cfrw.us Blog

Ammonium perfluorooctanoate (APFO) or C8 is an essential processing aid used to make Teflon and numerous other chemicals. The only chemical plant in North America producing C8 is in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The DuPont Chemical Works has been manufacturing C8 in Fayetteville since 2002.

C8 contamination of public water supplies in Ohio and West Virginia and DuPont’s failure to provide timely information to the municipalities, states and the U.S. EPA resulted in a $16 million dollar fine, the largest in EPA history. In addition to the fine DuPont has paid hundreds of millions of dollars to the municipalities to settle law suits where water supplies have been contaminated.

The EPA has labeled C8 a likely human carcinogen that meets 3 of 5 of the EPA’s criteria for identifying cancer-causing substances. The EPA has called on DuPont and the companies that use C8 in their manufacturing processes to voluntarily reduce and eliminate the use of C8 by 2015 as part of a program called the “Global Stewardship Program”.

The DuPont Fayetteville Chemical Works on the bank of the Cape Fear River has produced this chemical in a new”state of the art” plant since 2002. DuPont has reported discharges of C8 to the ground water and to the Cape Fear River. The extent and causes of these accidental discharges are not fully understood.

The North Carolina C8 Working Group has been watching this situation and meeting with NC DENR and EPA officials to assure that these discharges are fully investigated, understood, stopped and mitigated. The potential for contamination of the Cape Fear River and the ground water needs to be monitored and reported to prevent contamination of public water supplies as happened in West Virginia and Ohio.

The levels of C8 in workers at the Fayetteville plant are dramatically higher than the level in the general population and this happened during a fairly short exposure period. This may also be a public health concern because it is not known or understood how this exposure is happening.

Cape Fear River Watch has been a member of the North Carolina C8 Working Group since the Group was formed in response to the information learned about the C8 discharges in the summer of 2005. Learn more about the NC C8 working group on the web at C8 NC .