Yourlawyer.com (Teflon News)

DuPont Settles Birth Defect Lawsuits

Fri, 04 May 2007 00:00:00 -0700

The DuPont Co. has agreed to pay $9 million to settle two lawsuits alleging that the fungicide Benlate caused birth defects in children, according to court records and a federal regulatory filing.

In a Wednesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, DuPont said it had reached a tentative settlement of lawsuits filed in 1997 on behalf of children in Britain and New Zealand born without eyes or with abnormally small eyes, defects also noted in the offspring of laboratory rats exposed to Benlate.

The plaintiffs alleged that the birth defects were the result of the children being exposed in the womb to Benlate.

According to DuPont, the settlement involves not only the six families named as plaintiffs in the lawsuits, but 26 other claimants.

The settlement comes after the Delaware Supreme Court last year upheld a lower court ruling granting DuPont summary judgment in a third lawsuit after rejecting opinions offered by two expert witnesses for the plaintiffs as inadmissible.

"If the settlement is approved by the court and finalized, it will resolve all birth defects claims known by DuPont to exist," the Wilmington-based chemical company said in its SEC filing.

DuPont spokeswoman Michelle Reardon said the company would not comment beyond the SEC filing. A Wilmington attorney representing DuPont in the litigation, did not immediately return a telephone call Friday.

In December, a Superior Court judge granted a request by attorneys in the case to stay the proceedings so that they could discuss a resolution short of going to trial. On April 5, Jacobs sent the judge a letter notifying him of the tentative settlement.

Also last month, six Hawaii plant nursery operators who claimed that contaminated Benlate damaged their crops settled their lawsuit against DuPont. That settlement was reached one day before a federal judge in Honolulu was set to start jury selection for a trial in which the growers were seeking as much as $30 million.

DuPont, which began manufacturing Benlate in the 1950s, decided to halt production in 2001 in the face of mounting crop damage claims. The company has paid more than $1 billion in settlements and legal fees on claims of damage from Benlate.

DuPont hindered C8 study, judge told

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 00:00:00 -0700

DuPont Co. has told a three-person science panel to stop any effort to independently examine the possible effects of the chemical C8 on the company’s plant workers, according to previously confidential documents made public late Wednesday.

Lawyers for thousands of Parkersburg-area residents filed the documents in Wood Circuit Court and asked for a court order to stop DuPont’s “interference” with the independent C8 study.

The filing came just one day after DuPont released a summary of the results of the second phase of its own review of C8 impacts on plant workers’ health.

In their court filing, the residents’ lawyers said that DuPont’s action “on its face, prevents the science panel from casting its independent eyes on DuPont’s hand-picked worker data that only DuPont advocates have been permitted to review.

“Aside from the obvious possibility of data tampering or manipulation, such interference is highly prejudicial to impartial scientific analysis of the issue as was agreed to (and ordered) in the settlement,” the residents’ lawyers wrote.

At its Washington Works plant south of Parkersburg, DuPont uses C8 to make Teflon. It is also used to make food packaging and thousands of other consumer and industrial products.

Three top epidemiologists — picked by DuPont and the residents’ lawyers — are conducting an independent C8 review with funds from a more than $100 million settlement of a lawsuit against DuPont over the contamination of residential water supplies with the toxic chemical.

The settlement, approved by now-retired Wood Circuit Judge George W. Hill Jr. in February 2005, gave the science panel virtually no limitation on what studies or data they would consider in trying to determine if C8 exposure makes people sick.

As part of its work, the science panel decided to perform its own study of DuPont workers who were exposed to C8 at the Washington Works plant.

The scientists visited DuPont’s Haskell Lab facility in Wilmington, Del., to learn about the company’s computerized databases on worker health and C8 exposure.

During a July meeting with the science panel and lawyers for the residents, DuPont officials did not object to the worker study.

But last week, DuPont lawyer Laurence F. Janssen sent the science panel a one-paragraph letter that said, “Please stop all work related to an incidence of disease study of DuPont’s Washington Works employees.

“Such a study was not contemplated by the Settling Parties and is not a part of the Settlement Agreement,” Janssen wrote in the Oct. 9 letter. “DuPont has not substantially completed Phase I and II of the worker studies at Washington Works. Therefore, DuPont has determined that any additional studies performed on this DuPont worker population are best conducted by DuPont and its contractors.”

After receiving a copy of Janssen’s letter, one of the residents’ lawyers, fired off a response.

In his Oct. 9 letter, the residents'attorney said neither DuPont nor the residents were supposed to be able to control what studies the science panel performed concerning C8’s effects. Winter warned that the residents might seek a court order against DuPont’s actions.

The next day, on Oct. 10, the science panel e-mailed DuPont to ask the company to reconsider.

“The science panel regrets DuPont’s decision to cancel our proposed worker cohort study,” the panel said. “The population in question, DuPont employees, is a relatively highly exposed population. Understanding the potential health effects of C8 in the community will be markedly enhanced by understanding the health effects of C8 in the more highly exposed workers.”

DuPont did not respond, according to the court filing.

Later last week, science panel member Kyle Steenland revealed in an interview that DuPont had been “reluctant” to cooperate with the worker study. Steenland declined to elaborate.

At the time, DuPont spokesman Dan Turner said, “no decision had been reached” by the company on whether to cooperate with the worker study.

On Tuesday, DuPont held a news conference at the Washington Works plant to release a summary of its own latest study of C8 and plant worker health.

In a news release, DuPont said its study of more than 6,000 current and former plant workers found “no increased mortality risk in workers exposed” to C8.

The company said it found slightly elevated levels of kidney cancer, heart disease and diabetes among workers, but discounted those as not being statistically significant.

DuPont gave reporters an executive summary and a slide presentation describing the results, but has not made public its actual scientific paper.

3M agrees to pay EPA $1.5M in chemical case

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 00:00:00 -0700

3M Co. agreed Tuesday to pay a $1.5 million penalty to the Environmental Protection Agency for 244 violations of the Toxic Substances Control Act, for using unsafe chemicals in its products, according to media reports.

Those substances were used in consumer products, such as Scotchgard and Teflon. The Maplewood-based company neither admitted nor denied any wrongdoing.

The EPA, which did not specify when and where the violations happened, accused 3M of failing to notify the agency about new chemicals and of late reporting of "substantial risk information."

The fine is large by EPA standards, although it is considered small for a large corporate company like 3M.

Jackie Berry, a 3M spokeswoman, said the company voluntarily disclosed all information to the EPA after a series of internal audits of its toxic substances began in the late 1990s.

The EPA began its review of the company in 2000.

"EPA takes violations of toxic substances laws seriously and is committed to enforcing those laws," said Granta Nakayama, assistant administrator for the agency's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance.

He said the action was a "reminder of the importance of timely industry reporting" to the EPA of significant risk information.

Along with paying the fine, 3M agreed to review the management of 28 business units and processes. The company plans to establish the compliance status of all chemicals regulated by the toxic substances act, which Berry said is already completed.

3M began phasing out the alleged toxic chemical PFOA, used in Teflon, and PFOS, used in Scotchgard, in 2000. The substances were found in the blood of workers and in lab animals. The company has always maintained that the chemicals are not harmful to humans.

Suit alleges DuPont contamination of water

Wed, 19 Apr 2006 00:00:00 -0700

Drinking water supplies near a DuPont facility in New Jersey have been contaminated with chemicals, including a suspected carcinogen used in the production of Teflon, according to a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday.

The lawsuit alleges that the contamination is linked to the manufacturing, use and disposal of perfluorinated chemicals, including PFOA, at DuPont's Chambers Works plant in Salem County, N.J.

PFOA, or perfluorooctanoic acid, is a processing aid used in the manufacturing of fluoropolymers, which have a wide variety of product applications, including nonstick cookware. The chemical also can be a byproduct in the manufacturing of fluorotelomers used in surface protection products for applications such as stain-resistant textiles and grease-resistant food wrappers.

The plaintiffs are seeking class-action status and compensatory and punitive damages for what they describe as the "intentional, knowing, reckless and negligent acts and omissions of DuPont in connection with the contamination of human drinking water supplies."

In a statement, DuPont said the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in New Jersey, is without merit.

"We are confident in the safety of our operations at our Chambers Works site," the company said.

According to the lawsuit, DuPont has known for years that PFOA was being released into the air from operations and activities at the Chambers Works Plant, and was contaminating the groundwater underneath.

A 2003 report by DuPont found that PFOA was being released into the Delaware River at concentrations as high as 194 parts per billion, and had been detected in a water intake for Salem Canal, designated as a drinking water source by New Jersey environmental regulators, at a concentration of .089 ppb, according to the complaint.

In 2004, DuPont agreed to pay as much as $343 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by Ohio and West Virginia residents who alleged that their water supplies had been contaminated with PFOA from a DuPont plant in Parkersburg, W.Va.

The company agreed to spend up to $70 million for medical evaluations of up to 80,000 people who drank water contaminated with the chemical. DuPont also agreed to provide six local utilities with new water treatment equipment and fund an independent study to determine if PFOA makes people sick.

DuPont could be forced to spend another $235 million on a program to monitor the health of residents exposed to the chemical.

EPA admits C8 may be unsafe for humans

Thu, 09 Mar 2006 00:00:00 -0800

Federal officials have quietly admitted that chemicals used to make popular nonstick, nonstain products may be unsafe to humans and the environment.

The acknowledgement came in a proposed requirement to test any new products that rely on controversial chemicals already used in materials like DuPont's flagship "Teflon" coating.

"Based on recent information, EPA can no longer conclude that these polymers will not present an unreasonable risk to human health or the environment," the Environmental Protection Agency said in the proposal published without fanfare in a federal legal register Tuesday.

The proposal and its conclusions surfaced as The DuPont Co. faces new scrutiny over the handling of those chemicals at its Chambers Works plant on the Delaware River, near the foot of the Delaware Memorial Bridge.

The compounds have been labeled as a likely cause of cancer.

DuPont and the EPA both have said that Teflon is safe for consumers, but have agreed to a phase-out plan for some fluorine-containing chemicals used in its production.

One of those chemicals perfluorooctanoic acid, also called PFOA or C8 is used by DuPont Co. in the production of Teflon and other products.

PFOA-related products are a $1 billion a year business for DuPont. The company sells the materials to other businesses for use in thousands of products ranging from cookware to fabric coatings, food packaging, denture cleaners, shampoo, electronic goods and fire-fighting foams.

In a prepared statement, DuPont said it believes its products are safe and that it was studying the EPA's plan for testing of new products.

"We do not believe the rule has a significant impact on our business," the statement noted.

DuPont, the only producer of PFOA in the United States, and several major producers worldwide, already have agreed to phase out the chemical under an EPA-sponsored program.

Tim Kropp, a senior scientist for Environmental Working Group, said the EPA's latest proposal indicates that products are reaching consumers without adequate study of potential health hazards.

"As the proposal clearly lays out, the reason they're worried about the new formulations is that they're worried about the old ones," said Kropp, whose group pressed the EPA to act for years on PFOA. "The EPA doesn't have the power to take on old chemicals very well.

"I think this document, combined with the proposed phase out, is really sort of a vindication for the concerns that have been raised over the past couple of years," Kropp said.

The proposal, he said, "will give an extra measure of confidence that the alternative that the companies have agreed to move to are safer."

Chemical found in N.J. well

In Pennsville Township, N.J., near the Chambers Works site, officials have confirmed that low-level traces of PFOA which has been labeled as a likely cause of cancer have turned up in one well used to supply public taps.

Similar results are under study in Carneys Point and Penns Grove, according to the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, a nonprofit group that discovered the contamination during house-by-house testing.

"This is going to become a big issue," said Tracy Carluccio, a Riverkeeper staffer. "It's already found in so many places in the environment that any new source is of concern."

In mid-December, DuPont agreed to pay $16.5 million in fines and compensatory spending to settle EPA charges the company failed to report PFOA releases and human exposures, and information about possible toxic effects. The terms require the company to spend $5 million studying how a wider variety of related chemicals and consumer products behave and break down in the environment.

The company established a $108 million reserve last year to cover class-action lawsuit settlements involving water pollution claims by West Virginia and Ohio residents.

Exposure studies have found the chemicals "at low levels in the blood of humans and wildlife throughout the United States, providing clear evidence of widespread exposure," the EPA noted in its announcement Tuesday.

The agency listed several ways the chemical could potentially be getting into humans," including consumption of food packaged in treated papers, inhalation of chemicals from treated products or pollution from manufacturers."

Although blood concentrations in most people are low, its widespread presence and its potential to accumulate in blood and tissue is a concern, the EPA notice said.

DuPont officials have meanwhile revealed that they hope to begin shipping some PFOA-related chemicals from Chambers Works to a proposed $20 million facility in Pascagoula, Miss., for treatment prior to use in New Jersey. The treatment is designed to reduce impurities in the product and create more environmentally friendly products, David McMellon, manager of the company's First Chemical plant, told the Associated Press on Tuesday.

"What I'm getting from our folks is: 'If there wasn't anything wrong with it before, why are they taking it down there for treatment and sending it back?' " said John Rowe, president of a United Steelworkers union local at Chambers Works.

Environmental Working Group Highly Critical of White House Delay in Releasing Study Finding Toxic Rocket Fuel Chemical (Perchlorate) in Most Americans

Sun, 05 Mar 2006 00:00:00 -0800

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is a highly credible public watchdog organization that has been dedicated to conducting environmental investigations since 1993.

Through the years, EWG has been in the forefront of the fight against dangerous toxins unleashed on the environment by various industries.

The group has been particularly involved with efforts to ban or significantly restrict such toxins and contaminates as: PFOA (Teflon-related chemical); Zonyl; asbestos; arsenic-treated wood; dangerous pesticides; potentially dangerous ingredients in cosmetics; MTBE; mercury; and perchlorate.

On July 14, 2005, EWG published its comprehensive and critically acclaimed “benchmark investigation of industrial chemicals, pollutants and pesticides in umbilical cord blood.” (http://www.ewg.org/reports/bodyburden2/execsumm.php).

Thus, the organization’s concern over what is a looming environmental and public health crisis involving perchlorate contamination deserves to be disseminated in as broad a manner as possible. To that end, and as a public service, newsinferno.com is reproducing the EFG’s call for the immediate release of an alarming study involving that extremely dangerous toxic chemical.

(http://www.ewg.org/issues/perchlorate/20060303/index.php)

“WASHINGTON, March 3 - Following a published report that the Bush Administration is holding up a study that shows most Americans carry a toxic rocket fuel chemical in their bodies at levels close to federal safety limits, Environmental Working Group (EWG) is calling for the immediate release of the study so EPA and state agencies can take steps to protect the public.

Risk Policy Report, an independent newsletter, reported Feb. 28 that the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy is pressuring the Centers for Disease Control to delay the release of a study that tested for perchlorate in human blood samples from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). An EPA source told the newsletter that CDC has found levels of perchlorate that "leave no margin of safety" for the public, compared to EPA's current risk limit.

Perchlorate, the explosive ingredient in solid rocket fuel, has contaminated drinking water and soil in at least 35 states, with most of the known contamination coming from military bases and defense contractors. Tests by EWG, academic scientists in Texas and Arizona, state officials in California and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have found perchlorate in milk, produce and many other foods and animal feed crops from coast to coast. Perchlorate is a thyroid toxin, and animal tests show that even small amounts can disrupt normal growth and development in fetuses, infants and children.

The NHANES study is a followup to a CDC study last year that found perchlorate in the urine of every one of 61 Atlanta residents tested, even though concentrations of perchlorate in the city's drinking water are very low. Last year, scientists at Texas Tech University also found perchlorate in every sample of human milk from 36 mothers.

In a letter to Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the CDC, EWG Senior Vice President Richard Wiles said the results of the study of Atlanta residents "indicate that food is likely a major source of perchlorate exposure, and that perchlorate exposure is likely to be widespread in the general population."

Although the EPA has no timetable for developing a national drinking water standard for perchlorate, both Massachusetts and California are moving forward with their own safety standards. The proposed standards 1 part per billion in Massachusetts and 6 ppb in California are far below EPA's recently adopted risk limit of 24.5 ppb, which is a level used as a guidance for cleaning up perchlorate- contaminated sites. When the EPA announced the risk limit, it acknowledged the need for "national guidance on relative source contribution" exactly the information the NHANES data could provide.

"In the absence of national safety standards, the CDC should not be sitting on data so clearly needed to protect the public from a chemical that appears to be widespread in drinking water and food," wrote Wiles. "The NHANES perchlorate data should be released immediately."
EWG sent the following letter to the CDC director on March 2.

Dr. Julie Gerberding, Director
Centers for Disease Control
1600 Clifton Road, NE
Atlanta, GA 30333

Dear Dr. Gerberding:

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is a not-for-profit watchdog organization that works to protect environmental and public health as well as scientific integrity. Since 2000, we have extensively studied perchlorate contamination of the nation's food and drinking water. We have documented widespread water and soil contamination, conducted groundbreaking tests that found perchlorate in supermarket produce and milk, and have repeatedly called on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to set a national drinking water standard that fully protects fetuses, children and other sensitive populations, and adequately considers all potential sources of exposure.

We were awaiting with great interest the results of CDC's project to analyze National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) samples for perchlorate. As the first phase of that work, CDC tested for perchlorate in the urine of 61 Atlanta residents. The results, published last year in Analytical Chemistry, found perchlorate in the urine of each person tested, even though concentrations of perchlorate in the city's drinking water are very low (about 0.2 parts per billion). These findings are important because they indicate that food is likely a major source of perchlorate exposure, and that perchlorate exposure is likely to be widespread in the general population.

The Atlanta tests were not the only recent signs that prompt action is called for to protect the public. Last year, scientists at Texas Tech University reported finding perchlorate in human milk from 36 mothers at levels up to 92 parts per billion. In January, the EPA issued a new perchlorate cleanup guidance instructing risk assessors to base exposure "contributions from non-water sources" on "site-specific data until further national guidance on relative source contribution is developed." The EPA, state environmental agencies and the public need more information on perchlorate exposure levels exactly the data that CDC's NHANES study was designed to provide.

Consequently, we were alarmed and dismayed to read in Risk Policy Report (Feb. 28) the article "Stalled CDC Study Shows Human Perchlorate Levels Near EPA Safety Limits:"

dmark biomonitoring research conducted by scientists at the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) that shows most Americans carry perchlorate in their bodies at levels close to safety limits set by EPA, according to EPA and other government health officials.

The article reports that the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy has pressured the CDC to delaying its release of the NHANES perchlorate study. The study is said to have been completed last fall, and according to an unnamed Food and Drug Administration official, the exposure levels found in the study are close to EPA's current risk limit of 24.5 parts per billion perchlorate in drinking water. This EPA risk limit, which is not an enforceable safety standard, is of course well above the 1 ppb level that is being considered by Massachusetts and the 6 ppb Public Health Goal adopted by California. This is all the more troubling if, as an EPA source told Risk Policy Report, "EPA's current perchlorate policies leave no margin of safety" for the public.

This is unacceptable. In the absence of national safety standards, the CDC should not be sitting on data so clearly needed to protect the public from a chemical that appears to be widespread in drinking water and food. The NHANES perchlorate data should be released immediately.

Thank you for your attention to this important matter.
Sincerely,
Richard Wiles, Senior Vice President
Environmental Working Group

USGS Reports Most U.S. Rivers and Marine Life Contain Pesticides

Sat, 04 Mar 2006 00:00:00 -0800

Although the amounts vary and often do not reach levels that are believed to be dangerous to humans, pesticides now taint practically all of America’s rivers and streams as well as the fish that live in them.

While contamination is a relative term, there is no doubt that the toxic chemicals involved have been linked to a wide range of medical problems ranging from various cancers and neurological impairment to birth defects.

