By Mark Worth
The Free Press
Here's a Top 10 list you won't see in the major media: it's the 10 worst corporations now doing business on the planet. Compiled by Multinational Monitor in its December issue, the list is dominated by corporations whose environmental records-in a perfect world-would land their CEOs in shackles.
1. Shell
Last November, Nigeria's military dictatorship hanged nine activists, including
environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa. His crime: protesting operations by Royal Dutch
Shell that polluted the homeland of 500,000 Ogoni people.
2. BHP
3. Archer Daniels Midland
4. Chiquita
5. Enron
6. Dow
7. Johnson & Johnson
8. 3M
9. DuPont
10. Warner-Lambert
Subscription information: $25/year; Multinational Monitor, 1530 P St. NW,
Washington, DC, 20005; tel: (202) 387-8030; e-mail: monitor@essential.org.
The Australian mining giant dumps more than 80,000 tons of toxic waste into the
Ok Tedi River in Papua New Guinea-
ADM-the self-proclaimed "supermarket to the world"-contributes millions of
dollars to both political parties to preserve ethanol subsidies, protection of
the domestic sugar industry, and subsidized grain exports. What's more, a former
ADM executive recently alleged that the Decatur, Ill.-based company participated
in a global conspiracy involving corporate espionage, technology theft and price
fixing.
More than 10,000 banana workers in 11 developing countries are suing Chiquita
for using the pesticide DBCP, which has left many of them sterile. The chemical
was banned in the U.S. in 1977, but that didn't stop Chiquita-or Standard Fruit
and Dole Foods-from using the stuff abroad. Neither did research dating to 1961
showing that DBCP can cause serious physical problems.
In November, the world's largest natural gas company "won" a contract to build a
$700 million gas pipeline from Mozambique to South Africa. How'd Enron do it?
By getting the U.S. government to threaten to withhold financial aid from
Mozambique unless Enron got the contract.
More than 8,000 women who received silicone breast implants have sued Dow
Corning, the manufacturer. And, last September, Greenpeace reported that Dow's
pesticides, solvents, PVC plastics, and other chlorine-based products constitute
the world's single largest source of dioxine.
J&J subsidiary Ortho Pharmaceutical Corp. was slapped with a $7.5 million
judgment in January 1995 after the company pled guilty to destroying documents.
Ortho cranked up the shredder after federal officials began investigating
Ortho's claims that its Retin-A product helped sun-wrinkled skin. In October,
the FTC nailed the Cincinnati-based J&J for its misleading advertising campaign
for K-Y Jelly.
In his book "Deadly Medicine," Thomas J. Moore contends that heart drugs made by
3M and other companies have caused the deaths of some 50,000 patients. 3M's
product, Tambocor, is used in more than 50 countries, despite a National
Institutes of Health study that revealed the drug didn't save
patients, but finished them off.
Last April federal officials fined DuPont's oil subsidiary, Conoco Inc., $1.6
million for a Louisiana refinery explosion that killed one worker. Also, the company
faces two lawsuits from families in the U.S. and Scotland whose babies were born
blind after the DuPont fungicide Benlate was sprayed near their homes. And, in
August, the company was find $115 million for destroying documents in connection
with another lawsuit involving Benlate.
In November the pharmaceutical giant pled guilty to a felony count and was fined
$10 million for failing to tell FDA officials about problems with an
anti-epileptic drug. A former company officials faces 10 years in prison.
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Contents on this page were published in the February/March, 1996 edition of the Washington Free
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