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In case you think big chemical industry firms have the public good at heart a good example of their true behavior can be seen by looking at the pre-WWWII era. PCBs are dangerous but have many uses. They have had a history in industry since 1865.

This page The History of PCBs is illustrative of why industry cannot be trusted with telling the truth about  dangerous substances they use.

Here is a quote –

PCB history is not pretty. As the timeline shows, the manufacturers and major users of PCBs knew by the 1930s and 1940s that PCBs caused serious health problems in their workers, and doctors advised them that other effects could be occurring as well. But this did not stop industries from producing and using PCBs, or from releasing PCBs into our environment, contaminating our public waterways, air, croplands, and wildlife. It appears from this PCB history that several companies also deliberately misled workers, customers, regulators and the public for many decades, allowing the PCB problem to spread and become much worse. 

http://www.foxriverwatch.com/monsanto2a_pcb_pcbs.html 

When we look at the blow up in Fukushima, Japan and see the horrible consequences of trusting big industry with public health we must ask ourselves why they were trusted in the first place. There is no history of them putting public health ahead of shareholder profits.  This PCB History page brings home the truth of the mindset of some of the biggest chemical firms on earth. Many of them play a large role in advocating nuclear power.

Another worth quote:

1936 — A senior official with the U.S. Public Health Service described a wife and child, both of whom had developed chloracne, a combination of blackheads and “pustules,” merely from contact with a worker’s clothes. The same official wrote, “In addition to these skin lesions, symptoms of systemic poisoning have occurred among workers inhaling these fumes.”

http://www.foxriverwatch.com/monsanto2a_pcb_pcbs.html 

You will  notice the mention of GE along with Monsanto in this piece.