If you’re still using non-stick cookware, you may want to seriously reconsider. Ditto for using stain- and water-repellant clothing, and opting for stain-resistant carpets and fabrics.
All of these products — and many more — contain perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA, also known as C8), which has been revealed to be far more dangerous than previously thought.
For 50 years, DuPont used PFOA to make Teflon. Throughout that time, the company has defended the safety of PFOA, and still resists accountability for health problems resulting from exposure to this day. However, the truth has finally come to light.
I started warning people about the potential hazards of Teflon over 15 years ago. As a result, I was legally threatened by DuPont many times.
The evidence is now crystal clear for everyone to see, just as I have warned of for the last decade and a half. The dangers have become undeniable, and DuPont’s connection to this pernicious poison is starting to receive attention in the mainstream media.
The New York Times recently published an in-depth exposé1 on the legal battle fought against DuPont for the past 15 years over PFOA contamination and its toxic effects. I highly recommend reading through it; it’s an excellent read.
Last year, The Intercept also published a three-part exposé2 titled “The Teflon Toxin: Dupont and the Chemistry of Deception,” detailing DuPont’s history of covering up the facts.
Chemical Defense Attorney Became DuPont’s Greatest Nemesis
For the past 15 years, Rob Bilott — an environmental attorney and partner at Taft Stettinius & Hollister — has waged a legal battle against DuPont. He’s an unlikely nemesis for a chemical company, as the firm specializes in defending corporate clients, including chemical companies.
How he came to take on DuPont on behalf of a West Virginia farmer is detailed in the featured New York Times article. The farmer had reluctantly sold 66 acres of land to DuPont in the early 1980s, for the establishment of a company landfill.
The tract of land sold to DuPont had a creek running through it, which meandered down to the area where the farmer grazed his cows.
Not long after the sale, his cattle “began acting deranged” and developed mysterious ailments. More than 150 of his cattle had died by the time the farmer, Wilbur Tennant, contacted Bilott.
In response to Bilott’s initial suit, filed in 1999, DuPont offered to commission a study of Tennant’s property, with the help of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The study was conducted by three veterinarians selected by DuPont, and three chosen by the EPA.
As reported in the featured article:
“Their report did not find DuPont responsible for the cattle’s health problems. The culprit, instead, was poor husbandry: ‘poor nutrition, inadequate veterinary care and lack of fly control.’
In other words, the Tennants didn’t know how to raise cattle; if the cows were dying, it was their own fault.”
However, a letter sent by DuPont to the EPA mentioned a substance found at the landfill that Bilott had never heard of before, despite his chemical industry expertise. That substance was “PFOA.”
The chemistry expert retained for the case recalled reading about “PFOS” in a trade journal, used in the manufacturing of Scotchgard.
Since he couldn’t find any details about PFOA, Bilott asked DuPont to share what it knew about the substance. When the company refused, he requested a court order to force the release of the documentation, which was granted.
Internal Documents Revealed DuPont’s Guilt
By the end of 2000, he stood in receipt of more than 110,000 pages of material relating to PFOA, some of which dated back 50 years. Among the documents were private internal memos, medical reports, and confidential studies conducted by scientists at DuPont. As reported in the featured article:
“I started seeing a story’ Bilott said. ‘I may have been the first one to actually go through them all.
It became apparent what was going on: They had known for a long time that this stuff was bad’ … The story that Bilott began to see … was astounding in its breadth, specificity and sheer brazenness.
‘I was shocked,’ he said … Bilott could not believe the scale of incriminating material that DuPont had sent him.
The company appeared not to realize what it had handed over. ‘It was one of those things where you can’t believe you’re reading what you’re reading,’ he said. ‘’That it’s actually been put in writing …
But the crucial discovery for the Tennant case was this: By the late 1980s … [Dupont] decided it needed to find a landfill for the toxic sludge … Fortunately they had recently bought 66 acres … that would do perfectly.
By 1990, DuPont had dumped 7,100 tons of PFOA sludge into Dry Run Landfill. DuPont’s scientists understood that the landfill drained into the Tennants’ remaining property, and they tested the water in Dry Run Creek. It contained an extraordinarily high concentration of PFOA.
DuPont did not tell this to the Tennants at the time, nor did it disclose the fact in the cattle report that it commissioned for the Tennant case a decade later — the report that blamed poor husbandry for the deaths of their cows. Bilott had what he needed …
In August 2000, Bilott called DuPont’s lawyer, Bernard Reilly, and explained that he knew what was going on. It was a brief conversation. The Tennants settled …”
Other Shocking Findings
According to the paperwork, DuPont’s own disposal recommendations specified PFOA should not be flushed into surface water or sewers, yet over the decades, the company disposed of hundreds of thousands of pounds of PFOA powder into the Ohio River.
The PFOA-laced sludge that went into the landfill on the property purchased from Tennant also entered the water table supplying drinking water to more than 100,000 residents in Parkersburg, Vienna, Little Hocking and Lubeck.
The documents further revealed that for four decades, 3M and DuPont had conducted secret medical studies on PFOA, revealing potential health problems in rats and rabbits as early as 1961.
In the following decade, DuPont discovered its factory workers had high levels of PFOA in their blood, but they didn’t tell the EPA about it.
In 1981, 3M found that ingestion of PFOA resulted in birth defects in rats, after which DuPont tested the children of pregnant employees in their Teflon division. Two of the seven children had eye defects.
DuPont again chose not to share the information publicly. In 1984, DuPont became aware that PFOA was present in the local water supply. By 1991, one of the local water districts had PFOA levels that were three times higher than DuPont’s own internally established safety limit for drinking water, set at one part per billion (ppb). Still the company kept quiet.
As reported by The New York Times: (continue reading)