Ross's M+R Gets Rebuffed Trying to Paint DuPont Green

DuPont, one of the world's worst polluters, hires PR firms with green credentials and access to environmental activists, firms such as Ecos in Australia and M+R Strategic Services in the U.S. M&R is a PR/lobby business begun and owned in part by Donald K. Ross, an advisor to foundations who is on the board of the League of Conservation Voters. Ross's PR firm M&R does business with dozens of major health and environmental non-profits, many of them funded by the individuals and foundations he advises. Recently M&R sent an urgent appeal to groups asking them to sign a joint letter to President Bush calling for "a major national initiative to end childhood lead poisoning." However, M&R's appeal failed to reveal that M&R works for DuPont, a company now named with others in forty-five government lawsuits to hold them accountable for contamination of U.S. housing with lead paint. Advocacy groups including the Alliance to End Childhood Lead Poisoning have rebuffed M&R and its client DuPont saying "their recommendations to the President are incomplete and out of balance." These groups are now circulating their own letter to the White House.