News Coverage
Both sides hope for answers on C8
Published March 6, 2005
PARKERSBURG--Joe Kiger had never heard of C8. He didn't know what PFOA was. He sure didn't know anything about ammonium perfluorooctanoate.
Then, in October 2000, Kiger got a letter from his water company, the Lubeck Public Service District.
Lubeck officials warned that they had discovered C8 in the water they provided to Kiger's family and 8,000 other homes.
But they told customers not to worry. DuPont assured them that the water was safe, the letter said.
That wasn't good enough for Kiger.
"Curiosity got me," the former labor union official turned schoolteacher recalled last week. "I wanted to find out what this was all about."
Eventually, Kiger's curiosity led him to hire a lawyer. Kiger became one of the 13 named plaintiffs representing a now-estimated 80,000 people who alleged DuPont polluted their drinking water.
Last week, Kiger and other residents near DuPont's sprawling Washington Works plant south of Parkersburg got what they wanted -- or at least their first big step in that direction.
On Feb. 28, a Wood County judge gave final approval to a $107.6 million settlement.
Judge George W. Hill Jr. said that the class-action lawsuit against DuPont "certainly has served a good purpose to this community."
As part of the settlement, DuPont will pay $10 million or more to provide new equipment to remove most of the C8 from local drinking water supplies.
About $5 million of DuPont's money will pay for an independent scientific team to figure out if C8 is harmful to humans.
And, in a move dreamed up and insisted on by the residents' lawyers, up to $70 million more will fund a first-of-its-kind, massive community health study.
In the end, supporters of the deal hope to find out not only if C8 can make people sick, but also if exposure to it can be tied to any ailments residents have already suffered.
"We want to know the answer," Kiger testified in a settlement hearing last week.
"I asked questions and time and time again couldn't get the answers," he said. "Now, we will find out."
On this one thing, DuPont's critics and company officials agree: Both want answers.
For its part, DuPont believes that the science study funded by the settlement will ultimately exonerate the company and its chemical.
"At the end of the day, DuPont is a science company," said Laurence Janssen, one of the company's lawyers.
"We believe in science," Janssen said. "We want to put this issue to rest if we can, and we believe we can with this science panel."
An unregulated chemical
At its Washington Works plant, DuPont has used C8 for more than 50 years in the production of Teflon. The popular product is best known for its use on nonstick cookware, but it is also used in everything from waterproof clothing to stain-repellent carpet and ball-bearing lubricants.
In court documents, one DuPont executive testified that the company earns about $200 million a year from products made with C8.
For years, C8 -- and DuPont's emissions of it into the air and water -- have been basically unregulated. Residents downstream from the Washington Works plant complained to government agencies for years, but got little action.
In the last few years, C8 has come under increasing scrutiny.
Last month, members of the EPA's Science Advisory Board urged the agency to elevate its cancer-causing classification for the chemical and do a more thorough review of the substance.
In a draft study, EPA had characterized C8 as a "suggestive" carcinogen. But advisory board members said that the evidence may indicate that the chemical is a "likely" carcinogen.
The Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Working Group said that EPA's draft study ignored evidence that links C8 to heart attacks, breast cancer, testicular cancer and other ailments.
In September 2002, EPA launched a "priority review" of C8's dangers, largely in response to new information about its toxicity that lawyers for Wood County residents uncovered as part of the lawsuit.
Last year, EPA also sued DuPont in a case that could prompt more than $300 million in fines against the company. Based again on evidence uncovered by the residents' lawyers, EPA alleged that DuPont had illegally withheld data about potential dangers of C8 exposure.
DuPont is fighting that EPA suit, and is lobbying the agency seeking to have the federal study conclude C8 is not harmful.
"An imminent and substantial threat"
When he got the letter about his water, Joe Kiger called everybody he could think of -- the county health department, the state DEP, the federal EPA.
"There was a chemical in our water -- why was it there?" Kiger said he asked. "Nobody seemed to know. All I was being told was that it was an unregulated chemical."
Finally, someone from the EPA regional office in Philadelphia helped him a little.
The EPA official told Kiger he was going to send him some information. Kiger should read it, the official said, and then he would probably want to find himself a lawyer.
What the EPA official sent Kiger shocked him.
"I became very alarmed," Kiger said. He called Bilott and "That's what started this whole thing."
The EPA official had sent Kiger a copy of a March 6, 2001, letter that Cincinnati lawyer Rob Bilott had sent to more than a dozen state and federal government officials.
At the time, Bilott represented Wilbur and Sandra Tennant.
