Frank Popoff, a chief govt and chairman who tried to make Dow Chemical extra conciliatory towards regulators and environmentalists within the late Eighties and ’90s, and who prodded the chemical trade to undertake safer practices, died on Feb. 25 at his residence in Midland, Mich., the place Dow relies. He was 88.
A spokesman for the corporate stated the trigger was most cancers.
When the Bulgarian-born Mr. Popoff was named Dow’s president and chief govt in 1987, the corporate had begun attempting to shed its picture as a pugnacious chemical big that had manufactured napalm and the defoliant Agent Orange for the U.S. navy throughout the Vietnam Warfare; launched poisonous waste, like dioxins, into the Tittabawassee River from its plant in Midland; and fought the Environmental Safety Company to forestall flyover inspections of its emissions.
An estimated $50-million promoting marketing campaign that had begun two years earlier than Mr. Popoff rose to the highest used the slogan “Dow enables you to do nice issues.” It was meant to vary public perceptions of Dow, selling a picture of it as a nicer company, underlining its charitable giving and humanitarian makes use of of its merchandise.
“I feel we’ve a good quantity of labor to do by way of the best way we’re seen,” Mr. Popoff advised The New York Occasions in 1987, shortly earlier than succeeding Paul F. Oreffice as chief govt. “We all know we’ll by no means change Ralph Nader’s thoughts. However Dow is at peace with itself, and we would like our individuals to be ok with the corporate, too.”
The corporate was greatest recognized then for manufacturing chemical substances, together with chlorine, in addition to utilizing chemical substances in making plastics, prescribed drugs and grocery store items like Saran Wrap, Fantastik cleansing liquid and Ziploc baggage.
Regulators and environmentalists have been closely centered on chemical substances on the time. In 1991, Mr. Popoff and one other Dow govt, David Buzzelli, arrange a panel of outdoor environmental coverage advisers — amongst them Lee Thomas, a former E.P.A. administrator — who scrutinized Dow’s operations and have been in a position to acquire confidential info. A present model of that panel stays in place at Dow.
Between 1988 and mid-1991, Dow lowered by nearly one-third its emissions of 121 dangerous chemical substances that the E.P.A. had tracked, and it was on the best way to its purpose of reducing emissions by one-half.
“I’m within the chemical enterprise,” Mr. Popoff advised The Detroit Free Press in 1992. “That’s synonymous with quite a lot of unhealthy issues. However I’m for environmental accountability.”
In a speech to the Financial Membership of Detroit a yr later, he elaborated on the necessity for Dow to be open to concepts from regulators and environmental activists. “There isn’t any different to environmental reform in our trade,” he stated, arguing that chemical firms ought to lead such efforts or be pressured to take care of poorly designed rules.
Carol Browner, the E.P.A. administrator on the time, recalled in an e mail that Dow was “simpler to work with” underneath Mr. Popoff. However when she recommended in 1994 that the company wished to “substitute, cut back or prohibit” the extensive use of chlorine and chlorinated merchandise inside three years, Mr. Popoff despatched a testy letter to President Invoice Clinton.
“It might be irresponsible to pursue a coverage that presumes all chlorine merchandise are unhealthy with out contemplating both the burden of scientific proof on chlorine chemistry or the financial ramifications of a chlorine ban,” he wrote. He added: “The choice to pursue such a sweeping strategy to this very difficult difficulty was reached with out trade’s participation. The Dow Chemical Firm is dedicated to constructive participation.”
Jack Doyle, who wrote “Trespass In opposition to Us: Dow Chemical & The Poisonous Century” (2004) for the Environmental Well being Fund, an advocacy group, stated chlorine was too necessary to Dow’s backside line for the corporate to present it up with no battle.
Dow’s dedication to the chlorinated trade was “so dominant and so woven into the world’s economic system,” he added, “that making any actual dramatic modifications have been out of the query.”
Frank Popoff, whose given identify was Pencho, was born on Oct. 27, 1935, in Sofia, Bulgaria. His father, Eftim, who was also referred to as Frank, ran a dry cleansing enterprise along with his mom, Stoyanka (Kossoroff) Popoff, who was referred to as Stany.
He emigrated to america along with his mother and father and sister in 1939, they usually settled in Terre Haute, Ind.
Impressed by a highschool instructor who had been gassed whereas combating in World Warfare I, Mr. Popoff studied chemistry at Indiana College, the place he earned each a bachelor’s diploma and grasp of enterprise administration diploma in the identical yr, 1959.
He didn’t wish to be a chemist, nevertheless.
“Maybe I lacked the creativity and the imaginative and prescient that profitable chemists have,” he stated in an interview in 2012 with the Chemical Heritage Basis (now the Science Historical past Institute, in Philadelphia). “I used to be actually within the commercialization and software of chemistry.”
He joined Dow in 1959 and stayed with the corporate for 41 years. He labored in its urethane laboratory, then in technical companies and chemical gross sales within the early Sixties. Over the following quarter century, he moved into more and more influential positions: president of Dow Europe in 1981, govt vp of Dow Chemical in 1985 and, two years later, president and chief govt. He was named chairman in 1992.
Below Mr. Popoff, Dow Chemical expanded the corporate’s Asian operations and acquired a majority stake within the drugmaker Marion Laboratories in 1989 (it was renamed Marion Merrell Dow) earlier than promoting it six years later amid patent expirations and heavy competitors.
Within the early Nineties, Dow Chemical turned enmeshed in controversy over the protection of silicone breast implants made by Dow Corning, its three way partnership with Corning Inc.
“Rightfully or wrongfully, there are lots of people outraged in regards to the implants,” Mr. Popoff advised The Free Press in 1992, however he added, “Our legal responsibility is restricted to that of a shareholder, as a result of that’s what we’re.”
In 1995, nevertheless, the corporate was discovered liable by a Nevada jury for over $14 million in damages after a lady suffered well being issues attributable to leaky implants. The subsequent yr, the New York State Appellate Division dominated that Dow Chemical was not liable in 1,400 lawsuits over the implants.
Mr. Popoff stepped down as chief govt in 1995 and as chairman in 2000. He later taught at Indiana College for a time and served on company boards.
He’s survived by his spouse, Jean (Urse) Popoff, whom he met in school and married in 1958; three sons, John, Thomas and Steven; and 4 grandchildren.
Jim Fitterling, the present chairman and chief govt of Dow, stated that Mr. Popoff’s most necessary achievements revolved round making security a crucial purpose — “not that it wasn’t necessary, however he put it entrance and middle” — and being an early proponent of sustainability. That included producing much less waste, consuming fewer assets and higher making certain worker security. He helped advance a voluntary industrywide code of conduct that formalized these ideas, referred to as Accountable Care.
However Mr. Popoff stated it wasn’t at all times simple to get different firms to conform. Early on there was pushback.
“Some issues had extra affect for big firms versus small firms,” he advised the Science Historical past Institute. “Then the exhausting work started, that of constructing positive everybody was compliant. And what are you able to do? You should utilize no matter bully pulpit it’s a must to guarantee different people who it isn’t solely of their greatest curiosity, nevertheless it’s necessary for the trade to outlive with out flattening the animosity and the in poor health will of society, which the chemical trade occasionally is able to doing.”
