News Coverage
DuPont chief defends C-8
Holliday pledges to cooperate with EPA investigation
Published April 30, 2003
Chief executive Charles O. Holliday Jr. opened the DuPont Co.'s annual meeting Wednesday vigorously defending the safety of C-8 and pledging to cooperate with federal regulators as they investigate the chemical, used to make Teflon.
"We encourage them to go through the data," Holliday said, "and if they find the need to do some regulation based on the data, we will happily cooperate."
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency earlier this month stepped up its investigation into the human health effects of C-8, or ammonium perfluorooctanoate. After reviewing three decades of independent research, the EPA concluded the chemical causes cancers and developmental problems in rats, lingers for many years once absorbed by the human body, and likely exists at low levels in 80 percent or more of the U.S. population.
Holliday talked about the company's dedication to safety and its policy on C-8.
"We have not seen any negative effects on human health or the environment at the levels of exposure at which we operate," Holliday said of C-8.
A spokesman later said Holliday meant levels of 1 to 2 parts of C-8 per million measured in the blood of some DuPont employees who have worked with the chemical. The EPA has expressed concern about the much lower levels measured in the blood of the general population.
The EPA has said it has no concerns about the safety of products using Teflon. It has scheduled public hearings for June in which it will begin to negotiate a consent decree with a plastics industry trade group comprising DuPont and other companies, to disclose more data on C-8.
Holliday's remarks broke with DuPont's trend so far to address the C-8 issue exclusively through Holliday's executives.
Holliday also told stockholders he was focused on improving the performance of the company's stock.
"We're doing the right things in this company to return shareholder value to where we know you shareholders want it," Holliday told the 625 people attending the meting at the DuPont Theatre.
A few disagreed.
"I feel that your performance during the last four years was somewhat less than mediocre," said Paul Hagan, a shareholder from Merion, Pa., who said he had brought DuPont stock in 1999 at $72 a share. Shares closed up 16 cents Wednesday at $42.53. "You have been given time to reverse this trend and you have failed," Hagan said. He called on Holliday to resign.
Holliday responded to George Schreiber, a Clearwater, Fla., shareholder with a similar complaint, by noting that DuPont's stock has significantly outperformed the S&P 500 over the past two years. "Keep following us," Holliday said.