[masraum]

Originally Posted by stevej37

Thousand of barrels of dead cows contaminated by PBB buried in Michigan in the 70's.
The barrels only slow down the process.

I was part of the clean-up work at the time.

.

Wow, crazy. I'd never heard of it, but then I was 2-3 when it happened. I guess the cows couldn't be cremated since they were contaminated with a fire retardent!

Before the 1970s, PBBs were widely used commercially as a flame retardant. Michigan Chemical Corporation (MCC) in St. Louis, Michigan, which was then owned by Velsicol Chemical Corporation, was a major producer of the FireMaster range of PBB-based flame retardants. FireMaster BP-6 (a yellow-brown powder) is a mixture of many different PBB congeners with 2,2',4,4',5,5'-hexabromobiphenyl and 2,2',3,4,4',5,5'-heptabromobiphenyl being significant constituents by mass (60-80% and 12-25%, respectively).[9][10] FireMaster FF-1 (a white powder) is FireMaster BP-6 with the addition of 2% calcium silicate as an anti-caking agent.[10] Mixed bromochlorobiphenyls and polybrominated naphthalenes, as well as lower brominated compounds formed by incomplete bromination, have also been found as minor constituents of FireMaster products.[11]

In summer 1973, several thousand pounds of FireMaster BP-6 were accidentally mixed with livestock feed that was distributed to farms in Michigan because the MCC plant also produced a feed precursor ingredient, magnesium oxide, which was sold to the feed manufacturer.[12] Some 1.5 million chickens, 30,000 cattle, 5,900 pigs, and 1,470 sheep then consumed this feed, became contaminated with PBBs and the carcasses were disposed of in landfill sites throughout the state.[13] In 1976, the Michigan Department of Community Health established a PBB registry to gather and analyze data on exposed residents. It now resides at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University,[14][15] and is maintained by epidemiologist Michele Marcus.[16]

Michigan Farmer magazine staff members Richard Lehnert and Bonnie Pollard broke the news of the contamination. The magazine continued coverage of the issue until the eventual bankruptcy proceedings of the farm cooperative responsible for the accidental contamination and subsequent distribution of the feed.[17] These events were also portrayed in the 1981 documentary Cattlegate by Jeff Jackson, the true-fiction film Bitter Harvest starring Ron Howard, and in the book The Poisoning of Michigan by Joyce Egginton. A 1978 episode of Lou Grant ("Slaughter") portrays a similar, but fictionalized account. One year elapsed before the animals were culled.[12]

This incident is cited amongst a handful of other noxious substances as the driver for President Gerald Ford's reluctant approval in 1976 of the Toxic Substances Control Act, which "remains one of the most controversial regulatory bills ever passed".[18]