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Peter Secchia helped make the Michigan GOP a political force in recent years and was a major backer of the first President Bush. Sharply criticized for doling out ambassadorships to top contributors, that administration appointed Secchia as ambassador to Italy. The nominee was controversial because of undiplomatic antics–including reports of mooning a woman at a GOP convention and calling another a “bitch.” Asked what he hoped to accomplish in Italy, this George Bush Presidential Library trustee reportedly replied, “I’m looking for a big-titted woman.” Secchia’s Universal Forest Products is a major producer of lumber treated with arsenic pesticides. Environmentalists have called for lumber containing this carcinogen to be banned and to be recalled from playgrounds. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced in 2002 that there would be no recall but that producers would stop selling arsenic lumber for most consumer uses starting in 2004. “We strongly disagree with EPA’s unfounded assertion that current structures pose no risk,” the Environmental Working Group said. “How can they say there’s no risk when they haven’t done the risk assessment?” Disclosing some arsenic lawsuits to investors in 2003, Universal reported that a U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) study relied on flawed data in finding that arsenic-laced playgrounds pose elevated risks of bladder and lung cancer. “Alarmists” have “tried to banter around the name arsenic, to frankly to scare people,” Scott Conklin, Universal’s vice president of wood preservation later complained. The CPSC voted in 2003 that a ban on arsenic-treated playground equipment was unnecessary due to voluntary industry efforts. Secchia’s SIBSCO LLP develops real estate around Grand Rapids. SIBSCO bought the vacant City Centre building in 1999, reselling it a year later to the city. In 2000, SIBSCO and another developer renovated another building in downtown Grand Rapids for Western Michigan University.
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Of Special Interest
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| Profile last updated
Jan 12, 2004
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