Former
DuPont Top Expert: Company Knew, Covered Up Pollution of Americans' Blood for
18 Years Documents: Company Couldn't Find Safe Level of Exposure in 1973 to
Chemical that Never Breaks Down, Clings to Human Blood
Study Results
Show Company Found Safer Ways to Coat Food Packaging But Shelved Them to Save
Money
WASHINGTON - November 16 - Glenn Evers was a DuPont employee of 22
years, one of the company's top technical experts and the chairman of
an invitation-only committee of its 40 best scientists and technical
experts. He holds six patents, and his work has, to date, made the company
an estimated $250 million in after-tax profits. Evers was, by his
description, a dedicated "company man." He was also the company's top
chemical engineer involved with designing and developing new uses of
grease-resistant, or perfluorinated, chemical-based coating for paper food
packaging. Breakdown chemicals from these coatings and related sources are
now in the blood of 95 percent of Americans, and the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) has spent the last several years trying to determine how they
get there. DuPont has claimed that it does not know how the chemicals got
there - and that are not aware that their product is responsible. "If we
had any reason to believe that [there] was a safety issue for fluorinated
telomers-based product, we wouldn't have commercialized them," DuPont
Director of Planning and Technology Robert Ritchie told the Wilmington News
Journal (11/23/03). Today, however, Glenn Evers told in detail how his former
employer hid for decades that it was polluting Americans' blood with a
hyper-persistent chemical associated with the grease-resistant coatings on
paper food packaging. Environmental Working Group (EWG) has obtained and
today made public a set of internal company documents that support Evers'
story. Combined, the Evers story and EWG's documents present a startling
chronology of DuPont's actions: Evers describes how, in the mid-1960s, the
company negotiated with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) a weak
standard for how much of the paper chemical coating, which is applied to give
packaging grease or liquid resistance, could contaminate food. The FDA at the
time normally required a two-year study for chemicals it wasn't familiar
with, but agreed to base DuPont's approval on a 90-day test with a 1,000-fold
safety factor added. Evers explains how that standard, which remains in
effect today, was based on the premise that the chemical would leave the body
quickly. He explained that as a company expert, he saw that the company knew,
at least by 1981, that another class of perfluorinated chemicals, such as
PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid), accumulates in people. It is unclear whether
or not the company ever provided the FDA this information, but Evers
explained how the company continued to worry about this information
throughout the 1990s. A company document shows that DuPont conducted a
toxicological study in 1973 in which it was unable to find a safe level of
exposure in lab animals, and that the chemicals were toxic to the kidneys,
liver and blood. A 1984 internal company memorandum raises the question of
which of these crucial findings, if any, from the 1973 study were provided to
the FDA. A key document shows that in 1987, DuPont's Dr. Richard Goldbaum
found that the company's marquee paper packaging coating chemical, Zonyl RP,
could contaminate food at over three times the federal safety standard, while
two effective alternatives contaminated food at half the federal maximum
level. Evers describes how he and others copied on the results of that study
knew they were "devastating." Evers approached Goldbaum, and then
Goldbaum's superior, Gerald Culling, telling each of them that the results
were an enormous problem and that it would be unethical to continue selling
the product. Both men told Evers not to worry, and that they were "taking
care of it." Evers realized with time that the company had not ordered a
standard, internal process hazards review to find out why the chemical was
above FDA approved levels. The company did not provide the information to
customers, federal health officials and the public. DuPont did not recall the
faulty product, did not stop its production, shelved the safer alternatives,
and continued to make Zonyl RP - effectively producing for another 18 years
the chemicals that would lead to the contamination of consumers'
blood. Evers says that one of the reasons the company stuck with the
problematic Zonyl RP was that it had adopted the practice of blending
substandard batches in with better batches - and selling the blended versions
to its industrial customers. Evers describes how DuPont's "Document
Retention Program" required researchers to label all hard copy files to time
their destruction. Company managers could audit employees to ensure
compliance, and other staff went through employees' hard copy files to ensure
documents were destroyed. A master computer program at the company deleted
files from company hard drives after a certain period of time. Evers tells
of how 3M, DuPont's competitor, rapidly abandoned the $150 million per year
business using perfluorinated chemicals on paper food packaging when it
realized in 2000 that the chemicals were producing byproducts accumulating in
human blood and that those chemicals were harmful to developing lab animals.
Despite what it knew from the 1987 results by Dr. Goldbaum and the
persistence and toxicity of its own chemicals, DuPont moved quickly to sell
its similar chemistry to 3M's former customers. EWG today sent the documents
to the FDA's acting commissioner, as well as the inspector general of its
parent Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), requesting the
officials act on the new information. The group is also referring documents
to relevant EPA officials. "These documents indicate a failure to disclose
critical public health information about a toxic chemical that never breaks
down, that gets into our bodies and stays there," said EWG Senior Scientist
Tim Kropp. "If we ever needed a reason to reform the nation's toxic chemical
laws, every American now has one, courtesy of DuPont." Evers' appearance
and EWG's document release comes just a week before a potentially significant
date in the civil suit the Bush administration's EPA has pursued against the
company for suppressing health studies on PFOA, which is used in the
production of Teflon pan coatings. Bush EPA political appointees could seek
the maximum possible fine of $314 million, but they have shown little
appetite for pursuing such a penalty. The next court date for the civil suit
was negotiated to fall on Wednesday, November 23, the day before the
Thanksgiving holiday and the busiest travel day of the year. "DuPont thinks
it has the right to pollute your blood with chemicals, but it doesn't," said
Evers. "Someone could get a fine for dumping trash if he threw a used tire
into the creek behind my house. This company continues to pollute the blood
of the American public with a toxic chemical - what is it going to end up
paying?" =================== Email forwarded by: Sandra
Finley 306-373-8078 Saskatoon, SK sabest1@sasktel.net
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