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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Saturday, August 8, 2015

Report details Agent Orange use at Fort Detrick

What other test were done in civilian communities, that we were not informed?
 (This is not Central Chemical but we are learning so much about things happening in the past that we were not aware of.


Posted: Wednesday, February 23, 2011 12:00 am

Megan Eckstein News-Post Staff 
Fort Detrick has released a preliminary archive search report on its past Agent Orange use as the Kristen Renee Foundation began to ramp up its efforts to prove that the Army post caused a cancer cluster in Frederick.
According to the report, which was posted online Tuesday, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers found that Fort Detrick tested an estimated 16.82 pounds of Agent Orange and similar defoliants between 1944 and 1951.
In a news release, Fort Detrick noted that the amount tested was relatively small.
"During 1969 alone, the national average for use of the exact same chemical was roughly 1.12 pounds per acre, which equates to more than 8.9 million pounds used nationwide to include farm, lawn care, right of way, private property, aquatic area applications," the news release states. "There is no difference in the compounds used by the military during this time and those that were commercially available."
Fort Detrick's preliminary report is based on annual special reports, which chronicle scientific research. The archived records show that the Chemical Warfare Service at Fort Detrick in 1944 gave the Plant Research Branch "the mission of developing chemical agents to destroy or reduce the value of crops." This mission led to the creation of a number of chemicals in the Agent Orange family.
According to the preliminary report, records show that researchers tested these chemicals in fields between 1944 and 1951. Tests were done in plots of 6 by 18 feet; the chemicals were applied with hand-held sprayers. Light metal frames with wind-resistant cloth were placed between each plot to keep the chemicals from spreading and ruining the experiments -- which also means the chemicals didn't blow far off Army grounds, the report states.
The report also notes two more experiments -- one that tested chemicals from a truck-mounted spray tower and the other that tested herbicides' movement through the soil.
Greenhouse tests of Agent Orange between August 1961 and June 1963 -- which the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has acknowledged as a cause of health problems for veterans who served at Fort Detrick at the time and for which it is currently paying disability claims -- are outlined in a classified report, the preliminary report says, so details about those tests have not yet been made available to the Corps of Engineers.
Fort Detrick announced the 17-pound figure in November but was met with criticism from the Kristen Renee Foundation and its supporters, who didn't believe the Army would acknowledge the full extent of the problem. A National Academy of Sciences panel is set to review data suggesting that the Agent Orange tests from decades ago have not led to a cancer cluster, but Kristen Renee Foundation founder Randy White said during a Tuesday news conference that he had no confidence the NAS panel would get to the bottom of the problem.
"I believe the Department of Defense is worse than the Mafia," he said, explaining that the military wasn't likely to allow access to all its documents related to Agent Orange testing.
White's news conference Tuesday was the beginning of a weeklong push to bring new attention to his fight against Fort Detrick. Today, the foundation will join with Vietnam War veterans to protest before the Fort Detrick Restoration Advisory Board meeting at 6:30 p.m. at the Hampton Inn on Opossumtown Pike in Frederick.
On Thursday, White is scheduled to testify before the state Senate Finance Committee in Annapolis and to ask for money for the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to conduct a more thorough cancer cluster investigation.
A bill being considered, Senate Bill 574, would mandate "the Biennial Cancer Study conducted by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to measure possible environmental causes of targeted and nontargeted cancers, including specified chemical agents and toxins." The bill does not mention Frederick or Fort Detrick, but White said he believed the funding would help his cause.
At the news conference, White also offered updates on his private research into cancer cases near Fort Detrick. He said he had handed out 30,000 surveys for residents to detail their families' cancer history. The forms are being returned at a rate of about 20 a day, he said, and he hopes to have collected 1,200 by next month.
White also discussed blood tests he paid to have done on several local residents with cancer. He said researchers found dioxin in the blood samples, and that dioxin was a "very close" match to the dioxin in soil samples taken near Fort Detrick. White would not elaborate further. He declined to say how many blood samples were taken and from whom, and he would not clarify from where the soil samples were taken.


http://www.fredericknewspost.com/archive/report-details-agent-orange-use-at-fort-detrick/article_357c7b2b-179c-5586-b4ba-682037f9fb79.html
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