EPA to Act Against DuPont for an Ingredient in Teflon

In December 2001, DuPont lawyer Bernard J. Reilly wrote in an e-mail to his son that the company had learned that its method of detecting C-8 in water "has very poor recovery, often 25 %, so any results we get should be multiplied by a factor of 4 or even 5. However that has not been the practice, so we have been telling the agencies results that are surely low. Not a pretty situation, especially since we have been telling the drinking water folks not to worry . . . Ugh."

DuPont officials said yesterday they were confident they had complied with federal law and had taken appropriate precautions in disposing of C-8, cutting releases by 98 percent since 1999.

"We're not aware of any evidence of any health effects associated with PFOA," said Robert Rickard, DuPont's chief toxicologist. He said that while DuPont took women who could become pregnant off the C-8 production line in 1981, they were allowed to return after the company determined that the animal studies indicating birth defects had been flawed.

But that has failed to convince residents near the Washington Works plant, many of whom have become embroiled in litigation with DuPont.

Della Tennant, who lives in Parkersburg and settled a lawsuit with the company in 2001, said: "My whole family's been affected by it. I believe the C-8 was one of the factors . . . How are we going to know how much that contaminated water has affected our family?"

She said she has lost several head of cattle that grazed near the company's Dry Run Landfill and had suffered from respiratory problems she blamed on contaminated water and eating beef from her cattle. Her high-school-age daughter's gums decayed and required skin grafts, she said.

Bob Griffin, general manager of the Little Hocking Water Association, whose facility serves 12,000 area residents, said, "We're just trying to find a solution."

Griffin told EPA officials at a meeting last year: "Twenty years ago, DuPont knew C-8 contaminated our water, but we didn't find out about it until about a year-and-a-half ago. Since then, we have learned that C-8 not only contaminates the aquifer from which we pump our drinking water, but it also contaminates our soil and the air we breathe."