Published in The Fayetteville Observer on Sunday, February 19, 2006
5 Photos, Staff photo by David Smith
The sun rises behind DuPont’s Washington Works across the Ohio River from Little Hocking, Ohio. Some scientific studies say ammonium perfluorooctanoate, a substance known as C8 that is used at the plant, causes cancer.
PARKERSBURG, W.Va. — Ken Taggart used a scoop with his bare hands to dump small piles of powdered C8 on a scale when he worked for DuPont.
The substance is used at the company’s plant near here to make Teflon.
“We had to measure it out in grams and dump it in the reactor,” said Taggart, who is 64 and retired. “It gave Teflon a better end result, a better finish.”
C8, or ammonium perfluorooctanoate, has been around for half a century but has come under heavy scrutiny lately. It is also known by the acronyms APFO and PFOA. Whether C8 is harmful to humans is debatable, but it accumulates in blood, where it remains for years. Taggart has almost 80 times the typical level of C8 in his blood.
A scientific panel advising the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommended last week that C8 be considered a likely carcinogen. The EPA is beginning to regulate C8 as a toxin. 3M, which used to supply the plant near Parkersburg with C8, quit making it about five years ago.
Tens of thousands of people in the Ohio Valley near Parkersburg have unknowingly been drinking water contaminated with C8 from the DuPont plant for years, and some are worried about health effects from high levels of the man-made compound in their blood.
The contamination led to a class-action lawsuit that DuPont settled last year for $107 million to pay for a health study involving about 70,000 people. The EPA fined DuPont $16.5 million in December for failing to disclose information about possible health and environmental effects of C8.
The C8 used in the West Virginia plant today comes from DuPont’s Fayetteville Works plant on the Cumberland-Bladen county line in North Carolina. The plant began making C8 in late 2002. It’s the only site in the country where C8 is made, and the substance has been found in groundwater near the plant and in the Cape Fear River.
Workers at the Fayetteville Works plant use gloves, coveralls and respirators when they handle C8. “No, we never wore none of that,” Taggart said.
With C8 now in the water around the Fayetteville Works plant, concerns that had been limited to the Ohio Valley are spreading to North Carolina.
“I’m not out to get DuPont, but my God, I want them to get right,” said Joe Kiger, the lead plaintiff in the class-action lawsuit focusing on the West Virginia plant. “If it turns out there’s no link between C8 and all these health concerns, then we’ve accomplished something. But if I were in Fayetteville, and I knew all the information, I’d be very concerned, extremely concerned. Don’t touch this stuff, don’t drink it, stay away from it. We don’t know if it’s safe.”
DuPont dominates the Ohio Valley near Parkersburg, which some residents refer to as “Chemical Valley.” At least four other corporations operate chemical plants nearby, some in West Virginia and others on the Ohio side of the Ohio River.
The river is used by factories to draw water for production and as a place to dump treated wastewater. Barges travel the Ohio with payloads measured in the millions of tons.
The DuPont plant is in Washington, W.Va., about eight miles south of Parkersburg. It provides about 2,200 jobs and is the company’s second-largest among operations in more than 70 countries. The plant’s Teflon division, which opened in 1948, is DuPont’s largest.
The site of the Washington Works plant stretches for almost a mile on 1,200 acres along the river’s east bank. Its towers and smokestacks, which spew water vapor high into the sky, can be seen from most any of the surrounding mountain ridges. Many people who live here know someone who works at DuPont or who used to work there.
And almost everyone in the area — about 70,000 people — have had their blood tested to see how much C8 their bodies have absorbed from drinking the water, breathing the air, eating locally grown produce or drinking milk from nearby dairies. The testing is financed from the $107 million DuPont paid last year to settle the class-action lawsuit over C8.
Dr. Tony Fletcher, an epidemiologist from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and president of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology, said he has never heard of a larger human health study related to an environmental concern.
DuPont also agreed to install water treatment upgrades at six public water systems in the valley that had the highest levels of C8 contamination.
Divided opinions
C8 has in some ways divided the valley. While DuPont says the chemical is safe in the amounts to which people have been exposed, some residents are angry that DuPont knew in the early 1980s that it was contaminating groundwater with C8 but didn’t tell anyone.
