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The pesticide industry's Global Safe Use campaign has reportedly produced a dramatic decline in pesticide-related health and environmental problems in Guatemala. This paper challenges this claim, reanalyzing existing data and further evaluating claims of the campaign's efficacy. The paper argues that the campaign's strategy inadequately links knowledge with structural constraints on behavior. It also suffers from the industry's contradictory definitions of the pesticide problem both as public perception and as a serious health and environmental threat. The paper suggests an approach common to the field of Industrial Hygiene be applied to reducing pesticide hazards. The paper concludes by locating the Safe Use campaign within larger struggles to re-regulate globalizing economic spaces.

Researchers present the result of a survey of over 300 community advisory panels that are sponsored by the American Chemical Industry and their role in effective participation in environmental affairs, including the chemical industry's critics and supporters.

Robert B. Shapiro, chairman and CEO of Monsanto Company, based in St. Louis, Missouri, sees the conundrum facing his company this way. On the one hand, if a business doesn't [...]

Prominent chemical firms such as Monsanto Co. have initiated partnership with the Environment Protection Agency to evolve cleanup strategies for disposing toxic chemicals. Priority areas being jointly assessed for quality include accelerated bioremediation, in situ soil flushing, sorption/desorption and natural attenuation.

The chemical company E.I. Du Pont de Nemours is the United States' largest corporate polluter, and the world's main producer of CFCs. Yet through intensive lobbying, timely volte-faces, and disingenuous advertising, it has cultivated a misleading image of environmental responsibility. Rather than stopping pollution at source, Du Pont tries to delay legislation against dangerous chemicals until it has had time to develop compromise alternatives, which it advertises as 'environmentally enlightened'. This newly-acquired green image is used as a bargaining counter in the company's rearguard actions to avoid legal liability for the effects of its pollution.

Dow Chemical has three distinct public identities. One stems from its small-town origins and emphasizes traditional values. The second is its reputation as an uncaring corporate giant with public relations problems from napalm and Agent Orange. Dow is currently cultivating its third identity as a willing-to-learn, pro-environmental company with it's 'Dow let's you do great things' advertising and efforts to consult with communities effected by Dow plants. Reactions of environmentalists and scientists to the new Dow have been mixed.

Alaska in 1978 under then Gov Jay Hammond was the only state in the US to almost totally ban the use of pesticides and herbicides. The Alaska Railroad (ARR), a federal entity, was the only one allowed to use herbicides to clear land for its use. In 1992, decades after the ARR's continued harmful use of herbicide, the public was able to halt this practice. However, Monsanto Co, a pesticide manufacturing company, is seeking to introduce again pesticides through Native corporations.

In 1988, the American Chemistry Council, then the Chemical Manufacturers Association, set off on a precedent-setting course of self-regulation known as Responsible Care. The program has succeeded in its goal […]

A study of corporate environmentalism in the context of the US chemical industry was conducted to analyze changes made in the constituency of an organizational field. The results indicate that solutions to environmental problems must be done through institutional arrangement changes that influence industry and social action. The continuous evolution of environmental issues will result in the formation of new institutions.

The EPA's 33/50 Program is intended to encourage voluntary, proactive environmental management by business enterprises. The impact of the program within the first three years of its introduction (1991-93) was investigated, with particular focus on the toxic release and the economic performance of chemical companies. The findings indicate that the program had statistically significant negative effects on the firms' current return on investment, but statistically significant positive effects on their expected long-term profitability.

An evaluation of the EPA's Toxic Release Inventory showed that conglomerate subsidiaries registered pollution levels greater than those of companies with other corporate diversification programs. This poorer environmental performance was observed in a survey of 555 diversified parent companies in the chemical industry for 1989. The results indicate a need to carefully evaluate diversification plans against corporate environmental performance.

Research financed by the Swiss chemical firm Sandoz has found that engineering projects that restrict water flow do more long-term harm to rivers than the release of large quantities of toxic pollutants. Sandoz established the $7.7 million 'Rhine fund' for research on river pollution to make amends for a 1986 fire at one of its chemical storage depots that severely polluted the Rhine. The research indicates that such disastrous but short-lived episodes of pollution may have less effect on a river's ability to regenerate itself than the permanent blockage of the river's flow.