S9 Ep132: The Mix-Up (Velsicol Chemical Company)

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So go ahead and enjoy some cheesy mac and cheese. Enjoy that stack sandwich with hero bread for lunch or start your day with a fully loaded bagel. Because with hero bread, there's none of the stiff baked goods you expect from better for your brands. And right now, hero bread is offering 10% off your order. Go to hero.co and use code iHeart to check out. That's ATRO.co.iHeart. All figures per serving of hero bread. See Nutrition Facts on Hero.co for sodium and sugar content. This episode of swindled may contain graphic descriptions or audio recordings of disturbing events which may not be suitable for all audiences. Listen to discretion is advised. Recognize this gentleman. In English, he is called Cockroach, Cotinburg Roach, Waterbug or Black Beetle. The Germans call him Shaban, the French, La Blatt and in Spanish, he is known as La Cucuracha. No matter what the language or country, the Cockroach is an unwelcome and disgusting pest in any home. Scientists have worked for years developing insecticides to control Roaches. DDT proved fairly effective, but later another chemical chloridane was developed and today, it is considered to be one of the most effective insecticides for Roach control. 1974 marked a crisis for the Belsicol Chemical Corporation of Chicago. That year, the Environmental Protection Agency initiated proceedings to ban both of the company's flagship products, chloridane and haptoclor. Pesticides that had anchored Belsicol's business for decades and accounted for a quarter of its total sales. The alarm centered on both the health hazards and the environmental persistence of the chemicals. Studies have begun to tie them to cancer risk and neurological disorders, and because chloridane and haptoclor were water and soluble, yet lipophilic, they did not wash away but instead accumulated in living tissue, lodging in fat cells and magnifying in concentration as they climbed the food chain. None of this boated well for Belsicol's bottom line. Fortunately for its stakeholders, the company had already developed a replacement. In the late 60s, Belsicol unveiled a new and improved pesticide. It was a waxy powder, called leptophos, designed to kill insects by crippling their central nervous systems, while the product crawled through the approval process in the US where it was manufactured. Belsicol wasted no time exporting it overseas where it was sold as phosphol and at least 30 countries. Egypt was one of Belsicol's earliest and heaviest testing grounds. In the early 1970s, cotton farmers began coating their fields with a new pesticide. Within months, reports surfaced of paralysis and tremors among those who handled it. The damage wasn't limited to people either. Phosphol was suspected of seeping in the nearby watering holes where the lifeless bodies of more than 1300 water buffalo were soon discovered. It would be years before these overseas reports reached American regulators who were still weighing the pesticides approval for domestic use in 1974. Even after the EPA's own tests confirmed Phosphol's severe environmental and neurotoxic effects, the agency did nothing to halt production. A federal investigation didn't begin until almost two years later when an EPA insider bypassed a bureaucracy and blew the whistle directly to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. When investigators asked Belsicol if there had been any Phosphol related illnesses at its Texas facility where the chemical was produced, company officials were like, "You know what? Now that you mention it." Last year, a pesticide plant was closed in Hopewell, Virginia after more than 70 persons exposed to the pesticide called Capone suffered nerve damage. Now a similar case has been investigated of the plant near Houston. At least 10 of the 200 present or former employees at this Bayport sector have developed severe nerve disorders that are being described by fellow employees as zombies. Zombies, stiff, staggering, dead-eyed zombies. That's how workers at Belsicol's Bayport plant described colleagues who handled Phosphol on a daily basis. They would lurch into the break room, caked in the stuff, hands trembling so violently they couldn't lie to cigarette. And later if you asked them about it, they would stare you blankly, struggling to remember any of the day's events. A big blank, a ton of blankness. I didn't know what I was doing and I thought of nothing. The things so strange like running in the walls. When employees raised concerns about the obvious neurological symptoms, Belsicol management referred them to a company doctor who blamed the symptoms on inner ear infections or vitamin deficiencies. They were given a pill or a shot and sent straight back to the Phosphol production line. Outside workers sometimes found themselves stepping over the corpses of stray dogs before clocking in. Inside, they took their places beneath the ceilings where its stalactites at the waxy pesticide had formed overhead. It was a nightmare situation. Raymond David, a former supervisor at the Bayport plant, told the New York Times. Management told me all those guys smoke marijuana. They said the guys were acid freaks. David knew better. This crew wasn't a bunch of burnouts. Several were former high school athletes, young, healthy, straight-laced kids whose physical capabilities deteriorated to the point of partial paralysis after just a few months on the job. And I really don't know what it was, but he just told me I'd go and go back to work. So I believed him and I went on back to work and week later I couldn't walk. By the time OSHA inspected Belsicol's Bayport plant in February 1976, the EPA had already abandoned its review of Pawsville, so the company had ceased production. What remained, some 300,000 gallons of the pesticide, was stashed in warehouses around Houston. From there, most of it was quietly funneled to places like Costa Rica, Panama, and Indonesia, at least until those governments eventually grew wise to the damage it caused. Although it had been cleaned out, OSHA found enough hazards at the Bayport plant to side-bessicle for 44 safety violations. Federal authorities also conducted interviews and provided health screenings to 155 of the 250 Belsicol workers who had been exposed to Pawsville over the years. 63 of those employees had claimed that experienced physical symptoms such as dizziness, numbness, blurred vision, weight loss, and impotence. Eleven men had suffered severe consequences, including nervous system disorders and spastic paralysis, some of which proved to be permanent. I get angry at the people who run it, who operated, who should know and should have mentioned the facts, which were not mentioned. That's how I get angry at those people, and bitter. Belsicol chemical, flatly denied fostering unsafe working conditions, and its only public statement on the matter. The company insisted it had acted responsibly quote, "As soon as we became aware of the serious potential occupational health problems, we retained independent medical experts to review the health of our employees. We have reported fully on this matter to the appropriate government agencies." The Pawsville zombies disagreed. In 1977, a group of them filed a $12 million lawsuit, charging that Belsicol failed to warn them about the pesticide's dangers or provide them even the most basic protective equipment, but the case never reached a courtroom. A judge ruled that their suffering fell under workers' compensation laws in Texas, dismissing the lawsuit before it was ever heard. In fact, the harshest penalty Belsicol ever faced over Pawsville came not from OSHA or the courts, but from the EPA, and it didn't even amount to a slap on the wrist for the billion dollar a year company. Inspectors discovered the pesticide had escaped the Bayport plant, and seeped into nearby groundwater, the punishment, just under $90,000. However, there was one last chance at justice later that