Environmentalists as well as many scientists are concerned about potential long-term and cumulative effects on marine life, animals that rely on fish and other aquatic organisms for food, overall water quality, and the environment as a whole. Clearly, the ecosystems affected are fragile and can be easily disrupted or even destroyed by chemical pollutants.

Thus, the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) study of data between 1992 and 2001, which found pesticides in many urban and agricultural area waterways at concentrations that could affect marine life and fish-eating wildlife, has prompted a call for careful monitoring of and limitations on the use of these chemicals.

According to an article in USA Today (by way of the Associated Press), USGS associate director for water, Robert Hirsch, said that "while the use of pesticides has resulted in a wide range of benefits to control weeds, insects, and other pests, including increased food production and reduction of insect-borne disease, their use also raises questions about possible effects on the environment, including water quality.”

Of the 100 pesticides that were studied, about 40 accounted for the majority of the findings in water, fish, and sediment. Three herbicides in particular, atrazine, metolachlor, and cyanazine, which are used mainly for farming, were the detected most frequently in agricultural-area streams.

In urban-area streams, simazine, prometon, and tebuthiuron, three herbicides used commonly in cities were most frequently found.

Since fish live directly in the contaminated water as does everything they feed on, it was not surprising that the pesticides showed up in more than 90% of the fish from “agricultural, urban and mixed land-use areas.”

The pervasiveness of the contamination is evident from the fact that the scientists detected the presence of at least one pesticide in water from each of the streams tested. Moreover, the chemicals were found almost year-round in about 95% of the streams tested regardless of their location (agricultural, urban or mixed land-use watersheds).

Pesticides were most commonly found in shallow ground water under urban and agricultural areas, where more than 50% of the wells tested positive for one or more pesticides.

According to the AP article, the U.S. currently relies on some 1 billion pounds of pesticides each. This "shows an urgent need to strengthen policies at all levels of government and curtail pesticide use," says Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides, a national research and advocacy group.

The USGS analyzed data from 51 major river basins and aquifer systems around the country as well as a study of an aquifer system running through eight states “from South Dakota to Texas east of the Rocky Mountains.” (AP)

While the report found the prevalence of insecticide residue to be widespread, it also noted that, in most cases, the concentrations of individual pesticides were within Environmental Protection Agency drinking-water standards.

The EPA has the responsibility of analyzing the results of pesticide testing that is done by manufacturers before their products are approved for marketing. According to industry figures, it “typically takes up to a decade to study each one [pesticide] before it can reach the marketplace.” (AP)

The pesticide industry points out that the mere presence of pesticides, in and of itself, is not a reason for concern or a sign of danger since the use of pesticides by farmers, ranchers, and others is strictly regulated by federal and state laws.

"Water quality is of paramount importance to us. And the USGS report correctly recognizes that the large majority of pesticide detections in streams and groundwater were trace amounts, far below scientifically based minimum levels set for protecting human health and the environment," stated Jay Vroom, president of CropLife America, which represents pesticide developers and manufacturers.

One of the problems seen by environmentalists and a number of scientists, however, is that no one is certain of the true long-term health effects of low-dose pesticide exposure.

While government agencies and organizations such as WHO set what they believe to be safe limits on these chemicals, data simply does not exist to rule out any harmful effects small amounts of these toxins may cause over a lifetime. This is especially so when one considers the fact that, in higher amounts, these toxins are unquestionably linked to cancers, neurological injuries, and birth defects.

There is no longer any doubt that chemicals and other toxins find their way into every ecosystem and organism on earth to one extent or another.

As we have previously reported, for the past two years, there has been a growing concern over the safety of the manmade chemical known as C-8 or PFOA which can be found in everything from bread to birds, green beans to ground beef, dolphins to drinking water, and in the blood of up to 96% of the population of the United States.

The acid is used to manufacture Teflon coating for cookware and hundreds of other products like telephone cables, carpets, clothing, computer chips, chemical piping, and automobile fuel systems.

Because there are no known “natural” sources of C-8, scientists are curious as to how the chemical enters the environment. C-8 has also contaminated the groundwater in areas where Teflon is manufactured.

In addition, on July 14, 2005, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) published its “benchmark investigation of industrial chemicals, pollutants and pesticides in umbilical cord blood.” (http://www.ewg.org/reports/bodyburden2/execsumm.php). That massive report was summarized by EWG as follows:

“Summary. In the month leading up to a baby's birth, the umbilical cord pulses with the equivalent of at least 300 quarts of blood each day, pumped back and forth from the nutrient- and oxygen-rich placenta to the rapidly growing child cradled in a sac of amniotic fluid. This cord is a lifeline between mother and baby, bearing nutrients that sustain life and propel growth.

Not long ago scientists thought that the placenta shielded cord blood and the developing baby from most chemicals and pollutants in the environment. But now we know that at this critical time when organs, vessels, membranes and systems are knit together from single cells to finished form in a span of weeks, the umbilical cord carries not only the building blocks of life, but also a steady stream of industrial chemicals, pollutants and pesticides that cross the placenta as readily as residues from cigarettes and alcohol. This is the human "body burden" — the pollution in people that permeates everyone in the world, including babies in the womb.

In a study spearheaded by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) in collaboration with Commonweal, researchers at two major laboratories found an average of 200 industrial chemicals and pollutants in umbilical cord blood from 10 babies born in August and September of 2004 in U.S. hospitals. Tests revealed a total of 287 chemicals in the group. The umbilical cord blood of these 10 children, collected by Red Cross after the cord was cut, harbored pesticides, consumer product ingredients, and wastes from burning coal, gasoline, and garbage.

This study represents the first reported cord blood tests for 261 of the targeted chemicals and the first reported detections in cord blood for 209 compounds. Among them are eight perfluorochemicals used as stain and oil repellants in fast food packaging, clothes and textiles — including the Teflon chemical PFOA, recently characterized as a likely human carcinogen by the EPA's Science Advisory Board dozens of widely used brominated flame retardants and their toxic by-products; and numerous pesticides.

Of the 287 chemicals we detected in umbilical cord blood, we know that 180 cause cancer in humans or animals, 217 are toxic to the brain and nervous system, and 208 cause birth defects or abnormal development in animal tests. The dangers of pre- or post-natal exposure to this complex mixture of carcinogens, developmental toxins and neurotoxins have never been studied.”

Clearly, as the emerging research in this area demonstrates, the potential long-term effects of exposure to low levels of environmental chemicals and toxins is a topic worthy of further scientific investigation and public concern.

3M agrees to PFOA curbs

Fri, 03 Mar 2006 00:00:00 -0800

3M Co. and seven other companies have signed onto a voluntary U.S. government program that aims to reduce and eventually eliminate the use of a chemical known as PFOA.

The effort by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency comes after findings that the chemical is present in the environment and human blood. Last month, a group of scientists that advises the EPA said the chemical is likely a carcinogen.

"Aggressive corporate action is the right thing to do now," Susan Hazen, an EPA administrator, said Thursday. "The EPA is not waiting; the companies are not waiting."

The EPA plan calls for a 95 percent reduction in PFOA emissions by 2010, compared with 2000 levels. The effort also aims to virtually eliminate the chemical from emissions and products by 2015.

The seven other companies that signed onto the EPA's voluntary PFOA-reduction program are DuPont, Ciba Specialty Chemicals, Clariant Corp., Arkema Inc., AGC Chemicals/Asahi Glass, Daikin and Solvay Solexis.

Perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, was made by Maplewood-based 3M for years and was used in nonstick products, including DuPont's Teflon brand. Animal studies have shown the chemical can damage the liver. But 3M contends that more than 25 years of medical surveillance of its employees who were exposed to PFOA and a related chemical called PFOS have not shown adverse health effects.

When the EPA's advisory board said PFOA is likely a carcinogen, 3M scientists disagreed. They believe the scientific evidence suggests PFOA isn't likely to cause cancer in humans.

3M says it already has achieved a greater than 95 percent reduction in PFOA emissions in the United States and 88 percent worldwide since 2000. But its past work with perfluorochemicals continues to cause it legal problems.

Lawsuits are pending against 3M in Washington County and in Alabama. Residents near 3M sites say that the company released perfluorochemicals into the environment. Attorneys for the Washington County plaintiffs have coordinated blood tests for dozens of residents to measure levels of exposure and are seeking class-action status for the suit.

3M and its Dyneon subsidiary already are well into a plan to reduce PFOA emissions, having announced in 2000 that production of PFOA would be phased out. 3M has said it no longer makes PFOA or PFOS. The company does use PFOA in one Dyneon plant in Gendorf, Germany, to make fluoropolymers, which are used in automotive fuel systems, among other things.

The Gendorf facility employs a process patented by 3M that recaptures and recycles most of the PFOA involved in making fluoropolymers, said Bill Nelson, a 3M spokesman. "That technology is something we're prepared to license to other companies," he said, "and some have expressed interest."

Steelworkers lead drive to warn about chemical used in Teflon

Wed, 22 Feb 2006 00:00:00 -0800

A coalition including the United Steelworkers and several environmental groups is asking the state to list a chemical used in the production of Teflon and other products as a cancer-causing substance.

The groups have filed a petition with the state under Proposition 65, a 1986 law that requires companies to notify the public about potentially dangerous toxins.

If successful, California could mandate warnings to consumers who buy cooking equipment, outdoor wear, microwave popcorn bags and other products made using perfluorooctanoic acid, known as P-F-O-A. Last week, a group of scientific advisers to the Environmental Protection Agency recommended that the chemical should be considered a likely carcinogen.

Manufacturer DuPont says it will fight the petition effort.

Board: Teflon Chemical a Likely Carcinogen

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 00:00:00 -0800

A group of scientific advisers to the Environmental Protection Agency voted unanimously Wednesday to approve a recommendation that a chemical used in the manufacture of Teflon and other nonstick and stain-resistant products should be considered a likely carcinogen.

The approval of the EPA's Science Advisory Board is conditioned on minor clarifications being made to a draft report submitted by a review panel, but no major changes will be made to the panel's findings.

The revisions called for by the SAB include making a cover letter to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson more reader-friendly and clarifying the scope of dissent among members of the SAB panel that reviewed the EPA's draft risk assessment of perfluorooctanoic acid, also known as C-8.

Board members also agreed that the report should clarify why some unpublished scientific studies were considered by the panel while others weren't, and that the panel's findings should not be considered the last word on PFOA but should be updated as additional data become available.

PFOA is a processing aid used in the manufacturing of fluoropolymers, which have a wide variety of product applications, including nonstick cookware.

The chemical also can be a byproduct in the manufacturing of fluorotelomers used in surface protection products for applications such as stain-resistant textiles and grease-resistant food wrapping.

Wilmington, Del.-based DuPont Co., owner of the Teflon brand, is the sole producer of PFOA in North America.

Some members of the review panel disagreed with the majority view that PFOA should be classified as a "likely carcinogen," a finding that went beyond the EPA's own determination that there was only "suggestive evidence" from animal studies that PFOA and its salts are potential human carcinogens.

"Are we talking two-fifths of the panel, or are we talking about a small number?" asked SAB Chairman M. Granger Morgan, head of the department of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University.

Deborah Cory-Slechta, chair of the PFOA risk assessment review panel, said dissent from the majority views of the 16-member panel on issues it was asked to study typically was limited to three or four members.

Cory-Slechta also noted that an unpublished study from the 1980s linking PFOA to mammary tumors in laboratory rats was considered by the panel because it was peer-reviewed within the EPA and included in the original risk assessment submitted by the agency for review.

The same could not be said for a 2005 review sponsored by the DuPont and 3M Co. challenging the earlier study's conclusion.

"We do not feel that it rose to the same level of scrutiny as the other information we were considering," she said.

But 3M scientist John Butenhoff accused the panel of making "selective use" of information to make an unwarranted recommendation about PFOA's potential carcinogenicity.

Robert Rickard, director of health and environmental sciences at DuPont's Haskell Laboratory, said the company had asked the review panel after its February 2005 meeting if it would be appropriate to submit new data, and was told it could.

The only SAB member to offer significant criticism of the PFOA review panel was James Bus, a lead toxicologist for Dow Chemical Co.

Bus, who did not submit his written comments until shortly before Wednesday's meeting, said the review panel should have considered the DuPont-3M paper, and should have offered a stronger rationale for upgrading the recommended cancer descriptor from "suggestive evidence" to "likely carcinogen."

Johnson, the EPA administrator, is free to accept the SAB's recommendations regarding PFOA, or to reject them.

The EPA will use the report "as well as all new information that becomes available, to formulate the next steps in our continuing assessment of these chemicals," said Oscar Hernandez, director of the risk assessment division in the EPA's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics.

Safety Concerns May Stick to Teflon

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 00:00:00 -0800

For home cooks and professional chefs, Teflon might be the best kitchen innovation since sliced bread became a cliche.

A pan with the nonstick coating makes easy-to-lift omelets and cleans up like a dream. The concept of a cooking surface so smooth that nothing sticks has even leapt into the political lexicon. An American leader who weathered scandal and criticism became known as the Teflon president.

Now, something finally seems to be sticking to Teflon a nasty environmental tempest that has maker DuPont Co. and cookware companies worried that garage sales in the coming weeks will be stuffed with discarded nonstick pots and pans.

Home chefs have questioned the safety of nonstick cookware since an Environmental Protection Agency advisory board asked regulators in late January to examine whether a chemical that gets slippery Teflon and similar coatings to bond to a pan can cause cancer. About 70% of the cookware sold in the U.S. has a nonstick coating, according to the Cookware Manufacturers Assn.

"I stopped using those pans because of what I have heard about Teflon and carcinogen properties over the past few months," said Janeen Cunningham of Seal Beach, who recently tossed four nonstick pans into the back of her garage. "I am not sure what to do with them now."

Cunningham now cooks with older stainless-steel pans, using a thin coating of olive oil to prevent food from sticking.

Valley Village resident Tim Kislan shares her concerns.

"I worry about it because you can see when the coating chips off," said Kislan, who says about half of his 15 pots and pans have nonstick surfaces. "Maybe something is getting into the food."

Kislan said he limited the use of nonstick pans to cooking eggs and sauces low-temperature endeavors and saved hotter cooking for copper and steel pans.

Both Teflon maker DuPont and the EPA said cooks had little to worry about. The EPA raised questions about the chemical, perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, after studies found it to be in low levels in the blood of 90% of Americans, EPA Acting Assistant Administrator Susan Hazen said. Although the source of the exposure is unknown, she said cookware was an unlikely culprit.

PFOA is in the nonstick substance sprayed onto cookware. The pan then goes through a heating process in which virtually all of the PFOA is destroyed, according to DuPont.

The Food and Drug Administration has been able to detect traces of the chemical in tests in which it has ground up the surface of cookware, which is far beyond the abuse pots take in home cooking, DuPont said.

Still, mindful that sales could fall, DuPont touted the safety of Teflon in full-page advertisements this month in eight daily newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and USA Today. The ad shows an actual-size frying pan with the words, "Teflon Non-Stick Coating Is Safe."

"We stand behind the safety of our products and we wanted to get that out to consumers," said Dan Turner, a spokesman for Wilmington, Del.-based DuPont.

But some question whether such ads reassure cooks or increase the public's anxiety.

Christine Bruhn, director of the Center for Consumer Research at UC Davis, recalled that apple sales plummeted in the 1980s after grocery stores put up signs in their produce sections announcing that their fruit was free of the chemical Alar, used to improve the ripening and look of apples.

"The signs just created concerns," she said.

A DuPont rival worried about how the controversy would affect sales.

"Obviously it is a concern for us even though there is no proof of PFOA present in nonstick pans," said Scott Meyer, president of T-Fal, the West Orange, N.J.-based subsidiary of French cookware maker Groupe SEB.

T-Fal has launched a line of uncoated pans as a diversification move, though Meyer insisted that wasn't a direct response to the PFOA issue. The company has fielded hundreds of consumer inquiries about the issue but hasn't seen sales of its goods fall, Meyer said.

"The concern is that there is a steady drip-drip about this and it will become part of the common knowledge about cookware even though people won't get PFOA from cookware," Meyer said.

Some retailers, including Target Corp., which carries T-Fal, Teflon and other nonstick products, declined to discuss the matter.

At Wal-Mart Stores Inc., "we are monitoring the issue," said Karen Burke, spokeswoman for the Bentonville, Ark., retail chain. "We are working with our suppliers and the regulatory agencies to reduce the presence of PFOA in products in our stores."

Burke declined to say whether sales of nonstick cookware had slowed.

A spokeswoman for kitchen goods retailer Sur la Table said the company had fielded consumer questions about the safety of nonstick cookware.

"We tell people who are concerned that there is no evidence that nonstick cookware is a hazard," said Susanna Linse, spokeswoman for the Seattle-based company.

But the upscale pot peddler wouldn't be affected much by the controversy, because the chain sells mostly uncoated copper and stainless steel cookware, Linse said. "People may think they have to cook with nonstick, but they don't realize how easy it is to clean quality cookware," she said.

The chemical for decades has been considered essential in nonstick and stain-resistant products. In addition to cookware, it is used by the aerospace, transportation, textile and electronics industries for such products as wiring and fabrics.

Last year the EPA fined DuPont $16.5 million, alleging that the company hid data on the toxicity and health effects of PFOA for more than 20 years and contaminated the drinking water supply in the Ohio River Valley, next to a DuPont plant in West Virginia. It was the largest administrative fine in EPA history.

PFOA causes liver cancer, reduced birth weight, immune-system suppression and developmental problems in laboratory animals exposed to high doses. In humans, the effects of lower doses are unknown, but it is transferred to fetuses. An ongoing study by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore found the compound in the umbilical cord blood of 298 of 300 newborns.

Because there is little information about how the chemical affects humans, the EPA asked U.S. companies last month to voluntarily eliminate public exposure to the chemical. DuPont pledged to meet the deadlines.

But the voluntary phaseout will not end the sale of Teflon and other products like T-Fal's cookware, though it is expected to curtail the release of the chemical into the atmosphere. Regulators have to act, said Joe Hotchkiss, chairman of Cornell University's department of food science, because they don't know whether the problems that result from a high level of PFOA exposure in animals will crop up in humans with much lower contamination.

"We just don't know what it means. It could be nothing, or it could be a lot," Hotchkiss said.

Professional chefs are just starting to learn of the environmental issues surrounding PFOA, said Sumi Chang, who owns the Europane bakery and cafe in Pasadena.

But the pastry and bread chef has a more basic reason for avoiding nonstick cookware.

"It makes a chocolate cake look shiny," Chang said.

Teflon chemical found in infants

Mon, 06 Feb 2006 00:00:00 -0800

Researchers at Johns Hopkins Hospital drew blood from the umbilical cords of 300 newborns and discovered something that would be deeply unnerving to many parents: Ninety-nine percent of the babies were born with trace levels of an industrial chemical - suspected as a possible cancer-causing agent - that is used in the manufacture of Teflon pans, computer chips, cell phones and dozens of other consumer products.

Now Dr. Lynn Goldman, Rolf Halden and their colleagues at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health are working with other scientists to determine whether the toxic chemical has harmed the infants, possibly by interfering with their thyroid glands and hormone levels.

Previous studies, some funded by industry, have found perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, in the bloodstream of most Americans. But the Hopkins study, supported by the federal and state governments, is the largest independent research project to examine the compound's effects on newborns, who may be more vulnerable to endocrine-disrupting chemicals.

"It's very clear that PFOA is being released into the environment, and it's pretty much ubiquitous," Goldman said. "But we don't know if it's toxic to people at these levels."

DuPont, which manufactures Teflon and has used the chemical for more than 50 years, says there is no evidence that PFOA is harmful to humans.

"The chemical does have an effect on animals that are fed high doses of it. But animals respond differently to PFOA than people, and there is no evidence that there are any health effects in people," said David Boothe, a DuPont manager.

