The Air: From Pollution to Profit

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Dirty air decays buildings, cracks rubber tires, ruins nylon stockings and worsens all sorts of human ailments. According to one Government study, air pollution costs Americans an average $65 a year; the figure may hit $200 in particularly filthy cities like New York and St. Louis. Even so, most citizens have a lot to learn about pollution. When a sampling of St. Louis residents were polled on how much they would pay in higher taxes to clean up the air, they reckoned that the effort might be worth 500 a year, at most $1. Ignoring their own auto-exhaust fumes, they also insisted that dirty air is primarily industry's problem.

Not quite—but in St. Louis that view is understandable. One reason: the National Lead Co.'s titanium pigment plant routinely emits a sulphuric acid stench that is downright sickening. The city is also a booming center of the chemical industry, prolific source of exotic effluents like phthalic anhydride and chlorinated phenolic compounds, which make the eyes water and smell like the medicines children swallow while holding their noses. All too often St. Louis stinks, as one resident says, "like an old-fashioned drugstore on fire."

Quick Sniffers. Now one of the key villains is trying hard to turn hero. Until two years ago, Monsanto, the nation's third largest chemical company, paid little attention to the effects of the more than 300 products it makes at its headquarters plants around St. Louis. Then the city enacted some of the toughest air pollution ordinances in the U.S. Monsanto not only obeyed the laws—it set out to become a model antipolluter.

Monsanto has studied every vent in its four huge plants in the area, evaluating every chemical process, and monitoring the effectiveness of "scrubbers," "eliminators" and other controls. "What the company is doing is very complex and very expensive," says Charles Copley, Commissioner of the St. Louis air pollution control board.

Though its workers become indifferent to chemical odors, Monsanto itself goes to the opposite extreme. As soon as any employee smells something bad, he is asked to dial A-I-R on the factory phone. If the problem is serious, expert "sniffers" hurry to the scene, ready to bottle the air, analyze it and repair the leak. Elaborate ductwork in one factory connects the points where noisome phenols might be emitted and whisks them to a scrubber system that removes the odor with absorbent filters. Since 1967, Monsanto has spent almost $3,000,000 to curb pollution in St. Louis, plus another $12 million at its other plants across the nation.

Booming Business. As it turns out, the spending has produced profits as well as civic status for Monsanto. The company's industrial efficiency has been increased by the constant monitoring of all its processes. In addition, it is now recapturing some valuable chemicals that previously went up the stacks, while selling a new line of pollution-abatement equipment to other industries. Thus Monsanto has moved into a growing market that it estimates may soon reach $6 billion a year. "By 1975, we hope to be doing $200 million a year in such business," says Leo Weaver, general manager of Monsanto's new department, Environmental Control Enterprises.