year. The federal grand jury had died at six Belsicol executives, not for the Pawsville disaster, but for allegedly conspiring to defraud the United States by hiding data from the EPA. The suppressed studies suggested that the companies' pre-phosibel pesticides have to floor and chlordane, caused tumors and laboratory animals that could pose a cancer risk for humans. They've convicted the executives faced prison sentences of up to 50 years. But any hope of that actually happening was quickly crushed. The indictments were thrown out after it emerged that the US attorney leading the case had previously worked at the EPA where he helped build the original case against Belsicle. Incredibly, during the grand jury hearings, that attorney served both as an expert witness and as a prosecutor, an obvious conflict of interest that doomed the trial before it even began. The government refiled the charges, but the case ended in a quiet settlement. The executives walked away with nothing more than a $5,000 fine. It was hardly surprising. By the 1970s, Belsicle's artful dodging of responsibility had become almost routine. The company wasn't the biggest player in the chemical industry, nor the most powerful, and was easily among the sloppiest and most shameless. We see nothing wrong with helping the hungry world eat one executive scoffed when criticized for blanketing the globe and pesticides. The truth was harder to spin. Belsicle had been implicated and more environmental disasters than almost any of its peers. The phosphofiasco was just the latest chapter. In fact, by the time OSHA inspectors set foot and Bayport, Belsicle was simultaneously at the center of an even greater catastrophe or than a thousand miles away when they made the chemical zombies of Texas look almost quaint. This time, it wasn't just factory workers at risk, but an entire state's people, environment, industry, and future generations. A little mix up spirals into one of the worst chemical disasters in American history on this episode of Swindled. They bribe government officials, fight accounting career by basing the federal state law and the earlier land. They have paid a play as a taxpayer dollar, several wasted, and they have tens of billions of dollars in a billion dollars. That we dump the 10 bucks in a card, so quite falsified in our origin, records, bonds, will for the collapse of the entire system. In this role of some kind of swing clasps. If you listen to the show, you already know that people aren't always trustworthy. And unfortunately, some of those people might be interested in what's inside your house. That's why I use Simply Safe to protect my home when I'm away. I like knowing there's more than just a camera recording, whatever happens. Unlike traditional security systems that react after a break in. Simply Safe is designed to stop intruders before they get inside. Their AI-powered cameras can detect potential threats and alert a live US-based agent who can intervene in under 30 seconds. They can even speak directly to an intruder through the camera and request urgent 911 dispatch if necessary. Right now, Swindled listeners can save 70% on a new Simply Safe system with professional monitoring. That's their biggest savings of the year. Visit SimplySafe.com/Swindled and write in Swindled at checkout. It helps support the show. That's why I use SimplySafe to protect my home when I'm away. Right now, Swindled listeners can save 70% on the new SimplySafe system with professional monitoring. There was a snow explanation. It was as low as some old of lightning had hit the farm and suddenly the animals decided that they weren't going to be cows any longer. Rick Cowbert first noticed they'd change in his dairy cows behavior on Thursday, September 20th, 1973. The animals were very lethargic and that stopped eating for the most part. Rick summoned his veterinarian like any attentive farmer would. But after examining the herd, the vet left the Howard Farm, just as baffled as Rick. There were no symptoms of the usual culprits, no infection, no illness, nothing that fit the textbook explanations. Maybe there was mold in the corn, Rick wondered. Maybe something had tainted the soil on his farm in Battle Creek, Michigan. Had a jealous competitor sabotaged him, had a bitter employee poisoned at the well. He tried not to let the pair know you, get the best of him. As Rick Cowbert grasped for answers, the condition of his herd grew more concerning. And a few short weeks, their daily milk yield had dropped a less than 8,000 pounds per day. A typical haul was closer to 13,000 pounds. Okay, maybe it was time to panic. Rick's suspicions soon circled back to the feed. He had just received the first ship end of a custom formula from the Battle Creek Feed Co-op, owned and operated by the Michigan Farm Bureau, a private company that had served farmers in the area since 1919. At Rick's request, the new mix included magnesium oxide, an additive known to aid a cow's digestion and boost milk production, especially important given the local soil's deficiency. As one of the co-ops largest customers, the Howard dairy was given every accommodation. The feed was blended at a central plant five miles south of town to his exact specifications and delivered in the form of green pellets, sprinkled as a topper on the cow's daily rations. Rick called the Battle Creek Co-op with his concerns. He wanted to find out if any of the other local farmers were experiencing similar issues. They said that nothing was happening in other farms and weren't in other complaints specifically because we'd ask for someone else complaining that it's getting speed in the answer was no. Before he hung up, Rick had another query for the feed mill. What about X-Disease? I'm sorry, X-Disease? Yeah, you remember, like 20 years ago when cattle all over the country started craving those toxic lubricants. They were licking door hinges and tractor parts like lollipops and slowly poisoning themselves with chlorinated naphthalines. Rick had been reading and the symptoms back then sounded eerily similar to what he was seeing now. Oh, no, you don't have to worry about that, Rick. The Battle Creek plant only uses non-toxic lubricants in its machinery. But I'll tell you what, if you're unsatisfied with the feed, we'd be happy to buy it back. Rick Howard declined to offer that the problem were related to his custom formula. It would be beneficial to keep it on hand for future analysis, speaking of which Rick had some more phone calls to make. The veterinary diagnosticians at the Michigan Department of Agriculture offered little help. The symptoms appeared to be those of a viral infection they said, but the tests didn't confirm it. Beyond that, there wasn't much they could do, Rick was told. The MDA's facilities weren't equipped to house large farm animals for further study. The next call Rick made was to Michigan State University's Department of Dairy Science in East Lansing. They weren't interested in helping either. They didn't want to get involved in a squabble between a farmer and a feed company. Rick began to suspect that Michigan State University was reluctant to ruffle feathers at the Michigan Farm Bureau, the very organization that owned the feed mill and underwrote much of the department's research. His suspicions hardened when an MSU nutritionist later released a Farm Bureau funded reports that laughably pinned Howard's troubles on excessive iodine. If that had been the real culprit, Rick's cows would have already recovered weeks ago. Rick Albert kept reaching out to state labs, to federal scientists, even to the Food and Drug Administration, but every request for help ended in a dead end. Meanwhile, the health of his herd continued to worsen. It was around this point that Rick Albert came to a sobering realization that if this mystery were ever going to be solved, he would have to be the one to do it. Call it fortune or fate, but whatever was plaguing Rick Albert's cattle, couldn't have happened to a better farmer, not