The Hopkins study comes as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is working with industry to try to reduce PFOA emissions into the environment.

The EPA announced last month that DuPont has voluntarily agreed to reduce its use of the chemical, although not eliminate it, and take more steps to halt emissions from its plants. In December, the company agreed to pay a $10.25 million civil penalty - the largest ever levied by the EPA - for withholding information about the potential health and environmental impacts of the compound.

An EPA scientific advisory panel released a draft report in the spring that said the chemical has caused tumors when fed to rats and is a "likely carcinogen in humans." But the same panel said last week that more research needs to be completed before the EPA concludes whether PFOA causes cancer.

"It's a mystery right now," said Dr. Frank Witter, medical director of labor and delivery at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a partner in the research. "At some point, with more research, we may be able to say something more than 'it's just there.' But we have not finished that analysis yet."

PFOA is a highly durable, man-made chemical used since the 1950s in the manufacture of Teflon nonstick pans, rain-repellent clothing, aerospace equipment, computer chips, cables, automobile fuel hoses and numerous other products.

"We make a lot of chemicals that are extremely persistent, and we mass-produce them, but we never consider the life cycles of these chemicals," Halden said. "It's kind of a tragedy. In some instances, it takes years or decades before we learn of their toxicity" to people.

The research project at Hopkins began in late 2004. Over five months, Goldman and her colleagues collected blood samples from the umbilical cords of 300 newborns. The researchers used an instrument called a liquid chromatography mass spectrometer to analyze the blood, and they found that 298 of the samples contained PFOA, Goldman said.

Now the scientists are working with other researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a commercial lab to further scrutinize the samples and find out whether the babies' thyroid hormone levels are normal, Halden said. The researchers are also comparing PFOA levels to the birth weight of the babies, and looking at whether they were born full term. The study should be finished in a few months and then will be offered for publication in a scientific journal, Halden said.

It's not clear how PFOA gets into the environment and, eventually, into people's bloodstream. The chemical can be found in many places around the planet and has even been detected in polar bears.

Researchers with the Washington-based Environmental Working Group, a watchdog organization, believe the chemical may be released through the breakdown of fast-food packaging and stain-proof carpets, furniture and clothes, ending up in food, house dust, air and drinking water.

But Susan Hazen, an EPA acting assistant administrator, said this is speculation. "We have no evidence at this time that routine use of consumer products is a source of exposure," Hazen said.

DuPont agreed last year to pay a settlement of more than $100 million after residents living near a company Teflon plant in Parkersburg, W.Va., filed a class action suit claiming that PFOA escaped from the factory and contaminated local waters.

Boothe, the DuPont manager, said PFOA clearly had leaked from the Parkersburg plant. But he said there are probably "quite a few" other sources of the chemical's escape into the environment.

He said DuPont is working hard to stop all leakage of the chemical from factories. The firm has installed water discharge filters and air pollution control equipment at the Parkersburg plant and two others in Fayetteville, N.C., and Deepwater, N.J.

"The EPA is working with the industry to find out what the sources of exposure are," Boothe said.

Jane Houlihan, vice president for research at the Environmental Working Group, is among critics who say PFOA is dangerous and should be banned. It is disturbing, she said, that the Hopkins researchers have found the chemical in newborns.

"The fact that PFOA can cross the placenta from the mother to child is very troubling, given that this is a chemical that is broadly toxic and linked to birth defects in lab animals," she said. "The time in the womb is a time of particular vulnerability to environmental chemicals."

Panel: Teflon Chemical a Likely Carcinogen

Mon, 30 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0800

A chemical used in the manufacture of Teflon and other nonstick and stain-resistant products should be considered a "likely" carcinogen, according to an independent scientific review panel advising the Environmental Protection Agency.

The recommendation included in the panel's final draft report is consistent with its preliminary finding, which went beyond the EPA's own determination that there was only "suggestive evidence" from animal studies that perfluorooctanoic acid and its salts are potential human carcinogens.

"The predominant panel view was that the descriptor 'likely to be carcinogenic' was more consistent with currently available data, while a few panel members reached the conclusion that the current evidence fails to exceed the descriptor 'suggestive,' of carcinogenicity," the panel said in a draft report released Monday.

Officials with Wilmington, Del.-based DuPont Co., the sole North American producer of PFOA, took issue with the panel's conclusions.

"We disagree with the panel's recommendation on the cancer classification, and we continue to support the EPA's draft risk assessment," said Robert Rickard, director of health and environmental sciences for DuPont.

"This reflects recommended classification; what's more important is risk, and we are confident that PFOA does not pose a cancer risk to the general public," added Rickard, who said the carcinogenicity classification was based on animal data and does not reflect data from human studies.

PFOA is a processing aid used in the manufacturing of fluoropolymers, which have a wide variety of product applications, including nonstick cookware. The chemical also can be a byproduct in the manufacturing of fluorotelomers used in surface protection products for applications such as stain-resistant textiles and grease-resistant food wrapping.

Besides disagreeing with the EPA on the potential carcinogenicity of PFOA, also known as C-8, a majority of members on the review panel also recommended that the EPA's risk assessment include additional data on PFOA's potential to cause liver, testicular, pancreatic and breast cancers. A majority of panel members also recommended that the chemical's effects on hormones and on the nervous and immune systems be included in the risk assessment, and that studies should not be limited by age, gender or species in assessing human risk.

The findings of the panel, which was established by the EPA's Science Advisory Board, will be reviewed by SAB officials in a Feb. 15 teleconference.

"The real outcome of this is the panel going back and saying `You've got to include this extra stuff here; it wasn't really a rigorous analysis," said Tim Kropp, senior scientist for the Environmental Working Group, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization whose work has prompted increased government scrutiny of PFOA.

While the EPA is free to accept or reject the panel's recommendations, Kropp said it rare for the EPA to dismiss an advisory board's advice.

"They've asked them to do a more rigorous analysis, to do a more scientific method of determining risk, and you can't argue with that," he said. "That's just good science."

EPA officials declined to say how the agency might respond to the report.

"It's sort of what we expected," said EPA deputy administrator Marcus Peacock, adding that he had not read the full report. "There's more we don't know here than what we do know."

Susan Hazen, EPA's acting assistant administrator for the Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances, said much of the work aimed at better understanding PFOA already is underway.

Hazen and Peacock also pointed to an EPA initiative announced last week asking DuPont and seven other companies that manufacture or use PFOA, its precursors, and similar compounds to reduce environmental releases and levels of those chemicals in products by 95 percent no later than 2010, using the year 2000 as a baseline.

The EPA also wants the industry to work toward the elimination of PFOA and related chemicals from emissions and products by no later than 2015.

In Surprising Move, EPA Seeks to Ensure the Elimination of PFOA by 2015

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0800

Although it appeared some progress was being made with respect to the possibility that PFOA would eventually be banned in the United States, there was no real indication of when the drive to attain that ban would gain enough momentum and government backing to force the issue to a final determination.

Back in December, in the largest settlement involving a civil administrative penalty under any federal environmental statute in agency history, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that DuPont agreed to pay $10.25 million in fines and $6.25 to fund environmental projects to settle allegations that the company withheld information about the dangers of the toxic chemical, PFOA.

The settlement resulted from the EPA’s action against DuPont, for allegedly withholding information about the potential health and environmental risks posed by perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA (C8), under provisions of both the Toxic Substances Control Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

The EPA charged that the company knowingly withheld information for more than 20 years about the health effects of PFOA and about the pollution of ground water supplies around DuPont’s Washington Works plant near Parkersburg, West Virginia.

As we have previously reported, for the past two years, there has been a growing concern over the safety of the manmade chemical known as C8 or PFOA which can be found in everything from bread to birds, green beans to ground beef, dolphins to drinking water, and in the blood of up to 96% of the population of the United States.

The acid is used to manufacture Teflon coating for cookware and hundreds of other products like telephone cables, carpets, clothing, computer chips, chemical piping, and automobile fuel systems. Teflon currently nets DuPont a reported $200 million in profit a year. .
Because there are no known “natural” sources of C8, scientists are curious as to how the chemical enters the environment. C8 has also contaminated the groundwater in areas where Teflon is manufactured.

DuPont, which also pioneered the development of PFOA and continues to dominate its use, claims that the chemical is harmless to humans. It also disputes that C8 is released during normal cooking (as opposed to overheating).

Others are not so sure that either assertion is true. Studies have concluded that C8 is one of several toxic gases released by Teflon when it is heated to temperatures which, at their low end, are only slightly above normal cooking temperatures.

C8 has been shown to cause tumors in rats and fumes from Teflon coated cookware can cause what is known as “polymer fume fever,” a condition which has been shown to kill birds even at low temperatures but which DuPont claims is harmless to humans if the cookware is used at a temperature of up to 500aF. When Teflon is overheated (above 700aF), fatal cases of polymer fume fever in humans have occurred (at 842aF).

Last August, DuPont agreed to pay up to $343 million in settlement of a class action arising out of the contamination of drinking water in Ohio and West Virginia linked to its plant near Parkersburg, West Virginia.

Of that amount, most of the $107 million to be paid for damages to the water supply of some 50,000 people living near the plant will be used to fund a detailed scientific review and a landmark community health study with respect to the dangers posed by C8 in the six Ohio and West Virginia water districts covered by the settlement.

Up to another $235 million is to be set aside for future medical monitoring if the studies find C8 can make people sick.

So far, over 43,000 individuals have signed up for the health study with more than 17,000 having been tested since August. There is a waiting list of about 26,000 people. Eventually, up to 60,000 people are expected to take part in the study. Each person who completes the screening will be paid $400.

Beginning this year, a court-appointed panel of three epidemiologists will begin reviewing the results of the screening project.

Although DuPont continued to claim that there is no confirmed danger posed by C8, the company announced that it planned to dramatically decrease the use of PFOA in Teflon coatings by the end of 2006.

Earlier in 2005, however, the EPA stated that tests on laboratory animals linked PFOA to liver, pancreatic, and testicular cancer, reduced birth weight, birth defects, and immune suppression.

The agency also found that elevated cholesterol and triglycerides were a risk of exposure to C8. As a result, the EPA stated that low-level exposure to PFOA could pose a “potential risk of developmental and other adverse effects” in humans.
The EPA has released a draft assessment of the chemical used in the production of Teflon which, based on animal studies, found “suggestive evidence” that the substance may be a human carcinogen.

In May 2005, the Justice Department issued grand jury subpoenas seeking documents from DuPont with respect to PFOA and related chemical compounds. The suspicion was that DuPont withheld critical information concerning possible health risks posed by PFOA.
A 1961 internal document indicated that DuPont scientists had already warned company executives to avoid human contact with PFOA. DuPont faced more than $300 million in fines if it was found guilty of withholding such information.

In August 2005, a draft report released by an independent EPA scientific advisory board which reviewed the earlier EPA assessment and which will now be submitted to the EPA, concluded that PFOA (C8) is “likely” to be a human carcinogen and, as a result, the EPA should conduct cancer risk assessments for a variety of tumors found in rats and mice exposed to it.

Another startling revelation was reported in the Charleston Gazette on July 10, 2005. According to an April 2004 sworn statement by Dr. Bruce Karrh, DuPont’s former medical director, the company found similar birth defects in two of eight children born to women who worked at the Parkersburg chemical plant 25 years ago.

The Charleston Gazette also reported that: “A DuPont researcher said the number was ‘significantly greater’ than the expected rate of birth defects in the general population. In April 1981, the researcher proposed that DuPont do a detailed study to determine if exposure to the toxic chemical C8 was to blame. Three months later, DuPont officials dropped the study, a former top corporate doctor has testified. Dupont officials also decided not to report its preliminary findings to federal regulators, according to the testimony, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. ‘To my knowledge, it was never reported to EPA, and, to my knowledge, I didn’t ask anybody whether it was reported,’ Karrh said of the birth defects data.”

The study will look for a number of potential links involving C8; however, cancer and heart disease are of the greatest concern. Those results may take up to four years to report. Each sample taken from the test subjects is tested for the presence of C8 and for organ function.

While the EPA declared that the settlement "sends a strong message that companies are responsible for promptly giving EPA risk information associated with their chemicals;" DuPont has not admitted liability and continues to take the position that “there (are) no human health effects that we know about that are caused by PFOA ... We've seen nothing."

Thus, with strong evidence against it and a downside risk of over $300 million in civil penalties for failing to report the substantial risks posed by PFOA, DuPont made the prudent business decision of settling the entire EPA case for a total of $16.5 million.

DuPont’s general counsel summed up the company’s position on the settlement by stating: "Frankly, we could have litigated this thing for several years. We wanted to get this thing behind us so we could move forward."

A federal criminal investigation of DuPont’s actions with respect to PFOA has also been ongoing.

Now, however, quite unexpectedly, the EPA has requested DuPont and seven other chemical companies to stop using PFOA in their manufacturing processes.

According to the EPA, the program, which at present would be voluntary, would, if fully complied with, by all of the companies and their overseas affiliates lead to a 95% reduction in PFOA use by 2010 and their total elimination by 2015.

DuPont immediately issued a pledge to join the program, stating it had already reduced its PFOA manufacturing emissions by 94% and had developed new technologies that could reduce PFOA content in products by more than 97%.

The seven other chemical companies that are expected to sign on to the program as well are 3M/Dyneon, Arkema, Asahi, Ciba, Clariant, Daikin, and Solvay Solexis

EPA moves to ban Teflon ingredient

Thu, 26 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0800

In a surprise turn Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency moved to eliminate the production of a suspected carcinogen used in the making of Teflon and other non-stick and non-stain coatings.

The EPA has asked eight manufacturers that use a family of chemicals known as perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, to reduce production 95 percent by 2010 and to stop using it altogether by 2015.

PFOA, found in the blood of more than 95 percent of Americans, has been tied to cancer and developmental damage in animal studies. It is used in the process that makes water, stain and grease resistant products, everything from microwave popcorn bags to pizza box liners, non-stick cookware to pillows, upholstery to carpets.

Environmentalists and consumer groups have long dogged the agency to act against PFOA.

"The science is still coming in, but the concern is there, so acting now to minimize future releases of PFOA is the right thing to do for our environment and our health," says Susan Hazen, of EPA's Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances.

"This program will call on industry to essentially eliminate PFOA release and its presence in products over the next decade," Hazen says.

EPA officials are calling for voluntary PFOA cutbacks because "under the Toxic Substances Control Act they don't have authority to ban it," says Richard Wiles of the Environmental Working Group, a public interest group that has long fought to bring public attention to PFOA in the environment. If the EPA is able to get PFOA phased out, Wiles says it will be "the single biggest action the agency's ever taken."

The DuPont Company announced Wednesday it will comply with the EPA's voluntary guidelines. "DuPont has been aggressively reducing PFOA emissions to the environment," says DuPont vice president Susan Stalnecker.

DuPont has been at the center of this controversy. The company agreed in December to pay $10.25 million in fines and $6.25 million for research and education to resolve federal charges that it hid information about the dangers posed by PFOA.

There are less toxic alternatives readily available, says Scott Mabury, a professor of environmental chemistry at the University of Toronto in Canada.

PFOA is characterized by a chain of eight carbon atoms. But a version of four carbon atoms works well and doesn't accumulate in bodies, Mabury says. "You won't find them in huge quantities in polar bears or human blood, like we do the eight-carbon version. There will be chemical pollution from it but you can't have toxicology if you don't have exposure. It is an appropriate chemical solution to a chemical problem."

Teflon chemical to be altered by 2015

Thu, 26 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0800

A chemical used to make Teflon will be altered to prevent its release into the environment from finished products or from manufacturing plants.

Eight companies including the DuPont Co., which first marketed Teflon in 1945 agreed Wednesday to alter perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, in all Teflon-coated consumer products.

Although the chemical will still be used to manufacture Teflon and other products, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said processes will be developed to curtail the chemical's release into the environment, The Washington Post reported Thursday.

PFOA has been linked to cancer and birth defects in animals and is in the blood of 95 percent of Americans, including pregnant women. It has also been found in the blood of marine organisms and Arctic polar bears.

The voluntary agreement, crafted by the EPA, requires companies to reduce PFOA emissions by 95 percent no later than 2010. The companies also agreed to cut trace amounts of the compound in consumer products by 95 percent during the same period and virtually eliminate them by 2015, the Post said.

PFOA is also used in such products as pizza boxes, non-stick pans and microwave-popcorn bags.

DuPont Teflon chemical C8 found in Ohio stream, bottled water

Tue, 24 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0800

A stream in Williamstown, Ohio tested positive on Jan. 12 for C8, a DuPont chemical used to make Teflon. DuPont has a plant in Washington, WV, about 18 miles north of Williamstown. The plant is expected to have leaked the C8 chemical, according to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.

In addition, the chemical was detected when Ohio residents living in the southeastern part of the state bought bottled water called Crystal Spring. It is expected that Crystal Spring, based out of Marietta, Ohio, received its water from the effected stream. Customers in the Ohio district reported having C8 levels that were nearly 80 times higher than the usual amount found in drinking water.

To prevent the continued contamination of the drinking water, the Little Hocking Water Association is in the process of installing filters to the water. No more infected water is being given to customers. Instead, water from nearby Culligan County is being given to customers.

According to the EPA, there is no regulated level of C8. However, it is widely known that a generally safe level would be 150 parts per billion.

Immediately following the hazardous news, Gary Matheny, owner of Crystal Springs, tested the water himself. His results concurred with the previous findings, showing increased levels of C8.

As of Jan. 13, three separate tests from two different laboratories have shown that C8 was present in the Crystal Spring drinking bottles at levels between 13and 17 parts per trillion. In the actual well where the water came from, the levels were 3,500 to 7,200 parts per trillion.

“We’ve been using that well for 84 years and we've never had a problem with it until now,” The Marietta Times quoted Matheny as saying.

“We don’t know how it got there at levels this low it may be something as simple as Teflon tape on a fitting but we are exploring every avenue and we are taking the necessary steps to remove it.”

In response to the potentially hazardous findings, DuPont said that increased levels of C8, the chemical that the company uses to produce Teflon, is not a danger to water drinkers. However, despite DuPont’s reluctance to claim responsibility, the company is paying for health screenings for over 80,000 effected residents in southeastern Ohio.

It should also be noted that DuPont has been supplying residents of southeastern Ohio with bottled water because of a lawsuit a few years back over well contamination. Crystal Springs and two other drinking water companies were commissioned by DuPont to give bottles of water to southeastern Ohioans.

Crystal Spring Water has been around since 1922. It is comparatively a small drinking water company, with only 20 employees.

C8, also known as PFOA or ammonium perfluorooctanoate, is used to produce Teflon, a product made by DuPont to be used in various household items including cookware.

The EPA is in the process of classifying C8 as hazardous to humans, but official findings have yet to be released. In the past, C8 has caused cancer to develop in lab rats. The only official word from the EPA is that the agency believes C8 to be “likely” in producing cancer in humans.

Chemical runoff found in bottled water

Tue, 24 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0800

A chemical used to make Teflon, a non-stick coating most commonly used in cookware, was recently found in the bottled water supplied to a small town in Ohio. The town was receiving the contaminated bottled water as the result of a settlement from a 2004 law suit involving DuPont Co., a manufacturing company that uses the chemical compound C8 in making Teflon products.

Citizens from towns in both Ohio and West Virginia filed lawsuits against DuPont Co. in 2004 on the basis of claims that the corporation was not fully disclosing the health threats posed by the chemical runoff from their plant in West Virginia. Both Crystal Spring, the company that supplied the 1,000 citizens with bottled water, and DuPont Co. installed filters in their water supplies upon notification of contamination.

Kymron Decesare, staff research associate in the department of chemistry at UC Davis, said that Teflon and the chemicals used when producing it have not been researched enough for the amount of exposure that Americans have with these products.

