

It seems to be more toxic than I was aware of.

But we know it's not a very...

It's a very benign substance.

I mean, we know that.

Well, that's right, and this may be

one of the real problems.

When a person is working with, let's say, cyanide, one tends to know that if he gets it on him, he is

dead.

Apparently, ketone is not this

type a poison.

Well, ketone is a poison, however.

Yes, it is.

I am vitally concerned, and there's not one human suffering that doesn't concern me very, vitally.

William Moore, the president of Life Science, said he usually worked in the lab 25 miles away from the Keephone plant.

He rarely interacted with the substance or the workers who handled it.

He claimed there was no way for him to know the severity of the situation.

Virgil Hintofti, on the other hand, said he was working near the Keepone every day with a pregnant wife at home.

He had symptoms of his own.

Proof, he says, that he wasn't aware of the danger.

Even if the chemical producers were oblivious, as they claimed, there were more than enough warning signs to prevent widespread contamination.

Orban DuBose was the first to complain.

He got fired for refusing to work where there was kibone dust floating around in the air.

But he still got sick.

Well, I had got to the point where I was nervous, and I snap hit my wife and family.

Just something wasn't right, and from working in that dust the way we had to do without any kind of protection, it just wasn't right to work in.

I got to the point where I couldn't pick a cup of coffee up and hold it in my hand without having a holding both hands on me.

At the Life Science plant in 1974, a year before Dale Gilbert went to the doctor, worker Orban Dubose refused to unclog a rotor.

He was tired of getting keypone all over him, so he was fired for insubordination.

In return, Orban filed a complaint with OSHA, detailing the hazardous work environment and his related health issues.

OSHA dismissed Orban Dubosa's complaint without investigation after Life Science told them he was nothing more than a disgruntled worker and they never followed up.

In another instance of regulatory failure, there was an air pollution monitoring station located 200 yards away from the keypone plant, collecting data that would have shown there had been a dust problem since day one.

The only problem was that no one ever looked at it, despite everyone in the area having to sweep keypone dust off of their windshields every time they drove home.

It may strike you as incredible because it is, but this air pollution control monitoring device is located only a block away from the plant, right down there.

But nobody caught the fact that Kiphone was literally being poured into the air.

All officials did was measure the dust around.

Nobody analyzed it.

Nobody knew or cared about keyphone.

When they finally got around to analyzing some old samples a few weeks ago, it turned out that half the dust was keyphone.

By the spring of 1976, the former life science products building had been demolished.

Cleanup was well underway.

Much of it was spearheaded by Allied Chemical, who spent almost $400,000 gutting the problematic plant.

The company also funded studies at the Medical College of Virginia to help find a cure for the poisoned workers.

Not because a grand jury was about to convene to determine if Allied Chemical was legally responsible for the disaster and the optics were good, no.

It was about the goodness of their corporate hearts.

However, the company did want to make it clear that their good deeds were not a sign of guilt.

According to G.C.

Matheson, president of Allied's Agricultural Division, quote, We do not wish our cooperation to be misinterpreted as a concession that we are to blame or that we are legally responsible for the activities of persons not under our control.

A grand jury convened in May 1976, and in a series of indictments, the Allied Chemical Corporation was charged with a thousand-plus criminal charges for violations of the Clean Water Act and the Refuse Act for discharging its poison into the river and conspiracy counts for violating federal pollution laws.

Allied Chemical was faced with a possible fine of $17 million.

Five Allied employees were charged with one count of conspiracy for interfering with pollution control programs.

In addition to fines, those individual defendants faced a year in jail.

Life Science Products and its owners William Moore and Virgil Hintofti were indicted on 153 charges of violating the Water Pollution Control Act, as well as a conspiracy count to violate federal pollution regulations.

Both individuals and the company were facing fines of $3.8 million each.

The city of Hopewell was also named in 153 counts for allowing the discharge of keypoint waste in the sewer system and three additional counts for failing to report it.

The city faced a fine of $3.9 million.

Hours after the indictment, Allied Chemical released a statement criticizing the decision.

The scope of the criminal actions was unwarranted and unprecedented.

The extreme reaction shown by the indictments appears to reflect our official frustration over the failure of regulatory agencies to do their proper job.

Allied denies the allegations that have been reported and intends to defend vigorously the interests of the company, its employees, and stockholders.

The company's general record on environmental and safety policies has been excellent.

The city of Hopewell did not defend vigorously.

On June 25th, 1976, it pleaded no contest to 10 of the 156 charges against it.

Hopewell, a city, was fined $10,000 and put on five years' probation.

All the remaining charges were dismissed.

U.S.

District Judge Robert R.

