Harvard is a Major Stockholder Of Union Carbide, a Major Polluter

WASHINGTON, D.C., Jan. 31, 1971-Ralph Nader has implicated a company of which Harvard is a major stockholder as initiator of a nation-wide attempt by manufacturers to alienate workers from the ecology movement.

Union Carbide Corporation announced last month that in order to comply with a federal government order to curb air pollution at its Marietta, Ohio plant, it will have to lay off 625 of the plant's approximately 1200 workers. Carbide has one of the worst records of all U.S. corporations in refusing to curb air pollution. Harvard, with 68,520 shares, worth over $3,000,000, is by far the educational institute with the largest ownership of Carbide stock.

Carbide's Marietta plant, which makes iron alloys necessary for the production of steel, releases 44,568 pounds of dirt and dust and 246,550 pounds of sulfur oxides every day into the Ohio valley air, not from smoke-stacks, but from large holes in the roof of the factory.

For four years, until threatened with court action, Carbide refused to supply the government with any information regarding its pollution. Then last April, HEW Secretary Elliot L. Richardson '41 ordered pollution at the plant reduced at a fixed schedule. Carbide ignored the first deadline last September, saying that it was impossible to obtain a low-sulphur fuel necessary to meet it, but asked the government for $5,500,000 for anti-pollution research.

Court Threat

Finally, on January 8 of this year, when William D. Ruckleshaus, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, again threatened court action, Carbide announced that it could find the low-sulphur fuel after all, but that meeting the further deadlines would require the 625-worker layoff.

In a letter dated January 20th to Senator Edmund Muskie (D. Me.), Chairman of a Senate subcommittee on air and water pollution, demanding hearings to investigate Union Carbide's behavior, Nader said, "This threat to the livelihood of 625 families is unnecessary, unjustified and unconscionable.

"Union Carbide has chosen to pursue a course of duplicity and intimidation, evidently designed...to frighten the people of the Marietta region into quiet submission," Nader said.

The District Council of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers International Union, which represents the Carbide employees, passed a resolution last week condemning "Union Carbide's attempt to hold 625 workers as hostages to a decent environment."

Profitable Pollution

Among the other environmental indiscretions which Harvard, through its stock in Union Carbide, is profiting from, as documented by Nader's organization:

Carbide operates a factory in Alloy, W. Va., a company town, which emits five times as much dirt, dust, and particulate matter every day as the city of San Francisco. The death rate from lung cancer in this factory's county is three times the national average.

Carbide has refused to supply information about emission from its plant in Anmoore, W. Va. even though the discharges from the plant into the lungs of the citizens are believed to contain a known cancer-causing agent. Inside the plant visibility is often less than 20 feet because of air pollution, and local union officials report that for every two workers that retire at the age of 65, four are dead or permanently disabled by pollution before reaching that age.

Of 18 men working in one department of a Carbide plant in Tonawanda, N.Y., seven had emphysema, two havecirculatory diseases, and all have suffered from acute bronchitis and dermatitis. One recently died of emphysema. Workers report that the company resists all effort's to clean up and will not make public the data it has collected on the dust levels in the plant and medical examinations of the workers.

Nader wrote last week to James M. Hefter, President of New York University, who is a Union Carbide board member:

"Through silent complicity or knowing participation, you have apparently sanctioned or ratified acts of corporate vandalism and social irresponsibility, in comparison to which the bombings and riots of America's so-called student revolutionaries seem dwarfed. Unlike avowed anarchists, the Union Carbide executives you oversee destroy life and property silently, in the temperature-controlled comfort of corporate board rooms. Last year, these executives counted up $144,000,000 of after-tax profits. A portion of these profits were obtained at the cost of the destruction of innocent workers' and peoples' health and property."