“They’re not good neighbors,” said Melinda McDowell, a Vincent, Ohio, resident who, along with her husband and two sons, gets free bottled water from DuPont. “Somebody should be held liable at DuPont. Somebody made a decision to dump this stuff. Somebody should go to jail.”
Clarence Cox, who manages the Parkersburg water utility system — one that was not considered contaminated under terms of the class-action lawsuit — said the controversy is unwarranted.
“To me, it’s a lot of noise being made about something that, as far as I know, doesn’t cause any trouble,” Cox said. He said people breathe exhaust fumes, gasoline vapor and hair spray and use other household toxins every day, “and think nothing of it.”
Vicky Watkins, 53, is a lifelong resident of Belpre, Ohio, which has a water supply that was contaminated by DuPont.
“I’ve drank so much of it by now, I don’t guess it makes any difference,” she said. “Nobody seems to be really worried about it. I know people who work at DuPont. Some say it’s bad, some say it isn’t. I try not to think about it.”
Watkins’ father died in 2000 from liver cancer. A friend of hers died last month at age 50 from liver and pancreatic cancer.
“Who knows if it’s related?” she asked.
Watkins’ daughter doesn’t drink tap water.
Others in the area had to choose sides in the debate over C8.
“Some people didn’t even want to be tested because they felt it would be disloyal to DuPont,” said Patsy Flensborg, a coordinator of the blood testing program.
Water restrictions
Bob Griffin manages the Little Hocking Water Association in Ohio that once provided drinking water to more than 12,000 customers. His water district’s wells are across the Ohio River from the DuPont plant. Griffin recently had to tell his customers that the water they had been drinking for years was contaminated.
Since last summer, Little Hocking water has been used only for baths and showers, laundry, outdoor watering and washing cars. Water for drinking and cooking has come from 5-gallon jugs distributed by DuPont.
“I think it’s a pretty big deal,” Griffin said. “It’s now 10 times higher than it was in 1982. It should have been addressed then. ... They knew about it, but they didn’t tell the community. It’s outrageous they didn’t tell us. We had a right to know.”
The chemical is released into air and water during production.
Griffin, Taggart, the McDowells and others wonder why the sweeping contamination of C8 wasn’t known outside DuPont until 2001, when the information surfaced in company documents obtained in the class-action lawsuit.
“They knew in 1982 that it was in our water,” Taggart said. “They took samples at a couple of places but never said anything about it until it came up in the Lubeck water.”
The Lubeck Public Service District supplies water to Joe Kiger and other residents in Washington, W.Va., and surrounding areas. Kiger, a retired union manager and now a school teacher, is largely responsible for exposing the valley’s water contamination and getting DuPont to pay for the health study. DuPont also has agreed to pay up to $235 million if additional health monitoring is needed.
For Kiger, it started with a seemingly innocuous letter that the water district mailed to customers in October 2000. The letter disclosed that C8 had been found in the water, but that DuPont considered the levels safe.
“I thought, ‘What in the name of God does DuPont have to do with our water?’” Kiger said.
He said he called the regional office of the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources to find out more about C8 and he was surprised when the office referred him to DuPont. He kept digging until someone suggested he contact a lawyer.
Farmers’ lawsuit
A key legal dispute involving the area’s contamination and DuPont arose in the late 1990s from cattle farmers on the West Virginia side of the river near a DuPont landfill. Cattle and wildlife died, and the farmers blamed DuPont.
Della Tennant, one of the farmers, said an investigation during a lawsuit separate from the class-action suit found that C8 was among the chemicals discovered in their creek below the landfill.
While C8 was not believed to have killed the cattle, Kiger’s lawyers from Charleston, W.Va., and Cincinnati subpoenaed reams of documents from DuPont and found company records that revealed DuPont had known for years that C8 had invaded public water supplies.
Lawyers gave some of that information to the EPA, which levied a record $16.5 million fine against DuPont in December for withholding information deemed critical in determining the chemical’s potential health and environmental risks.
