Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution (review)

Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner tell how several large corporations and trade associations have, over the course of the twentieth century, deceived the public by hiding information about the toxic effects of their products. The main cases they examine—nicely integrated—involve the manufacture and use of lead paint, leaded gasoline, and vinyl chloride monomer (a petrochemical used in making polyvinyl chloride plastic). The authors, who have previously written about and served as expert witnesses in liability cases related to these and other products, write authoritatively and persuasively, marshaling an impressive array of sources.

Deceit and Denial starts with the debate over leaded gasoline that took place in the 1920s, with General Motors and Dow pitted against reformers in the Public Health Service. In this case, physicians in the relatively new field of industrial hygiene understood the toxic nature of lead and warned the Surgeon General about the long-term dangers of releasing leaded exhaust into the air we breathe. But proponents of tetraethyl lead pointed to the economic benefits of using the additive and successfully argued that they should be able to market the product unless someone could show that exhaust posed a significant danger. Therefore, after funding research that failed to demonstrate any immediate danger, corporate leaders proceeded to market leaded gasoline.

Next, Markowitz and Rosner turn to the manufacturing and marketing of lead paint. For almost a half century, the industry's main trade association treated the issue of lead poisoning as if it were a public-relations issue that could be made to disappear through well-designed advertising campaigns, and many of the advertisements are reproduced in the book. Finally, there is the petrochemical vinyl chloride monomer. Here, industry executives in Europe and the United States downplayed the health effects of the chemical on workers even though they had good evidence that typical exposure levels put workers in danger.

A strength of this book is that it raises numerous issues related to the manufacture and marketing of potentially toxic products. These issues include conflicts of interest associated with industry-funded toxicity research, the importance of public access to information, considerations of environmental justice, and the extent to which the precautionary principle should be used as a guiding ethic. All three cases raise questions about the ethics of industry-funded research.

In the case of leaded gasoline, Robert Kehoe, the industry-funded researcher who dominated studies of lead poisoning for several decades, framed the issue in an industry-friendly manner, suggesting that some lead in the bloodstream was normal. The lead industry also tried, less successfully, to corner the market on research related to the health effects of lead paint. The role of funded research in the vinyl chloride monomer case is more complex, with industry-employed researchers generating data that showed a problem existed. In this case, industry executives—with the help of scientists—attempted to keep the results secret so that they could manage reaction to the data. An example of an environmental justice issue raised in Deceit and Denial revolves around policies that "protected" pregnant women from exposure to workplace chemicals by banning women from the workplace rather than by lowering exposure levels to a safe level.

In regard to the precautionary principle, which suggests that products should be kept off the market until their potential dangers are clearly understood, the examples are mainly negative ones. The early debate over leaded gasoline, in which industry executives took the lack of knowledge about the health effects as a green light instead of a yellow light, nicely illustrates what can happen if this principle is ignored.

Markowitz and Rosner approach their subject as if they are uncovering a conspiracy rather than attempting to wrestle with historical change. In focusing primarily on how industry officials deceived the public, they fail to address the larger issue of...