Central Chemical Corp.

History of Central Chemical Corp.
In important ways, the circumstances surrounding Thomas’s entry into the fertilizer business were not propitious. First, Thomas began business near the end of a half-century-long relocation of the fertilizer industry’s center. Though fertilizer use continued to increase in the Mid-Atlantic states and elsewhere during the period from 1870 to 1920, the manufacture of fertilizer began to shift to the Southern states in the late nineteenth century. By 1902, Charleston had replaced Baltimore as the fertilizer capital of the country. The Mid-Atlantic states’ share of total fertilizer use decreased from 34% in 1880 to 14% in 1920. By contrast, in 1920 the South-Atlantic states used about 50% of all fertilizers consumed in the U.S. Thus, Hagerstown could no longer enjoy proximity to the major centers of fertilizer-material production, and, while previously situated between the two highest-fertilizer-use regions of the country, it now found itself on the northern edge of a region that now dwarfed all others.

Second, Thomas’s decision to continue in the practice (apparently favored by Hagerstown companies) of making fertilizer primarily from bone and organic materials came at the start of a rapid increase in the demand for mixed fertilizers, but also at the beginning of a precipitous decline in the use of bone and bone products as a source of phosphorous in fertilizers. With the growing use of potash and phosphate rock, consumption of mixed fertilizers grew from 46% of the total in 1880 to around 70% in 1920. During the period from 1890 to 1910, when Thomas was focusing on his presumably unmixed “dissolved bone” fertilizers, mixed fertilizers were capturing market share.

Furthermore, the period from 1880 to 1920 is also characterized by the decreasing use of organic materials in general. Though organic materials provided about 91% of the total nitrogen in 1900, by 1917 the total nitrogen contribution from organics had dropped to 46.5%. With regard to phosphates, bone meal, dissolved bones and boneblack, and phosphoro-guano use peaked in 1890, but their use dropped to a negligible amount by 1910 as the use of superphosphates from phosphate rock increased dramatically..

Third, even as Thomas had begun his business trading fertilizer for livestock from relatively distant places, the fertilizer industry was increasingly turning to local distribution. Though mid-nineteenth-century fertilizer plants typically were situated in East Coast harbor cities, twentieth-century plants were dispersed to be closer to areas of consumption.

Finally, even though the name “Thomas’ Dissolved Bone” suggests that Thomas produced his own superphosphates initially, the use of bone in the production of superphosphates was on its way out as described above. For all practical purposes, then, Thomas had set his business on the track of the second, smaller type of fertilizer company, which only mixed fertilizer and did not produce superphosphates. For the next 90 years, even when Central Chemical had affiliates across the nation, it would remain in this “smaller” category – relying on large suppliers for its materials. For reasons noted above, this was not a problem at the turn of the century vis-à-vis the larger companies. Starting in the 1890s, however, many agricultural societies began to advocate home mixing of fertilizer materials by farmers. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the fertilizer industry fought this effort successfully by insisting on the value of industrial mixing processes and the farmer’s comparative disadvantages in mixing.

Though in its early years, Central Chemical advertised itself as “Exporters – Manufacturers – Importers,” by the 1970s it had become little more than a middle-man between larger suppliers and farmers. It did not import its own materials, but purchased granulated materials from suppliers. There is no evidence that Central Chemical was exporting products out of the country anymore. And its manufacturing capacity consisted of mixing pre-processed granulated materials in various proportions. At this point, its consulting capacity became equally important to its factory processes.

Though Central Chemical and its subsidiaries were taking in a combined $25 million in sales by the late 1970s, an employee remembers that there was always a sense of trouble on the horizon. The vulnerability of a company that adds very little value to its product and relies entirely on contracts with larger suppliers requires no explanation. It appears that not long after Central Chemical became a bulk blender, its large suppliers began pushing their advantages. In the early 70s, Central Chemical’s supplier, Agrico Chemical Company, put pressure on Central Chemical to enter into a long-term contract. When Central Chemical refused, Agrico withheld di-ammonium phosphate and granular triple super phosphate at a time of national shortage in these materials. Central Chemical responded by filing an antitrust lawsuit against Agrico in federal court. For most of the next decade much of the time, resources, and energy of what was still a closely-held corporation would be consumed in this litigation. Ultimately the lawsuit proved unsuccessful.

All of this came at the same time that local, state, federal regulators were investigating the Hagerstown plant for its pesticide-disposal practices. In the 1970s the State of Maryland ordered two separate cleanups of the site; the EPA was just getting started.

