Public, regulators and regulated are in the dark about DuPont

Fayetteville Observer
Published November 30, 2005

A little over six weeks ago, officers and scientists at DuPont's plant near the Bladen-Cumberland County line were eager to have the public understand that groundwater contamination at the site had come from a faulty cistern, not from the facility that produces C8, a substance used in the production of Teflon. Today, what the public understands is that there's groundwater contamination there, too, and that the newly detected contamination is unrelated to the spill from the cistern (long since remedied). The public further understands that DuPont doesn't know what's causing this seepage, and that one reason it went undetected may have been that some monitoring wells near the C8 facility were drought-dry. Someone could ask, and someone should, why, if the dry wells were incapable of providing any information about the condition of the groundwater, good or bad, nothing was said about that while reassurances were being offered. The more urgent concern, of course, is that the source hasn't been pinpointed. So if the production facility is the source, it's not unreasonable to suppose that the contamination is continuing, cumulatively worsening, while all this is being discussed. It is being played out against a couple of backdrops. One involves the United Steelworkers Union and the C8 Working Group, each of which may have its own agenda although their interests overlap and they have been known to interact. That one can take care of itself. Neither group's actions are going to change the science of what's going on. The other backdrop involves a class-action lawsuit in the Ohio River Valley that DuPont settled for $107.6 million, agreeing to provide health screenings for 60,000 people who drank C8-laced water. And it has tentatively agreed to settle a dispute with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which alleges that the company withheld information about the extent of the C8 health threat and caused "widespread contamination" of drinking water supplies near one of its plants. But again, thoughtful people will put away the torches and pitchforks. While the company takes pains to limit its workers' exposure, and although it has been shown that C8 can be passed from expectant mother to fetus, no adverse health effects of exposure to C8 have yet been scientifically proven. That doesn't entitle either C8 or its manufacturer to a clean bill of health. The presumption of innocence, as has been said here before, is for people, not for chemicals. And a panel of scientists now reviewing the research into elevated cholesterol in humans and benign tumors in lab rats will have more to say on those and other concerns early next year. Part of the problem, however, may be precisely that C8, which has a terribly long half-life, is not a regulated chemical. If the EPA were to provide a standard for gauging contamination, then public, company and workers would all have a clearer notion of how serious the problem is and how to go about containing it.