Bloomberg News, Jack Kaskey
Published November 16, 2005
DuPont Co., the third-largest U.S. chemical producer, is tainting candy, butter, popcorn and baked goods with a potentially cancer-causing chemical that seeps out of grease-resistant packaging, a former company scientist said yesterday.
The Wilmington company has known since 1987 that its Zonyl RP, which makes paper resistant to grease, is absorbed by humans at three times the permitted level, said Glenn R. Evers, a DuPont chemical engineer from 1981 to 2002. Zonyl is used in food packaging.
The human body breaks down Zonyl into the chemical PFOA, or perfluorooctanoic acid, causing enlarged livers in animal studies, he said. The absorption findings were not disclosed by DuPont to customers or regulators, Evers said.
DuPont has said PFOA does not cause human health problems, even in workers exposed to high doses. In a statement yesterday, the company said Zonyl packaging was safe for consumers.
"DuPont has always complied with all FDA regulations and standards regarding these products," the company said. Spokesman R. Clifton Webb declined further comment.
The Food and Drug Administration regulates food packaging. An FDA spokesman did not immediately return calls yesterday seeking comment.
The Environmental Protection Agency is studying PFOA, used in Teflon-coated pans, to determine whether it causes cancer in people and why it is found in the blood of most Americans.
"DuPont has hidden and suppressed the data so they wouldn't draw further government scrutiny," Evers said at the Washington headquarters of the Environmental Working Group, a watchdog organization that persuaded him to speak publicly. "The issue is, are you going to play by the rules?"
DuPont is paying $107.6 million to settle claims that PFOA, also known as C8, from its West Virginia factory polluted the drinking water of 60,000 people.
International Paper Co. uses DuPont's Zonyl RP to make clamshell boxes for McDonald's Corp. hamburgers. Also, ConAgra Foods Inc. uses Zonyl to make bags for microwave popcorn, Evers said in an interview. Spokesmen for those companies were not immediately available to comment.
The Environmental Working Group disclosed to regulators and reporters yesterday what it said were internal DuPont documents that support Evers' claims.
A ban on PFOA would affect $1 billion of DuPont's $27.3 billion in annual sales, the company said in a Nov. 3 filing.
Evers, who was a chemical engineer in charge of fluorotelomer paper coatings at DuPont's Chambers Works site in Deepwater, N.J., said he tried to persuade his colleagues at DuPont to notify customers and regulators after he received a September 1987 study that found Zonyl leaches from paper coatings into food at 0.62 part per million. The FDA safety standard of 0.2 ppm was set in 1966.
DuPont subsequently learned that Zonyl breaks down into PFOA in the blood, and that PFOA accumulates and persists in people, he said.
DuPont would not market safer packaging alternatives because they were more expensive to produce, and Zonyl was the company's best seller, Evers said.
"I pushed as hard as I possibly could for eliminating blood contamination chemicals that are retained in the blood," Evers said.
Evers was fired in 2002 as part of a company restructuring, and he filed a wrongful-termination suit this year. He said he had no financial interest in speaking out.
"My personal convictions do not allow me to withhold what I know," Evers said. "This effort can do nothing but make trouble for me."
PFOA affects two groups of products made by DuPont: fluoropolymers and fluorotelomers.
PFOA is not found in finished fluoropolymer products, such as Teflon coatings, rain gear and wiring insulation, DuPont said. The chemical is present at trace levels in fluorotelomer products such as firefighting foams and grease repellants added to paper, clothing, leather, upholstery and carpet, DuPont said in a Nov. 3 government filing.
An EPA scientific advisory board in June said PFOA was a likely human carcinogen, based on animal studies. The EPA itself has not determined whether the chemical harms human health.
This article ran in the following outlets:
Philadelphia Inquirer, Montreal Gazette, Toronto Star.