Ultimately the push to eliminate the middle man that drove the switch to bulk blending began to turn on the blenders themselves. The larger companies and farmers wised up, and realized that they could both save money by dealing directly with each other. Farmers began buying direct-application materials from the same suppliers used by Central Chemical. By the early 1980s, Central Chemical’s network of fertilizer blenders had contracted substantially. Blending operations like those of the Hagerstown plant could no longer make the case for themselves. Crushed under the weight of increasingly serious environmental liability for its mid-century disposal practices, the Central Chemical Corporation contracted its operations substantially. The Hagerstown plant ceased operations in 1984 and the office headquarters moved from the old Thomas building to an office outside Hagerstown.


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Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Immune gene variant magnifies Parkinson's risk from insecticide exposure




Pyrethroids are found in the majority of commercial household insecticides. Although they are neurotoxic for insects, exposure to them is generally considered safe for humans by federal authorities. Image from Thinkstock.


Woodruff Health Sciences Center | April 27, 2015

Genetic variation and exposure to pesticides both appear to affect risk for Parkinson's disease. A new study has found a connection between these two risk factors, in a way that highlights a role for immune responses in progression of the disease.
The results are published in the inaugural issue of NPJ Parkinson's Disease.
The findings implicate a type of pesticide called pyrethroids, which are found in the majority of commercial household insecticides, and are being used more in agriculture as other insecticides are being phased out. Although pyrethroids are neurotoxic for insects, exposure to them is generally considered safe for humans by federal authorities.
The study is the first making the connection between pyrethroid exposure and genetic risk for Parkinson's, and thus needs follow-up investigation, says co-senior author Malu Tansey, PhD, associate professor of physiology at Emory University School of Medicine.
The genetic variation the team probed, which has been previously tied to Parkinson's in larger genome-wide association studies, was in a non-coding region of a MHC II (major histocompatibility complex class II) gene, part of a group of genes that regulate the immune system.
"We did not expect to find a specific association with pyrethroids," Tansey says. "It was known that acute exposure to pyrethroids could lead to immune dysfunction, and that the molecules they act on can be found in immune cells; now we need to know more about how longer-term exposure affects the immune system in a way that increases risk for Parkinson's."
"There is already ample evidence that brain inflammation or an overactive immune system can drive the progression of Parkinson's. What we think may be happening here is that environmental exposures may be altering some people's immune responses, in a way that promotes chronic inflammation in the brain."
For this study, Emory investigators led by Tansey and Jeremy Boss, PhD, chair of microbiology and immunology, teamed up with Stewart Factor, DO, head of Emory's Comprehensive Parkinson's Disease Center, and public health researchers from UCLA led by Beate Ritz, MD, PhD. The first author of the paper is MD/PhD student George T. Kannarkat.
The UCLA researchers used a California state geographical database covering 30 years of pesticide use in agriculture. They defined exposure based on proximity (someone's work and home addresses), but did not measure levels of pesticides in the body. Pyrethroids are thought to decay relatively quickly, especially in sunlight, with half-lives in soil of days to weeks.
In a group of 962 people from California's Central Valley, a common MHC II variant combined with above-average exposure to pyrethroid pesticides to increase the risk of Parkinson's disease. The riskiest form of the gene (where an individual is carrying two risk alleles) was found in 21 percent of Parkinson's patients and 16 percent of controls.
In this group, genes or pyrethroid exposure by themselves did not significantly increase Parkinson's risk, but together, they did. People with more-than-average exposure to pyrethroids and carrying the riskiest form of the MHC II gene had 2.48 times more risk for Parkinson's than less-exposed people with the least risky gene form. Exposure to other types of pesticides such as organophosphates or paraquat did not heighten risk in the same way.
Larger genetic studies (some including Factor and his patients) have previously identified variations in MHC II genes as having connections to Parkinson's. Puzzlingly, the same genetic variants affect Parkinson's risk differently in Caucasian/European and Chinese populations. MHC II genes are highly variable between individual humans; that's why they play a big role in organ transplant matching.
Other experiments showed that the genetic variant connected to Parkinson's is connected with immune cell function. In a group of 81 Parkinson's patients and control participants from Emory of European ancestry the immune cells from people who had the higher-risk MHC II gene variant studied in California displayed more MHC molecules on their surfaces, the researchers found.
MHC molecules are central to the process of "antigen presentation," a driver for T cells to become activated and have the rest of the immune system get involved. Heightened expression of MHC II was present in resting cells from both Parkinson's patients and healthy controls; but greater responsiveness to immune challenges were observed in Parkinson's patients with the higher risk genotype.
The authors conclude: "Our data suggest that cellular biomarkers (like MHC II activation) may prove more useful than soluble molecules in plasma and cerebrospinal fluid to identify individuals at risk for disease or for patient recruitment into neuroprotective trials testing immunomodulatory drugs."
The research was supported by the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke (R01NS072467, 1P50NS071669, F31NS081830), the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (5P01ES016731), the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (GM47310), the Sartain Lanier Family Foundation and the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research.


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