Consumer Products

In a letter to a federal judge overseeing Senate asbestos bill negotiations, EWG President Ken Cook says the judge has ignored the needs of people who are sick and dying of asbestos disease.

On Thursday, May 19, 2005, DuPont was served with a subpoena from the Justice Department's environmental crimes unit requesting documents on a key Teflon chemical. DuPont has already agreed to pay up to $340 million in a civil settlement for Teflon pollution and is the subject of an EPA investigation into its coverup of studies of the chemical's health effects.

A top Minnesota environmental official who worked for 3M is refusing to monitor the state's water supply for contamination from the company's dumping of a toxic Teflon chemical. EWG urges her to sever financial ties with 3M and let state scientists do their job.

Acting on a petition filed by EWG, the FDA has issued an unprecedented warning to the cosmetics industry that the Agency is serious about enforcing the law requiring companies to inform consumers about products that have not been safety tested.

EWG wrote to health officials in five states where chemical companies use Teflon chemicals to ask: please test your water. Alabama, Florida, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania could find that like Georgia, Minnesota, Ohio and West Virginia, they've also got a Teflon pollution problem to deal with.

EWG is petitioning the federal government to conduct a full investigation of this apparent violation of federal reporting requirements for toxic chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act, 15 U.S.C.

DuPont is continuing to make the same excuses to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on their violations of federal law. This analysis by EWG of DuPont's 2003 response to EPA's original inquiry still applies, since their defense has not changed, even after EPA announced it will formally take action against DuPont for violating section 8(e) of the Toxic Substances Control Act.

In an extraordinary announcement on July 8, 2004, the Environmental Protection Agency revealed the results of a year-long investigation into DuPont's failure to disclose to the agency internal company studies showing pollution of human fetal cord blood and local tap water with a toxic Teflon ingredient, known as C8 or PFOA. Acting on a petition filed by the Environmental Working Group, the Agency found that DuPont engaged in unlawful behavior on three separate counts of hiding critical study results in company file cabinets for up to 20 years.

New documents divulged via litigation show that the DuPont's behavior in the Teflon cover-up was worse than documented in the EWG petition, and that this behavior has not changed in any appreciable manner since that time.

A chemical associated with dozens of popular consumer products has proven to be surprisingly toxic and pervasive. In response, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is conducting the most extensive scientific review in the Agency's history to find out how this chemical has contaminated the blood of over 90% of Americans. A key Teflon ingredient, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), is the subject of the EPA's review. The public health stakes are high but lobbyists for DuPont and other chemical industry giants are hijacking the process by limiting what consumers will be allowed to know.