Paul F. Orefice, who because the wartime head of Dow Chemical grew and diversified the corporate on the similar time he pushed Vietnam veterans in opposition to Agent Orange, argued that the chemical dioxin was innocent and oversaw the manufacture of silicone breast implants recognized to leak, has died on December 26 at his residence in Paradise Valley, Arizona. He was 97 years outdated.
His household confirmed his dying.
Mr. Orefice (pronounced opening) spoke in staccato, fast-paced sentences, and so they have been usually used to push again in opposition to environmentalists, politicians and journalists throughout an period, the Nineteen Seventies and Nineteen Eighties, when the environmental motion was gaining momentum. specializing in poisonous chemical compounds within the air and water.
Below his 17-year management, which included the titles of president, chief govt and chairman, Mr. Orefis endured intense controversy.
His public relations intuition was for confrontation, not reconciliation. He had a robust dislike of what he perceived as authorities interference in enterprise, which he attributed to rising up in Mussolini’s Italy. “I’ve seen what overmanagement can do,” he said The New York Occasions in 1987. “I used to be born underneath a fascist dictatorship and my father was imprisoned by it.”
Mr. Orefice took over the reins of the Dow USA division in 1975, when its public picture was tarnished by campus protests of the Nineteen Sixties that vilified the corporate because the maker of the incendiary agent napalm, which was broadly utilized in Vietnam.
When Dow withdrew from apartheid South Africa in 1987. underneath stress from shareholders, Mr. Orefice said: “I am not happy with it. I believe we should always have stayed and fought.”
In 1977, when Jane Fonda insulted Dow in a speech at Central Michigan College, not removed from Dow’s headquarters in Midland, Mich., Mr. Orefice canceled the corporate’s donations to the college, writing to its president that he couldn’t assist Ms. Fonda’s “poison in opposition to free enterprise” efforts.
As a substitute, Mr. Orefis funded the campaigns of politicians in opposition to the rules. And he sued the Environmental Safety Company for monitoring Dow’s sprawling Midland crops from the air when the corporate refused an on-site inspection.
The case reached the USA Supreme Courtroom, which in 1986 dominated in opposition to the corporate, on the time the No. 2 American chemical producer after DuPont. (The businesses merged in 2017, then break up into three firms.)
In 1983 Rep. James H. Scheuer, Democrat of New York, revealed that Dow was allowed to redact an EPA report on the leakage of dioxin, some of the poisonous substances ever produced, from Midland crops into the Titabawassee and Saginaw rivers and Saginaw Bay.
EPA Regional Officers said Congress that their superiors within the Reagan administration ordered the adjustments to accommodate the calls for made by Dow. Mr. Orefice, showing on NBC’s “Immediately” present, provided a broad dismissal.
“There may be completely no proof that dioxin causes any hurt to people, aside from inflicting one thing known as chloracne,” he mentioned. “It is a rash.”
His assertion dismissed proof that dioxin is extraordinarily harmful to laboratory animals and has been proven in some research to be linked to a uncommon tender tissue most cancers in people.
One former Dow president, Herbert Doe Doan, grandson of the corporate’s founder, said public relations publication, Provoke Media, in 1990. that Mr. Orefice’s model shouldn’t be fine-tuned to appease critics. “It is partly ego, partly pleasure,” he mentioned. “Paul tends to push his line to the purpose the place some folks say he is conceited.”
There isn’t any doubt that Mr. Orefice’s willpower additionally lifted Dow’s enterprise, which within the Nineteen Seventies was overly depending on fundamental chemical compounds like chlorine. When a glut of low cost petrochemicals flooded the world market within the early Nineteen Eighties, he aggressively reshaped the Dow by diversifying into shopper merchandise, akin to shampoos and Fantastik cleansing fluid, and by shifting into international markets. Till 1987 The Dow recorded a file revenue of $1.3 billion (about $3.5 billion in at the moment’s forex).
On the similar time, a class-action lawsuit on behalf of 20,000 Vietnam veterans and their households in opposition to Dow and different producers of Agent Orange additional tarnished the corporate’s picture. The lawsuit, filed in 1979, alleged that the dioxin in Agent Orange brought on most cancers in fight veterans and genetic defects of their kids.
Dow claims it created Agent Orange on the request of the federal government and isn’t answerable for the way it was used. However in 1984 the corporate and different producers of Agent Orange, with out assuming accountability, settled the case for $180 million, with proceeds going to veterans and their households.
In one other dispute, Dow Corning, a three way partnership between Dow Chemical and Corning Inc., launched paperwork in February 1992 displaying that it had recognized since 1971 that silicone gel may leak from breast implants it made.
Tens of 1000’s of ladies had sued the corporate, claiming its implants had brought on them breast most cancers and autoimmune ailments. Dow Corning agreed to a $3.2 billion settlement after the corporate was pressured to file for chapter safety.
In 1999 impartial evaluation by the Nationwide Academy of Sciences concluded that silicone implants don’t trigger main diseases.
Paul Fausto Orefice was born on November 29, 1927. in Venice. His dad and mom, Max and Elena (Frydenberg) Orefice, moved the household to Ecuador in 1940 when Mussolini declared battle on Britain and France. Paul got here to the US in 1945, coming into Purdue College with lower than 50 phrases of English.
He graduated with a bachelor’s diploma in chemical engineering in 1949, grew to become a naturalized citizen, and after two years within the Military went to work for Dow in 1953.
“After I obtained into Midland, Michigan, it was ‘WASP’ nation, and I used to be a ‘W,’ however I wasn’t an ‘ASP,'” he advised The Washington Publish in 1986. “I spoke with an accent and combed my hair straight again, which was simply not executed.
Mr. Orefice represented Dow in Switzerland, Italy, Brazil and Spain earlier than being recalled to the Midland headquarters in 1969. and to be appointed the monetary vice chairman of the corporate. He grew to become president of Dow Chemical USA in 1975. after which it was promoted to president and CEO of dad or mum firm Dow Chemical Firm in 1978. In 1986 he added the title of chairman.
To the shock of many observers, Dow poured thousands and thousands of {dollars} within the mid-Nineteen Eighties right into a public relations marketing campaign to enhance its picture, together with a brand new slogan, “Dow Lets You Do Nice Issues.”
Below firm guidelines, when he turned 60, Mr. Orefice stepped down as president and chief govt officer in 1987. He retired as chairman in 1992.
He’s survived by his spouse of 29 years, Jo Ann Pepper Orefice, his kids Laura Jennison and Andy Orefice, six grandchildren and one great-granddaughter.
In retirement, Mr. Orefice pursued his ardour for thoroughbred racehorses, investing in Kentucky Derby starters and spending summers at a house in Saratoga Springs, New York. He was a associate within the Preakness Stakes winner, Summer time Squall, and the Belmont Stakes winner, Palace Malice.
In 2006 he revealed a memoir about his rise from an immigrant with little English to a company titan, titling it Solely in America.
