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The article must have been a severe blow to Monsanto PR since it had previously stated in response to a 1994 ''Sierra'' magazine article [http://www.planetwaves.net/silence2.html] that "Monsanto has never concealed any hazard of PCBs" and "Claims of 'cover-ups' and 'sacrificing "life itself" to corporate profits' are untrue and out of touch with Monsanto's way of doing business" [http://www.planetwaves.net/response.html]. This comment makes sense in light of a 1969 Monsanto directive to "a committee the company formed to address controversies about PCBs", it was to have "only two formal objectives: 'Permit continued sales and profits' and 'protect image of . . . the corporation'" [http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0223-01.htm] (1). The next year Monsanto secretly agreed that "any written effluent level reports [on PCBs] would be held confidential by the Technical Staff and would not be available to the public until or unless Monsanto released it" [http://www.chemicalindustryarchives.org/dirtysecrets/annistonindepth/pollution.asp]. And that was apparently the final word because nothing changed for decades. According to the WP article the public did not become fully aware of the problem until 1993 when, "after a local angler caught deformed largemouth bass [in a local creek] ... the first advisories against eating fish from the area" were issued. This was "27 years after Monsanto learned about those bluegills sliding out of their skins". Monsanto's PCB monopoly had been netting them $22 million dollars a year.
'''"Today, parts of Anniston are so contaminated that residents have been told not to grow vegetables in the soil, kick up dirt, eat food, chew gum or smoke cigarettes while working in their yards. 'Our children have to play in the streets, on the sidewalks, because they can't play in the grass because it's contaminated,' says resident David Baker. 'We have to wear masks if we cut our grass. Where else in the United States of America are people doing that?'"''' Over twenty thousand Anniston residents were part of the suit which resulted in a $700 million fine [http://www.fairopinions.com/news/index.asp?id=186259] (warning: while this page is fine, the original CBS ''60 Minutes'' article it refers to, ''Toxic Secrets'', and even the Google cache of it, is oddly buggy). The Alabama jury found Monsanto's conduct "outrageous". Under Alabama law, the rare claim of outrage requires conduct "'''so outrageous in character and extreme in degree as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency so as to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in civilized society'''."
Monsanto's response is to claim that since it spun off a smaller affliate, Solutia (in 1997), then merged with Pharmacia (in 2000) and then two years later sort of de-merged, it is not the same company that is responsible for Anniston [http://www.monsanto.com/monsanto/layout/media/02/11-11-02.asp].