only in the sense that Rick was a driven, experienced, and hard-working farmer, but also because Rick had a master's degree in chemical engineering. Before returning the battle creek to join the family business, he had spent several years working for Dow Chemical in Midland. With his father, he had since transformed the farmer into a thriving agribusiness. Rick, now in his early 30s, approached his herd the way he might think a chemical engineer would. Adjusting feed formulas, tweaking nutrients, and tracking variables to squeeze out every last gallon of milk, which is why watching his prized dairy cows waste away before his eyes was enough to drive him mad. Rick was determined to isolate what was making them sick. The first step was obvious, swap out the feed, which he hypothesized was the issue. Curiously, the cows' appetites returned gradually, but their milk production never did. So, Rick was determined to isolate what was making them sick. thick, dug deeper. He paid thousands of dollars to run tests on the custom mix he had stored in his barn, not knowing what to look for. He began rolling out the usual suspects. Modes, negative, heavy metals, within limits, urea, nitrates, nothing unusual. Growing frustrated, Rick admittedly shoved a handful of the pellets into his own mouth. They tasted perfectly normal. Albert's next move was the conductive's own experiment. He selected 12 calves and fed them nothing but the custom feed. Within days, those unlucky souls stopped eating. Within weeks, they started dying, grinding their teeth to the bitter end. These dozen calves were fed only this feed for, we intended a period of a month, but after a couple of weeks they wouldn't eat it, so we began to feed them other things. And about six weeks later, the experiment these calves began to die. And over the period of the next two months most of those calves in fact died. It was a small step forward, born out of tragedy. But Rick persuaded researchers that Michigan state to examine the organs of his dead calves to try to pinpoint what exactly happened. The results in conclusive. And the result of that was when they wrote up the report, it's a diet of starvation. Yeah, no shit. Of course the calves died of starvation. They refused to eat. Rick wanted to know why they stopped eating, but apparently that was not a question Michigan state could answer. This did not set well with me, he later said. I thought the laboratory report was an insult to me because it seemed to presume that I didn't know what I was doing. Further proof of his results slid up further insults. Halberd convinced the Michigan Department of Agriculture to replicate his experiment using mice instead of cows. As he expected, half of the mice fed the pellets were dead within days. Rick alerted the battle-cooked feed mill that the formula they made for him was lethal. The Farm Bureau veterinarian wasn't convinced, quote, "Those mice died because they had eaten cattle feed. Not mouse food." Seven months dragged on without answers. The Halberd farmed blood hundreds of dollars a day just to keep on productive cows alive. And without proof that the mysterious illness wasn't his fault, insurance offered no relief. It was a race against the clock because that mysterious illness had taken a grotesque turn. The herd began to mutate in ways no farmer had ever seen. Hoves grew monstrously long, curling upward like corkscrews until every step was an act of agony. Their coats turned patchy and mangy, hair matted, then fell away, exposing thickened skin, marked with oozing abscesses and unexplained hematomas. Their eyes watered constantly, their bodies wasted away as their appetites remained weak. And reproduction, the lifeblood of any dairy farm collapsed. Cows cycled into heat far too often, pregnancies failed as fetuses were reabsorbed, and those that did carry the term "produced calves so deformed and frail" they died within days. Some mothers lingered past their delivery dates, forcing stillborns under the world nose first, feet twisted behind, utter shrank, milk dried up, and even the rare surviving offspring trembled and staggered as if the disease had already consumed the next generation. What stood in the barn was no longer a herd, but a collection of suffering, animals ravaged by an unrecognizable plague with no hope of recovery, silently begging with their expressive eyes to be put out of their misery. Another curious observation Rikmade was that all the rodents on his farm had disappeared, but larger concerns soon engulfed him. Two of his children had fallen ill, and then his cousin Carl died in a bizarre tractor accident on the property, as if he had blacked out behind the wheel, tumbled off and been crushed beneath the machine. It was inexplicable. Yet, through it all, Rik Albert continued his quest for clarity. He was put in touch with Dr. Alvin Furr at the National Animal Diseases Laboratory in the Ames, Iowa, who agreed to conduct a pesticide screening on the deadly feed, using gas liquid chromatography, and in another moment of sheer fortuity, a technician in Dr. Furr's lab left the analyzer running while out to lunch. When they returned, the readout revealed an unexpected result that would most likely not have been discovered if the machine had been manned. Peaks and valleys denoted the presence of a foreign compound in the feed with an unusually heavy, molecular weight. It wasn't a pesticide, at least not the kind they were used to seeing, but it was unmistakably manmade. Once the results were confirmed, the next step was to identify the contaminant. That responsibility fell to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, armed with an electron captured detector and a mass spectrograph. Their findings were decisive, not a trace of magnesium oxide was present, and the feed like it should have been. Instead, the instruments detected an industrial compound. Its signature revealed by the presence of bromine. That narrowed the possibilities, but recovered when it's certainty. In April 1974, the forwarded the results to George Frees, a USDA scientist at the Belthville Agricultural Research Station, who recognized the compound almost immediately. Its polybrominated bifinil, or PBB, it seemed fate had intervened once again. George Frees was the only researcher in the United States who had studied PBB when it debuted as a flame retardant two years earlier, and he knew that there was only one place where it was manufactured. The Michigan Chemical Company. This is the Michigan Chemical Company. Some of the chemicals processed here are made to be eaten by people and animals. Others are pure poison. The Michigan Chemical Company, owned by Belsicol Chemical, a subsidiary of Northwest Industries, was the largest employer in St. Louis, Michigan. A small town located approximately 100 miles north of Battle Creek. It's 54 acre plant that operated on the banks of the Pine River since World War II when it produced DDT for the US military. By the 1970s, Belsicol was producing more than 250 chemicals at the MCC plant, including dust master, a substance for controlling dust on highways, boiler master, a product used to clean boilers, and the recently formulated Firemaster, the highly toxic PBB-based fire retardant, which was incorporated in the plastic products, such as auto parts, telephones, typewriters, and TVs. The manufacturer of these industrial compounds produced byproducts, such as salt and magnesium oxide, which Michigan Chemical repackaged and sold. Of course, the company stuck to its naming conventions. Magnesium oxide, for example, was rebranded as Nutramaster, an animal feed supplement, which was shipped to farm cooperatives across Michigan, including Battle Creek, always delivered in heavy brown paper bags, always marked with a blue stripe, until one day it wasn't. In the winter of 1972, Michigan Chemicals pre-printed Nutramaster bags were backordered amid a national paper shortage. When the supply ran out, the company switched to plain brown sacks, the familiar blue