By my definition (I don't know about anybody else's) the second boss who wouldn't spend the money to dispose of the chloroform properly was a psychopath. That was one incident in a long list of similar incidents. He cared about the advancement of his career and personal fortune at the expense of all else. He went on to a very senior position with Kraft Foods.Higgenbotham wrote:In 1984, I was hired by a Fortune 500 US based company out of college to help manage a lab in a manufacturing plant.
After training and about a week on the job, one of the techs told me, "It's time to empty the bucket." The bucket was a 5 gallon pail that contained about 50% chloroform, a probable human carcinogen. The contents of the bucket were being dumped down the drain on a pretty regular basis. I told my boss we can't be doing that because the stuff is toxic. He said, oh, OK, and he put a sign over the bucket saying the lab techs had to dump it. I then told him, no, we really can't have anybody dumping the bucket down the drain and we need to get a bid to dispose of it properly. He said, OK, get some bids. So I did and the lowest bid was $5000 per year. My boss was transferred and there was another Boomer boss now, so I gave him the bids. He said $5000 was too much and he wasn't going to spend it. Now, mind you, this was a company that made about a BILLION dollars per year in profit and is in the top 50 Fortune 500 companies.
This isn't in the archives, but I recall a very similar situation where a large consumer products company was secretly putting formaldehyde in their products and not disclosing it. I questioned them about it and the exec laughed. He said they do it "because it's cheap".
Those are the 21% versus the 1% in the general population. Most normal people would not dump carcinogens into a conduit that ultimately ends up in the public's water supply, or put carcinogens into products people spray in their homes unknowingly. But a substantial number of corporate executives will do those things and I've seen it first hand.
