Monsanto, Anniston, and Taylor

This month marks two decades since the Monsanto chemical company settled with residents of the town of Anniston. The payments were over health issues blamed on chemicals called PCBs that Monsanto started manufacturing back in the mid 1930’s. People living in Anniston say cases of cancer and other medical problems were linked to PCB exposure. It was a situation that didn’t harm just one generation, but many. Alabama Public Radio asked one longtime resident to explain what happened to her family and how it impacted the direction her life would take.

My name is Taylor Phillips. I’m twenty four years old, and this year, I’ll start medical school at the University of Pennsylvania. I grew up on the west side of Anniston, Alabama. That’s where the heaviest contamination of PCB’s from Monsanto was supposed to be. When I was young, my mother would joke about it. She used to say we were all radioactive and we’d glow green at night. But, the impact of one Monsanto product was more serious than that. It was a group of chemicals called Polychlorinated Biphenyls, or PCB’s for short.

To get a complete picture of Monsanto, Anniston, and PCB’s, you have to go back to the early 1930’s and the story of Rayfield Horton. He was my great grandfather…

The nation was still reeling from the Great Depression when Rayfield got a job as a janitor at the Swann Chemical Company in Anniston. Monsanto later bought the plant where my great-grandfather worked. That was 1935…

This is one of the fireside chats by President Franklin Roosevelt. His radio address took place the same year Monsanto bought Swann Chemical. FDR’s plan to save the nation’s economy was called the New Deal. One idea was to bring electricity to rural parts of the country. PCB’s were used in electrical insulation, so that was good news for Monsanto

My great-grandfather was just one of the African Americans living in Anniston. They were mainly descended from slaves and sharecroppers. Most of them got jobs making the town’s big exports. The list included iron, steel pipe, and chemical products. This was also the Jim Crow South. That meant Anniston was segregated. Blacks lived on the rural westside. Although there wasn’t much there, the community made do, and the children played in the woods and fished in Snow Creek. My great grandfather Rayfield and his wife Pearlie Mae lived in a three-bedroom shotgun house with five of their ten children ]

Rayfield would wake up early, Pearly Mae would make breakfast, and he’d be out the door to work until late, so his family didn’t see much of him. The PCBs made by Monsanto were used in things like flameproofing materials, paint, varnish, and even chewing gum. The problem was that two years after Monsanto bought Swann, PCBs were being linked to medical problems. The Harvard School of Public Health held a conference on sicknesses like liver damage, skin irritation, and infections caused by chemicals similar to PCBs.

In 1944, the D-Day invasion took place during World War two. That same year PCB’s were officially declared toxic. But nobody told my great grandfather. Monsanto salesmen were warned to stay clear of the chemicals. That information didn’t filter down to any of the black men working maintenance jobs at the plant. The company didn’t even provide protective gear. All of those details would be in the lawsuit against Monsanto that was coming. My mother told stories about her grandfather, that’s my great grandfather Rayfield Horton. He would come home and take off his boots and uniform after a day cleaning up at the Monsanto plant. My mother and her brothers and sisters would take turns putting on his work boots and stomp around the house.

That would go on until my great grandfather retired in 1969. That’s the year Astronauts landed on the Moon. It’s also when my family started getting sick. By the mid-nineteen seventies, all three of my surviving great grandparents had suffered strokes. They were only in their late forties and early fifties. My great grandmother Pearlie Mae was diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer. During that time, that illness was a taboo subject. For that reason, many Blacks were unaware of the symptoms of cancer. Also, my mother’s family only went to the doctor if they were really sick. That meant few, if any, annual physicals.

In 1977, Monsanto was pressured to quit making PCBs. Two years later, the EPA ordered a nation-wide ban. That was too late to save my great grandmother. Her cancer had progressed too far by the time she was diagnosed. She decided against receiving treatment and died in 1979.

During the 1990s, my mother’s generation began to experience severe health problems. Women went into preterm labor or suffered pre-eclampsia. Their newborn children had congenital defects. My own brother was born at only twenty-five weeks. He was diagnosed with cerebral palsy when he was a year old. A family friend lost twin baby daughters due to complications.

Around this time, my family started investigating the impact of PCBs. They all had blood tests taken. Both of my parents, my aunt, and my older brother had higher levels of PCB’s than the federal government considered safe.

My mother recalled playing in ditches around Anniston when she was young. She and her family and friends made mud pies, ate fish from Snow’s creek, and drank the water. A jury later found that Monsanto had dumped PCBs in many of those spots.

In 2003, the residents of Anniston won a lawsuit against Monsanto. The chemical giant, and its subsidiary called Solutia, paid seven hundred million dollars to more than twenty thousand Anniston residents. The money was to cover damages, court fees, the cleanup of PCB pollution, and research. The checks were also supposed to cover medical bills. But, it was a bittersweet victory since no dollar amount can restore health that was permanently damaged.

As for me, I spent so much time growing up around doctors and hospitals, that medical school was an obvious choice for my career. I’ll begin my studies at the University of Pennsylvania later this year. As the world looks back on twenty years since the Monsanto settlement, it’s what money doesn’t buy that hurts.

Two years after the settlement, my extended family gathered together for we knew was my grandmother’s last birthday. We all called her Nanny. Her cancer had metastasized to her brain. I was too young to know what that meant. But, I remember Nanny growing more frail every time I saw her. On the weekends, she used to sit me in her lap with a copy of the book Pippi Longstocking. Nanny used to read to me and challenge me to spell and pronounce the big words. Her illness worsened to the point that you could barely understand what she was saying. We never finished that book and no settlement will change that.

Editor's note:

Alabama Public Radio contacted the Bayer company which bought out Monsanto in 2018. APR offered Bayer the chance to heard on issues related to PCB’s in Anniston. Those emails went unanswered.