stripe replaced by the trade name hastily hand stenciled across the top. At the same time, Michigan Chemical was rolling out a new crystallized form of Firemaster. It hadn't yet been assigned a color-coded bag, so the PBB product, an off-white powdery substance, nearly indistinguishable from Magnesium oxide, was shipped in the same plain brown sacks, with only a barely visible brand name. I bet some idiot made a mistake in the warehouse and you got PBB instead. George Freeze told Rick Halbert, unaware that his off-hand gas was closer to the truth than he realized. Impossible, Michigan Chemical replied when Rick alerted them to this theory. PBB was produced and shipped from an entirely different part of the plant than Magnesium oxide they told him. The chances of that happening were slim to none. But that is precisely what did happen. Probably around May 2nd, 1973, Michigan Chemical's internal investigation later revealed. As much as 1,000 pounds of Firemaster was shipped to the Battle Creek co-op, where it was mixed into the daily feed that was delivered to Rick Halbert, who fed it to his cows. Rumors swirled that it was the fault of an illiterate truck driver or an illiterate feed mill worker who couldn't read the bag. But the who went to win why wears and howls were impossible to decipher, thanks to Michigan Chemical's sloppy inventory management and storage practices. The only certainty is that there was unaccounted for PBB and a bunch of sick cattle on Rick Halbert's farm. The FDA provided additional confirmation days later when it discovered a half-empty bag of Firemaster at a feed mill and mended in Michigan, 20 miles southwest of Halbert's property, where dairy farmers had been complaining about a mysterious illness for months. in the parliament public health was in on it. It seemed like right from the word go that it was pretty well covered up. The following is a paid advertisement for the Swindle Valued Listener Rewards Program. Are you tired of hearing advertisements in Swindle like this one? 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Simply Safe. Ahead of crime. In real time. Fags of the wrong chemical were sent to Farm Bureau livestock feed mills. Instead of a chemical to help cows grow, the mills got bags of a highly poisonous chemical used as a flame retardant. It's commercial name, Firemaster. It's chemical name, Poly Brownated by Fennel, PBB. Once it became clear that the contaminated feed from the battle creek co-op had reached far beyond Rick Albert's farm. The problem shifted from a private misfortune to a public crisis. And he hoped that identifying the source would bring a quick fix proved naive. And reality, the disaster was only beginning. Michigan's Department of Agriculture was finally compelled to intervene. And the news released date of May 13 to 1974. Agriculture officials acknowledged that an industrial chemical had "found its way into the milk supplies through contamination of cattle feed. Still, they insisted the problem was confined to just 15 dairy farms in the southern part of the state. Those herds they announced had been quarantined after exceeding the FDA's new action level of one part per million of PBB and meat and dairy products. The battle creek feed mill at the center of the crisis had been cleaned and sanitized. They assured the public that at this time there was no imminent health threat. In reality, the Michigan Department of Agriculture was either dangerously uninformed, willfully deceptive, or both. Within months of its reassuring statement, the number of quarantined farms jumped from 15 to more than 100, harboring thousands of contaminated cattle, sheep, and chickens. It was now clear that the tainted feed hadn't just gone to a few unlucky farms. It had been distributed statewide. Those who had sounded the alarm early, farmers like Rick Halbert were dismissed at the time and blamed for their own poor husbandry. At the same time, none were told that others in the state were watching their herds collapse in the same way. Worse, the recent cleanup was a premature celebration. The chemical clung to the machinery. Every subsequent batch mixed at the battle creek of mill was polluted, which polluted secondary feed plants that performed additional processing, even after the problem was first identified. PBB isn't something you can simply sweep under the rug. And the fact that MDA assumed a scrubbed facility meant that danger was over, just further underscored how little they understood. The contamination was deeper, more persistent, and far more widespread than anyone had imagined. By the time anyone realized this, an estimated 50,000 tons of feed produced between the fall of 1973 and the spring of 1974 had most likely been compromised, which meant that for roughly nine months, the state of Michigan's food chain had been quietly poisoned. But every glass of milk, every cut of meat, traced back to those animals, carried a dose of PBB. This meant nearly every living creature in Michigan had been exposed, millions of animals, millions of people. What were the health consequences? Nobody knew, especially not the Michigan Department of Agriculture, despite their assurances that there was no threat. PBB was a relatively new chemical, and there was no data whatsoever on its impact on humans, whether it harmed them, and if so, at what level of exposure. What little state and federal officials did know came from Dow Chemical and DuPont, two notoriously environmentally cavalier companies that had considered producing PBB a few years earlier, only to abandon the idea, after animal tests on related compounds showed bioaccumulation and strong evidence of carcinogenicity, but nothing definitive. Any meaningful health studies would take months, if not years, which meant the FDA's action level of one part per million wasn't grounded in science at all. Yet this arbitrary threshold became the basis of the FDA's quarantine policy. Farms testing under the one part per million limit were allowed to operate as usual, their milk and meat still entering the food supply. Those testing above it saw their products pulled from the market, and their herds condemned. It's cruel, actually, to watch them lay here and suffer. There's nothing you can do for them, but after they die, just drag them away. Farmers, whose livelihoods were wiped out were promised compensation, eventually, through the insurance carried by Michigan Chemical and the Farm Bureau. But the two companies were battling it out in court over who should pay, relief, if it came at all, would come slowly. In the meantime, the Department of Natural Resources designated a site and the deep pine forest of Calcaska County to serve as a mass grave, remote, isolated, and miles from water or people. It was approved for burial use in July 1974. For liability reasons, the decision to euthanize was left to the farmers themselves. The Farm Bureau covered the cost and provided transport while a state veterinarian oversaw the slaughter. However, the final call rested with the people who had raised the animals as if they were family. When I think the state agencies are wrong, that they forced the farmer to make that kind of a decision to destroy his own cattle is wrong, and it's merely wrong to place that kind of a burden upon a farmer. They should have been cared for by the agencies. This way it's terrible to do this. It was a brutal, but obvious choice. Sentenced them to death or prolonged their suffering while receiving no payout and bleeding the farm dry. It was the darkest day in my life. Farmer Gary's outer vein said, reliving it in his head. Some of the cows were in such poor shape that they collapsed and died on the trucks that carried them north. Behind those trucks came the farmers, following in their cars, determined to make sure the final moments were at least humane. At the site, the cattle were led into holding pens, then ushered forward individually. toward the pit. Many balked, refusing to step down from the trucks. Their terriide owners gently coaxed them out by calling their names. A veterinarian from MDA waited with a syringe in hand. A muscle relaxant slid into the vein. The animals dropped where they had just struggled to stand before a single rifle shot ended it. Instant relief from the pain. Workers slid open the abdomens to keep them from swelling. Cranes moved in, hooking the carcasses, hoisting them on the wooden pallets and swinging them over and gently placing the bodies inside the 12-foot deep trench. Initially, the cow cascassite was approved for the burial of 5,000 cattle and some additional smaller animals. By the end, the official number reported by the state of Michigan exceeded 30,000. 