"The first thought Americans had was how great it is, so we covered everything in our kitchens with it," he said. "Now 95 percent of Americans have Teflon in their blood, and scientists have no idea how to get it out."

Decesare noted that Teflon could have detrimental health effects yet to be discovered.

"The situation with Teflon is similar to that of DDT [the first modern pesticide]," he said. "The idea that DDT, which was thought to be perfectly safe, is strongly connected with Alzheimer's is widely accepted in Europe and Canada. So maybe after 30 years of using Teflon we will have another disease like Alzheimer's that we can't explain."

Michael Johnson, research ecologist at UC Davis, said that Teflon and the chemicals used to produce it could be dangerous if not adequately examined.

"It seems like only a matter of time before the emergence of another significant ecological or human health problem due to the release of an untested chemical into the environment," Johnson said in an e-mail interview. "Based on the chemical properties of PFOA [a chemical used in making Teflon], it appears that the chemical will be around for a very long time in the environment, like DDT."

Johnson also noted that with the overwhelming use of Teflon in American kitchens, as well as the likelihood that some of those products are put in landfills at some point, the release of Teflon into the environment is inevitable.

Despite the Environmental Protection Agency's analysis that C8 is likely a carcinogenic, DuPont Co. maintains that the chemical is harmless. Some scientists speculate that the disagreement exists due to categorizing several chemicals under the name Teflon.

Although DuPont has apologized for the high amounts of C8 in the water, they maintain that the chemical is harmless and will not pose any significant health effects.

In a 2004 news release in response to the EPA's reports, DuPont General Counsel Stacey Mobley claimed the corporation has been appropriately forthright to the EPA.

"Scientific evidence confirms that the trace amount of PFOA found in this one data point would pose no risk to human health," she said. "In the absence of substantial risk of harm, the information is simply not required to be reported."

Johnson noted that toxicology reports may not reveal the truth about Teflon because of the groupings of chemicals.

"Taken individually, the chemicals could be harmful," Johnson said. "But mixed together and bound into the Teflon matrix, they are unavailable to cause their toxicological effects."

DuPont won't say how C-8 is formed

Sun, 18 Dec 2005 00:00:00 -0800

The Environmental Protection Agency wants to know a lot more about the fate and breakdown of chemicals the DuPont Co. makes or sells for use at its Chambers Works plant in New Jersey and other sites around the globe to make nonstick, nonstain, grease-repellent products.

But government and company officials are refusing all requests for names of the chemicals and products targeted in a $5 million study included in a record-breaking $16.5 million settlement announced by the EPA last week. And that has some workers and residents around the Deepwater, N.J., plant wondering if they have been contaminated or misled.

"We expect that our local management will be forthcoming with this information, since it concerns the health and safety of our membership inside the facility," said James Rowe, president of the United Steelworkers local at Chambers Works, near the foot of the Delaware Memorial Bridge.
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The EPA would say only that DuPont must spend $5 million on a three-year study of nine fluorotelomer-based products and chemicals. The research work is part of a $16.5 million penalty that settled federal claims DuPont failed to report water pollution, human blood contamination and toxic hazards connec- ted with production of Teflon and other nonstick materials.

Chemicals up for study, the EPA said, have been "claimed by DuPont as confidential."

"There have been a number of questions asked about the biodegradation study that we're not in a position to talk about," said R. Clifton Webb, a DuPont spokesman.

Settlement documents include only generic names for the targeted chemicals.

The deal has its roots in mounting concern over detection of perfluorooctanoic acid also known as PFOA or C-8 in the human blood around the world. Some scientists suspect the potentially toxic chemicals are residues of fluoropolymers and broken-down fluorotelomers used in a variety of industries.

Both compounds are made with fluorine, carbon and other chemicals, assembled into long, durable chains. Although fluorotelomers are produced without PFOA, a chemical now made in America only by DuPont, researchers are concerned that the fluorotelomers can biodegrade or get broken down under some conditions into PFOA.

The still-confidential DuPont studies "will provide valuable information so we can better understand the presence of PFOA in the environment and any potential risks it may pose to the public," said Susan Hazen, the EPA's principal deputy assistant administrator for the Office of Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances.

A huge number of products have fluorotelomer ties, ranging from grease-resistant coatings on fast-food wrappers to fire-fighting foams, from soil- and stain-resistant carpets to medical products, from personal care items to cleaning supplies.

Fluoropolymer-related chemicals used to make Teflon have been released to the air and water for years from Chambers Works, DuPont has confirmed, although levels have fallen by 98 percent since 1999.

Both types of compounds show up on a list of chemicals that DuPont provided to New Jersey last year in a report on what the company knows or believes may be in wastewater discharges at Deepwater.

"I'm right here in Collins Park, only half a mile from the river, and I want to know more," said Jeffrey M. Ousey, who lives due west. "It needs more attention here. They've known about this for years. It's as bad as the cigarette companies knowing about cancer and tobacco for years."

Hazen said DuPont's studies could prompt action.

"During the course of those three years, there will be interim reports coming out of the agency," Hazan said. "Much of the information in those reports may in fact lead us to be able to draw some conclusions earlier than three years."

Accused of withholding facts

Federal and industry officials launched intensive studies of PFOA health risks in 2003 after the synthetic chemical began turning up in the blood of people and animals around the globe. That study gained urgency as the EPA uncovered details about DuPont's failure to report troubling findings at its Washington Works Plant near Parkersburg, W.Va.

The agreement released last week points out that the research will assess the potential for nine of DuPont's fluorotelomer products to break down to PFOA and related compounds.

Wilmington resident Al Denio, a former DuPont chemist, said the company's handling of problems with its $1 billion line of nonstick, nonstain products could threaten its survival.

"They assure us that it's not harmful, but how do I know that," said Denio, chairman of the Sierra Club Delaware Chapter's anti-pollution committee. "It bothers me to think that this stuff is in everybody's bloodstream and they keep saying: 'Don't worry about it.' "

DuPont officials have repeatedly said they are unaware of any human health concerns connected with the chemicals, but the company has reduced PFOA emissions at plants by 98 percent since 1999.

EPA officials late last year accused DuPont of withholding information about potential health hazards connected with PFOA-related compounds. The agency said the company held back for decades evidence that the chemical could contaminate fetal blood in pregnant workers, as well as information about pollution that eventually tainted water systems serving more than 30,000 people in Ohio and West Virginia.

Another allegation in the eight-count complaint settled by the $16.5 million penalty charged that company officials failed to report "significant lethality" in rats exposed to unnamed perfluorinated compounds in 1997, a fact "that should have been reported immediately," an EPA official said.

Jane Nogaki, South Jersey representative for the New Jersey Environmental Federation, said the latest settlement is reason enough to take another hard look at DuPont's commercial wastewater operation. Chambers Works is New Jersey's second-largest source of toxic pollution.

Testing is first step

DuPont and EPA officials have repeatedly disagreed about methods for testing the ways fluorotelomers degrade in the environment -- a dispute that in June 2004 prompted annoyed EPA officials to announce that the government would conduct taxpayer-funded studies. Until that point, federal officials had hoped that industry would finance research into the ways the compounds move in the environment and living tissues.

DuPont officials had confirmed that Chambers Works, until recently, discharged thousands of pounds of PFOA yearly, mostly into the Delaware River by way of the company's commercial wastewater plant.

Last month, a former DuPont employee accused the company of ignoring warnings about fluorotelomers and the grease-resistant coatings produced at the same site during the late 1980s.

"We hope the testing demanded by the EPA, as part of its settlement with DuPont, is a step in the right direction to determining the safety of these chemical products," Rowe said. "In light of the EPA's unprecedented and historic fine against DuPont, our doubts have grown about DuPont's truthfulness over the years about the real effects of these chemicals."

DuPont to Pay $16.5 Million to Settle EPA Allegations Involving 20-Year PFOA Cover-up

Thu, 15 Dec 2005 00:00:00 -0800

In the largest settlement involving a civil administrative penalty under any federal environmental statute in agency history, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced that DuPont will pay $10.25 million in fines and $6.25 to fund environmental projects to settle allegations that the company withheld information about the dangers of the toxic chemical, PFOA.

The settlement stems from the EPA’s action against DuPont, for allegedly withholding information about the potential health and environmental risks posed by perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA (C8), under provisions of both the Toxic Substances Control Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

The EPA charged that the company knowingly withheld information for more than 20 years about the health effects of PFOA and about the pollution of ground water supplies around DuPont’s Washington Works plant near Parkersburg, West Virginia.

As we have previously reported, for the past two years, there has been a growing concern over the safety of the manmade chemical known as C8 or PFOA which can be found in everything from bread to birds, green beans to ground beef, dolphins to drinking water, and in the blood of up to 96% of the population of the United States.

The acid is used to manufacture Teflon coating for cookware and hundreds of other products like telephone cables, carpets, clothing, computer chips, chemical piping, and automobile fuel systems. Teflon currently nets DuPont a reported $200 million in profit a year.

Because there are no known “natural” sources of C8, scientists are curious as to how the chemical enters the environment. C8 has also contaminated the groundwater in areas where Teflon is manufactured.

DuPont, which also pioneered the development of PFOA and continues to dominate its use, claims that the chemical is harmless to humans. It also disputes that C8 is released during normal cooking (as opposed to overheating).

Others are not so sure that either assertion is true. Studies have concluded that C8 is one of several toxic gases released by Teflon when it is heated to temperatures which, at their low end, are only slightly above normal cooking temperatures.

C8 has been shown to cause tumors in rats and fumes from Teflon coated cookware can cause what is known as “polymer fume fever,” a condition which has been shown to kill birds even at low temperatures but which DuPont claims is harmless to humans if the cookware is used at a temperature of up to 500F. When Teflon is overheated (above 700F), fatal cases of polymer fume fever in humans have occurred (at 842F).

Last August, DuPont agreed to pay up to $343 million in settlement of a class action arising out of the contamination of drinking water in Ohio and West Virginia linked to its plant near Parkersburg, West Virginia.

Of that amount, most of the $107 million to be paid for damages to the water supply of some 50,000 people living near the plant will be used to fund a detailed scientific review and a landmark community health study with respect to the dangers posed by C8 in the six Ohio and West Virginia water districts covered by the settlement.

Up to another $235 million is to be set aside for future medical monitoring if the studies find C8 can make people sick.

So far, some 43,000 individuals have signed up for the health study with more than 17,000 having been tested since August. There is a waiting list of about 26,000 people. Eventually, up to 60,000 people are expected to take part in the study. Each person who completes the screening will be paid $400.

Beginning in 2006, a court-appointed panel of three epidemiologists will begin reviewing the results of the screening project.

Although DuPont continues to claim that there is no confirmed danger posed by C8, the company announced that it plans to dramatically decrease the use of PFOA in Teflon coatings by the end of 2006.

Earlier this year, however, the EPA stated that tests on laboratory animals linked PFOA to liver, pancreatic, and testicular cancer, reduced birth weight, birth defects, and immune suppression.

The agency also found that elevated cholesterol and triglycerides were a risk of exposure to C8. As a result, the EPA stated that low-level exposure to PFOA could pose a “potential risk of developmental and other adverse effects” in humans.

The EPA has released a draft assessment of the chemical used in the production of Teflon which, based on animal studies, found “suggestive evidence” that the substance may be a human carcinogen.

In May, the Justice Department issued grand jury subpoenas seeking documents from DuPont with respect to PFOA and related chemical compounds. The suspicion was that DuPont withheld critical information concerning possible health risks posed by PFOA.

A 1961 internal document indicated that DuPont scientists had already warned company executives to avoid human contact with PFOA. DuPont faced more than $300 million in fines if it was found guilty of withholding such information.

In August of this year, a draft report released by an independent EPA scientific advisory board which reviewed the earlier EPA assessment and which will now be submitted to the EPA, concluded that PFOA (C8) is “likely” to be a human carcinogen and, as a result, the EPA should conduct cancer risk assessments for a variety of tumors found in rats and mice exposed to it.

Another startling revelation was reported in the Charleston Gazette on July 10. According to an April 2004 sworn statement by Dr. Bruce Karrh, DuPont’s former medical director, the company found similar birth defects in two of eight children born to women who worked at the Parkersburg chemical plant 25 years ago.

The Charleston Gazette also reported that: “A DuPont researcher said the number was ‘significantly greater’ than the expected rate of birth defects in the general population. In April 1981, the researcher proposed that DuPont do a detailed study to determine if exposure to the toxic chemical C8 was to blame. Three months later, DuPont officials dropped the study, a former top corporate doctor has testified.

Dupont officials also decided not to report its preliminary findings to federal regulators, according to the testimony, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act…‘To my knowledge, it was never reported to EPA, and, to my knowledge, I didn’t ask anybody whether it was reported,’ Karrh said of the birth defects data.”

The study will look for a number of potential links involving C8; however, cancer and heart disease are of the greatest concern. Those results may take up to four years to report. Each sample taken from the test subjects is tested for the presence of C8 and for organ function.

While the EPA declared that the settlement "sends a strong message that companies are responsible for promptly giving EPA risk information associated with their chemicals;" DuPont has not admitted liability and continues to take the position that “there (are) no human health effects that we know about that are caused by PFOA. We've seen nothing."

Thus, with strong evidence against it and a downside risk of over $300 million in civil penalties for failing to report the substantial risks posed by PFOA, DuPont made the prudent business decision of settling the entire EPA case for a total of $16.5 million.

DuPont’s general counsel summed up the company’s position on the settlement by stating: "Frankly, we could have litigated this thing for several years. We wanted to get this thing behind us so we could move forward."

A federal criminal investigation of DuPont’s actions with respect to PFOA is ongoing.

DuPont Settles Charges That It Hid Toxic Risk Data

Thu, 15 Dec 2005 00:00:00 -0800

Chemical giant DuPont Co. will pay the largest administrative fine in the history of the Environmental Protection Agency to settle charges that it hid information for more than 20 years indicating that a compound used to make Teflon poses a substantial threat to human health.

Without admitting any guilt or liability, DuPont has agreed to pay $16.5 million, including a $10.25-million civil fine, to settle a case alleging eight violations of federal laws that require companies to report the toxic dangers of chemicals they manufacture.

Perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, a synthetic compound pioneered by DuPont and used for 50 years, has been found in the blood of 95% of Americans tested. It persists in the environment indefinitely and migrates long distances in the air. Researchers have found it in the blood of polar bears near the North Pole.

"This is the largest civil administrative penalty EPA has ever obtained under any environmental statue. Not by a little, by a lot," EPA Assistant Administrator Granta Y. Nakayama said. "This settlement sends a strong message that companies are responsible for promptly informing EPA about risk information associated with their chemicals."

The maximum potential fine was about $300 million, and environmental organizations, particularly the Environmental Working Group, which filed a petition in 2003 that triggered the EPA investigation, said the penalty amounted to a slap on the wrist for the chemical-manufacturing giant, which reported $27 billion in sales last year.

DuPont executives contend that there is no evidence that the chemical has caused any human health problems in its workers or in the general population after a half-century of use. But EPA officials say the company knew as long ago as 1981 that the chemical built up in human bodies, passed through the womb to fetuses and, in animal tests, caused birth defects.

Wilmington, Del.-based DuPont, the nation's second-largest chemical company, said Wednesday that the settlement "closes this matter for the company without any admission of liability." However, DuPont attorneys said they disagreed with how the EPA interpreted what data must be reported under the Toxic Substances Control Act, the 1976 law that governs toxic chemicals.

"Our interpretation of the reporting requirements differed from the agency's. The settlement allows us to put this matter behind us and move forward," Stacey Mobley, DuPont's senior vice president and general counsel, said in a statement.

PFOA is used in the manufacture of fluoropolymers, including Teflon, at a DuPont plant in Wood County, W.Va. The chemical is considered an essential ingredient in the manufacture of Teflon, which is used not only in nonstick cookware but also in clothing, building materials, bedding and hundreds of other products.

No one knows how PFOA gets into human bodies, but the use of Teflon products is probably not the source, scientists say, because PFOA is removed from finished products during manufacturing. Instead, the chemical is released into the water and air at DuPont plants, and also might be formed by the breakdown of other fluoropolymers, used to make a variety of products including telephone cables and computer chips fire and water-resistant. DuPont said it had reduced PFOA emissions from its U.S. plants by 98%.

In a draft risk assessment unveiled in January, the EPA found "no notable health effects," including no elevated cancer rate, among DuPont workers exposed to PFOA. But in tests on laboratory animals, the EPA reported links to liver and testicular cancer, reduced weight of newborns and immune suppression.

The reporting provisions that DuPont was accused of violating are designed to be an "early warning system" to let the EPA know about "chemicals that may pose a risk to workers, the public and the environment," said Susan Hazen, the EPA's principal deputy assistant administrator for the Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances.

The allegations against DuPont stem from internal company memos obtained by lawyers for Ohio River Valley residents whose drinking water was contaminated with PFOA at the West Virginia factory. DuPont last year agreed to pay as much as $342 million to the residents to settle their case.

DuPont's memos show that the company was aware in 1981 of a study conducted by 3M Co. that showed PFOA was toxic to newborn rats, killing some and causing eye and facial defects.

The company found PFOA in the bloodstream of its female workers and at least one of their fetuses in 1981. The chemical was also detected in a 2-year-old child, EPA officials said. The company in 1981 moved female employees out of areas where the chemical was being used and told them to consult doctors before becoming pregnant but it did not inform the EPA.

Nakayama said the EPA should have been told "because it was the first and only information about potential human transfer and levels of PFOA in children."

DuPont also learned in the mid-1980s that the chemical had contaminated the water supply of 30,000 Ohio River Valley residents but did not report it, the EPA said.

EPA officials alleged that DuPont continued to fail to disclose information as recently as 2004, after the company already had been charged with four violations. Four more violations were added last year.

In the consent agreement filed Wednesday, DuPont said it agreed to the settlement "to avoid unnecessary business disruption and to avoid the necessity of litigation," and that it was not conceding any facts in the case or interpretations of the toxics law.

Environmental activists were upset that DuPont executives did not apologize or admit responsibility.

"What we've heard instead is a company lawyer dismissing the settlement as nothing more than business as usual, with no expression of having failed its obligation as a corporate citizen," Environmental Working Group President Ken Cook said.

Of the $16.5 million, DuPont agreed to spend $6.25 million on environmental projects, including $1.25 million for a "green chemistry" program in West Virginia schools designed to reduce chemical risks in school science laboratories. A three-year, $5-million project will investigate whether nine of DuPont's fluorotelomer products break down to form PFOA. That may help determine how the chemical winds up in human bodies.

The fine was the largest for a case handled as an EPA administrative matter rather than filed in a federal court. The EPA had the authority to impose a fine of $25,000 to $27,500 a day for each violation, or $313 million. Community activists in the Ohio Valley and national environmental groups had urged the EPA to fine DuPont at least a year of Teflon profits about $200 million.

The EPA is studying whether to restrict use of PFOA, an action that the agency has rarely taken against an existing industrial chemical.

DuPont Fined More Than $10M Over Teflon

Tue, 13 Dec 2005 00:00:00 -0800

DuPont Co. has agreed to pay $10.25 million in fines and $6.25 million for environmental projects to settle allegations by the Environmental Protection Agency that the company hid information about the dangers of a toxic chemical used to make the non-stick coating Teflon, officials said Wednesday.

EPA officials said the settlement represents the largest civil administrative penalty the agency has ever obtained under any federal environmental statute.

"Frankly, we could have litigated this thing for several years," said DuPont general counsel Stacey Mobley. "We wanted to get this thing behind us so we could move forward."

The settlement involves EPA action taken against Dupont for allegedly withholding information about the potential health and environmental risks posed by perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, under provisions of both the Toxic Substances Control Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

The EPA alleged that DuPont withheld information for more than 20 years about the health effects of PFOA, also known as C-8, and about the pollution of water supplies near the company's Washington Works plant near Parkersburg, W.Va.

