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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 mentioned 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 large that had manufactured napalm and the defoliant Agent Orange for the U.S. navy in the course of the Vietnam Struggle; launched poisonous waste, like dioxins, into the Tittabawassee River from its plant in Midland; and fought the Environmental Safety Company to stop 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 helps you to do nice issues.” It was supposed to alter 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 believe now we have a good quantity of labor to do by way of the best way we’re seen,” Mr. Popoff advised The New York Instances 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 wish our individuals to be ok with the corporate, too.”
The corporate was finest identified then for manufacturing chemical compounds, together with chlorine, in addition to utilizing chemical compounds in making plastics, prescription drugs and grocery store items like Saran Wrap, Fantastik cleansing liquid and Ziploc baggage.
Regulators and environmentalists have been closely targeted on chemical compounds on the time. In 1991, Mr. Popoff and one other Dow govt, David Buzzelli, arrange a panel of out of doors environmental coverage advisers — amongst them Lee Thomas, a former E.P.A. administrator — who scrutinized Dow’s operations and have been capable of get hold of confidential data. A present model of that panel stays in place at Dow.
Between 1988 and mid-1991, Dow decreased by nearly one-third its emissions of 121 dangerous chemical compounds 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 a variety of dangerous 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 mentioned, arguing that chemical firms ought to lead such efforts or be pressured to cope with poorly designed laws.
Carol Browner, the E.P.A. administrator on the time, recalled in an e-mail that Dow was “simpler to work with” below Mr. Popoff. However when she recommended in 1994 that the company wished to “substitute, cut back or prohibit” the vast use of chlorine and chlorinated merchandise inside three years, Mr. Popoff despatched a testy letter to President Invoice Clinton.
“It will be irresponsible to pursue a coverage that presumes all chlorine merchandise are dangerous 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 method to this very sophisticated challenge 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, mentioned chlorine was too necessary to Dow’s backside line for the corporate to offer it up with no battle.
Dow’s dedication to the chlorinated trade was “so dominant and so woven into the world’s financial system,” he added, “that making any actual dramatic adjustments have been out of the query.”
Frank Popoff, whose given title was Pencho, was born on Oct. 27, 1935, in Sofia, Bulgaria. His father, Eftim, who was often known as Frank, ran a dry cleansing enterprise along with his mom, Stoyanka (Kossoroff) Popoff, who was referred to as Stany.
He emigrated to the US along with his dad and mom and sister in 1939, and so they settled in Terre Haute, Ind.
Impressed by a highschool instructor who had been gassed whereas combating in World Struggle 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, nonetheless.
“Maybe I lacked the creativity and the imaginative and prescient that profitable chemists have,” he mentioned 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 Nineteen Sixties. Over the following quarter century, he moved into more and more influential positions: president of Dow Europe in 1981, govt vice chairman 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 purchased 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 grew to become 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 proscribed to that of a shareholder, as a result of that’s what we’re.”
In 1995, nonetheless, 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, mentioned that Mr. Popoff’s most necessary achievements revolved round making security a essential 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 mentioned it wasn’t all the time straightforward to get different firms to conform. Early on there was pushback.
“Some issues had extra impression for giant firms versus small firms,” he advised the Science Historical past Institute. “Then the arduous work started, that of constructing certain everybody was compliant. And what are you able to do? You need to use no matter bully pulpit it’s important to guarantee different folks that it isn’t solely of their finest curiosity, nevertheless it’s obligatory for the trade to outlive with out flattening the animosity and the sick will of society, which the chemical trade once in a while is able to doing.”
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