In 1975, workers at Life Science Products, a small makeshift pesticide factory in Hopewell, Virginia, became ill after exposure to Kepone, the brand name for the pesticide chlordecone. The chemical made their bodies seize and shake. News of ill workers led to the discovery of widespread environmental contamination of the nearby James River. Dumping of the chemical had been going on for years, not only by Life Science but also the corporate behemoth Allied Chemical. The disaster led to a controversial fishing ban on the James, precedent-setting legal action, as well as significant state and federal laws regulating toxic substances. Kepone affected not only Hopewell, Virginia, and the United States, but also far away fields where growers used the white powder to combat insects. In the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique, workers spread chlordecone on banana plantations, victims of the crisis emerging from the poison accumulating in their bodies and the soil and water around them. This talk, based on the book Poison Powder, provides a brief chronicle of this important environmental disaster in the post-World War II South and its connections to the Caribbean. Although the EPA has banned the manufacture and use of Kepone, organochlorines have long half-lives, and these toxic compounds and their residues remain in people and the environment.
Dr. Gregory Wilson is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Akron. His research and teaching include Ohio history, as well as public history, labor, and the environment in the twentieth century. He directs the MA in Applied History and Public Humanities program at UA. He is a co-principal investigator for “Deindustrialization and the Politics of Our Time,” a transnational research project examining the historical roots, lived experiences, and responses to deindustrialization. He is the author or co-author of four books, most recently Poison Powder: The Kepone Disaster in Virginia and Its Legacy.
