Charleston Gazette, Ken Ward Jr.
Published August 20, 2005
VINCENT, Ohio - On Monday night, more than 200 people gathered in the steamy hot auditorium of Warren High School to find out if pollution from a DuPont Co. chemical plant is making them sick.
Dr. Edward Emmett of the University of Pennsylvania's School of Medicine delivered the good news: A landmark government-funded study found no link between C8 exposure and any illnesses. No connection to liver disease. No signs of kidney problems. No indication of thyroid maladies.
Still, Emmett recommended that residents near the DuPont Washington Works south of Parkersburg not drink water contaminated with the company's toxic Teflon ingredient.
If C8 isn't making people sick, why should people worry about drinking water polluted with it?
First, Emmett said, there were important limits to what his study examined. It did not consider whether C8 causes cancer or leads to development problems in children.
Second, Emmett said, absent more concrete information about those two issues, he believes residents should remain cautious.
"I think it's really prudent," Emmett said. "There is a difference between knowing something is harmful and being able to say that it's safe."
Emmett said that caution is especially important for children and older residents, who were found to have the highest concentrations of C8 in their blood.
"We can't explain all of the health effects, and I'm pretty concerned that the level is high in the very young," Emmett said.
"We may not be able to say it's harmful, but do we know it's safe? That's another thing," Emmett said. "We haven't seen any harm, but we can't say that this is safe."
The announcement of Emmett's findings was another significant chapter in the continuing controversy over C8 and DuPont's emissions of it.
The study is believed to be the first independent review of how C8 exposure might affect an entire community's health. Generally, previous studies - many funded by DuPont and other chemical makers and some by plaintiffs' lawyers - examined effects on plant workers and on laboratory rats.
C8 is another name for perfluorooctanoate, and is also known as perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA.
At the 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 C8 is also used in everything from waterproof clothing to stain-repellent carpet and ball-bearing lubricants.
For years, C8 and DuPont's emissions of it have basically been unregulated.
Fueled in large part by information uncovered by lawyers suing DuPont over C8 pollution, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has launched a priority review of the chemical's dangers. The EPA has also sued DuPont for allegedly hiding information about C8 toxicity, and the company is facing a criminal investigation for concealing data about the chemical's hazards.
Last August, DuPont agreed to pay more than $ 107 million to settle the class-action suit on behalf of more than 50,000 current and former plant neighbors whose water was tainted with C8.
Much of the money will fund a detailed review by private scientists of C8's dangers and a landmark community health study in the Parkersburg area. The company has also offered to pay for new water treatment systems to remove C8 from local water supplies, and will pay for bottled water for the Little Hocking Water Association customers until the new treatment systems are installed.
Under the settlement, DuPont could be on the hook for another $ 325 million in future medical monitoring if the studies find C8 could make people sick. On top of that, the company may also face additional lawsuits if residents actually get sick from C8 exposure.
In press releases and at last week's meeting, Emmett has taken great pains to emphasize that his work is not related to the legal wrangling over C8's potential dangers or DuPont's liability in releasing it into the environment.
Funded through a four-year grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the Emmett study is independent of any corporation, law firm or class-action lawsuit.
In his work Emmett sought to measure levels of C8 in the blood of Ohio residents who live across the river from the Parkersburg plant. He focused on four communities - Belpre, Little Hocking, Cutler and Vincent - that receive their drinking water from the Little Hocking Water Association. The survey examined blood samples and a variety of health information of 326 residents from 160 randomly chosen households.
Emmett also wanted to find out if most C8 exposure for humans came from drinking water or from the air they breathe. Finally, he sought to learn if this exposure put residents at a greater risk of getting sick.
Last month, Emmett reported in a news release that his work had found that residents who depend on C8-contaminated drinking water have 60 to 80 times more C8 in their blood than the general U.S. population.
The average American is believed to have about 5 parts per billion of C8 in his blood.
Residents studied by Emmett averaged about 340 parts per billion. The figures varied, depending on whether customers worked at DuPont, got water only from the Little Hocking system, and some other factors.
Emmett compared C8 blood levels in Little Hocking water customers who live upwind and downwind from the Washington Works plant. He found that the C8 levels were comparable. From that, he concluded that drinking water, not air emissions, is the most significant source of C8 exposure.
As part of his study, Emmett compared C8 levels in residents' blood to other blood tests commonly used to detect liver, kidney and thyroid diseases.
Emmett found no connection, a conclusion that was praised by DuPont officials and publicists who attended last week's meeting.
Bill Hopkins, the Washington Works plant manager, said that Emmett's results were "very consistent with what DuPont's own findings have been."
"We believe there are no known health effects, and that's what we heard here tonight," Hopkins told reporters after the meeting.
But Emmett said he found some things in his study that have him worried.
For example, Emmett found that residents who ate more locally grown fruits and vegetables had significantly higher concentrations of C8 in their blood.
"It went up as the number of servings increased," Emmett said.
Emmett said he is concerned because he cannot fully explain the finding.
"I wish I knew what was happening," he said. "Is the C8 in the fruit or vegetables, or is it in the cooking water, or does it have nothing to do with that?"
In response to Emmett's findings, the Washington-based Environmental Working Group, which has been following the C8 issue, published a "briefing memo" with its take on the study.
The group emphasized that Emmett "did not assess the most sensitive health effects linked to the Teflon chemical in lab studies - cancer and developmental harm."
Last year, a scientist working for lawyers suing DuPont found that people living near the Parkersburg plant had high rates of prostate cancer in men and cervical and uterine cancer in women. The study also found elevated rates of less common cancers such as non-Hodgkin's, leukemia and multiple myeloma.
And in late June, an EPA science advisory panel urged the agency, in a draft report, to list C8 as a "likely human carcinogen."
Emmett said that his study did not examine nearly enough people to properly consider C8's potential to cause cancer. He said that the larger health review launched as part of the lawsuit settlement should be large enough to look at the issue.
Last week, the private firm doing that health study said that 20,000 residents had signed up so far to take part. The firm, Brookmar, hopes that 60,000 to 80,000 eventually take part.
Until more detailed answers are available, Emmett said residents should seek alternate water sources - such as the bottled water DuPont agreed to fund for Little Hocking customers - until water treatment systems are installed to filter out the C8.
Emmett specifically advised parents not to use the polluted water to make infant formula and called his findings on children's blood levels "the exact opposite of what we would want to see from a public-health perspective."
Emmett's C8 findings highlight what critics say is a major weakness in the way the federal government regulates toxic chemicals.
In June, the Government Accountability Office reported that existing law provides only "limited assurance" that the 700 new chemical compounds entering the marketplace each year are safe.
"EPA does not routinely assess existing chemicals, has limited information on their health and environmental risks, and has issued few regulations controlling such chemicals," the GAO report said.
Two years ago, the Environmental Working Group issued its own report that urged Congress to require detailed testing to prove chemicals are safe before people are exposed to them.
"Industry must be required to prove the safety of a new chemical before it is put on the market," the report said.