Among other things, the EPA said that DuPont withheld test results indicating that the chemical had been found in at least one pregnant worker from the Washington Works plant and had been passed on to her fetus.

"This sends a strong message that companies are responsible for promptly giving EPA risk information associated with their chemicals," said Granta Nakayama, EPA's assistant administrator for enforcement and compliance.

The supplemental environmental projects involved in the settlement include funding for a research program to evaluate the potential for biodegradation of chemicals such as PFOA and funding for microchemistry and green chemistry programs in West Virginia schools.

Susan Hazen, EPA's principal deputy assistant administrator for the Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances said the studies should produce valuable information that will help scientists better understand the presence of PFOA "and any potential risks it poses to the public."

Lawyers for DuPont and EPA told an administrative law judge Nov. 23 that they had reached a final agreement, but details were not released until Wednesday.

The settlement, which must be approved by the EPA Environmental Appeals Board, resolves four counts of reporting violations filed by the EPA last year. Four additional counts raised by the agency this year also were resolved, according to DuPont, which did not make any admission of liability.

"To date there is no human health effects that we know about that are caused by PFOA . We've seen nothing," Mobley said.

Under federal law, DuPont faced a potential fine of more than $300 million for not reporting that the chemical posed a substantial risk of injury to health or the environment.

"Our interpretation of the reporting requirements differed from the agency's. The settlement allows us to put this matter behind us and move forward," said Mobley, who noted that the company has cut PFOA emissions from U.S. plant sites by 98 percent and hopes to reduce emissions even further by 2007.

DuPont, which previously set aside $15 million to cover the costs of the EPA lawsuit, still faces a federal criminal investigation of its actions concerning PFOA.

In February, the company agreed to pay more than $107 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed in 2001 by Ohio and West Virginia residents who claimed that DuPont intentionally withheld and misrepresented information about the human health threat posed by PFOA.

The EPA is continuing its risk assessment process for PFOA. In a draft report released in June, the majority of members on a scientific advisory board that reviewed the EPA's draft risk assessment concluded that the chemical is "likely" to be carcinogenic to humans. That finding went beyond the EPA's own determination that there was only "suggestive evidence" from animal studies that perfluorooctanoic acid and its salts are potential human carcinogens.

DuPont Settles With EPA Over Teflon Chemical

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 00:00:00 -0800

Federal regulators have reached an agreement with DuPont (DD) to settle allegations the company hid information about the dangers of a toxic chemical known as C8 used in the manufacture of Teflon.

Lawyers for DuPont and the Environmental Protection Agency told an administrative law judge on Nov. 23 that they had reached a final agreement, but needed more time to put together the paperwork. Judge Barbara A. Gunning then gave the parties until Jan. 13 to file the formal agreement.

"The request for additional time is to accommodate EPA's procedural rules which require the Environmental Appeals Board to review and approve any settlement reached by the parties," the EPA said Tuesday in a statement.

Officials from both the EPA and DuPont refused to release terms of the deal.

"We are not commenting on that particular issue at this time," said Robin Ollis, spokeswoman for DuPont Co.'s Washington Works plant south of Parkersburg, W.Va.

The EPA alleged that DuPont for 20 years covered up important information about C8's health effects and about the pollution of water supplies near the company's Washington Works plant.

Under federal law, DuPont could face civil fines of more than $300 million for not reporting information that showed C8 posed "substantial risk of injury to health or the environment." The company has set aside $15 million to cover the costs of the lawsuit, according to corporate disclosures filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

DuPont also faces a federal criminal investigation of its actions concerning C8 pollution, the company has told shareholders. Since May, DuPont and the EPA repeatedly have said they were close to a settlement in the civil case, but had one item left to resolve. They would not identify that item.

DuPont has maintained that C8, also known as perfluorooctanoic acid or PFOA, has no negative health effects. In February, DuPont settled a class-action lawsuit for $107.6 million brought by Ohio and West Virginia residents in 2001, alleging the Wilmington, Del.-based company intentionally withheld and misrepresented information concerning the nature and extent of the human health threat posed by C8.

The EPA in July 2004 filed a complaint that alleged DuPont had caused "widespread contamination" of drinking water supplies near its Washington Works plant. The EPA also alleged DuPont never told the government the company had water tests that showed C8 in residential supplies in concentrations greater than the company's own internal limit.

The EPA alleged DuPont withheld the results of a test showing that at least one pregnant worker from the Washington Works plant had transferred the chemical from her body to her fetus. That information, the EPA said, supported animal tests showing that C8 "moves across the placental barrier."

The EPA said that agency efforts to understand C8's health effects "might have been more expeditious" if DuPont had submitted the human test results in 1981.

Whistleblower Questions Teflon's Safety

Fri, 18 Nov 2005 00:00:00 -0800

To prevent grease stains on fast food and pizza boxes, microwave popcorn bags, candy bar wrappers and hundreds of other food items, the paper is coated with a chemical that's part of the Teflon family made by DuPont.

Now ABC News has learned that the Food and Drug Administration has opened an investigation into its safety, based on new information and the testimony of a DuPont whistleblower.

Glen Evers, a senior engineer at DuPont for 22 years, says the company has tried to hide the fact that the chemical coating on food wrappers comes off and ends up in humans in far greater concentrations that originally approved.

"You don't see it, you don't feel it," Evers said. "You can't taste it. But when you open that bag, and you start dipping your French fries in there, you are extracting fluorchemical and you're eating it."

The chemicals go into your body, which is "a very bad thing," Evers added.

"It bioaccumulates, which means the chemical goes into the blood and it stays there for a very long period of time," he said.

A recent government study found that the chemical is now in the blood of 96 percent of all Americans.

But Evers says the company refused to listen to his pleas they discontinue the chemical's use on food wrapping.

"DuPont thinks that they have pollution rights to the blood of every American, every man, woman and child in the United States," Evers said.

A DuPont memo from 1987, obtained by the Environmental Working Group reveals test results that the chemical was coming off at three times what the FDA allowed.

"The documents that we are sending now to the FDA show that this is a pattern of cover-up and suppression," said Tim Kroop of the Environmental Working Group. Evers says he was pushed out of the company for his stand and he has now told what he knows under oath in a lawsuit being brought against DuPont. He says he is ashamed he waited so long to talk.

"You have to ask for forgiveness for things, excuse me, for the things that you've done and you haven't done," he said. "I couldn't take it. I had to confess it to my priest and my priest said me, 'You just can't dance with the devil. You just have to do something.' "

DuPont has denied allegations that the chemical posed a health risk, saying FDA has approved the products for consumer use.

"These products are safe for consumer use," the company said in a statement. "FDA has approved these materials for consumer use since the late 1960s, and DuPont has always complied with all FDA regulations and standards regarding these products."

The company said Evers "had little if any direct involvement in PFOA issues while employed at DuPont. Evers expressed a wide range of personal opinions that are inaccurate, counter to FDA's findings, and which DuPont strongly disputes."

DuPont told "GMA" that Evers lost his job because of corporate restructuring, and not for his views.

Major Study Warns People to Avoid Drinking Water Tainted with Teflon-Related Chemical

Mon, 22 Aug 2005 00:00:00 -0700

The lead researcher in a major government-funded study, Dr. Edward Emmett, a University of Pennsylvania scientist, has advised Ohio Valley residents to avoid drinking water contaminated with DuPont’s toxic chemical C8.

The independent study, funded through a four-year Environmental Justice Partnership grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, is a collaboration between scientists at University of Pennsylvania’s school of medicine, the Decatur Community Association in Cutler, Ohio, and a local physician affiliated with Grand Central Family Medicine in Parkersburg, West Virginia.

Dr. Emmett also stated that the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection’s so-called safe limit for C8 in drinking water, 150 parts per billion, needs to be changed.

While the study did not find a link between the levels of C8 found in Parkersburg area drinking water and diseases of the liver, kidney, or thyroid, it did not examine C8 as a potential to cause cancer or developmental problems in children. Both have been linked to C8 exposure in rat studies.

In July, Emmett reported the study had found that residents who depend on C8-contaminated drinking water have 60 to 80 times more C8 in their blood than found in the general U.S. population.

He suggested that residents of the affected communities should switch to bottled water until long-term water treatment funded by DuPont is installed at local treatment plants. DuPont has agreed to finance the bottled water program.

For the past two years, there has been a growing concern over the safety of the manmade chemical known as C8 or PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) which can be found in everything from bread to birds, green beans to ground beef, dolphins to drinking water, and in the blood of up to 96% of the population of the United States.

The acid is used to manufacture Teflon coating for cookware and hundreds of other products like telephone cables, carpets, clothing, computer chips, chemical piping, and automobile fuel systems.

Since there are no known “natural” sources of C8, scientists are curious as to how the chemical enters the environment. C8 has also contaminated the groundwater in areas where Teflon is manufactured.

DuPont, which also pioneered the development of PFOA and continues to dominate its use, claims that the chemical is harmless to humans. It also disputes that C8 is released during normal cooking (as opposed to overheating).

Others are not so sure that either assertion is true. Studies have concluded that C8 is one of several toxic gases released by Teflon when it is heated to temperatures which, at their low end, are only slightly above normal cooking temperatures.

C8 has been shown to cause tumors in rats and fumes from Teflon coated cookware can cause what is known as “polymer fume fever,” a condition which has been shown to kill birds even at low temperatures but which DuPont claims is harmless to humans if the cookware is used at a temperature of up to 500F. When Teflon is overheated (above 700F), fatal cases of polymer fume fever in humans have occurred (at 842F).

Last August, DuPont agreed to pay up to $343 million in settlement of a class action arising out of the contamination of drinking water in Ohio and West Virginia linked to its plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia.

Of that amount, most of the $107 million to be paid for damages to the water supply of some 50,000 people living near the plant will be used to fund a detailed scientific review and a landmark community health study with respect to the dangers posed by C8. Up to another $235 million is to be set aside for future medical monitoring if the studies find C8 can make people sick.

The company also announced that it plans to dramatically decrease the use of PFOA in Teflon coatings by the end of 2006. With these announcements, DuPont hoped the worst was over for its lucrative Teflon business which nets a reported $200 million in profit a year.

In 2005, however, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stated that tests on laboratory animals linked PFOA to liver, pancreatic, and testicular cancer, reduced birth weight, birth defects, and immune suppression.

The EPA also found that elevated cholesterol and triglycerides were a risk of exposure to C8. As a result, the EPA stated that low-level exposure to PFOA could pose a “potential risk of developmental and other adverse effects” in humans.

Earlier this year, the EPA released a draft assessment of a chemical used in the production of Teflon which, based on animal studies, found “suggestive evidence” that the substance may be a human carcinogen.

In May, the Justice Department has issued grand jury subpoenas seeking documents from DuPont with respect to PFOA and related chemical compounds. The suspicion is that DuPont withheld critical information concerning possible health risks posed by PFOA.

A 1961 internal document indicated that DuPont scientists had already warned company executives to avoid human contact with PFOA. DuPont faces more than $300 million in fines if it is found guilty of withholding such information.

Even DuPont’s shareholders are now demanding that the company fully disclose all legal and expert fees, media and lobbying expenses related to PFOA.

Dupont is attempting to settle the EPA claim and has set aside $15 million for that purpose. To date, however, no agreement has been finalized.

Then, earlier this month, a draft report released by an independent EPA scientific advisory board which reviewed the earlier EPA assessment and which will now be submitted to the EPA, concluded that PFOA (C8) is “likely” to be a human carcinogen and, as a result, the EPA should conduct cancer risk assessments for a variety of tumors found in rats and mice exposed to it.

This latest finding is seen by environmental advocacy groups as significant since it will increase the pressure on the EPA to conduct human health risk assessments for a variety of cancers as well as potential toxic effects on the human immune system.

Another startling revelation was reported in the Charleston Gazette on July 10. According to an April 2004 sworn statement by Dr. Bruce Karrh, DuPont’s former medical director, the company found similar birth defects in two of eight children born to women who worked at the Parkersburg chemical plant 25 years ago.

According to the Charleston Gazette article: “A DuPont researcher said the number was ‘significantly greater’ than the expected rate of birth defects in the general population. In April 1981, the researcher proposed that DuPont do a detailed study to determine if exposure to the toxic chemical C8 was to blame.

Three months later, DuPont officials dropped the study, a former top corporate doctor has testified. Dupont officials also decided not to report its preliminary findings to federal regulators, according to the testimony, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. ‘To my knowledge, it was never reported to EPA, and, to my knowledge, I didn’t ask anybody whether it was reported,’ Karrh said of the birth defects data.”

Finally (for now), two Florida law firms filed class-action lawsuits on July 19, charging DuPont with concealing the potential health hazards associated with Teflon nonstick cookware coatings. The lawsuits were filed in a number of federal district courts.

The relief being sought includes monetary damages to class members, the creation of a fund for medical monitoring of consumers who have bought and used products containing Teflon, and placing warning labels on Teflon coated cookware.

Although DuPont announced it intends to “vigorously defend itself against the allegations in the lawsuit,” the mounting problems for Teflon (and C8) may no longer be of the nonstick variety.

The independent study results would also seem to indicate that anyone living in an area with high levels of C8 in the available water supply should make every effort to avoid drinking it.

Safety of Nonstick Cookware Unresolved

Wed, 17 Aug 2005 00:00:00 -0700

After more than two years of study by the federal government, questions concerning the safety of nonstick cookware remain unresolved.

Consumers should be aware of the controversy and consider whether they want to take steps to limit possible harm while the science is being sorted out. The questions center around a man-made chemical called perfluoroctanoic acid, PFOA for short. PFOA is used in the production of Teflon and other nonstick-coated cookware and water, grease- and stain-repellent products used in carpet, fabric, paper, leather and other goods.

I first wrote on this topic in this column almost two years ago. The issue at that time had taken on urgency because the Environmental Protection Agency had determined that PFOA:

• Is persistent in the environment and continues to build up as more is produced.

• Is present in the blood of up to 90 percent of Americans.

• May cause cancer and other problems, including liver damage and birth defects, in laboratory animals.

The EPA two years ago launched an expedited review of the scientific data concerning risks PFOA may pose to human health. The agency found there was "suggestive evidence" that PFOA causes cancer in humans.

But an independent EPA scientific advisory board in June concluded the association was stronger and that PFOA was a "likely" cancer-causing agent in humans.

Industry representatives point out that consumer goods produced in processes that use PFOA don't necessarily still contain the chemical. But scientists have found that nonstick coatings can chemically break down when heated, creating and releasing PFOA into food and the environment. The EPA has not yet finalized its report and recommendations on the risks.

Any risks, though, may extend well beyond nonstick pots and pans. The Food and Drug Administration has begun a preliminary investigation into the migration of PFOA into food heated in coated paper packaging, such as that used for microwave popcorn, pizza boxes and french fry containers. A spokesman for the FDA told The New York Times last month, however, that it's too early to declare coated food packaging a safety risk.

Where does this leave consumers?

You have two choices. The first: Wait and see. This is the advice of the EPA. (The agency answers basic questions about PFOA online at http://www.epa.gov/opptintr/pfoa/pfoainfo.htm.)

However, you may opt to err on the side of caution and take some steps now to lessen potential exposure to PFOA:

• Set aside your nonstick pots and pans and use stainless steel or cast iron cookware instead.

• If you use nonstick cookware, you should not let it sit on a burner without adding food or liquid. Leaving empty pots and pans on a heat source may allow cookware to get hot enough to release PFOA.

• If you use nonstick cookware, avoid high temperatures. Use low or medium heat settings instead.

The Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit consumer and research organization, also recommends limiting consumption of foods packaged in wrappers or containers coated to keep grease from soaking through. (More consumer tips from the Environmental Working Group can be found online at http://www.ewg.org/reports/pfcworld/part10.php.)

The final word on PFOA and the safety of nonstick pans and pizza boxes isn't likely to come any time soon. Even if additional studies confirm that PFOA poses a substantial risk to human health, ridding it from our lives and environment would be difficult: It's already everywhere, even in the blood of polar bears living in the Arctic.

DuPont Far From Being Out of the Frying Pan with Respect to Its Teflon-Related Problems

Mon, 25 Jul 2005 00:00:00 -0700

Teflon has become so accepted as an everyday product that the word itself has become an adjective. Like “Scotch” tape (instead of cellophane tape) and “Xerox” copies (instead of photo static copies) before it, Teflon has been associated with people who seem to be able to escape blame or negative publicity as in the cases of John Gotti, the “Teflon” Don, and Ronald Reagan, the “Teflon” President.

Unfortunately for E.I. DuPont de Nemours Co., the chemical giant that invented Teflon 50 years ago, the nonstick nature of the product does not seem to be protecting the company from a steadily-growing mountain of evidence, litigation, studies, and investigations calling Teflon’s safety into question.

For the past two years, there has been a growing concern over the safety of the manmade chemical known as C8 or PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) which can be found in everything from bread to birds, green beans to ground beef, dolphins to drinking water, and in the blood of up to 96% of the population of the United States.

The acid is used to manufacture Teflon coating for cookware and hundreds of other products like telephone cables, carpets, clothing, computer chips, chemical piping, and automobile fuel systems. Since there are no known “natural” sources of C8, scientists are curious as to how the chemical enters the environment. C8 has also contaminated the groundwater in areas where Teflon is manufactured.

DuPont, which also pioneered the development of PFOA and continues to dominate its use, claims that the chemical is harmless to humans. It also disputes that C8 is released during normal cooking (as opposed to overheating).

Others are not so sure that either assertion is true. Studies have concluded that C8 is one of several toxic gases released by Teflon when it is heated to temperatures which, at their low end, are only slightly above normal cooking temperatures.

C8 has been shown to cause tumors in rats and fumes from Teflon coated cookware can cause what is known as “polymer fume fever,” a condition which has been shown to kill birds even at low temperatures but which DuPont claims is harmless to humans if the cookware is used at a temperature of up to 500F. When Teflon is overheated (above 700F), fatal cases of polymer fume fever in humans have occurred (at 842F).

Last August, DuPont agreed to pay up to $343 million in settlement of a class action arising out of the contamination of drinking water in Ohio and West Virginia linked to its plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia.

Of that amount, most of the $107 million to be paid for damages to the water supply of some 50,000 people living near the plant will be used to fund a detailed scientific review and a landmark community health study with respect to the dangers posed by C8. Up to another $235 million is to be set aside for future medical monitoring if the studies find C8 can make people sick.

The company also announced that it plans to dramatically decrease the use of PFOA in Teflon coatings by the end of 2006.

With these announcements, DuPont hoped the worst was over for its lucrative Teflon business which nets a reported $200 million in profit a year.

In 2005, however, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stated that tests on laboratory animals linked PFOA to liver, pancreatic, and testicular cancer, reduced birth weight, birth defects, and immune suppression.
The EPA also found that elevated cholesterol and triglycerides were a risk of exposure to C8. As a result, the EPA stated that low-level exposure to PFOA could pose a “potential risk of developmental and other adverse effects” in humans.

Earlier this year, the EPA released a draft assessment of a chemical used in the production of Teflon which, based on animal studies, found “suggestive evidence” that the substance may be a human carcinogen.
In May, the Justice Department has issued grand jury subpoenas seeking documents from DuPont with respect to PFOA and related chemical compounds. The suspicion is that DuPont withheld critical information concerning possible health risks posed by PFOA.

A 1961 internal document indicated that DuPont scientists had already warned company executives to avoid human contact with PFOA. DuPont faces more than $300 million in fines if it is found guilty of withholding such information.

Even DuPont’s shareholders are now demanding that the company fully disclose all legal and expert fees, media and lobbying expenses related to PFOA.

