On Wed, 13 Aug 2003 12:08:08 -0700,
(paghat) wrote:

. As you deny being the same Bill Oliver who services
Monsanto through the American Chemical Society,

Check out some of the staff at the Armed Forces Institute of
Pathology, Billo's employer. Lots of Monsanto links there. Nothing
like defending your buddies and their interests.

( oh oh Ashcroft's bullies are probably reading this)

An analysis by PHR Environmental Consultants Inc., conducted in 1999
for the purpose of a federally mandated cleanup, identified 12 zones
of extreme contamination in the area located close to the Mississippi
River opposite the city of St. Louis. Until 1967, Sauget was known as
the Village of Monsanto, after the largest industrial company
operating within its bounds.

"Contaminants identified to date in the subject area include: PCBs
(polychlorinated biphenyls), heavy metals including arsenic, barium,
copper, lead, mercury, nickel and zinc; volatile organic compounds,
including chloroform, benzene, 111-trichloethene, tetrachloroethene,
chlorobenzene, toluene and xylenes; semi-volatile organic compounds
such as phenol, naphthalene and pentachlorophenol; pesticides; the
breakdown products of chlorinated hydrocarbon solvents have also been
detected in the ground water," the report said.

Exposure to many of these compounds, especially PCBs, dioxins and
benzene, is known to cause cancer in humans and animals.

The PHR report states that pollution of Dead Creek began in 1918 when
St. Louis-based Monsanto Co. began manufacturing chemicals there. As
early as 1923, six local landowners sued Monsanto for damages to their
agricultural land caused by the release of chemical wastes into Dead
Creek.

Over the years, dozens of companies contributed to the problem. Some
are no longer in business; some have been acquired by other companies.
Monsanto itself has spun off its Sauget plant to a subsidiary, Solutia
Inc.

Solutia has taken responsibility for cleaning up the site and spent
around $17 million trying to do so. Solutia bought the Batson's house
for $40,000 last year and demolished it.

But the company, which last April settled a similar case of PCB
contamination in Alabama for $40 million, is fighting the lawsuit.
Solutia has petitioned to have the case transferred from an Illinois
county court to federal court, arguing much of the pollution stemmed
from a period during World War Two when the company was producing
poisoned gas for the military.

"We believe the U.S. government will be a defendant and therefore it
should be heard in federal court," said Solutia spokesman Glenn
Ruskin.

Additionally, Ruskin stated: "I have not heard of any medical
knowledge or studies that the form of leukemia Mr. Batson has is
associated with exposure to chemicals."

Chemical engineer Melvyn Kopstein, an expert retained by Batson's
lawyer Bill Gavin, said in an affidavit: "Benzene has long been known
to cause myelogenous leukemia in humans."

Gavin believes Solutia's attempt to shift the case to federal court
is aimed at avoiding disclosure of documents. "The federal court
system has strict restrictions on the kind of discovery that can be
conducted," he said.

The federal judge has told plaintiffs they can only send 50
interrogatories, or questions, to each defendant and 20 requests for
production of documents.

"That severely limits my ability to shake information out of them,"
Gavin said.

* * *

Copyright 2001, Reuters All Rights Reserved
Copyright (C) 2001 Environmental News Network Inc.



In article ,
Jerry Kindall wrote:
In article ,
(Andrew Kelly) wrote:

Is it maybe that because I've got that lovely little .de at the
end of my address that nobody thinks I'm worth spamming?

There it is. More likely, the people who create the mailing lists just
search on US top-level domains (.com, .net, .edu, .etc) and haven't yet
started searching on country TLDs.



My strategy is to change my email address every few years.
That's why I'm instead of .
My junk email at has dropped dramatically, and
the stuff at saltmine has risen only slowly. In another couple
of years, I'll switch to another place or back to UNC. So far,
there'w been no real need for a pseudonym.

billo


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Oliver
Degree: M.S.
E-mail:
Comments: Doing the old Forensic Pathology and 3D visualization in
Quantitative Anatomic Pathology at the Armed Forces Institute of
"Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets,
but humbler folk may circumvent this restriction if they know how.
To plant a pine, for example, one need be neither god nor poet;
one need only own a good shovel. By virtue of this curious loophole in the rules,
any clodhopper may say: Let there be a tree--and there will be one"

Aldo Leopold