Murhich later said he regretted fining the City of Hopewell such a small amount because later litigation revealed just how truly negligent it had acted.

On August 10, 1976, Life Science Products co-founder Virgil Huntofti pleaded no contest to 79 of the 153 counts against him.

He agreed to testify against the Allied and received a $25,000 fine and five years' probation.

The other co-founder, William Moore, eventually pleaded no contest for himself and Life Science products.

He was fined $25,000 and sentenced to five years' probation.

Life Sciences was fined the entire $3.8 million,

which was entirely symbolic because the company was utterly insolvent.

The individual Allied employees charged with conspiracy were all dismissed or acquitted.

The judge did not want to pin the blame on what happened to what he called lower-level employees.

Because of this ruling, not a single person in the keep-on scandal would serve jail time.

In other surprising moves, Allied Chemical gave up on its vigorous defense later that month and pleaded no contests to the 940 pollution charges.

The company was losing the public relations battle and wanted to end the chatter quickly.

As a bonus, the plea could not be used as an admission of fault in its pending civil litigation.

The 150 conspiracy charges were eventually dismissed.

As punishment for the pollution charges, Judge Murhage enforced the maximum, a fine of $13,215,000.

It was the largest fine ever imposed in a federal pollution case.

I hope that after this sentencing, every corporate officer will think, if I don't do anything about pollution, I will be out of a job, Judge Murridge said.

He believed Allied was acutely aware that it was polluting the river.

Quote, pollution is a crime against every citizen.

The environment belongs to every single person, every single citizen, from the lowest to the highest.

I think it was done because of what it considered to be business necessities and money took the forefront.

A federal judge today imposed the maximum fine of $13 million on Allied chemical for polluting the James River in Virginia with the insecticide Capone.

Allied used to make, used to make Capone in Hopewell, Virginia.

Later it got its Capone supply from Life Science Products Company of Hopewell.

However, Judge Murhich hesitated to hand over the entire $13 million fine to the U.S.

Treasury.

The judge announced he would, quote, be interested in any legal method to keep that money in Virginia to help the people directly injured by Kipone.

Allied Chemical had an idea.

How about they use $8 million of the fine to establish an environmental endowment fund which would be spent on projects to enhance the environment in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

That way the federal government wouldn't receive all the money, and it would count as a charitable contribution for the company, a tax-deductible disaster.

Judge Murhage loved this idea and called it, quote, a very generous gesture by the Allied Chemical Corporation, who he referred to as, quote, good guys in my book.

Judge Murhage also reduced Allied's remaining $5 million fine to $1.4 million.

The day after the endowment was created, Allied issued a statement of regret for its part in the Keephone contamination.

Soon after, the bulk of the civil litigation was settled out of court for undisclosed sums.

Reportedly, these settlements totaled about $3 million,

mostly covered by the company's insurance.

The former workers, families, fishermen, and others initially sought nearly $200 million.

In total, the Keepone disaster cost Allied Chemical about $30 million.

The following year, 1977, the company recorded $3 billion in sales.

To their credit, the Virginia Environmental Endowment was a good idea.

The monies had been used to fund studies on the health effects of ketone exposure, bail out the seafood industry, and helped build a new sewage treatment plant for the city of Hopewell, which opened in August 1977.

The following year, the new sewage plant malfunctioned.

resulting in discharge that was actually dirtier than before it had entered treatment.

The plant was adding excessive amounts of chemicals of its own to the water.

They were fined $1,600.

Fortunately, none of those added chemicals was ketone.

The Federal Environmental Protection Agency has ordered a ban on a dozen pesticides containing ketone, the chemical suspected of poisoning production workers.

The pesticides are made by Allied Chemical Company, which agreed to the ban, although it argues with the findings that ketone causes liver cancer.

The remaining reserves of ketone were eventually shipped and buried in a former salt mine in West Germany.

The state of Idaho and the country of Wales rejected disposal offers.

South Wales is not prepared to become a receptacle for the excreta of an incontinent sector of American capitalism, a Wales member of parliament told Fortune magazine.

Speaking of excrement.

We found that in humans, cholestyramine increases the rate of disappearance of ketone from the blood and from the fat.

It draws it out of the body.

It draws it out of the body and eliminates it from the tissues.

In February 1978, Dr.

Philip Gazelian at the Medical College of Virginia discovered that the cholesterol drug cholestyramine sped up the elimination of ketone from the body by 50% by preventing reabsorption and allowing it to exit through the bowels.

This discovery virtually eliminated the short-term effects of ketone poisoning.

However, at the time, The long-term effects remained completely unknown.

For most former life science products workers, the symptoms have dissipated.