Dupont is attempting to settle the EPA claim and has set aside $15 million for that purpose. To date, however, no agreement has been finalized.

Then, earlier this month, a draft report released by an independent EPA scientific advisory board which reviewed the earlier EPA assessment and which will now be submitted to the EPA, concluded that PFOA (C8) is “likely” to be a human carcinogen and, as a result, the EPA should conduct cancer risk assessments for a variety of tumors found in rats and mice exposed to it.

This latest finding is seen by environmental advocacy groups as significant since it will increase the pressure on the EPA to conduct human health risk assessments for a variety of cancers as well as potential toxic effects on the human immune system.

Another startling revelation was reported in the Charleston Gazette on July 10. According to an April 2004 sworn statement by Dr. Bruce Karrh, DuPont’s former medical director, the company found similar birth defects in two of eight children born to women who worked at the Parkersburg chemical plant 25 years ago.

According to the Charleston Gazette article: “A DuPont researcher said the number was ‘significantly greater’ than the expected rate of birth defects in the general population. In April 1981, the researcher proposed that DuPont do a detailed study to determine if exposure to the toxic chemical C8 was to blame. Three months later, DuPont officials dropped the study, a former top corporate doctor has testified.

Dupont officials also decided not to report its preliminary findings to federal regulators, according to the testimony, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act…‘To my knowledge, it was never reported to EPA, and, to my knowledge, I didn’t ask anybody whether it was reported,’ Karrh said of the birth defects data.”

Finally (for now), two Florida law firms filed class-action lawsuits on July 19, charging DuPont with concealing the potential health hazards associated with Teflon nonstick cookware coatings. The lawsuits were filed in a number of federal district courts.

The relief being sought includes monetary damages to class members, the creation of a fund for medical monitoring of consumers who have bought and used products containing Teflon, and placing warning labels on Teflon coated cookware.

Although DuPont announced it intends to “vigorously defend itself against the allegations in the lawsuit,” the mounting problems for Teflon (and C8) may no longer be of the nonstick variety.

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (EPA) INDEPENDENT REVIEW BOARD SEES CANCER RISK ASSOCIATED WITH TEFLON MANUFACTURING CHEMICAL AS BEING MORE SERIOUS THAN INDICATED IN EARLIER EPA REPORT

Wed, 29 Jun 2005 00:00:00 -0700

Earlier this year, the EPA released a draft assessment of a chemical used in the production of Teflon which, based on animal studies, found “suggestive evidence” that the substance may be a human carcinogen.
For the past two years, there has been a growing concern over the safety of the manmade chemical known as C-8 or PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) which can be found in everything from bread to birds, green beans to ground beef, dolphins to drinking water, and in the blood of up to 96% of the population of the United States.

The acid is used to manufacture Teflon coating for cookware and hundreds of other products like telephone cables, carpets, clothing, computer chips, chemical piping, and automobile fuel systems. Since there are no known “natural” sources of C-8, scientists are curious as to how the chemical enters the environment. C-8 has also contaminated the groundwater in areas where Teflon is manufactured.

DuPont, which pioneered the development of PFOA and continues to dominate its use, claims that the chemical is harmless to humans. It also disputes that C-8 is released during normal cooking (as opposed to overheating).
Others are not so sure that either assertion is true. Studies have concluded that C-8 is one of several toxic gases released by Teflon when it is heated to temperatures which, at their low end, are only slightly above normal cooking temperatures.

C-8 has been shown to cause tumors in rats and fumes from Teflon coated cookware can cause what is known as “polymer fume fever,” a condition which has been shown to kill birds even at low temperatures but which DuPont claims is harmless to humans if the cookware is used at a temperature of up to 500F. When Teflon is overheated (above 700F), fatal cases of polymer fume fever in humans have occurred (at 842F).
In 2005, however, the Environmental Protection Agency stated that tests on laboratory animals linked PFOA to liver, pancreatic, and testicular cancer, reduced birth weight, birth defects, and immune suppression. The EPA also found that elevated cholesterol and triglycerides were a risk of exposure to C-8.

As a result, the EPA stated that low-level exposure to PFOA could pose a “potential risk of developmental and other adverse effects” in humans. DuPont also agreed to pay up to $343 million in settlement of a class action arising out of the contamination of drinking water in Ohio and West Virginia and plans to dramatically decrease the use of PFOA in Teflon coatings by the end of 2006.

In May, the Justice Department has issued grand jury subpoenas seeking documents from DuPont with respect to PFOA and related chemical compounds. The suspicion is that DuPont withheld critical information concerning possible health risks posed by PFOA.

A 1961internal document indicated that DuPont scientists had already warned company executives to avoid human contact with PFOA. DuPont faces more than $300 million in fines if it is found guilty of withholding such information. Even DuPont’s shareholders are now demanding that the company fully disclose all legal and expert fees, media and lobbying expenses related to PFOA.

Dupont is attempting to settle the EPA claim for some $15 million, but no agreement has been finalized.
Now, however, the complexion of the entire issue has changed as a result of a draft report released by an independent EPA scientific advisory board which reviewed the earlier EPA assessment. The new report, which will now be submitted to the EPA, concluded that PFOA (C-8) is “likely” to be a human carcinogen and, as a result, the EPA should conduct cancer risk assessments for a variety of tumors found in rats and mice exposed to it.

This latest finding is seen by environmental advocacy groups as significant since it will increase the pressure on the EPA to conduct human health risk assessments for a variety of cancers as well as potential toxic effects on the human immune system .

Teflon Controversy Heating Up

Mon, 23 May 2005 00:00:00 -0700

For the past two years, there has been a growing concern over the safety of the manmade chemical known as C-8 or PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) which can be found in everything from bread to birds, green beans to ground beef, dolphins to drinking water, and in the blood of up to 96% of the population of the United States. The acid is used to manufacture Teflon coating for cookware and hundreds of other products like telephone cables, carpets, clothing, computer chips, chemical piping, and automobile fuel systems. Since there are no known "natural" sources of C-8, scientists are curious as to how the chemical enters the environment. C-8 has also contaminated the groundwater in areas where Teflon is manufactured.

DuPont, which pioneered the development of PFOA and continues to dominate its use, claims that the chemical is harmless to humans. It also disputes that C-8 is released during normal cooking (as opposed to overheating). Others are not so sure that either assertion is true.

Studies have concluded that C-8 is one of several toxic gases released by Teflon when it is heated to temperatures which, at their low end, are only slightly above normal cooking temperatures. C-8 has been shown to cause tumors in rats and fumes from Teflon coated cookware can cause what is known as "polymer fume fever," a condition which has been shown to kill birds even at low temperatures but which DuPont claims is harmless to humans if the cookware is used at a temperature of up to 500F. When Teflon is overheated (above 700F), fatal cases of polymer fume fever in humans have occurred (at 842F). In 2005, however, the Environmental Protection Agency stated that tests on laboratory animals linked PFOA to liver, pancreatic, and testicular cancer, reduced birth weight, birth defects, and immune suppression.

The EPA also found that elevated cholesterol and triglycerides were a risk of exposure to C-8. As a result, the EPA stated that low-level exposure to PFOA could pose a "potential risk of developmental and other adverse effects" in humans. DuPont also agreed to a $343 million settlement of a class action arising out of the contamination of drinking water in Ohio and West Virginia and plans to dramatically decrease the use of PFOA in Teflon coatings by the end of 2006. Now, the Justice Department has issued grand jury subpoenas seeking documents from DuPont with respect to PFOA and related chemical compounds. The suspicion is that DuPont withheld critical information concerning possible health risks posed by PFOA.

A 1961 internal document indicated that DuPont scientists had already warned company executives to avoid human contact with PFOA. DuPont faces more than $300 million in fines if it is found guilty of withholding such information. Even DuPonts shareholders are now demanding that the company fully disclose all legal and expert fees, media and lobbying expenses related to PFOA.

Justice Department Subpoenas Documents From DuPont on Teflon Chemical

Fri, 20 May 2005 00:00:00 -0700

Del. Chemical giant DuPont is facing a criminal investigation into its use of a controversial chemical in the manufacture of Teflon.

The company says it's been subpoenaed by the Justice Department which is seeking documents about the dangers of an acid called P-F-O-A.

DuPont maintains the substance is harmless. The acid is used to manufacture Teflon coatings for cookware, along with products like car fuel systems, clothing, phone cables and firefighting foam.

The Environmental Protection Agency is seeking (m) millions of dollars in fines against Dupont for alleged violations involving the chemical. The agency says P-F-O-A could pose "a potential risk of developmental and other adverse effects."

Dupont recently agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit in West Virginia over water contamination.

Lawsuit: C8 in Water Scuttled $36m Parkersburg Plant Deal

Fri, 13 May 2005 00:00:00 -0700

A $36 million deal to build a frozen food plant in Parkersburg and employ up to 600 people fell apart because the plant's proposed water supply is possibly contaminated by a chemical used to make Teflon, a lawsuit contends.

Luigino's Inc. has sued the West Virginia Economic Development Authority over the scuttled 2002 agreement that would have landed a 180,000 square foot processing and distribution facility at the Parkersburg Business Park.

The Minnestota-based frozen food maker contends the agency breached the agreement by failing to reveal that a class-action lawsuit had raised warnings over the presence of perfluorooctanoic acid, known as PFOA or C8, in the local water supply.

C8 causes cancer in laboratory animals and lingers in the environment. Intensive government and industry studies are under way to determine if exposure increases human cancers, reproductive problems or other health disorders.

After discovering the allegations on its own, the "stigma of significant contamination" forced Luigino's to cancel its plans, the lawsuit said.

"Luigino's would have been using hundreds of thousands of gallons of potentially contaminated water each day for the production of frozen food," the lawsuit said. "Given the contamination and litigation associated with the area, distributors and retailers would have been justified in refusing to carry Luigino's food products."

WVEDA Executive Director David Warner was not available for comment Thursday. Luigino's lawsuit was filed in Monongalia County Circuit Court late last month, and alleges breach of contract, negligent and fraudulent omissions and professional negligence among its causes of action. It alleges it spent $2.5 million before backing out of the agreement, and seeks additional damages as well.

The class-action targeting C8, filed in 2001, blamed DuPont for the possible contamination. C8 is a key ingredient in Teflon, and DuPont produces the nonstick coating at its Washington Works plant.

Without admitting any liability, DuPont agreed to settle the class-action in September. Approved by a judge in February, the agreement has DuPont providing $10 million in new treatment equipment to six local water utilities and funding a $5 million independent study on C8's effect on people. DuPont could spend another $235 million on a program to monitor the health of residents exposed to the chemical.

Last month, DuPont agreed to resolve a complaint by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency alleging the company failed to disclose health data about C8. Some of the EPA charges focused on the company's handling of a finding in 1981 that the chemical had jumped from the blood of a pregnant female employee to her unborn child.

When it nixed its agreement with the WVEDA in March 2003, Luigino's said it "has sufficient capacity while this project remains on hold to meet its current and anticipated production needs." It later reported flat sales for 2002, after several years of strong growth.

Du Pont, 3M to Cut Nonstick Chemical

Wed, 16 Mar 2005 00:00:00 -0800

DuPont and 3M, makers of Teflon and Scotchgard, will remove a key ingredient used to make nonstick and stain-resistant products that also contaminates our bodies and the global environment.

The move away from the chemical, known as PFOA, affects just a small fraction of DuPont's and 3M's business and won't take effect until the end of 2006. The compound, being studied by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a potential carcinogen, will still be used in other consumer and industrial products.

"It's a small part of our sales," DuPont spokesman

R. Clifton Webb said Tuesday. "We're taking this step not because of any concerns about health, but certainly because of the perception of PFOA in the environment."

PFOA, or perfluorooctanoic acid, is found in almost all our blood in minute concentrations, with a median exposure of near 5 ppb in the United States. A martini mixed at that concentration would have 5 drops of vermouth in a rail tank car of gin.

The compound is crucial in the manufacture of a class of extremely durable and expensive industrial plastics, electrical wires and cables, power and chemical-plant pipe liners, even firefighting foam.

It's also necessary for such well-known brands as Teflon, Silverstone and Stainmaster. The switch applies only to plastics that get sprayed and then baked onto a product, such as Teflon cookware.

Other plastics, such as those used to make fabrics stain resistant and to coat wires and line pipes, would be unaffected.

"It's a step forward, but it's an incomplete step," said Tim Kropp, a toxicologist with Environmental Working Group, which is tracking PFOA contamination.

"They're starting to have to take this seriously because the EPA and the science shows it's a serious problem. It's unacceptable to have a chemical with the type of health effects (PFOA) does in more than 95 percent of people's blood."

Laboratory studies link PFOA exposure to mammary, testicular and pancreatic cancer, Kropp said, and scientists have found no dose in lab animals that doesn't suppress the immune system. DuPont notes that a study of 1,024 PFOA workers found almost no ill effects.

DuPont and 3M both say virtually all PFOA is destroyed during manufacture. Scientists do not understand how it contaminates the environment, though one hypothesis suggests that as such products break down, the chemicals revert back to PFOA.

"It signals a gradual sea-change," said Kropp said of industry's move. "But it really doesn't answer the larger global questions of how it got into everybody's blood."

DuPont To Cut Use of C-8 for Teflon

Tue, 15 Mar 2005 00:00:00 -0800

The DuPont Co. plans to reduce the amount of a controversial chemical, used to make Teflon, that is believed to be in the blood of most people.

Perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, will be largely replaced in Teflon coatings and other paint-like formulations by the end of 2006, said George H. Senkler Jr., managing director of technology for DuPont fluoroproducts.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is studying how PFOA, also known as C-8, becomes pervasive in the environment and whether it poses a risk to human health.

The Fluoropolymer Manufacturers Group - composed of DuPont and three other companies - has agreed in principle to reduce PFOA content in these formulations by at least 90 percent by the end of 2006, using 2000 as a base year. DuPont has been discussing such a reduction with the EPA for several months. The agreement by the manufacturers' group was struck at a meeting Feb. 9 but was not widely reported by the media.

Only about 15 percent of the PFOA used to make fluoropolymers is used for coatings, according to the manufacturing group. Plans have not been announced to reduce the amount of PFOA used to make other products, such as wire coatings.

The PFOA will be replaced by a new ingredient that does not contain fluorine, DuPont spokesman R. Clifton Webb said.

DuPont is the world's largest producer of fluoropolymers, used in nonstick cookware, electrical coatings, computer chip processing and stain-resistant carpeting.

DuPont also will reformulate another product known as fluorotelomers, Senkler said. No further details on DuPont's plans with fluorotelomers were available Monday. Fluorotelomers are used to make fabrics stain-resistant and in fast-food packaging and textile products.

Jane Houlihan, a vice president at the Environmental Working Group, a DuPont critic, said the changes won't eliminate the threat to human health. She said consumer products containing fluorotelomers break down and release PFOA, which then enters the bloodstream. DuPont disputes that claim.

"It's good news for the communities around the plant and the workers, but it doesn't help the rest of the world," Houlihan said of the effort to replace PFOA in chemical processing.

PFOA, which can cause cancer in animals, is found in the blood of almost all people at very low levels, the EPA has said. PFOA isn't yet known to make people sick. The EPA is studying how PFOA makes its way into the bloodstream.

DuPont also is reducing PFOA emissions from its plants, and new product formulas are aimed at helping customers reduce emissions, Senkler said.

"We view this largely as dealing with the perception issue of this appearing in people's blood, rather than a health issue," Senkler said.

An EPA advisory panel also is deciding whether to characterize the chemical as having undetermined "carcinogenic potential" or as being a "likely carcinogen," a higher risk assessment.

DuPont believes PFOA does not cause human cancers and asked the panel Wednesday to wait until more studies are presented before making a ruling, DuPont Chief Toxicologist Robert W. Rickard said Monday.

Last month, a West Virginia judge approved a settlement in which DuPont agreed to pay at least $107.6 million to reduce and test for PFOA contamination in community water supplies around DuPont's Washington Works, W.Va., plant. The money will be used to purchase new water-treatment equipment, to pay for an independent study to determine whether PFOA makes people sick and to test for the chemical in human blood.

DuPont Settles Teflon Pollution Lawsuit

Tue, 01 Mar 2005 00:00:00 -0800

DuPont reached a $107.6 million settlement late Monday in a West Virginia lawsuit that took the chemical giant to task for allegedly polluting local drinking water with a chemical used to make Teflon.

The company, which has denied any wrongdoing, said in September it would try to settle the case to avoid lengthy and costly litigation.

The class-action suit was filed against Wilmington, Del.-based DuPont in 2001 after residents near the Washington Water Works in Parkersburg, W.Va., said their drinking water contained traces of perfluorooctanoic acid, also known as PFOA or C-8.

Perfluoroctanoic acid is one of the chemicals that DuPont uses to make Teflon, a non-stick surface coating best known for its use on cookware.

"We are satisfied that this settlement is in the best interests of the persons who are, or were, impacted by exposure to C-8," said Harry Deitzler, a lawyer for DuPont, in a statement released by the company.

DuPont said that as part of the settlement, it has agreed to remove C-8 from local water supplies and establish an independent group of experts to determine whether C-8 exposure is harmful to humans.

If any harmful link is found, DuPont agreed to provide up to $235 million to fund medical monitoring.

Also as part of the settlement, DuPont said it would provide $70 million in cash for a health and education program approved by the court.

Chemical In Non-Stick Cookware Causes Concern

Sun, 27 Feb 2005 00:00:00 -0800

A chemical used in the making of non-stick cookware and many other household products could be making you sick, according to a Local 6 News investigation.

Teflon keeps food from sticking to pots and pans, helps keep clothing stain-resistant and is used in making carpets and furniture.

However, chemicals used to make Teflon are also turning up in people, according to the report.

"It's in the blood of children, it's in the blood of almost 3,000 people tested now," Environmental Working Group spokeswoman Jane Hooligan said. "When Teflon is heated, it begins to break down and it can release toxic gasses and toxic particles."

The Environmental Working Group says the toxic particles can make people sick.

"We're talking about chills, backache, headache, temperature that can last for several days," Hooligan said.

However, FIU chemist Dr. Albert Sabucedo says it's hard to tie the common symptoms.

"You would really have to be right over the pan and it would have to give off particles and you would have to absorb them in your system," Sabucedo said.

Teflon Chemical's Potential Risk Cited

Thu, 13 Jan 2005 00:00:00 -0800

The Environmental Protection Agency said yesterday that low-level exposure to perfluorooctanoic acid, a chemical used to make Teflon, could pose "a potential risk of developmental and other adverse effects" on human health.

The statement, a preliminary assessment of the potential risks associated with the processing agent known as PFOA or C-8, is significant because the agency's final conclusion could determine whether the government decides to regulate the chemical. The EPA is seeking as much as $300 million in fines from chemical giant DuPont Co., which uses C-8 to produce nonstick surfaces and materials, for failing to report its studies of the possible dangers linked to the processing agent.

The EPA report, which is based on animal studies, said there is some evidence C-8 can cause cancer and immune deficiencies in rats, but it does not conclude whether these problems could surface in workers or those who drink C-8 contaminated water.

The EPA also found that the chemical could boost people's levels of cholesterol and fats called triglycerides, which might increase the likelihood of a heart attack or stroke. This conclusion mirrors the finding of a study DuPont issued on Tuesday. That study found no health risks associated with C-8 but identified elevated cholesterol and triglyceride levels in workers exposed to the chemical.

The firm, which is fighting the fine on the grounds that it has submitted all the legally required reports to the EPA, maintains that the chemical does not pose a health risk, and that any increased cholesterol or triglyceride rates will not occur in the general population because of the public's low levels of exposure.

The EPA sent its draft assessment to a scientific advisory board for review. Agency spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman said it may take a year for officials to issue a final C-8 assessment.