800 of those cows belonged to Rick Calbert, the farmer whose persistence had uncovered the scandal. By late summer of 1974, Rick and others with condemned herds began receiving financial relief. For some, the payments were enough to rebuild and reenter the dairy business. For others, the trauma was too heavy. They walked away, unwilling to ever risk living through something like that again. And as the months passed, they became clear that some farmers were still trapped in the nightmare. About 18 months had passed since the mix-up first laced Michigan cattle feed with PBB. The signs were now slower to emerge, subtle and consistent, sometimes dismissed as coincidence, but nearly 600 farmers were convinced their herds were still ailing. In contrast to the cattle condemned at the very start of the crisis, whose feed was so highly contaminated and unpalatable that they preferred the starved death. These new cases had consumed smaller doses, stretched out over months, but the results were just as horrific. Lutrumbly, a farmer from Hershey, remembered trudging through his barn with a scoop shovel and a will barrel, collecting the daily abortions. Some calves were born with holes in their skulls. You could look straight through to the brain, he said. The few that survived were even worse off. When Lou placed them in a pen, he said the newborns thrashed wildly, bludgeoning themselves against the walls until they'd stopped breathing. The symptoms varied from farm to farm and from herd to herd due to different feeding practices, but local veterinarians agreed that the cows were obviously sick and ultimately concluded that the culprit was PBB. The catch, laboratory tests detected only faked traces of the chemical in the animals, levels that fell just under the state's official tolerance of one part per million. These farmers were left without recourse, and their only path to stave off financial ruin posed quite the moral dilemma. Keep milking and butchering their poisoned cows and feed the tainted products to the people of Michigan. Many farmers took that path because there was no other way to make a living, but others refused that couldn't bear the thought. They had already seen what eating the contaminated food had done to their own bodies and they weren't willing to inflict the same on anyone else. Exhaustion, blackouts, aching joints, open sores, digestive troubles, even strange nail growth. Farmers and their families would have been unknowingly consuming PBB tainted meat, eggs, and milk for months, began to develop the same disturbing symptoms they had observed in their cattle. In our trend is one of those humans, he unknowingly ate PBB contaminated food and now suffers from dizziness, memory loss, and general poor health. His PBB level is nine times higher than some of his animals which were considered unsafe and killed. Dr. Larry Whitton is wiped, lost their trial during early pregnancy. Physicians, he says, reported the fetus contained no recognizable human tissue. The low contamination farmers pleaded with the state to implement and lower its own PBB tolerance level. A move that would not only rescue them from an impossible situation, but also protect the public from food they knew wasn't safe. The Michigan Department of Agriculture, however, was unmoved. Officials insisted that there was no evidence to suggest that low-level exposure harmed people or animals, and in some cases went further, joining skeptical citizens and accusing the farmers of inflating their troubles, just the cash in. "Well, I think they're claiming all these difficulties to get a little money." Finding a sympathetic ear was nearly impossible. Neither local nor national media wanted the story. Rural agricultural scandals didn't sell papers, especially with water gates dominating the headlines. The governor of Michigan, William Millican, was misled by his own agencies, so he never took action, and the federal government showed even less concern. This was a man-made, state-level disaster, and there was no pot of federal money, so I decided to clean it up. And behind closed doors at the Michigan Department of Agriculture, that was really the crux of the issue, economic considerations. Lowering the PBB tolerance could be far more detrimental than just waiting it out. It would mean quarantining more farms, destroying more food, and demnifying more farmers and bearing more cattle. It would also risk alarming the public, potentially crippling Michigan's agricultural industry permanently, and lurking beneath at all was another threat, the legal liability, of admitting too late that the health effects were every bit as devastating as farmers had claimed. In the end, the decision was taken out of Michigan's hands. In November 1974, the US Food and Drug Administration dropped its PBB action level from one part per million to 0.3. Officials claimed the change was made possible by advances in testing equipment that now allowed measurements down to 0.3 ppm with a reasonable accuracy. It smelled like bullshit, and a farmer would know. PBB began at an accident, a blunder. At this meeting, citizens were told what little federal and state investigators do know. They believe PBB in small amounts is not dangerous, and have said what they say is a safe standard, 0.3 ppm per million. The new tolerance level still fell short of what many farmers, veteranarians, and medical professionals believed were safe, so the fight dragged on. Still, the adjustment gave some low contamination farmers a chance to file claims. The only problem was that the pull of insurance money, which ultimately amounted to $15 million, was completely depleted, leaving at least 300 newly condemned operations out in the cold. Their only path to compensation they were told was to take Michigan chemical or farm bureau services to court. Until then, the farmers were offered one more chance to be heard. In May 1975, the Michigan Agriculture Commission, the policy-making arm of the MDA, can be in the public hearings to consider removing from market any food that contained detectable levels of PBB. On paper, it sounded like progress. In practice, the outcome was predictable. FDA officials who set the tolerance level testified that 0.3 ppm posed no danger to human health, and state officials nodded along an agreement. I have utterly no concern about PBB as a problem in foodstuffs, which my wife buys in the supermarkets today. We have never at any time changed our food buying patterns in my home during this situation. They pointed to a recently completed short-term survey by the Michigan Department of Public Health, which examined families living on quarantine farms and concluded conveniently, the no illnesses could be linked to PBB. The result of that study was that there was no symptom or sign of illness or biochemical evidence of illness that could be detected acutely in individuals who had ingested PBBs. That survey was later criticized by other health professionals and scientists as being "poorly planned, unscientific, possibly biased, and does not conform to the standards of adequate scientific, medical, and epidemiological evaluation, mostly because it was revealed that 70% of the subjects in the studies control group had been exposed to PBB. They made no difference. Siding the survey, the Michigan Agriculture Commission voted down the