Document pBJeNNgv1mL57JLdELgRErpKa

JURIS DOCTOR. MASTER OP law s. U lm , nr ta x a t io n M o n n ye R . G ross ATTORNEY A COUNSELOR AT LAW P.O. BOX 11833 CLAYTON. MISSOURI 63103 314-991-0607 ADMITTED IN ILLINOIS. PENNSYLVANIA A MISSOURI J u l y 5, 1990 Peter Montague, Ph.D., Editor Environmental Research Foundation P.O. Box 3541 Princeton, NJ 08543-3541 Re: W i l l i a m R. Gaffey, Ph.D. Dear D r . Montague: Please be a d v i s e d that I r e p r e s e n t W i l l i a m R. Gaffey, Ph.D., P r e s i d e n t of W i l l i a m R. Gaffey, Inc. In your newsletter "Rachel's Hazardous Waste N e w s " #171 dated M arch 7, 1990 you p u b l i s h e d s e v e r a l f a l s e and d e f a m a t o r y state m e n t s a bout the w o r k that W i l l i a m R. G a f f e y and J u d y Zack allegedly did in connection with the health effect of occupational dioxin exposure. Mr. Gaffey demonstrated the f a l s e h o o d s to you by letters d a t e d A p r i l 4, 1990, A p r i l 23, 1990 and May 11, 1990, and included supporting data. To date he has r e c eived neither a reply to his letter of M a y 11, 1990 nor a retraction. Liability for trade libel results from the publication of false and d e f a m a t o r y s t a t e m e n t s ,a b o u t a p e r s o n ' s b u s i n e s s , t r a d e or profession. Specifically, the tort of def a m a t i o n is a false c o m m u n i c a t i o n w h i c h injures a p e r s o n 's r e p u t a t i o n . F a l s e statements that disparag e another in the cond u c t of his business, trade or profession give rise to liability without proof of special damages. Mr. Gaffey may recover damages from you for defamation even without proving actual loss of trade. In addition, Mr. Gaffey may recover damages for the loss of business that he can establish with reasonable certainty. Statements, such as those in your newsletter, w h i c h interfere with Mr. Gaffey*s prospective and existing business and contractual relationships also constitute tortious conduct for which you may be held liable. Furthermore, the tort of disparagement or injurious falsehood imposes liability for the publication of a false statement that results in harm to another's interests which have pecuniary value. The torts of defamation, interference with prospective and existing business and contractual relationships and disparagement involve the imposition of liability for injuries sustained through publication of false statements. OOO^o Peter Montague/ Ph.D.f Editor J uly 5, 1990 Page 2 Mr. G a f f e y has a u t h o r i z e d me to take w h a t e v e r legal a c t i o n is necessary to protect and restore his reputation and protect his economic interests. In order to avoid litigation which will be e x p e n sive and e m b a r r a s s i n g to you, Mr. G a f f e y is w i l l i n g to settle this matter if you publish a retraction and pay his legal fees of One Hundred and Fifty Dollars ($150.00), which have thus far accrued. If the retraction and paym e n t is not forthwith in coming, appropriate legal action will be taken to protect my client from the torts of defamation, disparagement or injurious faslehood and interference with prospective and existing contractual relations. Please be advised that I intend to fully protect my client's interests, to vigorously enforce all of my client's rights and to diligently pursue all legal remedies. An immediate retraction and payment of Mr. Gaffey's legal fees will be appreciated. Very truly, .M R G / k s Monnye R. Gross C00203 RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #171 Providing news and resources to the Movement for Environmental Justice - March 7, 1990 D io x in -P a rt 1 DIOXINS AND CANCER: FRAUDULENT STUDIES For years, industry scientists have been claiming there's no evidence that dioxins cause cancer in humans. Now there is mounting evidence that such claim s rely heavily on studies that are fraudulent. Two companies recently accused of producing fraudulent dioxin-and-health data are Monsanto and BASF. M onsanto A scientist w ith U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (ERA) says Monsanto falsified data in im portant studies that Monsanto used to support its claim that dioxin does not cause cancer in humans. Dr. Cate Jenkins, a chem ist in EPA's O ffice of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, says EPA itself re lied upon Monsanto's fraudulent data in setting health standards for dioxin, and Jenkins has asked the EPA's Science Advisory Board to reopen the m atter of EPA's dioxin standards, to take a fresh look at available data.1 Two im portant sources o f dioxins in the environ ment are old chemical dum ps and the incineration of municipal solid wastes,2 w hich is why EPA is con cerned about allowable levels of human exposures to dioxin. BASF The British technical journal, N ew Scientist, says, "A new analysis by a W est German epidem iologist may have established the firs t ciearcut evidence of a direct link between exposure to dioxins and cancer in humans. Friedemann Rohleder, an independent specialist, has produced a report detailing an unexpec tedly high incidence of cancer among workers exposed to dioxins during an industrial accident at a chem icals plant in 1953.1 T h e plant, operated by the W est German com pany BASF, made trichlorophenol. Rohleder claims the company presented the data in a way that dis guised the cancers," says New S cientist B ackground Each of these claim s of fraud relates to an in dustrial accident in which workers were exposed to dioxins; follow-up m edical studies funded by the responsible companies have been published in main stream scientific journals, claiming to show that ho excess cancers have occurred in the dioxin-exposed workers. In fa c t excess cancers have occurred, but it appears that the data have been manipulated to hide the facts. The M onsanto Case In 1949, an explosion occurred at a Monsanto chemical, factory in Nitro; W est Virginia; as a result, many workers in the plant were exposed to the herbicide 2,4,5-T, which w as contam inated with dioxin.