After repeatedly seeking help from regulators and getting no action, the Tennants had sued DuPont in 1999, alleging that the company's C8 pollution made them sick and killed hundreds of their cattle.
Bilott told EPA that lawyers for the Tennants had evidence that C8 from DuPont's facility "may pose an imminent and substantial threat to health or the environment."
Bilott urged EPA to join in the lawsuit against DuPont, and to force the company to "immediately cease all manufacturing activities" involving C8. Bilott outlined dozens of documents that, he argued, showed DuPont had known for years that C8 was harmful, but had hidden that information from regulators and the public.
After the letter was written, DuPont lawyer John Tinney sought a court order to block Bilott and other plaintiffs' lawyers from discussing the C8 issue publicly.
In court papers, Tinney complained that Bilott's letter to EPA "could easily reach the mass media." Such publicity, Tinney said, "would result in a bias against DuPont at the trial of this matter."
U.S. District Judge Joseph R. Goodwin refused to gag Bilott and the other lawyers. DuPont eventually settled the Tennants' lawsuit for an undisclosed amount of money.
Bilott and Tennants' other lawyers, though, continued to push state and federal agencies to do something about C8.
And, when Kiger called Bilott, the lawyers agreed to represent him and other residents who worried about the C8 in their water.
"No human health effects"
Throughout the case, and even with the settlement, DuPont continues to maintain that "no human health effects are known to be caused" by C8.
At last week's hearing, lawyers announced that the study of this issue -- being conducted as part of the settlement -- will be done by Tony Fletcher of the London School of Hygiene, David Savitz of the University of North Carolina School of Public Health, and Kyle Steenland of Emory University.
The panel will evaluate available scientific evidence to determine if there is a link between C8 exposure and any human disease, including birth defects.
Janssen said that initial results of the study should be completed within 12 to 15 months.
"Their main charge is to go with all deliberate speed, but no matter what, to do it right," Janssen said.
Plaintiffs' lawyer Larry Winter, who with Janssen picked the scientists, said that the study would be "thorough and unprecedented."
"There is a tremendous amount of interest in this process nationally and internationally," Winter told the judge.
While the three scientists are doing their study, other medical experts will be surveying the health of residents downstream from the DuPont plant.
Planning for that survey has already been going on for five months. Plaintiffs' lawyers advanced money out of their own pockets so that the project could get started before the settlement was finalized.
Dr. Paul Brooks, a physician and one of two former hospital administrators, said the survey would gather residents' medical histories and try to estimate potential C8 exposure.
Blood samples from residents who agree to that part of the survey will be screened in 50 or 60 ways. Tests will look for cancer markers, organ function and C8 levels.
Eventually, the survey should give some answers about whether residents with great C8 exposure are more or less likely to have suffered from various diseases.
Brooks hopes that most of the work can be done in about a year. No community health survey "of this magnitude" has ever been done anywhere before, Brooks said.
"It's important that we determine scientifically what effect C8 has had or will have in the future on the health status of those individuals who have been exposed," Brooks said.
More than that, Brooks said, the study will provide a wealth of information about other facets of the community's health. All of the results -- without individual names or other identifying features -- will be placed in the public domain.
"It's going to be an enormous amount of information," Brooks said. "I think it will be a gold mine [for health researchers]."
Here are the general terms of DuPont's C8 settlement:
*DuPont will make an immediate cash payment of $ 70 million, which residents' lawyers will use to fund a community health study of the area around the company's Washington Works plant. To encourage participation, residents who fill out a health questionnaire will be paid $150. Those who also provide a blood sample for testing will be paid another $250. If any money is left when the survey is done, it will be divided among residents.
*On top of that $70 million, DuPont will pay another $22.6 million in legal fees and expenses for the plaintiffs.
*DuPont will offer to provide new water treatment equipment to clean C8 from the supplies of six area water companies. This is estimated to cost $ 10 million, but DuPont is obligated to pay whatever it costs.
*DuPont will pay $5 million for creation of an independent scientific panel to evaluate the potential health effects of C8.
*If that panel concludes that a link exists between C8 exposure and any diseases, DuPont will spend up to $ 235 million on a medical monitoring program for area residents. The monitoring would be designed to help residents seek early treatment of any C8-related ailments. A panel of physicians will be picked by the plaintiffs and DuPont to run the medical monitoring program. If medical monitoring is required, the residents' lawyers could be paid up to $ 60 million more in fees and costs. Again, the legal fees and costs are on top of - and will not come out of - the $235 million being paid for medical monitoring.
*Residents retain their right to file personal injury suits if C8 is linked to illness or birth defects.
Source: Wood Circuit Court