It was a humid early morning in July 1975 and Lieutenant RL Anderson of the Hopewell Police Department was conducting a routine patrol in his squad car. He was passing the  Allied plant, which at the time one was one of the worlds largest chemical plants, situated next to the James river in Hopwell, Virginia, USA. He observed two men standing at the back of a pickup truck with a 250 gallon tank in it. Nothing unusual there you might think. However, the men were pouring a fuming liquid into a pit, not a lined pit however, just a hole in the ground. The plume this liquid created could be seen from quite a distance. Lieutenant Anderson didn’t know if what they were doing was authorised or legal so he noted it in his report to his superiors and that’s where it remained.

Dale Gilbert had only been working at the Life Sciences facility for a few months and in January 1975 he had begun to suffer from hand and body tremors. This was very well known to other workers of the Life Sciences facility and was nonchalantly known as the ‘Kepone shakes’. By March, of the same year, he began having severe chest pains, twitching eyes and weight loss. By early June he was too ill to work. In late June 1975, Dale walked into the office of Dr. Chao, a 33 year old immigrant from Taiwan. Dale had come to see Dr Chao on the recommendation of his wife who had been dissatisfied with the prognosis and medicine proposed by the company doctor. The company doctor enquired if he was just an alcoholic and then prescribed anti-depressants.

Dr Chao did a number of tests and also decided to test Gilbert’s wife, Jan, and their three children. It was discovered that Jan had an enlarged liver and spleen. Two of his children had rapid eye movements and one also had mild tremors. The dog had been suffering from a number of aliments and had to be put down earlier.

The Allied chemical facility was Hopewell’s biggest employer, with around 3500 workers. Allied had the patent for the pesticide Chlordecone which was sold under brand name of Kepone. Allied invited tenders to produce Kepone. It was suggested that by not producing it directly themselves it would reduce or eliminate any future liabilities. A couple of Allied managers got together and made a successful bid and with some second hand machinery Life Science Products was born in November of 1973 for the sole purpose of manufacturing it. It’s interesting to note that their bid was nearly 5 times lower than the highest bid which incorporated disposal costs.

The Life Sciences facility was only open for three months before Allied said it would purchase as much Kepone as they could make. The facility was only designed to produce 3000 pounds of Kepone per day. As the world’s only supplier, the Life Science facility and its employees operated in three shifts, around the clock to produce 6100 pounds of Kepone per day and safety measures went out of the window.

Dale would go on to tell Dr Chao that he was not the only one experiencing symptoms like these at his workplace, it was actually very common. Dale explained that his workplace, the Life Sciences chemical plant in Hopewell, Virginia, USA actually resembled a dust storm. They made just one chemical at this plant, a chemical called Kepone and it’s dust storm was on every surface and even coated local buildings. Management had acknowledged that it was the chemical causing all of these problems, but it was nothing to worry about. If workers got sick they didn’t get paid and eventually they either left or they were just let go. In the 16 months Life Sciences was open they would go through five sets of workers.

Dr Chao being a diligent chap, suspected that Dale had been poisoned so he went on to do something key. Firstly, he sent Dale to hospital and most importantly, he sent a sample of his blood and urine to the CDC, the Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta for testing. Gilbert was also referred to a neurologist, Dr Taylor. Dr Taylor examined Dale and as well as confirming Dr Chao’s diagnosis he added that Dale also had unusual eye movements, a rapid pulse and possible brain damage.

About three weeks later on a hot and humid Friday afternoon in July Dr Robert Jackson, the states epidemiologist (they investigate the source of outbreaks of disease), got a call from the CDC. They were querying the Kepone levels in the sample sent by Dr Chao. It was the highest that they had ever seen and the sample must have been contaminated by someone pouring Kepone directly into the sample. It had not been contaminated in that way.

A number of occupational and health inspectors had previously visited the parent plant, Allied. Some of the health officials were contained to just the offices, others just didn’t check too hard and others would report that everything was just fine. This was a different era when everyone knew each other so not too many boats were rocked. They didn’t even venture to the Life Sciences facility.

It was July 23rd 1975 and Dr Jackson wasted no time in going to the Allied chemical facility. He examined a number of workers and six of them had varying degrees of Kepone poisoning, one was so bad he was unable to stand because he was so unsteady on his feet. After examining the workers, and sending some of them immediately to hospital, Dr Jackson donned his galoshes and ventured over to the Life Sciences facility.

