How H. B. Fuller convinced ethical investors, the media, and the public that Third World glue-sniffers are not its problem.
It's hard to resist H. B. Fuller's corporate charm. Their environmentally sensitive research lab sits on the shores of Willow Lake near St. Paul and supports a 115-acre nature preserve. Employees work for good wages and top-of-the-line benefits; in their spare time, they're expected to volunteer for charitable organizations, which also receive 5 percent of Fuller's pre- tax profits. The balance sheet sings' so do socially responsible investors, who hand Fuller award after award, along with their trust-fund dollars.
It's hard, too, to resist the pictures from Guatemala: street children crowded around dingy corners, buying plastic bags of glue for a dime apiece. When they sink their heads into the bags and breathe, hunger, loneliness, and fear give way to a sense of comfort and power. Kids who've done this for a while develop chronic coughs, lose use of some of their limbs, vital organs, and brain cells. Eventually they crawl the streets instead of walking, still begging or stealing for more glue. Many die of kidney or heart failure, hunger, or police beatings.
Odds are that the glue the kids are sniffing is made by Fuller. The company says it feels bad about this, but so far it's refused to follow the lead of other manufacturers and add a foul- smelling substance that may prevent abuse. Instead, Fuller has taken a series of highly publicized steps--adding labels, supporting social programs, even pulling out of some markets after it started catching national media attention. Today, after collecting a slew of awards and glowing editorials for the way it handled the problem, the company continues to sell its glue in the countries where kids sniff it. And nobody, except a few activists and social workers, seems to be too bothered by that.
Resistol--advertised with a cute cartoon elephant and the slogan "You stick it and it never comes unstuck"--is popular among shoemakers, who buy it by the pail and use it in small manufacturing operations, often for export to the U.S. It's also popular among street kids, so much so that glue addicts are known in many countries as resistoleros.
The active ingredient in many inhalants, including Resistol, is toluene, a substance made from petroleum that has a sweet, slightly nauseating smell. In the U.S., it's widely used in manufacturing and is considered one of the country's top air pollutants by the EPA. Toluene has a peculiar effect on humans; it goes straight to the frontal lobes, the "switchboard" of the brain, and to the areas that control emotions. There, it can turn off the brain's connection to reality, neutralizing stress, pain, fear, and memory. In a word, it's the perfect drug for street kids.
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
