American Cyanamid

THIS CHEMICAL company's record-setting activities included the nation's largest corporate contribution to a superfund site cleanup, above-average toxic waste releases, and the largest fine for an air permit violation in New York state. This last record earned the company its number 93 spot in Corporate Crime Reporter's Top 100 Corporate Criminals of the 1990s.

Named for a derivative of a toxic chemical used in pesticides, calcium cyanamide, American Cyanamid manufactured dyes, paints, pharmaceuticals, and other chemicals. In 1929, the company bought Lederle Laboratories, which was already operating a manufacturing plant in Bridgewater Township, New Jersey. Much of the 575-acre site, which sits atop New Jersey's second largest aquifer, became contaminated with chromium, lead, mercury, benzene and toluene, as wastes generated by manufacturing were simply dumped on the property. When Cyanamid settled with the U.S. Environmental[Page 30] Protection Agency (EPA) in 1988, their $84 million contribution to cleaning the site was the largest ever corporate share of a superfund site cleanup. The site has since been redeveloped as Bridgewater Promenade, a shopping center with major discount retailers.

Cyanamid's handling of wastes remained dubious into the early 1990s, when protesters rallied to prevent the company from sending 5,000 to 9,000 pounds of mercury wastes to a recycling plant in South Africa with a record of toxic leaks. The South African government responded by barring foreign toxic wastes from entering the country. Cyanamid already had a poor reputation there due to its firing, over pension disputes, of 200 workers at a South African plant. George J. Sella, then chief executive officer of Cyanamid, defended past mercury shipments to shareholders in April 1990, disputing widespread mercury poisoning in the Natal region around the recycling plant: “I am absolutely satisfied that there is no contamination possible from the activities that we are involved in.”