"We've not offered any determination of risks," said Charles M. Auer, director of the EPA's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics. "We are asking the advice of science advisory board to assist in making those kind of scientific judgments."

DuPont welcomed the assessment, saying the company "is committed to continue working with the regulatory and scientific communities and others in industry to gain additional understanding of [perfluorooctanoic acid] to assure protection of public health, safety and the environment."

But officials at the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization that first raised questions about possible health risks of C-8, said ordinary Americans are vulnerable and the federal government has failed to fully investigate the issue.

The group's president, Kenneth A. Cook, questioned why the agency did not consider whether humans might be at higher risk of testicular, pancreatic and other cancers that have been linked to the chemical in animal studies.

"There's a big difference between sound science and tilted science, and at every turn in this important process, EPA officials favored DuPont," Cook said. "We don't know if DuPont lobbyists played a role or if these were just agency mistakes. But for those who were expecting a thorough and fair review, this is a huge disappointment."

Next month, DuPont will finalize a settlement for as much as $343 million of a class-action lawsuit accusing it of allowing C-8 to contaminate drinking water in Ohio and West Virginia. An administrative law judge, who held a hearing last month on whether DuPont should pay for failing to fully notify the EPA about studies it had conducted on the chemical, has yet to issue a ruling.

EPA Taps Outside Experts to Solve Teflon Enigma

Thu, 13 Jan 2005 00:00:00 -0800

The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday reported that a chemical used in making Teflon that has been detected in human bodies worldwide could cause cancer and developmental problems. But the chemical, pioneered by DuPont, has raised so many novel scientific questions that the federal agency asked outside experts to help nail down its risks.

The EPA's long-awaited draft risk assessment found "no notable health effects," including no elevated cancer rate, among DuPont workers exposed to the industrial chemical perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA. But in tests on laboratory animals, the EPA reported links to liver and testicular cancer, reduced weight of newborns and immune suppression, which raises the potential for some human health effects too.

The ubiquitous compound, used by DuPont for more than 50 years, has been found in the blood of nearly all people tested in the United States.

The chemical is used in the production of the famous non-stick cookware and hundreds of other products, but it is not found in the products after manufacture, so no one knows why so many people have it in their bloodstreams. The compound is considered essential to making fluoropolymers, which are used not only in cookware but in clothing, telephone cables, carpets, computer chips, chemical piping, car fuel systems and many other consumer and industrial products.

DuPont, one of the world's largest chemical companies, faces charges filed by the EPA last July that it violated federal law by withholding findings for 20 years that showed risks to its factory workers in West Virginia and to the public. The data showed that PFOA can be transferred from women to fetuses and infants and had contaminated drinking water in the Ohio River Valley. The case is pending and the EPA is seeking a penalty of millions of dollars.

Charles Auer, director of the EPA's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, said the agency was "not attempting to offer any final conclusions about the risks of PFOA." Instead, he said, unusual issues concerning the Teflon compound have surfaced, testing the limits of toxicology, so the EPA created a special panel of its Science Advisory Board to explore them.

The questions focus on how to compare the effects found in animals with potential dangers to people. The chemical stays in the human body for years while most of it flushes out of rats' bodies within days. Also, no one knows how much people are exposed to, so it is difficult to evaluate data from animals ingesting specific doses.

Facing such uncertainties, Auer said the EPA could not complete its evaluation of the chemical's risks, the first step toward determining whether its use would be restricted.

An advocacy group, the Environmental Working Group, says that the EPA is playing down the health threats and that its report "tilts toward DuPont." The group contends there is adequate animal data to show that the chemical is carcinogenic and that the EPA ignored its rules in making that decision.

"There's a big difference between sound science and tilted science, and at every turn in this important process, EPA officials favored DuPont," said Ken Cook, president of Environmental Working Group. "We don't know if DuPont lobbyists played a role or if these were just agency mistakes. But for those who were expecting a thorough and fair review, this is a huge disappointment."

DuPont representatives welcomed the EPA's decision to create the panel, calling it "a critical action to evaluate data and assumptions" related to people's exposure.

"Although, to date, no human health effects are known to be caused by PFOA, the company recognizes that the presence of PFOA in human blood raises questions that should be addressed," the company said in a statement.

DuPont has said that 50 years of use and study support its conclusion that the chemical poses no danger to people.

But Auer said the EPA did not agree. "That's DuPont's opinion. Our view is there are a number of important issues where we need the input of scientific experts. We're not offering an opinion like the DuPont opinion," he said.

EPA officials are particularly concerned that rats are born with reduced body weight when their blood contains amounts of the chemical that are about 50 times more than the levels in some people's blood. That is generally not considered a safe difference to protect human health.

EPA Warns of Teflon Health Risks

Thu, 13 Jan 2005 00:00:00 -0800

EPA Seeks Review of Teflon Ingredient

Wed, 12 Jan 2005 00:00:00 -0800

A chemical used to make the nonstick substance Teflon is being considered by the Environmental Protection Agency as a potential health risk.

The EPA on Wednesday said that exposure to even low levels of perfluorooctanoic acid and its salts, known as PFOA, or C-8, could pose "a potential risk of developmental and other adverse effects." Officials emphasized their draft risk assessment was not conclusive.

"We've not offered any determinations of risks," said Charles Auer, director of EPA's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics.

Auer said the draft report, based on animal studies, would be sent to a science advisory board for helping determining the risks.

DuPont and EPA have been sparring over PFOA, used to make many of the company's most popular products, which range from auto fuel systems, firefighting foam and phone cables to computer chips, cookware and clothing.

The agency said in a statement it "has concerns with respect to the potential nationwide presence of PFOA in blood and with the potential for developmental and other effects suggested by animal studies." But it also said there are "significant uncertainties in the agency's quantitative assessment of the risks of PFOA."

Chemical maker DuPont Co., which is based in Wilmington, Delaware, and produces the chemical at a plant in Fayetteville, North Carolina, said Wednesday it welcomed EPA's report and was trying to minimize people's exposure to the chemical.

"Although, to date, no human health effects are known to be caused by PFOA, the company recognizes that the presence of PFOA in human blood raises questions that should be addressed," DuPont officials said in a statement.

Initial research by EPA suggests that PFOA could be carcinogenic in rats but the cancer hazard for people is less certain. It also indicates the chemical targets the liver and is present in the breast milk of rats.

The Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization that brought DuPont's record on PFOA to EPA's attention, said it believes EPA ignored its own scientific advice on defining the cancer-causing potential of the chemical to benefit DuPont.

"At every turn in this important process, EPA officials favored DuPont," said Ken Cook, EWG's president.

DuPont said its own study, based on 62 blood and urine tests among 1,000 employees at its Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia, showed "no human health effects known to be caused" by PFOA. It showed elevated levels of total cholesterol and fats called triglycerides among workers exposed to PFOA, but noted that the study data "did not indicate that PFOA was or was not the cause of the increases in serum cholesterol and triglycerides."

Sol Max, DuPont's chief medical officer, said "no association would be seen in the general public" for cholesterol and triglycerides, because exposure to the chemical was minimal outside a work setting.

In September, DuPont and residents around the Ohio Valley Teflon-making plant entered into a proposed legal settlement to resolve complaints that PFOA contaminated private wells and water sources in West Virginia and Ohio. DuPont has agreed to pay as much as $343 million to settle those claims.

At an EPA administrative court hearing last month, DuPont battled charges by EPA that it did not fulfill its obligation to release PFOA information to EPA. DuPont said it did and maintained that PFOA was harmless.

Teflon Production Linked To Cholesterol

Thu, 23 Dec 2004 00:00:00 -0800

Long-term studies of blood samples from workers at an Italian chemical plant show a potential link between blood concentrations of a chemical used in Teflon production and a slight rise in cholesterol levels, documents filed with the Environmental Protection Agency show.

An environmental group based in Washington, D.C., accused DuPont and 3M Co. of failing for months to report the potential effect from chemical exposure on cholesterol levels, and claimed the delay was similar to those involved in an earlier complaints by the EPA.

Environmental Working Group, based in Washington, D.C., said DuPont was aware of the issue as early as Feb. 15, and said the later report warranted a maximum fine of as much as $6 million under EPA guidelines.

One DuPont Co. official who was involved in the review said Wednesday that at its earliest opportunity earlier this year, the company notified the EPA about the finding after agreeing that formal results would be relayed through another American company that dealt directly with the Italian chemical firm.

"You're talking about a spreadsheet with thousands of data points on it and you've got to do months of statistical analysis before you can figure out whether it means anything," said Robert Rickard, director of environmental science at DuPont's Haskell Laboratory.

Two EPA complaints have been lodged against DuPont claiming that the company was long overdue in notifying regulators about possible health issues involving perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, a compound used in making Teflon. Penalties in the cases could run into the millions, EPA officials have said.

Rickard said the blood sampling in Italy spanned 17 years and 35 employees, giving researchers one of the most complete records yet of PFOA concentrations in worker blood over time.

Even so, Rickard said, researchers obtained only limited and qualified findings. He said the results in Italy may be inconsistent with other research findings, and may not take into account other factors.

"We don't know whether they've been exposed to other chemicals in their normal work process. About all we can say is: They're healthy. There are not health effects. There appears to be a very weak association between PFOA levels in their blood and cholesterol," Rickard said.

The environmental group's claim targeted a type of compound used in some forms to make DuPont's flagship nonstick product. The chemicals involved are the subject of a study by EPA scientists, amid concerns about the unexpected, widespread presence of PFOAs in the environment and potential health risks.

Some animal-based studies have suggested that the materials can increase risks of birth defects, developmental problems or other health problems such as cancer.

Comparing the numbers

Rickard said that concentrations of PFOA in the blood of the Italian factory group averaged 16 parts per million and ranged as high as 90 parts per million, far above the 500 parts per billion range seen in some American plants and 5 parts per billion in the general population.

A university researcher based in Verona, Italy, found that workers exposed to PFOA had about a 15 point higher total cholesterol level compared with those without workplace exposure.

Cholesterol is a naturally occurring substance in the body found among the fats in the bloodstream. It is used to form cell membranes and some hormones, among other functions. Normal levels are considered to be below 200, with elevated levels associated with increased risks of heart disease and stroke.

Total cholesterol levels in the exposed workers averaged 233, compared with 214 in the nonexposed group.

"In other words, it seems that PFOA [probably only at high blood concentrations] can interfere with metabolism of cholesterol," researcher Giovanni Costa wrote. "Such findings need precise interpretation."

Costa said no significant effects were seen in other types of blood tests.

"I think what you can take away from this is, at most, we're seeing a minor biological change, at the most, and we're not even sure about that," Rickard said.

Federal officials are working with a number of companies to develop tests to determine how PFOA and related chemicals break down and reach the environment and living tissues.

DuPont is conducting or participating in research on the issue around the globe, ranging from blood levels in hundreds of workers - including some at the Chambers Works in Deepwater, N.J., and attempts to determine if the chemicals reach humans during the breakdown of stain-resist

EPA Seeks Teflon Penalties Against DuPont

Mon, 06 Dec 2004 00:00:00 -0800

A dispute over an unregulated chemical used to make Teflon erupted again Monday as the Environmental Protection Agency sought fines against DuPont Co., saying the chemical maker withheld some lab results.

EPA officials accused DuPont of not sharing its findings on perfluorooctanoic acid and its salts, known as PFOA or C-8, in blood samples taken in July from 12 people living near DuPont's Washington Works Facility near Parkersburg, W.Va.

Each was exposed to PFOA through drinking water from the Lubeck Public Service District, according to EPA. The 12 people had stopped using that contaminated water as their primary source three years ago, EPA said, but their blood samples showed concentrations of PFOA averaging more than 13 times the national average.

PFOA is used in making Teflon but is not part of the Teflon itself. DuPont has maintained that PFOA is not harmful to people's health or the environment.

DuPont said the samples were taken at its request from 12 named plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against the company over PFOA contamination in West Virginia. The samples were sent off to be analyzed by an independent lab.

"DuPont shared the results of these tests with attorneys for the test participants, who made them available to the EPA, and we welcome the EPA's consideration of these findings," company officials said Monday.

Nationally, PFOA averages about 5 parts per billion in people in the United States. But the lab tests showed the West Virginians with PFOA levels in their blood ranging from 15.7 ppb to 128 ppb, with a mean of 67 ppb.

Penalties against DuPont of up to $32,500 per day, from August 28 through October 12, are being sought "for failing to report this substantial risk information under the Toxic Substances Control Act," EPA officials said. The case next goes to EPA's administrative law judges.

EPA said the lab results should have been turned over to the government immediately after they were found, instead of only being made available several weeks later.

DuPont said Monday it does not believe the blood monitoring data is reportable under the law cited by EPA. The company said "the exposure levels ... do not represent a health concern" and no adverse health effects were observed.

In July, EPA cited DuPont for not providing the agency with a one-page document on PFOA confirming a nostril and eye birth defect in a 4-month-old child and listing an unconfirmed eye and tear duct birth defect in a 2-year-old child.

DuPont has said it was not required to report that document because it was an informal record from the early 1980s.

Health Concerns Stick To Teflon

Sat, 09 Oct 2004 00:00:00 -0700

More than 65 years ago in a south New Jersey laboratory, a DuPont Co. chemist accidentally invented a waxy, white powder that would become one of the mainstays of the modern kitchen: Teflon.

Today, this nonstick marvel is getting attention far beyond the stovetop.

A chemical used to make it, perfluorooctanoic acid PFOA has been turning up in people and animals worldwide: river otters in Oregon, polar bears in the Canadian Arctic, and in the blood of 96 percent of children tested in 23 states.

Scientists are not sure how the chemical is getting into people not from using Teflon pans, they say and they don't know whether it poses any danger at current levels.

But the hardy substance does not break down in the environment.

And it has been linked to liver and developmental problems in lab rats, prompting a broad review by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"We need to get to the bottom of this," said Charles Auer, director of the agency's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics.

PFOA is just one of dozens of synthetic intruders found in the human body in recent years, thanks to increasingly sophisticated equipment that allows scientists to measure the slightest traces of chemicals.

But this one has drawn unusual scrutiny.

DuPont agreed last month to pay at least $108 million to settle a class-action suit brought by residents near a company plant in West Virginia, where PFOA has been found in the drinking water.

And in July, the EPA prompted partly by the research of a Washington-based nonprofit organization called Environmental Working Group accused DuPont of failing to disclose certain health-related information about PFOA from as early as 1981.

A public hearing is pending, after which an administrative law judge can impose fines of more than $300 million.

Meanwhile, a growing number of scientists think the biggest source of PFOA is not Teflon , but a related family of chemicals called telomers.

Telomers, made by DuPont and a handful of other companies, are widely used to make grease- and stain-repellent coatings for take-out food boxes, carpets and clothing.

Burger King, for example, stopped selling food in telomer-coated boxes in 2002. McDonald's has said in the past it uses such boxes, but would not say whether it still does.

The various accusations have provoked consternation at DuPont, based in Wilmington, Del., whose executives describe it as a "science company" that cares about the environment.

The company says it has broken no laws and has sharply reduced emissions of PFOA.

And studies on plant workers have shown PFOA to be safe, said Don Duncan, president of the Society of the Plastics Industry, an industry group.

"It's not as if we've got people dropping in the streets out there," he said.

Today, the DuPont plant in Fayetteville, N.C., is the nation's lone manufacturer of PFOA.

In a preliminary assessment last year of risks to human development, the EPA found the chemical levels linked to problems in rats to be anywhere from less than 70 to more than 9,000 times the levels found in women and children.

For some health effects, including a weaker immune system and low organ weights, scientists have found no dose to be totally safe in rats.

Critics advocate a precautionary approach: Stop making the suspect chemicals.

"We're already to the point where it is in people and getting near the point where there's significant risk," said Tim Kropp, a toxicologist at Environmental Working Group.

Teflon's Sticky Situation

Thu, 07 Oct 2004 00:00:00 -0700

It's on saucepans, clothing, even buildings, but now Teflon the famed non-stick chemical is at the centre of a slippery controversy about cancer and birth defects.

Since its invention in the 1930s, amateur and professional cooks alike will acknowledge their debt of gratitude to Teflon. Over the years, the non-stick coating on pots and pans has helped turn out countless perfect fried eggs and cheese souffls.

But for how much longer? Environmentalists have called for the withdrawal of a chemical which is a key ingredient in the manufacture of Teflon because of growing health fears.

Perfluorooctanoic Acid, PFOA for short, is a synthetic chemical used in the manufacture of advanced plastics including Teflon.

Today, all new man-made chemicals must undergo rigorous testing to be marketed in Europe. But PFOA is one of 100,000 or so chemicals which avoided the test because they were invented before 1981.

Teflon was invented in the 1930s by DuPont, the US firm which uses it today to make non-stick cookware, and also markets it as a coating for clothes and carpets.

The company recently agreed to an out-of-court settlement to a class action lawsuit brought by around 50,000 residents who lived near its West Virginia plant.

The residents, who lived along the Ohio river south of Parkersburg, West Virginia, claimed the company had contaminated local water supplies with PFOA, which they alleged was linked to birth defects and other health hazards.

Among the plaintiffs was Bucky Bailey, who was born with a single nostril and a deformed face. His mother fell pregnant with him while working at DuPont's Parkersburg plant.

DuPont eventually agreed to pay $50m in cash to the plaintiffs, plus $22m in legal costs. The company also agreed to spend $10m on special water treatment facilities to filter out PFOA.

But, crucially, DuPont did not accept liability and maintained PFOA did not pose any danger to the public.

Water tests

"We want to make very clear that settling this lawsuit in no way implies any admission of liability on DuPont's part," says DuPont lawyer Stacey J Mobley.

At the same time, DuPont is facing another multi-million dollar lawsuit from the US environmental watchdog for allegedly failing to disclose the results of secret water tests in 1984.

It faces being fined $27,000 for every day since 1984.

Now, environmental campaigners on both sides of the Atlantic want to ban the controversial chemical.

"PFOA accumulates in the body and in the environment and studies on animals suggest a link to birth defects. We are very concerned about it," says Karine Pellaumail, from Friends of the Earth.

Dr Tim Kropp, a toxicologist working for environmental activists in the US says tests carried out by the US firm 3M suggested high doses of PFOA led to various forms of cancer in rats.

"DuPont have some brilliant scientists and I don't believe that they couldn't find an alternative if they put their minds to it," says Dr Kropp.

'Respond with compassion'

But DuPont disagrees. "There is no evidence that PFOA is harmful," says its director of media relations, Clifton Webb. "We are very confident that there are no health effects associated with the public's exposure to PFOA at the levels we have seen."

However, he accepts that, in high enough doses, PFOA could be carcinogenic to animals.

As for those who had suffered birth defects, such as Bucky Bailey, he says the firm would "respond with compassion and concern, but they are not related to exposure to PFOA".

According to 3M's tests, PFOA was present in five parts per billion in the bloodstream, says Mr Webb.

Workers exposed to it were likely to have a level "thousands of times higher", he concedes, but there was no evidence it was doing them harm.

As for substitutes, the company has identified around 100 possible alternatives to PFOA which is used as a processing aid in Teflon but none could produce the sufficient "quantity or quality" required. Cost, he says, is not an issue.

Last year the American Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched an investigation into the chemical's effects, a study that's being watched by the British government.

It acknowledges "considerable scientific uncertainties" on the issue but says there is no reason anyone should stop using Teflon products.

But the EPA is expected to submit a more comprehensive risk analysis next month.

Last year the British government called for a related chemical, perfluorooctane sulphonate (PFOS), to be withdrawn. It followed 3M's decision to abolish the chemical from its well-known Scotchgard products after health concerns were raised.

"PFOA is related to it but nowhere near as much research has been done into it and we are awaiting the outcome of the EPA's research," says a spokesman for Defra.

