News Coverage
Concerns grow about risk from DuPont chemical C8
Published April 4, 2003
When strings of carbon atoms combine with fluorine, they help keep food from sticking to pots and pans.
A powerful family of substances called perfluorochemicals, or PFCs, provides modern society with some of its most popular consumer products.
These magical items, including Teflon, Stainmaster and Scotchgard, repel stains on furniture and make raindrops roll off jackets. They keep feet that wear Gore-Tex hiking boots dry.
Concerns are growing, though, that PFCs are also incredibly toxic, according to federal government officials and independent scientists.
On Thursday, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization released a detailed report of what it says is a health threat the public is just learning about.
“A flood of disturbing scientific findings since the late 1990s has abruptly elevated PFCs to the rogues gallery of highly toxic, extraordinarily persistent chemicals that pervasively contaminate human blood and wildlife the world over,” the Environmental Working Group said in its report.
PFCs are basically unregulated. They are also everywhere - from workers who make them and the blood of their children to the general population and the food supply in cities across the country.
For example, in a 2001 study, the working group said, 3M found PFCs in apples from a Decatur, Ala., Kroger and ground beef from a Port St. Lucie, Fla., Albertson’s.
In some cases, federal regulators now fear, PFC levels in women and young girls are above the concentrations that may be safe.
The Environmental Working Group said that laboratory studies have linked PFC exposure to breast, testicular, prostate and thyroid cancers. Exposure has also been tied to hypothyroidism and fetal brain damage, the group said.
“As more studies pour in, PFCs seem destined to supplant DDT, PCBs, dioxin and other chemicals as the most notorious, global chemical contaminants ever produced,” the group said.
On its Internet site, www.ewg.org, the group published an interactive report that includes maps of known PFC contamination around the world. The report also includes a list of common products made with PFCs.
In West Virginia, DuPont Co. has since 1951 used a key PFC, called C8, to make Teflon at its Washington Works plant outside Parkersburg.
A group of residents from both sides of the Ohio River are suing the company over contamination of area water supplies with C8. Lawyers for the residents also complain that the state Department of Environmental Protection has not done enough about the problem.
Last month, DEP lawyer Perry McDaniel criticized the Environmental Working Group for a letter that said, “C8 causes cancer, damages reproductive organs, is toxic to the immune system and produces a host of other adverse health effects in people and animals.”
“There is no evidence of any of these health effects in humans,” McDaniel said.
McDaniel’s comments echoed repeated statements by DuPont that C8 does not present a health threat.
Earlier this week, DuPont vice president Richard J. Angiullo said in a statement that C8 “has been used safely for more than 50 years with no known adverse effects to human health.”
In its new report, the Environmental Working Group said that DuPont’s stance is “clearly out of step with recent conclusions drawn by the U.S. [Environmental Protection Agency], with data published in peer-reviewed journals, and with data embedded in 50,000 pages of industry-sponsored studies.”
Last year, EPA launched a review of C8 after reading a 2001 study by 3M. The agency has estimated that 0.04 parts per billion is a safe blood level of C8. The average concentration in blood of American children has been estimated at 140 times higher than that.
At one of its plants, 3M found that C8 production workers were three times more likely to die of prostate cancer than other employees.
In 1981, DuPont found C8 in the umbilical cord blood from one baby and blood from a second baby born to female workers at its Wood County plant. Among seven pregnant workers monitored by DuPont, two gave birth to babies with birth defects. That same year, DuPont reassigned 50 women from the plant.
The Environmental Working Group urged EPA to order a phase-out of C8 and an expedited review of all other PFCs. The group suggested consumers phase out the use of products like Teflon skillets and stain-resistant carpet.