proposal. The tolerance would remain at 0.3 ppm. The outcome felt predetermined. The department charged with safeguarding both consumers and the agricultural industry had time and again favored the industry when the two were pitted against one another. And it was no wonder why. The Agriculture Commission appointed the Director of the Department of Agriculture. Senior officers at the Department of Agriculture were members of the Farm Bureau. The Farm Bureau funded political campaigns and research at public universities. It was complete regulatory capture. When it comes to economic power and political influence in Michigan, few big corporations have as much as the Farm Bureau, a co-operative that has represented farmers since 1919. So it has used all the power and influence it can to minimize the seriousness of the PBB problem. The decision infuriated Michigan State Representative Don Al-Bosta, whose unanimously supported bill to provide low interest loans to low contamination farmers was vetoed by the governor. Not long after, Al-Bosta was tapped to chair a special house committee to investigate every major player in the PBB design. But as the probe began to expose politically and convenient truths, the legislator pulled the plug by abruptly cutting off its funding. By the end of 1975, Munia, the low-contamination farmers, had reached their wits end. Alvin Green and Chase Michigan was among them, stuck with sick, unproductive cattle, and no clear path to recompense. It already made the moral choice not to sell poison to food into the market, but that decision carried a heavy cost. Now with bills piling up and is heard wasting away, the Green family was on the verge of losing everything. My dream was to have a beautiful herd of cattle, a beautiful farm, and I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. And I could do it on my own. And I was proving it until this poison came along and took it away from me. Alvin's bitterness deepened with each passing day. He watched his family's future crumble. He felt abandoned by his own government. And beyond the farm fences, it seemed as if the rest of the world didn't have a clue as to what was even happening. "I just got to the point where that nobody would listen to me, and I said here one day, and I had a damn good notion to take my rifle and go out here and blow my head off." So Alvin Green conceived a plan to force the world to pay attention. He began digging a pit. And when it was ready, he invited local reporters and television crews to witness what was about to unfold. Alvin Green was going to execute his herd himself. On a cold rainy morning, November 10th, 1975, Green and 25 neighbors and friends gathered on his property and formed a makeshift firing squad. In between sobs, they eliminated the cows one by one. Within an hour, it was over 112 cows and calves laid dead in a ditch. The images shocked the nation. Alvin Green's grand protest captured both the desperation of Michigan's farmers and the staggering scale of the PBB contamination. His act became one of the most enduring symbols of the disaster, but he would never farm again. If you listen to the show, you already know that people aren't always trustworthy, and unfortunately, some of those people might be interested in what's inside your house. Unlike traditional security systems that react after a break in, simply safe is designed to stop intruders before they get inside. Right now, Swindled listeners can save 70% on a new, simply safe system with professional monitoring. Visit simplysafe.com/swindled and write in "Swindled at checkout" to help support the show. Simply safe, ahead of crime, in real time. But for Swindled comes from simply safe. Your AI powered cameras can detect potential threats and alert a live US-based agent who can intervene in under 30 seconds. Simply safe. A head of crime. In real time. The farmers claimed that millions of cattle sheep and poultry, which ate fatated feed, are sick and dying. But the government says their tests show these animals have too little PBB in them to make the animals sick or to harm human beings. And farmers like Lewis Trumblay are caught in the middle, according to their attorney. They're unable to sell their farms, unwilling to sell their products. And they face the threat of financial ruin. This cow has got an abscess that leaks. These cows have abscesses all over their bodies. Now these cows are low tolerance cows. This cow is still alive on my farm today, and I can put it on your dinner table legally. But morally, I will not put it on another person's dinner table. In March 1976, frustrated by officials' persistent inaction, low contamination farmers staged a march on the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing to publicize the PBB disaster. Lew Trumblay made the group's intention explicit. "We'll take a truckload of dead cows down there, and we'll carry them into the governor's office," he said. "We'll take them these cows with the big old abscesses that's leaking all over the place. He either buckles up and listens to what we're telling him, or he can call out the National Guard." The protesting farmers also arrived with a clear set of demands. They called for the PBB tolerance level to be lowered from 0.3 ppm to 0.002 ppm, and for every animal to be tested and destroyed if contaminated. They demanded immediate research into the human health effects of PBB exposure, as well as a full investigation in the possible corruption within the departments of agriculture and public health, and they insisted on fair compensation for their losses. Their livelihoods had been destroyed through no fault of their own. The demonstration worked. It drew headlines across the state. After all, it wasn't every day that dead cows were chained to the front of a pickup and paraded through downtown Lansing. The spectacle forced the issue on the governor Millican's desk, and response he announced the creation of an independent blue ribbon advisory panel. Six internationally recognized experts in toxicology, physiology, pharmacology, cancer research and more would be tasked with reviewing the evidence on low level PBB contamination. "I have charged this panel to review all of the available data, all of the knowledge, background information to receive all of the comments from authorities in the field, and to come back with a report on the various levels which are being discussed in the state and outside the state." In May 1976, the advisory panel delivered its findings to Governor Millican, citing clear evidence that PBB accumulates in human and animal tissue and its strong potential to cause cancer and birth defects. The panel urged that the tolerance level be reduced to as close to zero as possible. However, rather than accept the panel's recommendations outright, Governor Millican scheduled a public review of the report, conveniently on a date when none of the report's authors could attend to defend it. Predictably, the usual opposition filled the room. The Farm Bureau, the MDA, the FDA, each recycling familiar arguments against lowering the tolerance. But this time a new voice joined them, Rick Haubert, representing the high contamination farmers whose herds had already been replaced, warned that adopting a stricter standard would saddle farmers like him within the impossible burden they would have to start all over since by definition their new cattle undoubtedly still carried low levels of PBB. Despite the panel's expert warning, the Michigan Agriculture Commission once again refused to alter the action level. However, despite the best attempts of those in power, reality has a funny way of becoming too real to ignore. 