Swann Chemical Company

{{Infobox company

| name = Swann Chemical Company

| founder = Theodore Swann

}}

The Swann Chemical Company was an American chemical company started by Theodore Swann, described by one historian as "a flamboyant Birmingham mogul and New South industrialist." Swann Chemical first operated a chemical manufacturing plant in Anniston, Alabama where PCBs were first made on an industrial scale after development of a new process under leadership of Theodore Swann.{{cite book|last1=Dracos|first1=Ted|title=Biocidal: Confronting the Poisonous Legacy of PCBs|date=November 2010|publisher=Beacon Press|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Vpftr5W-7FoC}} The plant was later bought by Monsanto Industrial Chemicals Co. in 1935.{{cite web|title=Poisoned By PCBs: "A Lack of Control"|url=http://www.chemicalindustryarchives.org/dirtysecrets/anniston/2.asp|website=Chemical Industry Archives|access-date=30 November 2015}}{{cite journal|last1=Head|first1=Thomas R. III|title=PCBs—The Rise and Fall of an Industrial Miracle|journal=Natural Resources & Environment|date=Spring 2005|page=18|url=http://www.americanbar.org/tools/digitalassetabstract.html/content/dam/aba/publishing/natural_resources_environment/environ_mo_premium_nr_nre_spring05_Head.pdf|access-date=30 November 2015}}{{cite web|last1=Montague|first1=Peter|title=How We Got Here -- Part 1: The History of Chlorinated Diphenyl (PCB's)|url=http://www.hudsonwatch.net/rachels01.html|website=HudsonWatch.net}} The plant, just west of Anniston, had around 1,000 employees.{{cite book|last1=Spears|first1=Ellen Griffith|title=Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution, and Justice in an All-American Town|date=April 2014|publisher=University of North Carolina Press|location=Chapel Hill|isbn=978-1-4696-1171-6|page=60|url=http://www.uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=3493}}

One historian wrote that, "In many ways, the spirit of Swann Chemical became the corporate culture of Monsanto."