MONSANTO PLANT SPILLED TONS OF MERCURY

  ANNISTON, Alabama, July 23, 2001 (ENS) - Some 40 or 50 tons of liquid
mercury were dumped into a storm sewer by a Monsanto Corporation chemical plant
in the 1950s and 1960s, an investigation by the "Anniston Star" shows.

  The newspaper reports today that officials are still not sure how much
mercury was released, or what areas of Alabama may have been contaminated.

  Monsanto's caustic soda and chlorine plant used lead and mercury to
produce polychlorinated biphenyls, (PCBs) in the decades before PCBs were
banned in the U.S. Some spilled mercury was discarded down the company's storm sewer
and could not be recovered, the "Star" reports.

 "In 1999, Monsanto's spin-off Anniston company, Solutia, gave state
regulators a brief description of the site's use of mercury," wrote reporter
Elizabeth Bluemink. "But, company records show that the information Solutia supplied 
about the potential for mercury discharges was incomplete and inaccurate."

 Officials at Solutia told the Alabama Department of Environmental
Management (ADEM) that Monsanto had "likely" not released any mercury to the
environment. ADEM now plans a complete investigation of all mercury releases from
the plant.

 As early as 1967, the newspaper learned, Dr. Denzel Ferguson, a
Mississippi State University biologist, warned Monsanto that its discharges of mercury
and other pollutants were killing fish in nearby Snow Creek and Choccolocco
Creek.

  Ferguson sent a report to Monsanto, "Investigations of Certain
Pesticide-Wildlife Relationships in the Choccolocco Creek Drainage," citing high 
acidity and mercury as the cause of the fish fatalities.

 The "Anniston Star" story is available at:
 http://www.annistonstar.com/news/news_20010720_1304.html