DuPont records indicated the company believed 1 part per billion of C8 in water was safe. The lawyers argued that 0.5 parts per billion should be set as the threshold for contamination. Six area water supplies, four in Ohio and two in West Virginia, were later found to be above the 0.5 parts per billion threshold.
Kiger was among 12 lead plaintiffs, each of whom received $50,000 in the class-action settlement. Anyone who drank water from the six contaminated systems for at least a year was a member of the class of plaintiffs. Everyone who gave a blood sample and completed a 78-page health survey was paid $400.
C8 uses
Teflon made a big splash in the 1950s, giving consumers nonstick cookware that saved on shortening and cleaning time. Since then, other nonstick products, such as Scotch Guard, Stainmaster and Gore-Tex, all related to C8, have been sold internationally.
On a less visible scale, C8 also is used to make grease-resistant food packaging, such as inside microwave popcorn bags and on the linings of fast-food wrappers. The lining of dog and cat food bags have a material made from C8 to keep their contents from sticking to the packaging.
The consumer products are not believed to be a source of contamination.
David Hastings, a DuPont spokesman based at the company’s Richmond, Va., plant, said C8 is a key ingredient in casings of computer wires and in semi-conductors, keeping out airborne particles that would otherwise clog and foil America’s information technology.
3M made some of the C8 products in Minnesota and also sold C8 to DuPont. Other companies also use the material.
Hastings said 3M workers handled ammonium perfluorooctanoate for decades and never showed conclusive signs of adverse health effects.
Taggart, the retired DuPont worker, recalls two co-workers in the Teflon division at Washington Works who gave birth to children who had facial deformities, the same abnormality found in laboratory rats that were fed C8.
“They said C8 could hurt unborn fetuses. On account of that, they moved all the women out of the Teflon plant,” Taggart said. “The only ones they let back in were ones who couldn’t have children.”
Hastings said the two cases were not out of line with the general population, and one of the cases was minor, with the person growing up to become a policeman.
The EPA is reviewing DuPont’s position that C8 is safe. C8 has caused cancer, liver damage and birth defects in laboratory rats. DuPont notes that there was dissent on the panel that recommended to the EPA that C8 be considered a likely carcinogen.
C8 also raises concerns because it is bio-persistent, meaning once it’s in the environment, or in humans, it takes years to break down. The government wants companies to limit C8 emissions, and the companies, including DuPont, have agreed.
While C8 does not occur naturally, it has been found in almost everyone whose blood has been tested for it and is believed to be in 90 percent of everyone in the United States. About 5 parts per billion is considered a typical level.
DuPont’s position
Bill Hopkins, manager of the Washington Works plant in West Virginia, said DuPont knew about C8 escaping into the environment but because the company’s assessments indicated it posed no health risk, DuPont had no reason to go public.
He said DuPont moved 50 women out of the Teflon plant in 1981 as a precaution related to information from 3M about potential health risks. After DuPont concluded the information was false, the women were moved back a year later.
Hopkins identifies C8 by the acronym PFOA.
“PFOA is a concern, not so much because of health effects, but because of persistent elements,” he said. “It migrates to water. We’re doing what we can to limit exposure and emissions, and we have reduced emissions.”
He said the company has spent millions studying C8, including epidemiology research, and has tried unsuccessfully to create a replacement for C8 in Teflon production.
In the meantime, he cited the chemical’s many uses in computer chips and other technology and said of C8, “It’s very critical to the world we live in today.”
The blood tests have provided an unexpected benefit to the area, he said, because the laboratory also screens for blood-sugar levels, cholesterol and other conditions that have led many residents to receive needed health care.
As part of the class-action lawsuit, DuPont agreed to buy activated carbon filters for the six contaminated water systems, four of which are nearing completion with the upgrades, he said. The carbon is intended to remove C8 or reduce it to minimal levels.
Results from the blood tests should be available in a year, but a panel of scientists, including Dr. Fletcher from London, may need two or more years to validate the findings before determining whether C8 is linked to health problems.
Hopkins said DuPont intends to help the scientists in every way possible.
“Hopefully, we’ll be able to put this thing to rest once and for all,” he said.
Staff writer John Fuquay can be reached at fuquayj@fayettevillenc.com or (919) 828-7641.