He was disturbed to say the least.

He eyes stung as he got out of this car. He really needed the galoshes as there were puddles of Kepone all over the floor, along with machinery caked deep with powered Kepone. Jackson saw workers with hard hats, but respirators drew shrugged shoulders. The kepone powder covered absolutely everything, dusted cars and buildings outside and was detected as far as 40 miles away.

The next day, July 24th 1975, before Dr Jackson and his department did so, Life Sciences voluntarily closed down the facility.

What Lieutenant RL Anderson had witnessed the two men doing that July night was not an isolated incident, far from it. At least 40 other clandestine trips exactly like this had previously been made. Using this converted pick up truck was only the latest effort, to dispose of the waste water from the Life Science facility.

It was February 1974 and the Life Science facility was struggling with disposing the waste water generated by the facility. Initially they tried to flush it direct into the drains but there was so much kepone in the waste it killed the bacteria that was used to breakdown sewage in Hopewell’s sewage treatment plant. The next step was to create a containment lagoon slightly larger than an Olympic swimming pool. With between 15 to 20,000 gallons per day of waste water being generated this was soon hopeless. They temporarily switched to a landfill site until they were also banned by the authorities from using that. They went back to using the drainage and sewage system but this time in an attempt to cover their tracks they would also dump barrels of Chlorine at the sewage pump station, further down the line, to disguise the smell of the waste water and avoid detection. When the Chlorine became too expensive they swopped the Chlorine for washing detergent. In October of 1974, management at the facility hired two septic tank operators and waste water was now being dumped into a creek which led to the James river and eventually Chesapeake Bay.

These were different times back then.

It wasn’t like the dangers associated with Kepone were not known, it was actually listed in the Handbook of Poisons. It was also known that it affects the central nervous and reproduction systems and it also caused cancer in laboratory animals. It therefore could possibly cause cancer in humans. It accumulates in the fatty tissues of unfortunate organisms like human beings and increases in concentration the higher up in the food chain.

Now with the Life Science facility closed a major investigation began. Sediment and fish samples were gathered by the Virginia State Water Control around Hopewell.

It couldn’t really be worse.

The test showed that Kepone was in the soil and in the waters around Hopewell and in sediment, and several species of commercially viable fish and shellfish, especially oysters in the James River. Kepone is a persistent organic pollutant. It is in a class of chemicals that includes the more notorious and well know chemical DDT. The life sciences facility had produced 1.8m pounds of Kepone in its relatively short existence. Kepone, was designed to persist and continue working against the pests.

The fishing industry shut down overnight and would remain so for decades. The machinery from the Life Science facility was cut up and encased in a massive plastic liner, which was then buried in clay land dump. They didn’t try to clean the water, instead relying on decades of sediment to cover over it.

The scandal went all the way to the House of Representatives and the Senate. There were lawsuits, fines and out of court settlements but no-one was ever jailed. In 2009, chlordecone was included in the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, which bans its production and use worldwide.

Most of the Kepone produced was shipped abroad, very little was actually used in the United States. It was sent to West Germany and was remanufactured and used in pesticides and sent around the world. It was very good at killing leaf-eating insects, ants, roaches, fly larvae and especially banana tree weevils.

By now you may be wondering, interesting story but what does this have to do with the subject matter at hand, prostate cancer.

When I do my prostate cancer presentations, I have an audience participation part where I ask the audience to put a group of 7 countries in order of prostate cancer occurrences from highest to lowest in the world.

Number one and two, by a long margin are the French islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe.

They were the main users of Kepone, with workers using their bare hands to distribute it onto banana trees. Other than being told,

“Don’t eat or drink anything while you’re putting it down”. The workers were none the wiser.

Even when it was banned worldwide the economically powerful banana planters lobbied intensively for its continued use. They argued that there wasn’t a better alternative. They lied. There was. They were quietly allowed to finish the stocks they had and there is evidence that it was still being imported.

It has badly contaminated the soil and the water. Food cultivation and fishing is heavily restricted.

Between 92% and 95% of the populations of Martinique and Guadeloupe are contaminated by Kepone. In humans, chlordecone is known to cross the placental barrier and is excreted in breast milk.

Every child born on either of the two islands, already has Kepone in its blood.

Kepone will persist in the environment for 700 years.

Bugs, bananas and money.

The unfairest and deadliest combination.