Others are seeking a more restrained response. Professor Scott Mabury, head of environmental chemistry at the University of Toronto, says a ban on PFOA would be "Draconian" and the answer was to go back to the factory and make sure residual levels of the polluting chemicals were removed in the production process.

"It's an engineering problem," he says. "It's not impossible."

DuPont Agrees To Settle In Teflon Suit

Thu, 09 Sep 2004 00:00:00 -0700

DuPont agreed to a settlement Thursday that could be worth more than $340 million to resolve a class action lawsuit alleging the chemical giant contaminated a West Virginia community's water supply with a key ingredient used in its Teflon products.

A circuit judge must still approve the terms reached between DuPont and lawyers for as many as 60,000 area residents who sued over exposure to the chemical C8, also known as ammonium perfluorooctanoate or PFOA.

The settlement, which must be approved by a Wood County Circuit Court, calls for cash payments and expenditures of $85 million, as well as attorneys' fees and expenses of $22.6 million.

The settlement also calls for DuPont to fund a $5 million study into whether C8 causes disease in humans. If a scientific panel finds such a link, DuPont would pay up to $235 million the bulk of the potential settlement on medical monitoring testing of residents.

Study Begins On Chemical Used To Make Teflon

Thu, 02 Sep 2004 00:00:00 -0700

About 300 people have agreed to participate in a four-year study that aims to determine whether there are health risks associated with exposure to a chemical used to make Teflon.

Environmental officials say the DuPont Co.'s plant near Parkersburg, W.Va., across the Ohio River from southeast Ohio, has contaminated area drinking water supplies with the chemical C8, also known as ammonium perfluorooctanoate.

The National Institutes of Health has given doctors an $841,000 grant to study 400 people who live in the Little Hocking water district.

About 300 people, who were selected by randomly mailed invitations, have agreed to participate so far. The study also has asked for 10 lactating women to volunteer samples of blood and breast milk.

Preliminary results could be available by the end of the year.

Ohio and West Virginia residents who claim the plant knowingly contaminated water supplies filed a class-action lawsuit in 2001 against DuPont on behalf of up to 50,000 people who live nearby. That case is set for trial Oct. 11 in Wood County, W.Va., Circuit Court.

DuPont said in its quarterly report in July that it has set aside $45 million to defend itself against the lawsuit. The company maintains the chemical poses people no health risks, but recently began an internal investigation into the health of its employees and C8 levels in their bloodstreams.

Former 3M Chemical Is Widespread

Sun, 15 Aug 2004 00:00:00 -0700

Four years after 3M stopped making the chemicals behind such innovative products as Teflon, Scotchgard and Stainmaster, the compounds are showing up everywhere from remote Minnesota lakes to polar bears in Alaska and albatrosses in the Pacific Ocean.

The compounds, known as fluorochemicals, are a concern because they don't degrade and it's unclear how they spread. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is studying whether one of the compounds poses environmental or health risks, but it does not consider fluorochemicals harmful.

A steady stream of scientific studies in the past six years has reported low levels of the compounds in humans, foods and wildlife all over the world, including Great Lakes fish.

Now, in a study that underscores the pervasiveness of fluorochemicals, EPA-funded researchers at the University of Minnesota say they have detected traces of the compounds in two remote lakes in the Voyageurs National Park near International Falls, Minn. One lake is 11 miles from the nearest road.

3M, based in Maplewood, was a leading manufacturer of the compounds until 2000, when it stopped making, selling and using them and it reformulated Scotchgard because the compounds were so widespread. One of its big customers had been DuPont Co., which still uses a fluorochemical to make Teflon and other coatings.

Last week, DuPont denied charges by the EPA that for two decades it withheld health information that it was required to submit about one of the chemicals. The EPA is seeking fines that could total millions of dollars.

The study of Minnesota lakes was led by Matt Simcik, an assistant professor of environmental chemistry, who presented preliminary results at a scientific conference in May. Simcik said researchers also found the chemicals in two lakes in Tettegouche State Park near Silver Bay, Minn., in Lake Michigan and in the Minneapolis Chain of Lakes.

Researchers at the University of Iowa recently detected fluorochemicals in lakes Ontario and Erie. The study, published in June in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, said traces of the chemicals were found in all 16 samples taken.

"They are not high in a toxic sense," said Keri Hornbuckle, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Iowa. "There is no danger from exposure to the water, but they are high enough that they there is no question that animals are going to accumulate them from the aquatic food chain."

Hornbuckle said fluorochemicals are different from other persistent and highly toxic substances found widely in the environment. They include the banned pesticide DDT, the banned industrial oil/coolant mixture known as PCBs and mercury, a toxic element released by coal-burning power plants.

The spread of fluorochemicals is partly the result of consumer demand for stain-repellent carpeting, breathable waterproof jackets and nonstick cooking utensils. "We like these chemicals to keep the water off our back and to keep food from sticking on our pots," Hornbuckle said. "They are the result of our wealth."

Studies have suggested that 90 percent of Americans, including children, have the chemicals at low levels in their bodies. Yet scientists have not determined how they got into people.

A related mystery is how these chemicals are transported in the environment. Simcik said air currents may spread them, which would explain how they got into remote lakes. Another possibility, said Hornbuckle, is that the chemicals are washing off the stain-resistant or waterproof fabrics and ending up in wastewater discharges.

Few people have heard of these chemicals, which carry the almost unpronounceable names perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfate (PFOS).

In 1945, chemical maker DuPont of Wilmington, Del., introduced Teflon, a product that over the next five decades would become a household name. Its use spread far beyond cookware to industries ranging from aerospace to computers. DuPont says such products can't be made without PFOA.

Seven years after Teflon's debut, Patsy Sherman, a chemist fresh out of college, was working for 3M in Minnesota on a substance to coat aircraft tires when a lab mishap helped launch another highly successful fluorochemical product Scotchgard fabric protector.

"I had made a sample of one of the fluorochemical rubbers," said Sherman, who retired in 1992 and now lives in Bloomington. "Another person to whom I had given it dropped it. It splashed it over brand-new tennis shoes. We tried to remove the fluorochemical using all the solvents we could find. Nothing would even wet these stains."

Many of the Scotchgard stain-repelling products relied on fluorochemical cousins of PFOS. For decades, 3M produced fluorochemicals at its plant in Cottage Grove and also in Decatur, Ala. 3M turned away from the chemicals, and ended production at the plants, in 2000. DuPont, which still needed PFOA for its coatings business, built its own manufacturing plant in North Carolina.

Since at least the mid-1970s, scientists have known that fluorochemicals end up in humans' blood. 3M's medical director Larry Zobel said the company began regularly testing fluorochemical workers in 1976 and has consistently found the chemical in their blood. Over the years, "we found no adverse health effects in our workers," he added. The workers were told of the results, 3M says.

Recent findings that three fluorochemical workers in a 3M Alabama plant died of bladder cancer a higher number than would be expected are being studied further, Zobel said. Production workers have 50 to 500 times more of the chemicals in their blood than the general population, he added.

The knowledge in the 1970s that fluorochemicals end up in humans did not trigger the kind of EPA review that has been taking place since last year. The process, called a risk assessment, could lead to regulations of PFOA.

The EPA last month charged that DuPont repeatedly failed to pass information about PFOA to the government, including data on the company's 1981 monitoring of pregnant workers at a West Virginia plant and the discovery of the chemical in one child's umbilical cord. The EPA is seeking millions of dollars in fines.

In a response filed Wednesday, DuPont said it wasn't required to submit the information and asked for a hearing. It said that PFOA found in the umbilical cord did not harm the baby. DuPont also is facing a class-action lawsuit by residents of a West Virginia community where PFOA has been detected in the water supply.

Chris Lagan, an EPA spokesman, said the DuPont information could have triggered an earlier EPA inquiry into the chemical. "Had we had that information, is it reasonable to say we would have acted sooner?" he said. "It is possible it [the current risk assessment] would have happened then."

3M has not been accused by the EPA of withholding information about the chemicals. The Minnesota Health Department said its tests of wells near 3M's Cottage Grove plant found no fluorochemicals.

Zobel of 3M said testing equipment improved in the 1990s, leading to the wave of reports by company researchers and others that fluorochemicals are widespread. The evidence prompted 3M to stop making and using the compounds, said Michael Santoro, 3M's director of regulatory affairs.

The expanding knowledge about fluorochemicals in the environment raises the question of how they could spread so widely before being comprehensively studied by federal regulators.

"We don't have a forward-looking system," said Timothy Kropp, senior scientist with the Environmental Working Group, a Washington, D.C., organization that has published EPA, 3M and DuPont documents on its Web site. "We have a backward-looking system. Something has to be a problem for EPA to look at it."

Former 3M Chemicals Showing Up In Remote Places

Sun, 15 Aug 2004 00:00:00 -0700

Maplewood-based 3M Co. stopped making the chemicals behind such products as Teflon and Scotchgard four years ago, but the compounds are showing up everywhere from polar bears in Alaska and birds in the Pacific Ocean to remote Minnesota lakes.

The compounds, which are in a family known as fluorochemicals, are a concern because they don't break down and it's not clear how they've become so widespread.

Several studies in the past six years have found low levels of the compounds in humans, foods and wildlife all over the world, including fish in the Great Lakes.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency does not consider these fluorochemicals harmful, but it is now studying whether one of them poses any environmental or health risks.

Now researchers at the University of Minnesota have detected traces of the compounds in two remote lakes in the Voyageurs National Park in far northern Minnesota. One of the lakes is 11 miles from the nearest road.

The compounds in question include perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfate (PFOS).

3M was a leading manufacturer of them until 2000, when it stopped making, selling and using them because the compounds were so widespread. The company reformulated its Scotchgard fabric protectors to remove the chemical cousins of PFOS.

One of 3M's big customers for fluorocarbons had been DuPont Co., which still uses PFOA in Teflon and other coatings, and built its own manufacturing plant in North Carolina to keep supplied with the compound.

Matt Simcik, a professor of environmental chemistry at the University of Minnesota, presented preliminary results from the Minnesota lakes study at a conference in May. He said researchers also found the chemicals in two lakes in Tettegouche State Park near Silver Bay, in Lake Michigan and in the Chain of Lakes in Minneapolis.

University of Iowa researchers recently detected traces of fluorochemicals in lakes Ontario and Erie.

"They (the levels) are not high in a toxic sense," said Keri Hornbuckle, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Iowa. "There is no danger from exposure to the water, but they are high enough that they there is no question that animals are going to accumulate them from the aquatic food chain."

Hornbuckle said fluorochemicals are different from other persistent and highly toxic substances found widely in the environment such as DDT, PCBs and mercury.

The spread of fluorochemicals is partly the result of the popularity of stain-repellent carpeting, breathable waterproof jackets and nonstick cookware.

"We like these chemicals to keep the water off our back and to keep food from sticking on our pots," Hornbuckle said. "They are the result of our wealth."

Studies have suggested that 90 percent of Americans have the chemicals at low levels in their bodies. Scientists don't know exactly how they got into humans.

They're also not sure how these chemicals are transported in the environment.

Simcik said air currents may spread them, which would explain how they got into remote lakes. Another possibility, Hornbuckle said, is that the chemicals are washing off stain-resistant or waterproof fabrics.

Scientists have known since at least the mid-1970s that fluorochemicals end up in human blood.

Larry Zobel, 3M's medical director, said the company began regularly testing fluorochemical workers in 1976 and has consistently found the chemical in their blood. Over the years, "we found no adverse health effects in our workers," he added. The workers were told of the results, 3M said.

But Zobel said further study is under way of recent findings that three fluorochemical workers in a 3M Alabama plant died of bladder cancer a higher number than would be expected.

Production workers have 50 to 500 times more of the chemicals in their blood than the general population, he added.

Zobel said testing equipment improved in the 1990s, leading to the wave of reports that fluorochemicals are widespread.

The evidence prompted 3M to stop making and using the compounds, said Michael Santoro, 3M's director of regulatory affairs.

DuPont is under fire from the EPA, which has charged that the company withheld health information about PFOA for two decades that it was required to submit. The EPA is seeking fines that could total millions of dollars.

The information includes data on the company's 1981 monitoring of pregnant workers at a West Virginia plant and the discovery of the chemical in one child's umbilical cord. DuPont filed a response last week saying it wasn't required to submit the information. It also said that PFOA found in the umbilical cord did not harm the baby.

Chris Lagan, an EPA spokesman, said the DuPont information could have triggered an earlier EPA inquiry to assess the risks of PFOA a study that could lead to regulation of the chemical.

"Had we had that information, is it reasonable to say we would have acted sooner?" he said. "It is possible it (the current risk assessment study) would have happened then."

DuPont also is facing a class-action lawsuit by residents of a West Virginia community where PFOA has been detected in the water supply.

The EPA has not accused 3M of withholding information about the chemicals. The Minnesota Health Department said its tests of wells near 3M's Cottage Grove plant, which made fluorochemicals, found none in the water.

C-8-Type Chemicals Found In Humans

Sun, 01 Aug 2004 00:00:00 -0700

People around the world are carrying in their blood traces of chemicals associated with stain-resistant and nonstick coatings and similar goods, according to a newly published report.

Bloodstream levels of the compounds, a type of perfluorochemical, are higher where the consumer products are common, the report said. The compounds include a chemical used by the DuPont Co. for Teflon production and other activities, including some at its Chambers Works plant at the foot of the Delaware Memorial Bridge in Deepwater, N.J.

Eleven researchers from 10 nations collaborated on the examination of perfluoronated compounds in human bloodstreams, published on the Internet by Environmental Science & Technology in advance of regular print publication. A division of the American Chemical Society, a national professional and scientific organization, publishes the bimonthly magazine.

The study analyzed blood from 473 samples from city and suburban residents on four continents. Levels of the most common compounds proved highest in the United States and Poland, and lowest in India.

"Prolonged use of perfluorochemicals for a wide variety of applications, such as paper and packing products, residential and mill-applied carpet and spraying, stain resistant textiles and cleaners, may be a major source of human exposure to these compounds," the study said.

The findings added to a growing number of studies and calls for more research regarding perfluoronated chemicals, a group that in general features carbon atoms strongly bonded to fluorine atoms in ways that are highly resistant to breakdown. Attention in recent years has turned from their durability to their potential toxicity, long-term health effects and tendency to linger in the environment and accumulate in living tissue.

Earlier research had reported the same chemicals can be found in the bloodstreams of virtually all U.S. citizens. Some of the compounds are the same or similar to those used to make DuPont's Teflon and other mass-market consumer goods and coatings - including fast-food packaging - and are under Environmental Protection Agency scrutiny for potential health risks.

"This just shows that it's not just a domestic concern, but a global problem," said Timothy J. Kropp, a senior scientist with Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit group that has called for a ban on perfluoronated compounds.

DuPont referred questions on the study to the Society of the Plastics Industry, an umbrella group. John Heinze, a researcher and science and communications consultant who works with the plastics group, said the compounds have not been proven harmful at the levels found in the bloodstream study.

R. Clifton Webb, a DuPont spokesman, said the company has voluntarily reduced emissions of perfluoronated compounds by 98 percent over the past five years. Sites affected by the reduction include the company's Chambers Works industrial wastewater plant.

Webb said the company expects its releases of perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, to the Delaware River will fall to 3,700 pounds by the end of the year. A document filed with New Jersey regulators last year indicated that the company was releasing PFOA, also called C-8 by DuPont, at roughly a 12,000 pound annual rate that year.

Another company, 3M, phased out use of perfluorooctyl sulfonates, or PFOS, in making stain repellents and other products after the EPA said that the compounds persist in the environment, build up in living tissues and pose long-term health threats, including possible cancer risks.

EPA officials this month accused DuPont of failing to provide prompt health-related information to regulators about potential risks and releases involving C-8 at the company's West Virginia plant.

The action, which could cost DuPont millions of dollars in penalties, came weeks after the EPA announced a plan to conduct its own study of some of the chemicals and their fate in the environment after months of effort to agree on voluntary industry-financed research.

DuPont Co. last week reported setting aside $45 million to cover potential costs from a class action lawsuit for releasing C-8 from its West Virginia Teflon works. The company is accused of contaminating the drinking water supplies of 30,000 people in the Ohio River Valley. Company officials have agreed to supply alternate drinking water supplies if contamination levels creep too high.

A separate report the company provided to Delaware regulators said the Chambers Works operation is "not a significant source" of PFOA, or C-8, in the environment.

The international research project found levels of PFOA were highest among Korean women. The same chemical was found in 100 percent of blood tested from Kentucky, New York City, the United Kingdom, Colombia, Poland and Belgium.

PFOS was found at even higher levels. Other studies have found the same compounds in wildlife around the world.

Teflon Maker Sets Aside $45 Million For Defense In Chemical Trial

Wed, 28 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0700

Chemical maker DuPont has set aside $45 million to defend itself against a lawsuit that alleges it contaminated water supplies in West Virginia and Ohio with an unregulated chemical used to make Teflon.

The fund was contained in a footnote in DuPont's quarterly financial report released Tuesday. DuPont said its quarterly results through June 30 included "a charge of $45 million to establish a reserve in connection" with a class-action lawsuit over the chemical C8, also known as perfluorooctanoic acid.

DuPont has used C8 for more than 50 years in the production of Teflon at its Washington Works plant south of Parkersburg.

Neighbors of the plant allege that DuPont polluted their drinking water with unsafe levels of C8 and that the company knew for decades that the chemical was harmful to humans but concealed that knowledge from the public. Residents claim high levels of C8 in the water and soil caused health problems such as respiratory problems and cancer.

Environmental officials said the chemical has been found in the drinking water of the Little Hocking Water Association, which is the largest rural water system in Washington County in southeast Ohio. About 30,000 Ohioans are plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

DuPont recently completed a $1 million study of its Washington Works employees who volunteered to participate in a health screening. The study examined employees who worked with C8 and those who did not. The company hopes to show that C8 does not pose a health risk to humans, a plant official has said.

Tuesday's financial report marks the first time DuPont has put a potential price tag on the C8 litigation. The first-phase of the lawsuit is expected to start Sept. 20 in Wood County Circuit Court. That phase will determine if DuPont should be required to provide medical testing to residents. Later phases will focus on property damages and restitution.

Teflon Birth Defect Attorney

Wed, 28 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0700

Teflon

The coating on non-stick pans used in millions of kitchens throughout the world has been linked to birth defects in humans. Chemical firms face claims that perfluorinated organic chemicals such as perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) are a health threat. PFOA was first used in 1945 and is in Teflon and oil and water-resistant coatings.

DuPont, which makes Teflon, is having to answer accusations in the United States that it had evidence about dangers posed by PFOA but deliberately and illegally kept it secret. The US Environmental Protection Agency says that DuPont concealed its own 1981 research showing that its pregnant workers were passing the chemical to their unborn children. In addition, in 1991, it failed to report evidence that the chemical had contaminated the water supply to 12,000 people.

Bucky Bailey is a member of one of eight families living near the DuPont factory in Parkersburg, West Virginia who are suing the company over the effects of PFOA. His mother, Sue Bailey, was a factory worker exposed to PFOA while pregnant. Mr. Bailey was born with only one nostril and other facial defects for which he has had 30 operations. He has recently married, but does not intend to have children in case they inherit his condition.

Dr. Tim Kropp, the senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group, an organization in Washington DC, said: "The Environmental Protection Agency should force DuPont to pay a punishing fine such that it sends out a signal to all chemical manufacturers that it is not profitable to withhold critical information.

"The Teflon chemical PFOA, like other fluorochemicals, is in people everywhere. It never breaks down in the environment and it's toxic at or near levels found in humans."

If you or a loved one suffered side effects from Teflon, please fill out the form at the right for a free case evaluation by a qualified pollutants attorney.

Yourlawyer.com (Teflon News)

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Teflon Birth Defect Attorney

Teflon