Shame on Eastman Chemical - redux

I posted an item here on January 13, 2009, criticizing Eastman Chemical, and I also sent a similar letter to Rudy Baum, the editor of Chemical & Engineering News, which Mr. Baum offered to publish. (I have great respect for Mr. Baum. Indeed, I am forever grateful for his publication of an earlier letter of mine, on September 14, 2004, which led to the formation of Chemists Without Borders in the first place.) Subsequently, I received a letter from Mr. Baum saying he'd changed his mind about the Eastman letter. Here's what he said.

Dear Dr. Gerber:

Upon reflection, I have decided not to publish your letter on Eastman Chemical Co. and its production of material for cigarette filters. As much as you find cigarette smoking distasteful, it remains a legal activity. Eastman Chemical is a corporation, and it is not its business to police people's unhealthy activities.

Sincerely,

Rudy M. Baum
Editor-in-chief

Besides the impact of smoking on smokers themselves, the industry which grows tobacco in many places has a terrible impact on the workers who do the farming of the tobacco. For instance, in places like Bangladesh, where Virginia tobacco is cultivated for US companies, the workers are kept intentionally in the dark about the risks to their occupational health and safety.

What do you think?

Shame on Eastman Chemical

Chemical & Engineering News: Business Concentrates - Eastman Enters Korean Acetate Tow Fiber Venture

According to C&EN (Jan. 5, 2009, p.13), "The acetate fiber is used to manufacture cigarette filters, a market with significant growth in Asia." Shame on Eastman Chemical for promoting, expanding and profiting from the increasing ill-health of people around the world. It is the least educated and already least healthy who will likely suffer most from Eastman's largesse.

It is hard to imagine that the company's founder, the amazing George Eastman, would support such an enterprise. From the Kodak web site: "Eastman was a stupendous factor in the education of the modern world," said an editorial in the New York Times following his death. "Of what he got in return for his great gifts to the human race he gave generously for their good; fostering music, endowing learning, supporting science in its researches and teaching, seeking to promote health and lessen human ills, helping the lowliest in their struggle toward the light, making his own city a center of the arts and glorifying his own country in the eyes of the world."