Herbicide row renewed

Press, 18 February 1980, Page 1

Herbicide row renewed

NZPA New York Eight religious orders that together own more than 22,000 shares of stock in the Dow Chemical Company have started a shareholder action to force Dow to establish a review committee to “examine and evaluate the existing and potential, health consequences” of the herbicide,. 2,4,5-T, which was used in the controversial defoliant Agent. Orange. Thie‘religious orders also want Dow to stop exporting the. herbicide until the review, is-completed. Dow is resisting the action, which,. if permitted by; the Securities and Exchange Commission, would . require the company to place the proposal for the

review committee before Dow’s 150,000 other shareholders (of more than 180 million shares) for a vote. The herbicide under attack constituted 50 per cent of the chemical defoliant, . Agent Orange, which was used by ■ the United States in the Vietnam War to deprive the Vietcong of food and places to hide. Its use was stopped in 1970 after 12 million gallons of the substance were sprayed, ■ and after South Vietnamese physicians began to complain that because of" exposure to Agent Orange, civilians were suffering a high rate of. stillbirths and birth defects. . Dow and four ' other chemical makers say that Agent Orange was not harmful to people or ani-

mals.. Nevertheless, they have begun litigation against the Government, contending that if anyone was harmed it was because the Government used the product improperly. The companies, in turn, are being sued by Vietnam veterans, many of whom are members of a group called Agent Orange Victims International which alleges that Agent Orange has caused cancer, loss of sex drive, low sperm counts, stillbirths, miscarriages, lumps and festering sores on the body, weaknesses in arms and legs, and bizarre changes in personality. The dispute between Dow and the five Roman Catholic and three Protestant groups has become

unusually intense. insisting that the P ro ®“? is safe and that those posed to its use are treme activists” uS i “Hitler-type propaganda to discredit the The action against is co-ordinated by Interfaith Centre on Cot* ■ porate Responsibility, 3 S coalition of religious j* 1 ’ . vestors in American corporations. The Interfaith Centre has co-ordinated-, several stockholder actions, and last year f»®“,* 82 resolutions with 6companies. The centre believes thaj religious orders . churches, as stockholders, have some responsibility, for the social account*;’ ability of organisations which they have invested?;, ■