Charleston WV, September 14--Despite a tentative lawsuit settlement that could cost it $343 million, chemical giant DuPont vowed Friday to continue to fight allegations that its C8 chemical is harmful, according to the Charleston West Virginia Gazette.
DuPont officials said that they would continue to challenge federal regulators, who say the company concealed information about the chemical's hazards.
That separate case, filed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, could cost DuPont another $300 million or more in fines.
R. Clifton Webb, a DuPont spokesman, said the tentative deal in the Wood County class action case does not affect the EPA matter.
"It's separate, and we'll continue to contest it with EPA," Webb said Friday.
Cynthia Bergman, a spokeswoman for the EPA, agreed that the matters are not related. The settlement does not affect the EPA's case against DuPont, Bergman said.
On Thursday, lawyers for DuPont and Parkersburg-area residents announced a tentative settlement to a three-year-old class action against the company.
Under that deal, DuPont would pay $107.6 million, including $22.6 million to cover legal fees and costs for the residents.
DuPont would provide, at a cost of about $10 million, six local water plants with new equipment to reduce the amount of C8 in their supplies.
The company would pay $5 million for a study to examine potential health effects of exposure to C8.
Depending on the outcome of that study, DuPont also could end up on the hook for $235 million for future medical monitoring for 50,000 or more neighbors of its Washington Works plant.
A formal settlement document has not yet been filed in Wood Circuit Court.
Lawyers for the parties notified Wood Circuit Judge George W. Hill Jr. in a telephone conference, and then issued a news release Thursday afternoon to announce the tentative deal.
Before the settlement can be finalized, the lawyers must notify potential class members and give those residents an opportunity to review and object to the deal. The settlement also must be approved by Hill before it can take effect.
C8 is another name for perfluorooctanoate, and is also known as perflurooctanoic acid, or PFOA.
At its Washington Works plant, south of Parkersburg, DuPont has used C8 for more than 50 years in the production of Teflon.
For years, C8 -- and DuPont's emissions of it into the air and water -- have been basically unregulated. But in the past few years, C8 has come under increasing scrutiny.
In September 2002, the EPA launched an unusual "priority review" of the chemicals, in response to studies that linked it to development and reproductive problems, liver toxicity and cancer. The EPA repeatedly has delayed the release of results of that review.
Based largely on documents uncovered by lawyers for the Parkersburg residents, the EPA in July filed a complaint alleging that DuPont had covered up information about C8's dangers.
When they filed the lawsuit against DuPont on July 8, EPA officials alleged that the chemical giant had caused "widespread contamination" of drinking water supplies near its Parkersburg plant.
EPA officials also alleged that this pollution has created a "substantial risk of injury to health or the environment."
EPA officials allege that DuPont never told the government that it had water tests that showed C8 in residential supplies in concentrations greater than the company's internal limit.
Also, the EPA alleges that DuPont withheld, for more than 20 years, the results of a test showing that at least one pregnant worker from the Parkersburg plant had transferred the chemical from her body to her fetus.
That information, the EPA said, supported animal tests showing that C8 "moves across the placental barrier." The EPA said that agency efforts to understand C8's health effects "might have been more expeditious" if DuPont had submitted the human test results in 1981.