2 years ago, livestock feed in Michigan was accidentally tainted with the industrial chemical PBB, polybrominated bifinal, and thousands of cattle died. Today, Michigan helped the fisheries said the chemical has now been found in the breast milk of a test group of 22 nursing mothers. But they said that despite its potential for harm, they don't have enough evidence to recommend against breastfeeding. After early 1977, Governor William Milliken finally conceded he had been misled. He pushed through legislation to lower the PBB tolerance from 0.3ppm to 0.1. Still far higher than what experts and farmers had demanded, but enough to trigger compensation for hundreds more farmers, and at least on paper a greater measure of public safety. The change also meant thousands of additional animals would have to be destroyed. We're going to need a bigger grave. from the dead cows will seep into their groundwater. Michigan officials say that's impossible because the animal carcasses are being buried in a pit lined with clay 20 feet thick. Last week a judge agreed and today these cows were killed. The cows killed here today are among the last of the animals originally contaminated with PBB but their death does not mark the end of the PBB controversy nor the contamination. The official estimates were staggering one.5 million farm animals dead. 5 million eggs tainted 18,000 pounds of cheese destroyed and untold quantities of contaminated milk and beef consumed in all more than 8.5 million Michiganers. Nearly the entire state were exposed to PBB three years later. There was still no clear answer about what that exposure meant for their short term or long term health. In late 1976 the state of Michigan turned to Dr. Irving Selikoff of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York to lead a comprehensive health study of more than a thousand volunteers. Selikoff was already renowned for exposing the lethal dangers of asbestos a decade earlier. At a press conference in January 1977 Selikoff and his team shared the studies preliminary findings. The caution that it was too soon to determine whether PBB should be classified as a carcinogen but urged Michigan's leaders to reduce exposure to the lowest possible levels. "We found health problems that we did not anticipate and would not anticipate among people in general." For example, one of the highest blood levels we've so far seen of PBB was in a man who did not live on a quarantine farm but ate 21 eggs a week. So it may turn out to be that what you ate and thereby what you were exposed to will turn out to be the most important problem. In February 1977 Michigan State Senator Francis Bus Spanola seized on the momentum from the early results of the Selikoff study to push through legislation lowering the PBB tolerance to 0.02 PPM. His bill also set aside funds for new health studies and provided low interest loans to struggling farmers but for many the relief came too late. Unable to keep their poisoned herds alive log on up to service evidence they had a little left to claim. Their last hope of being made whole now hinged on the first lawsuit against Michigan chemical and the Farm Bureau to go to trial which began later that same month. "And it is that issue economic walls caused by PBB contamination which is on trial here. A farmer who contains he lost 150 cows to PBB contamination is suing the manufacturer of PBB the Michigan chemical company and the distributor of contaminated feed the Michigan Farm Bureau services. His attorney says the company is attempted to cover up an environmental catastrophe that placed the highly toxic PBB into the human food chain." Roy Tacima, a Michigan dairy farmer, claimed his cattle suffered lingering effects of PBB contamination. It had been denied state compensation because it has heard tested under the official level at the time. So as instructed Tacima turned to the courts. He sued the companies he believed to be responsible for not only crippling his farm through negligence but for orchestrating a cover-up which caused financial losses so severe he would never recover. Most farmers in Tacima's position had already settled. Tacima wanted to ensure he was repaid what he deserved. "What the hell? I've lost a lot of money. I'm going to tremendous amount of money. You think today that I walked out here and sorted out what cows were bad and shot all the young cattle. That day right there cost me $50,000. And I haven't got a dime out of that. Not a dime." The fence attorneys denied any cover-up went further, insisting that PBB was not responsible for the collapse of Michigan's livestock industry. Yes, the chemical might cause vague symptoms they argued, but there was still no credible proof that low-level exposure could actually damage cattle or reduce milk production. The case was deliberately narrow in scope, confined only to agricultural losses, not the broader health effects on farm families or consumers. Even so, the Tacima trial became the longest and most expensive litigation in Michigan's history. It stretched on for 16 months, heard testimony from 63 witnesses, and generated more than 25,000 pages of transcripts. It was a bench trial, decided without a jury. In October 1978, circuit court judge William R. Peterson issued his ruling. It was devastating. Peterson dismissed all of Tacima's claims against Michigan chemical and the farm bureau. He found that the plaintiffs have failed to prove any measurable harm to the health of the dairy cows or any decline in milk production attributable to low-level PBB contamination. Even more surprising, he ordered Tacima to pay the defendant's court cost. The opinion was skating in vitriolic. Peterson described Tacima as a man whom the court believes to be fundamentally honest and God-fearing, but then accused him of "telling a number of inconsistent and untrue stories." He declared there was not a shred of credible evidence to support the farmer's claims and went further, calling the allegations of corporate cover-up gross neglect and collusion with state officials "flegrantly irresponsible and a view of proofs to the contrary." In Judge Peterson's view, the true tragedy of the PBB disaster was not the poisoning itself, but the needless destruction of animals exposed to low levels of polybrominated bifinal and even of animals that never received PBB. He confidently insisted that in small amounts, PBB is non-toxic and suggested that many of Tacima's heard problems were the result of his own poor farming practices. Even the defense was surprised by the venom and Peterson's decision. But for low-contamination farmers still awaiting settlements, the effect was crushing. Tacima had been publicly branded a liar. His case had been thrown out with prejudice and now lawyers across the state became reluctant to touch similar suits. Farm Bureau and Michigan chemical felt less urgency to resolve pending claims. Critics blasted the ruling as spiteful and politically motivated and influenced less by evidence than by fear of what a verdict against the companies might be for Michigan agriculture. To many, the court had decided it was in the state's greater good to act as a PBB had never happened. Soon after, Michigan chemical and the Farm Bureau settled all remaining claims for $3.7 million. On average, each farmer received about $32,000 along with a requirement to waive any future personal injury claims tied to PBB-related health problems. Surprisingly, criminal charges were filed against several employees of Michigan chemical and the Farm Bureau for concealing material facts about how PBB was made, packaged and stored, and for gross negligence and adulterating food. However, the employees pleaded no contest and were fined just $4,000 each. Add to that another surprise in 1978, PBB was back, although truthfully, it never went away. It is feared that the waste from PBB contaminated animals deposited in pastures as long as five years ago is the source for the current re-contamination of life. Because the chemical is tenacious and not easily broken down by nature, some of Michigan's farms may be permanently polluted. Balsacol and the subsidiary Michigan chemical never restored their reputations after the PBB disaster. Their credibility was further eroded as other scandals unfolded simultaneously. Fosville, a pesticide was wreaking havoc in Texas and abroad. While another of