C8. August 5, 2004. Letter from the Environmental Work Group to Tom Skinner, Acting Asst. Administrator, Office of Enforcement & Compliance, US EPA, requesting maximum fine for DuPont.

FLUORIDE ACTION NETWORK PESTICIDE PROJECT

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C8 or C-8: PFOA is perfluorooctanoic acid and is sometimes called C8. It is a man-made chemical and does not occur naturally in the environment. The "PFOA" acronym is used to indicate not only perfluorooctanoic acid itself, but also its principal salts.
The PFOA derivative of greatest concern and most wide spread use is the ammonium salt (Ammonium perfluorooctanoate) commonly known as C8, C-8, or APFO and the chemical of concern in the Class Action suit in Ohio.

Ammonium perfluorooctanoate (APFO or C8)
CAS No. 3825-26-1. Molecular formula:

Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA or C8)
CAS No: 335-67-1. Molecular formula:

The DuPont site where APFO is used as a reaction aid is the Washington Works (Route 892, Washington, West Virginia 26181) located along the Ohio River approximately seven miles southwest of Parkersburg, West Virginia.

The Little Hocking Water Association well field is located in Ohio on the north side of the Ohio River immediately across from the Washington Works facility. Consumers of this drinking water have brought a Class Action suit against the Association and DuPont for the contamination of their drinking water with DuPont's APFO, which residents and media refer to as C8.

PFOA is used as a processing aid in the manufacture of fluoropolymers to produce hundreds of items such as non-stick surfaces on cookware (TEFLON), protective finishes on carpets (SCOTCHGUARD, STAINMASTER), clothing (GORE-TEX), and the weather-resistant barrier sheeting used on homes under the exterior siding (TYVEK).

http://www.ewg.org/issues/PFCs/20040806/index.php

August 5, 2004

Mr. Tom Skinner
Acting Assistant Administrator, Office of Enforcement and Compliance
Environmental Protection Agency
Ariel Rios Building
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20460

Dear Mr. Skinner:

As you and your colleagues decide how much to fine DuPont for illegally hiding a human birth defect study and water contamination data, a new study coming out in Environmental Science & Technology (ES&T) finds the Teflon chemical PFOA in people's blood on four continents. If DuPont had complied with the TSCA 8(e) reporting requirement over twenty years ago, we believe it is reasonable to assume that EPA would have taken regulatory action decades ago to prevent or reduce the release of PFOA into the environment, preventing or reducing what is, by this point, human contamination on a planetary scale. Providing such early warning, particularly for substances with the unusual persistence and toxicity of perfluorochemicals, is the very purpose of the Section 8(e) requirement.

In light of this new information, we renew our request to the Agency to levy a fine that takes into account the decades of profits DuPont has accrued while hiding the studies from the Agency, a fine that is proportional to the magnitude of the pollution problem scientists are only now belatedly documenting.

Even the maximum fine of $313 million would be less than two years' worth of net DuPont profits from Teflon sales.

A recent news story reports that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) just fined Shell $120 million for falsifying oil reserve estimates, a legal violation that primarily affected investors. Surely the fine should be far higher for a company that earned billions in profits while permanently polluting the entire biosphere.

Sincerely,
(signed)
Timothy J. Kropp, PhD
Senior Scientist

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The Environmental Working Group is a nonprofit research organization based in Washington, DC that uses the power of information to protect human health and the environment. Four years' worth of EWG research on Teflon chemicals and related substances is available at http://www.ewg.org/issues/PFCs/index.php.