Others still exhibited signs 10 years later.

They all worry about cancer.

To decrease everyone else's chances in the wake of the Kipone scandal, the state passed the Virginia Toxic Substances Information Act, and the federal government passed the Toxic Substances Control Act, which has been widely criticized for falling short.

The James River slowly recovered.

The fishing ban remained in effect for 13 years until everyone just kind of got tired of it.

According to the Newport News Daily, even a member of the agency enforcing the ban was caught fishing illegally.

By all accounts, the James River is cleaner than before the ketone pollution.

Kepone levels in fish have dropped significantly.

However, an advisory about eating fish from the James River remains on the Virginia Department of Health's website because the ketone remains in the James River.

According to a report by the Environmental Protection Agency, the James River in Virginia has so much keypone chemical poison it would cost $7 billion to clean it up.

Before the industrial dumping of Kapone, the James used to support a large fishing industry.

The plan to remove the ketone from the James River was abandoned because the EPA warned it, quote, may not be technically feasible or financially possible.

There was no guarantee it would work and could possibly result in more problems by dredging it up.

Other ideas included diverting the entire James River around the problem area.

Another included deploying hordes of a keypone-eating bug until it was discovered that that bug could not swim.

So instead, it was decided that the safest option would be to let the keypone settle.

It's still there, 20,000 to 40,000 pounds of it, buried a few feet under the sediment, like a sleeping monster, waiting to be beckoned by rising sea levels, a tropical storm, or the slightest little shudder from Mother Earth.

Earth.

Swindled is written, researched, produced, and hosted by me, a concerned citizen, with original music by Trevor Howard, aka Deformer, aka the chemical capital of the West.

For more information about Swindled, you can visit swindledpodcast.com and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok at swindledpodcast.

Or you can send us a postcard at P.O.

Box6044 Austin, Texas, 78762.

But please no packages.

We do not trust you.

Swindled is a completely independent production, which means no network, no investors, no bosses, no shadowy moneymen, no pesticides, and we plan to keep it that way, but we need your support.

Become a valued listener on Patreon, Apple Podcast, or Spotify at valuedlistener.com.

For as little as five bucks a month, you will receive early access to new episodes and exclusive access to bonus episodes that you can't find anywhere else.

And everything is 100% commercial-free.

Become a valued listener at valuedlistener.com.

Or if you want to support the show and need something to wear on your trip to the James River, consider buying something you don't need at swindledpodcast.com slash shop.

There are t-shirts, patches, hats, hoodies, posters, coffee mugs, and more.

swindledpodcast.com slash shop.

And remember to use coupon code CAPITALISM to receive 10% off your order.

If you don't want anything in return for your support, you can always simply donate using the form on the home page.

That's it.

Thanks for listening.

My name is Hillary from Denver, Colorado.

My name is Karen from New Orleans.

My name is Shannon

from Newark, Delaware.

And I am a

visitor and citizen, aka

Youth Listener.

And this is the third year I've tried.

So let's see if I make it on the recording this year.

Great job you're doing.

Thanks.

Bye.

Support for Swindled comes from Orchid Toys.

Orchid Toys is a female, an LGBTQIA plus friendly online adult toy store that offers quality products while making the world a better place at the same time.

Our friends at Orchid Toys encourage you to come for a cause.

That's their actual slogan.

A portion of every sale goes to fund a well-researched selection of charities that fight for things like victims of domestic assault, trans equality, abortion rights, reproductive health, and female genital mutilation and trafficking in Africa.

This week, I went onto the Orchid Toys website and searched the term chemical.

to find our product of the day and I came across something important.

It's called Swiss Navy Toy and Body Cleaner.

Hygiene is mandatory, my people.

That's why you should buy this one-gallon pump of Swiss Navy and toy body cleaner.

One gallon of it.

That seems like a lot.

I mean, there must be a market for it.

What do I know?

Whatever you're in the market for, I bet you Orchid Toys has it.

Go check them out at orchidtoys.com/slash swindled.

That's orchid O-R-C-H-I-D toys.com/slash swindled.

You'll get a 10% discount.

You'll get to come forward calls.

Work at toys.com/slash swindled.

You're welcome.

Thanks to Simply Safe for sponsoring the show.

Get 50% off your new SimplySafe system at simplysafe.com/slash swindled.

That's 50% off your new Simply Safe system by visiting simplysafe.com/slash swindled.

There's no safe like Simply Safe.

Bundle and safe with Expedia.

You were made to follow your favorite band and from the front row, we were made to quietly save you more.

Expedia.

Made to travel.

Savings vary and subject to availability, flight inclusive packages are adult protected.