Basf Wyandotte Corp

A West German chemical company has agreed to pay $3.75 million to a woman who claimed her leukemia was caused by a detergent used to launder her diapers 23 years ago in now-defunct Booth Memorial Hospital, where she was born. Fawna Wright, 23, of Mound City, Ill., reached the settlement with BASF Wyandotte Corp. on Monday. Her lawyers contended chemicals in Loxene may have harmed thousands of infants before the detergent was pulled from the market in the 1960s.

A West German chemical company has agreed to pay $3.75 million to a woman who claimed her leukemia was caused by a detergent used to launder her diapers 23 years ago in now-defunct Booth Memorial Hospital, where she was born. Fawna Wright, 23, of Mound City, Ill., reached the settlement with BASF Wyandotte Corp. on Monday. Her lawyers contended chemicals in Loxene may have harmed thousands of infants before the detergent was pulled from the market in the 1960s.

The sour smell of chemicals burns the air at the giant BASF Wyandotte Corp. plant, a 2,300-acre maze of silver pipes fed by scores of black railroad cars lined up like soldiers. The plant, on the banks of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, uses some of the most toxic chemicals in the country to make plastics, herbicides and antifreeze. Company executives call it an efficient industrial money-maker.