Fayetteville Observer, Nomee Landis
Published January 27, 2006
DuPont's Fayetteville plant will adhere to the terms of an agreement to reduce emissions of a Teflon chemical that gets into the environment and into people's blood, manager Barry Hudson said Thursday.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday that eight U.S. companies, including DuPont, have agreed to find ways to keep the chemical, APFO, or ammonium perfluorooctanoate, out of the environment and out of consumer products.
Hudson said DuPont will lead the way in global reductions of the chemical. The company plans to reduce APFO emissions worldwide by 98 percent by the end of 2007, he said.
At the same time, Hudson said he and his staff will continue to investigate how APFO has gotten into the groundwater at the Fayetteville plant.
Officials at DuPont's Fayetteville Works plant discovered two years ago that the chemical has seeped into water and soil at the plant, which is near the Cumberland-Bladen County line off N.C. 87. Traces of it have been found in groundwater, in the Cape Fear River and in a private well off DuPont property. And recent samples have shown the concentration in one monitoring well near the company's APFO manufacturing facility has increased significantly in the past several months.
Staff from the EPA and the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources spent several days at the Fayetteville plant this week collecting water and soil samples that will be tested for the presence of APFO.
APFO is widely known as C8, a trademarked name that its original manufacturer, 3M, gave it. The EPA and many scientists refer to it as PFOA. It has been used for decades to make Teflon and other products.
The Fayetteville DuPont plant is the only place in the United States where the chemical is manufactured. DuPont ships it to its Washington Works plant near Parkersburg, W.Va., where it is used to make Teflon, and sells it to other companies.
The chemical has caused problems for the communities around the West Virginia plant, where it has gotten into drinking water. DuPont settled a class-action lawsuit there in March involving more than 50,000 people. DuPont agreed to pay $107.6 million to settle the suit and spend as much as $235 million for health monitoring of those people.
Joe Kiger, the lead plaintiff in the class-action lawsuit, said the agreement between DuPont, the other chemical companies and the federal government is a step in the right direction.
"At least we've got some agencies doing something," Kiger said Thursday. "We've got the Environmental Working Group pushing this. That is what it is going to take. But what hurts is we have not even scratched the tip of the iceberg."
Last month, the company reached a $16.5 million settlement with the EPA for its failure to report possible health risks associated with the chemical.
The EPA began studying APFO and other closely related chemicals after sampling revealed that it is in the blood of about 95 percent of Americans. It is also found in wildlife.
Studies by DuPont have found it causes benign tumors in laboratory animals, but further studies, some of which have been conducted by independent sources, have found no conclusive evidence that it causes health problems in people. The EPA is still studying that.
APFO products generated $1 billion in revenues for DuPont in 2004. According to the agreement struck with the EPA Wednesday, the company must reduce APFO manufacturing emissions by 95 percent by 2010. It must also virtually eliminate traces of it in finished products by 2015.
APFO dissolved in water acts as a surfactant in the manufacturing process. It aids the chemical reaction that must occur to form the complex compounds needed to make, among other things, nonstick pans, wire coatings and grease-resistant food packaging, including microwave popcorn bags and fast-food wrappers.
Hudson said the Fayetteville APFO plant, which opened in late 2002, emits 1 percent of the APFO emissions that were being released by 3M when it manufactured the chemical.
The Fayetteville plant operates its APFO manufacturing facility under a state air-quality permit. The permit allows for the emission of up to 200 pounds of the chemical each year, but Hudson said actual emissions are lower.
Hudson said the company will test emissions from the smokestack at the APFO facility in February using more sensitive detection instruments than have been used in the past. Depending on the results of those tests, the company will consider installing better equipment, he said.
The company's goal is to drive emissions to zero, Hudson said.
DuPont officials told the Associated Press on Wednesday that they believe the chemical giant can create new manufacturing processes to reduce the trace amounts of the chemical that linger in food packaging and other consumer goods. Hudson said the company has already committed to reducing emissions of the material.
At the Fayetteville plant, workers retrieve as much APFO as possible from wastewater. Some remains, however. Hudson said the wastewater that is produced is shipped either to Colorado or New Jersey. The waste that contains the most APFO is incinerated, which destroys the compound's chemical bonds, something nature cannot do.
This class of chemicals persists in the environment for years. Some studies suggest it may take a century or longer for the compound to degrade.
In people, APFO has a half-life of 4.5 years, Hudson said. That means it takes that long for the body to excrete half of the chemical's concentration and that long again to remove half again and so on.
Hudson has said because APFO is so soluble in water, the ultimate sink for this chemical will be the world's oceans.