their products, Triss, a flame retardant used in children's sleepwear, was banned after test revealed it was a hundred times more carcinogenic than smoking. Balsacol closed the Michigan chemical plant in St. Louis in 1977. The company then demolished and buried it where it set a year later and were allowed to walk away from the state of Michigan with no further liability. Almost. It was then discovered that Balsacol via Michigan chemical for years had been dumping tons of chemicals including PBB and DDT into the nearby landfills in Pine River. All of these areas were irreparably contaminated. The incident resulted in a flurry of legal suits by state and federal authorities, but today after years of negotiations, government officials announced that Balsacol chemical cooperation has agreed to pay $38.5 million to clean up the polluted dump site, work that has already begun. Balsacol reached a consent agreement with the EPA and the state of Michigan in 1982 to assure proper remediation of the site. The company agreed to excavate contaminated soils from nearby areas and consolidate them at the main plant. Surround the site with a slurry wall to contain further spread and seal it all beneath a clay cap. In 1984 Balsacol announced mission accomplished. The new Superfund site was marked with a granite tombstone that read warning, "Do not enter." We cleaned it up and we didn't wait to be hit over the head by the state or the federal government. A year later, Balsacol and its parent company, Northwest Industries, were acquired by Fruit of the Loom. Yes, the underwear company, which suddenly inherited all of their toxic baggage. When Fruit of the Loom declared bankruptcy in 1999, it shed responsibility. for a contaminated site like the former Michigan Chemical Plant in St. Louis. The timing could not have been more convenient. Just two years earlier, in 1997, an inspection of that plant revealed that the slurry wall and clay cap, Velsico, had built, were failing. More than 11 million gallons of contaminated wastewater had seeped into the Pine River. Testing of fish and sediment showed the highest levels of DDT ever recorded in the United States. Today, more than 50 years after the PBB disaster, the land around the former chemical plant in St. Louis, Michigan remains poisoned. Birds still drop dead from the trees, the fish in the Pine River, or two toxic to eat. What was once expected to take years has stretched in the decades, consuming hundreds of millions of dollars. Money secured only because a citizens task force refused to stop fighting for every single penny. Ed Lorenz, a professor at Alma College and Vice Chair of the Pine River Superfund Citizen Task Force, told Michigan Public Radio that the cleanup will likely cost more than half a billion dollars when it's all said and done, while the company's responsible will escape with paying barely 10% of the bill. All the current costs are coming from tax money. We call this an orphan site. It has no parent. And this orphan is expensive. It's going to cost 45 million dollars to build a new water system that's not contaminated. It cost 100 million to dig up a bunch of DDT-laden sediments from the Pine River, 23 million to clean another area where Valskyl used to burn and dump waste, and 150 million to redo the cleanup the company botched first time around. How this massive contamination and exposure has affected the health of the local population has only recently become more clear. Dr. Celikov's study in the late 70s concluded that Michigan farm people had unusually high incidents of physical and neurological ailments, but the jury was still out on long-term effects. Four years later, an American Medical Association report stated that 97% of Michigan residents showed measurable levels of PBB in their blood in a decade since. Additional studies have only amplified their alarm. Well, depending on who you ask. It's been estimated that the fire retardant chemical PBB got into the blood of 9 out of 10 Michigan residents after being accidentally mixed with livestock feed eight years ago. And today, a federal study for the first time definitively labeled PBB as a cancer-causing agent in animals. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences based its two-year study on rats and mice, but warned that the chemical agent might be hazardous to people. A spokesman for the governor, cautioned against heightened concern, saying so far there's no evidence that cancer in the lab means cancer in people. A 1981 federal report labeled PBB a cancer-causing agent in animals. And in 2016, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services concluded that PBBs may reasonably be anticipated to cause cancer in humans. Emory University researchers, led by Dr. Michelle Marcus, picked up the work after the state stopped monitoring residents, finding evidence that PBBs interfere with the endocrine system and may pass damage down through multiple generations. In 2013 and 2014, Emory collected blood samples from more than 800 Michigan volunteers. Their findings suggested elevated rates of thyroid disorders, reproductive problems, miscarriages, and cancers. Not only in those directly exposed in the 1970s, but in their children and grandchildren as well. And we are seeing health effects, particularly reproductive health effects like the miscarriages. Now that's affecting the third generation. The second generation would be children of the people who ate the contaminated food. And we know from animal studies that in fact, some of these endocrine disrupting chemicals that they can affect multiple generations, you know, up to four and five generations down the line. For many, the consequences have been lifelong. Families describe a litany of elements, everything from cancer to heart defects, resulting in shortened lives. Jumhall, the utility worker, tested at PBB levels seven times higher than people who worked at Michigan chemical decades before. And suspects the exposure costs the lives of both his brother and young daughter. Others like Lori Morris and Jane Ann Crowley have endured devastating reproductive health issues. They trace back the contaminated food from their childhood farms. Today, there's still no medical treatments to remove PBB from the human body. Its half-life is measured in decades. Suffice it to say many of the study participants today, years after their original exposure, still have circulating PBB in their blood. As long as PBB is still in you, then the threat, if you will, of what it might mean, is still there and needs to be evaluated. As Marcus Cheatham, the Mid-Michigan Health Department put it, the contamination left St. Louis, Michigan with more than poison to blood. It left behind a toxic town where residents felt betrayed by the very institutions meant to protect them. Quote, "We really have let this community down, and it's really tragic." Swindled is written, researched, produced, and hosted by me, a concerned citizen. With the original music by Trevor Howard, aka The Former, aka Firemaster. For more information about Swindled, you can visit SwindledPodcast.com and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok @SwindledPodcast. Where we can send us a postcard at PO Box 2045, Austin, Texas 78768. But please, no packages. We do not trust you. 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If you don't want anything in return for your support, you can always simply donate using the form on the homepage. That's it. Thanks for listening. Hello, my name is Cameron from Louisiana. Hi, my name is Leah. My name is Calvin from Omaha, Nebraska. Well, I've been concerned since I was a valued listener. I think it's a little concerning that we value CEOs more than our own school children. Bye. Most security systems record break-ins, simply safe as designed to prevent them, but the AI-powered cameras and live agents who can intervene in under 30 seconds. Get 70% off a new system with professional monitoring at simplysafe.com/swindled. Mention Swindled and check out.