(This herbicide was later the principal component of Agent Orange, the chem ical defoliant used by the U.S. in Viet Nam.) In subsequent years, two Monsanto scientists, J A Zack and R. W. Gaffey, studied the exposed workers, com paring their health against the health of a sim ilar group of workers who were not exposed to dioxin or 2,4,5-T.4 According to court documents attached to the EPA memo,"Zack and G affey deliberately and knowingly om itted 5 deaths from the exposed group and took four workers who had been exposed and put these workers in the unexposed group, serving, of course, to decrease the death rate in the exposed group and increase the death rate in the unexposed group." O ther studies o f this same accident were also fraudulent, according to the same court documents, including a study by R.R. Suskind published in the Journal o f the Am erican M edical Association:s "This published study of the workers exposed in the 1949 accident reported only 14 cancers in -th e exposed group and 6 in the unexposed group (a smaller cohort). However, the medical records produced [by Monsanto] to the P laintiffs conclusively prove gross m iscalculations and om issions... there were 28 can cers in the group tha t had been exposed to dioxins in 1949 as opposed to only 2 cancers in the unexposed group." Mr. Suskind published two other reports" on the same accident, using his same data, to reach the conclusion that dioxin does not cause cancer. The BASF Case On the night of November 17, 1953, a runaway chem ical reaction spewed dioxin-contam inated chemi cals over workers and com m unity residents of two sm all German cities, Mannheim and Ludwigshafen. Subsequently, an epidem iological study was used to deny workers any com pensation for ailm ents they claim ed they suffered as a result of exposure. In keeping with German law, the workers retained their own expert to review the data. Their expert, Friede mann Rohleder, received the data from the German governm ent but found, to his surprise, that all the data 0002201 actually came from the BASF company itself. He analyzed the data and found that some workers suffering from chloracne, which is universally ack nowledged to be evidence of high exposure to dioxin, had been placed in the low-exposure or non-exposed group. He found evidence of "diluting" the exposed group with 20 plant supervisory staff who, Rohieder believes, were not exposed. When Rohieder omitted the 20 supervisory staff, his analysis revealed statisti cally significant increases in two groups of cancers: cancers of the respiratory organs (lungs, trachea, etc.), and cancers of the digestive tract. "This analysis adds further evidence to an association between dioxin exposure and human m alignancy," Rohieder told New S cientist [To be continued.] 'Cate Jenkins, "Memo to Raymond Loehr: Newly Revealed Fraud .by Monsanto in an Epidemiological Study Used by ERA to Assess Human health Effects from Dioxins," dated February 23,1990. Jenkins is a chemist with the Waste Characterization Branch (OS 332), Characterization and Assessment Division, U.S. ERA, 401 M St., SW, Washing ton, DC 20460. Loehr is Chairperson of the Executive Committee of the Science Advisory Board (A-101), Office of the Administrator, U.S. ERA, 401 M SL, SW, Washing ton, DC 20460. The Jenkins memo has attached to it 25 pages of a brief filed in Case No. 5-88-0420, in the Appellate Court of Illinois, Fifth District by attorneys suing Monsanto on behalf of plaintiffs who say they were harmed when a Norfolk and Western railroad tank car derailed, spilling 19,000 gallons of a Monsanto chemical called "OCR-crude" into the community of Sturgeon, Missouri the night of January 10,1979. Chief attorney for the plaintiffs .is Rex Carr, 412 Missouri Avenue, East SL Louis, IL 62201; phone (618) 27440434. Our thanks to Margo Blackwell, People Against the Incinerator (PATI), Bloom ington, Indiana, and to ERA official William Sanjour, both of whom independently sent us the information about Monsanto. We can mail copies of the Jenkins memo and attachments (28 pages) for $14.00, which covers our. actual costs of photocopying, handling and mailing. *Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Toxicological Profile for 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin [ATSDR/TP-88/23; PB89-214522] (Springfield, VA: National Technical Informa tion Service, June, 1989), pg. 22, identifies dumps and incinerators as "the important sources of 2,3,7,8-TCDD exposure to the general population." This is the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry [ATSDR] toxicological profile for dioxin (See RHWN #169.) 3 Stephanie Wanchinksi, "New Analysis links dioxin to cancer," New Scientist October 28,1989, pg. 24. Thanks to Paul Connett of Work on Waste USA, we have a copy of Friedemann Rohlederis paperv which he presented in late September at a dioxin conference in Toronto, Ontario; Rohiederis paper is entitled "Dioxins and Cancer MortalityReanalysis of the BASF Cohort" We can mail you the 14page Rohieder paper for $7.00, or you can request a copy directly from the author. Friedemann Rohieder, Friedrich Hebei Str. 13,1712 Weme, West Germany. 4 Zack, J.A., and W. R. Gaffey, "A Mortality Study Of Workers Employed At The Monsanto Company Plant In Nitro, West Virginia," Environmental Science Research, Vol. 26 (1983), pgs. 575-591. 5R.R. Suskind, and V.S. Hertzberg, "Human Health Effects Of 2,4,5-T And Its Toxic Contaminants," Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 251, No. 18 (1984), pgs. 2372-2380. R.R. Suskind, "Chloracne, The Hallmark Of Dioxin In toxication," Scandinavian Journal o f Work, Environment and Health, Vol. 11, No. 3 (1985), pgs. 165-171. 7R.R. Suskind, 'Long-Term Health Effects Of Exposure To 2,4,5-T And/Or Its Contaminants," Chemosphere, Vol. 12, No. 4-5 (1983), pg. 769. * Rachel's Hazardous Waste News is published weekly by Environmental Research Foundation, P.O. Box 3541, Princeton, NJ 08543. Editor: Peter Montague, Ph.D.; Associate Editor: Maria B. Pellerano; Assistant Editor: Annette Eubank; West Coast Editor: Tim Montague; subscriptions: Abigail Alien, Office Manager. 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