http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2004/09/14/build/business/55-dupont.inc
September 14, 2004
The Billings Gazette
(Montana)
Settlement won't
stop DuPont's chemical fight
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -
Despite a tentative lawsuit settlement that could cost it $343 million,
chemical giant DuPont vowed this week to continue to fight allegations that
its C8 chemical is harmful.
DuPont officials said
that they would continue to challenge federal regulators, who say the company
concealed information about the chemical's hazards.
That separate case,
filed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, could cost DuPont another
$300 million or more in fines.
R. Clifton Webb, a DuPont
spokesman, said the tentative deal in the Wood County class action case
does not affect the EPA matter.
"It's separate,
and we'll continue to contest it with EPA," Webb said Friday.
Cynthia Bergman, a spokeswoman
for the EPA, agreed that the matters are not related. The settlement does
not affect the EPA's case against DuPont, Bergman said.
On Thursday, lawyers
for DuPont and Parkersburg-area residents announced a tentative settlement
to a three-year-old class action against the company.
Under that deal, DuPont
would pay $107.6 million, including $22.6 million to cover legal fees and
costs for the residents.
DuPont would provide,
at a cost of about $10 million, six local water plants with new equipment
to reduce the amount of C8 in their supplies.
The company would pay
$5 million for a study to examine potential health effects of exposure to
C8.
Depending on the outcome of that study, DuPont also could end up on the
hook for $235 million for future medical monitoring for 50,000 or more neighbors
of its Washington Works plant.
A formal settlement
document has not yet been filed in Wood Circuit Court.
Lawyers for the parties
notified Wood Circuit Judge George W. Hill Jr. in a telephone conference,
and then issued a news release Thursday afternoon to announce the tentative
deal.
Before the settlement
can be finalized, the lawyers must notify potential class members and give
those residents an opportunity to review and object to the deal. The settlement
also must be approved by Hill before it can take effect.
C8 is another name for
perfluorooctanoate, and is also known as perflurooctanoic acid, or PFOA.
At its Washington Works plant, south of Parkersburg, DuPont has used C8
for more than 50 years in the production of Teflon.
For years, C8 - and
DuPont's emissions of it into the air and water - have been basically unregulated.
But in the past few years, C8 has come under increasing scrutiny.
In September 2002, the
EPA launched an unusual "priority review" of the chemicals, in
response to studies that linked it to development and reproductive problems,
liver toxicity and cancer. The EPA repeatedly has
delayed the release of results of that review.
Based largely on documents
uncovered by lawyers for the Parkersburg residents, the EPA in July filed
a complaint alleging that DuPont had covered up information about C8's dangers.
When they filed the
lawsuit against DuPont on July 8, EPA officials alleged that the chemical
giant had caused "widespread contamination" of drinking water
supplies near its Parkersburg plant.
EPA officials also alleged
that this pollution has created a "substantial risk of injury to health
or the environment."
EPA officials allege
that DuPont never told the government that it had water tests that showed
C8 in residential supplies in concentrations greater than the company's
internal limit.
Also, the EPA alleges
that DuPont withheld, for more than 20 years, the results of a test showing
that at least one pregnant worker from the Parkersburg 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.
Further, the EPA alleges
that DuPont did not provide the EPA with this information, even after the
agency requested it under the terms of the company's hazardous-waste permit.
The information at issue
was not reported to the EPA until a lawyer representing Parkersburg-area
residents did so in March 2001.
DuPont has denied the
allegations, and will challenge them during a hearing before an EPA administrative
law judge. That hearing has not been scheduled.
Webb said DuPont continues
to believe that C8 is not harmful to humans.
"Nothing has changed
in our position," Webb said.
Copyright © The
Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises.
