News Coverage
EPA challenges DuPont on C-8 reports
Company faces fines of up to $1.5 million for delay in reporting blood tests to agency
Published December 7, 2004
The Environmental Protection Agency filed a new claim against the DuPont Co. on Monday for failing to report higher-than-average levels of a Teflon-related chemical in the blood of a dozen people who live near a company plant along the Ohio River in West Virginia.
DuPont faces a potential fine of nearly $1.5 million in the latest action, initially proposed as an addition to an earlier complaint that the company failed for as long as 20 years to report pollution or health concerns from perfluorooctanoic acid, sometimes called PFOA or C-8. Federal officials have said they may seek millions in penalties for the earlier offenses; maximum penalties on all counts could exceed $300 million.
EPA officials described the blood tests as the first to connect human PFOA exposures with individual pollution sources.
"The agency considers the human serum sampling information to reasonably support the conclusion of a substantial risk of injury to health or the environment," the EPA said in its complaint. "The administrator was not adequately informed about the risk at the time the information was obtained by DuPont."
PFOA and related chemicals are used in a wide range of consumer products, including stain-resistant and nonstick coatings. The materials in recent years are under scrutiny by the EPA, after studies found traces of the chemicals in the blood of humans and animals around the globe.
The EPA has warned that the chemicals might never break down in the environment and might increase risks of birth defects, developmental delays or other health problems such as cancer, based on tests on laboratory animals.
DuPont officials said in a statement late Monday that the company would contest the EPA's claims, and denied that the exposures found during the blood tests represented a health threat.
The EPA accused the company of failing to report blood test results involving 12 people who lived near the company's Washington Works plant near the Ohio River. They drank water from a public supply that had been contaminated with PFOA but had stopped drinking the water at least three years before the tests. Still, their blood levels of PFOA were far higher than those reported for the water.
"EPA received this information, which should have been reported immediately by DuPont, several weeks after DuPont allegedly received the results," the agency said after filing its claim.
Tests in July found PFOA levels in the group's blood ranging from 15.7 parts per billion to 128 ppb, with an average of 67 ppb. That is more than 12 times the national average of 5 ppb. Federal officials said the company faces fines of $32,500 a day for failing to forward the information between Aug. 28 and Oct. 12.
Exposure to PFOA among chemical industry workers around the country ranges from 840 to 6,400 parts per billion, according to an EPA preliminary risk report issued last year. One worker had a PFOA blood level of 81,300 ppb.
"DuPont does not agree with EPA that the blood monitoring data is reportable" under Toxic Substances Control Act requirements, the company said. "The exposure levels reported in the twelve samples are below occupational exposure levels, where we have not observed any adverse health effects resulting from exposure to PFOA, and do not represent a health concern."
The company said it is cooperating with federal regulators seeking information on the compounds. A National Institutes of Health study also is under way to assess community and workplace exposures to the compound.