Frank Popoff, who wanted to lead a friendlier Dow Chemical, dies at 88

Frank Popoff, a CEO and chairman who tried to make Dow Chemical more conciliatory toward regulators and environmentalists in the late 1980s and 1990s and who urged the chemical industry to adopt safer practices, died Feb. 25 at his home in Midland. Michigan, where Dow is located. He was 88.

A company spokesperson said the cause was cancer.

When the Bulgarian-born Popoff was named president and CEO of Dow in 1987, the company tried to shed its image as a belligerent chemical giant that napalm and the defoliant Agent Orange for the US military during the Vietnam War; toxic waste was released, as well as dioxins, from the Midland plant into the Tittabawassee River; and fought the Environmental Protection Agency to prevent flyover inspections of its emissions.

An estimated $50 million advertising campaign, begun two years before Mr. Popoff reached the top, used the slogan “Dow lets you do great things.” It was intended to change public perception of Dow, promote its image as a kinder company, and highlight the charitable and humanitarian uses of its products.

“I think we still have a fair amount of work to do in terms of the way we are perceived,” Mr. Popoff told The New York Times in 1987, shortly before he succeeded. Paul F. Oreffice as general manager. “We know we will never change Ralph Nader’s mind. But Dow is at peace with itself and we want our people to feel good about the company too.”

The company was then best known for manufacturing chemicals, including chlorine, and for using chemicals in making plastics, pharmaceuticals, and supermarket items such as Saran Wrap, Fantastik cleaning fluid, and Ziploc bags.

Regulators and environmentalists at the time were heavily focused on chemicals. In 1991, Mr. Popoff and another Dow executive, David Buzzelli, established a panel of outside environmental policy advisers — including Lee Thomas, a former EPA administrator – who scrutinized Dow’s activities and was able to obtain confidential information. A current version of that panel remains in place at Dow.

Between 1988 and mid-1991, Dow reduced emissions of 121 harmful chemicals the EPA had been tracking by nearly a third, and was on track to its goal of cutting emissions in half.

“I’m in the chemical business,” Mr. Popoff told The Detroit Free Press in 1992. “That is synonymous with a lot of bad things. But I am for environmental responsibility.”

In a speech to the Economic Club of Detroit a year later, he elaborated on the need for Dow to be open to ideas from regulators and environmentalists. “There is no alternative to environmental reform in our industry,” he said, arguing that chemical companies must lead such efforts or be forced to deal with poorly designed regulations.

Carol Browner, the EPA administrator at the time, recalled in an email that Dow was “easier to work with” under Mr. Popoff. But when she suggested in 1994 that the agency wanted to “replace, reduce or ban” the widespread use of chlorine and chlorinated products within three years, Mr. Popoff sent a sharp letter to President Bill Clinton.

“It would be irresponsible to implement a policy that assumes all chlorine products are bad, without considering the scientific evidence on chlorine chemistry or the economic impact of a chlorine ban,” he wrote. He added: “The decision to tackle this very complicated issue in such a major way was taken without industry participation. The Dow Chemical Company is committed to constructive participation.”

Jack Doyle, who wrote “Trespass Against Us: Dow Chemical & The Toxic Century” (2004) for the Environmental Health Fund, an advocacy group, said chlorine was too important to Dow’s bottom line to give it up without a fight.

Dow’s commitment to the chlorine industry was “so dominant and so intertwined in the global economy,” he added, “that making real dramatic changes was out of the question.”

Frank Popoff, whose given name was Pencho, was born on October 27, 1935 in Sofia, Bulgaria. His father, Eftim, also known as Frank, owned a dry cleaning business with his mother, Stoyanka (Kossoroff) Popoff, who went by Stany.

He emigrated to the United States with his parents and sister in 1939 and they settled in Terre Haute, Ind.

Inspired by a high school teacher who was gassed while fighting in World War I, Mr. Popoff studied chemistry at Indiana University, where he earned both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in business administration in the same year, 1959.

However, he did not want to become a chemist.

“Maybe I missed the creativity and vision that successful chemists have,” he said an interview in 2012 with the Chemical Heritage Foundation (now the Science History Institute, in Philadelphia). “I was very interested in the commercialization and application of chemistry.”

He joined Dow in 1959 and remained with the company for 41 years. He worked in the urethane laboratory and in the early 1960s in technical services and chemical sales. Over the next quarter century, he held increasingly influential positions: president of Dow Europe in 1981, executive vice president of Dow Chemical in 1985, and president and CEO two years later. In 1992 he was appointed chairman.

Under Mr. Popoff, Dow Chemical expanded the company’s Asian operations and in 1989 bought a majority stake in drugmaker Marion Laboratories (it was renamed Marion Merrell Dow) before selling it six years later amid patent expirations and intense competition.

In the early 1990s, Dow Chemical became embroiled in controversy over the safety of silicone breast implants made by Dow Corning, its joint venture with Corning Inc.

“Rightly or wrongly, a lot of people are outraged by the implants,” Mr. Popoff told The Free Press in 1992, but he added: “Our liability is limited to that of a stockholder because that’s what we are. ”

However, in 1995, the company was found liable by a Nevada jury for more than $14 million in damages after a woman suffered health problems due to leaking implants. The following year, the New York State Appellate Division ruled that Dow Chemical was not liable in 1,400 lawsuits over the implants.

Mr. Popoff resigned as CEO in 1995 and as chairman in 2000. He later taught for a time at Indiana University and served on boards of directors.

He is survived by his wife, Jean (Urse) Popoff, whom he met in college and married in 1958; three sons, John, Thomas and Steven; and four grandchildren.

Jim Fitterling, Dow’s current chairman and CEO, said Mr. Popoff’s key achievements revolved around making safety a critical goal – “not that it wasn’t important, but he made it a priority” – and the fact that he was an early proponent of sustainability. That included generating less waste, using fewer resources and better ensuring worker safety. He helped promote a voluntary industry-wide code of conduct that formalized these principles, called Responsible Care.

But Mr Popoff said it wasn’t always easy to get other companies to comply with the rules. There was opposition early on.

“Some things had more impact on big companies than on small companies,” he told the Science History Institute. “Then the hard work started, making sure everyone followed the rules. And what can you do? You can use every pulpit you have to assure other people that this is not only in their best interest, but that it is also mandatory for the industry to survive without undermining the hostility and ill will of society, which the chemical industry is sometimes capable of. Of doing.”