(p 146)
[Don Carlson worked at the Pine Bend Refinery from 1974 to 1995, 21 years. He worked for years in hazardous conditions, unknowingly absorbing benzene, without any protective gear. He was tested for exposure, due to OSHA rules, but never told the results until too late. ]
(p 147)
In 1995, when Carlson became too sick to work any longer...When he obtained his company medical records, he and his wife were shocked by what they read. In the late 1970s, OSHA had issued regulations requiring companies whose workers were exposed to benzene to offer annual blood tests, and to retest, and notify workers if any abnormalities were found....what he discovered was that even though his tests had increasingly serious, abnormal blood cell counts beginning in 1990...the company had not mentioned it to him until 1994.
(p 148, 2nd para)
Carlson continued working for another year but grew weaker, needing transfusions of three to five pints of blood a week. Finally, in the summer of 1995, he grew too sick to work at all. At that point, his wife recalls, "they let him go. Six months' pay is what they gave him. It was basically his accumulated sick pay." Carlson argued that his illness was job related, but Koch Refining denied this claim, refusing to pay him workers' compensation, which would have covered his medical bills and continued dependency benefits for his wife and their teenage daughter...
In February 1997, twenty-three years after he joined Koch Industries, Donald Carlson died of leukemia. He was fifty-three...
Furious at the company, Doreen waged a one-woman battle to get Koch Industries to acknowledge some responsibility for her husband's death and apologize...For three years, [she] pressed her legal claim. The company offered her some money but refused to call it compensation for a work-related death. It resisted until minutes before the case was about to be heard by a judge. And when it did finally agree to her terms, it did so only if there was no written agreement. "They never admitted it. They avoided court. There was no written record. They just gave me those little crumbs," she recalled.
(p 149)
Carlson's case was just one of many targeting Koch Industries' corporate conduct in the decades after Charles took over the company...
(p 150)
What is indisputable is that...between 1980 and 2005, under Charles Koch's leadership, his company developed a stunning record of corporate malfeasance....