RiverKeeper to DENR: We’ve Got Some Questions
Secretary William G. Ross
North Carolina Department of Environmental and Natural Resources
1601 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-1601
Dear Secretary William G. Ross,
Cape Fear River Watch, Inc. is one of the public interest not-for-profit organizations that has been participating as a partner in a group that formed out of concerns about the production and monitoring of Ammonium perfluorooctanoate acid (APFO) or C8 at the DuPont Fayetteville Works production facility. As the newly appointed Cape Fear Riverkeeper I have several questions about North Carolina�s role in monitoring the production of APFO and in assuring public health and safety. Cape Fear River Watch has determined that the production of C8 in the Cape Fear Watershed is a substantial threat to the Cape Fear River given that this is the only production facility in the United States, DuPont�s history with respect to C8 discharges to ground and surface water in Ohio and West Virginia, the Environmental Protection Agency�s finding that C8 is a likely carcinogen, and their Global Stewardship Program which has called for the elimination of public exposure to C8 the year 2015.
My first question is about the discharge of C8 into the ground water that was reported to the State in 2005. It is my understanding that this discharge was investigated by DuPont and that the results of this investigation were reviewed by both NCDENR and the EPA. What are the results of this investigation? Was the source of the discharge determined? If so has that been remediated and are there safeguards in place to assure that future discharges can be quickly identified, reported and corrected?
The second question is in regards to the EPA Global Stewardship Program. Through this program companies to reduce PFOA releases and its presence in products by 95% no later than 2010, and to eliminate PFOA as a source of exposure by 2015.
The EPA asked the following of the companies volunteering to participate:
- Provide their commitment by March 1st, 2006.
- To submit their year 2000 baseline numbers for emissions and product content by October 31st, 2006.
- To submit annual public reports on their progress toward the goals due in October of each successive year. .
- To ensure comparable reporting of reductions, participating companies must commit to work with EPA and others to develop and agree upon analytical standards and laboratory methods.
Is the State of North Carolina through NCDENR involved with and monitoring the companies who have volunteered to participate in the Global Stewardship Program? Is the DuPont Company participating? If so have they submitted their year 2000 base line numbers and their first annual report? Are copies of these now available to the public?
My third question has to do with the Interim C8 Ground Water Standard that has been established by NCDENR. Establishment of an Interim Ground Water Standard for C8 at 2 parts per billion came as a surprise to water quality advocacy groups. Why did NCDENR determine it is in the best interest of North Carolina citizens to set an interim ground water standard for C8? What is the current status of this interim standard? How long will this interim standard be in effect? What are the requirements for North Carolina to establish a permanent legal ground water standard for Ammonium perfluorooctanoate acid, C8 and are there opportunities for public review and comments built into the process for establishing ground water standards.
My final question is about the amount of sediment carried into the Cape Fear River along with the discharge water from the DuPont Fayetteville Works plant. I understand that this an issue that was brought up through public comments made as part of the process of reviewing and renewing the North Carolina Discharge Permit for the DuPont Fayetteville facility. In response to these comments NCDENR stated that DuPont was presenting options to reduce the amount of sediment delivered to the Cape Fear River along with their discharge water. At that time NCDENR stated that it was not able to share these alternatives with the public. Dupont has indicated to me that they presented an alternative for handling its discharge water and the ball is in your hands for evaluation and modeling? If so can they now be shared with the public and will there be provisions for public review and comments on the alternatives presented and the NCDENR evaluation of these alternatives?
I appreciate the time and staff effort that will be required to respond to my questions. The responses to these questions will help me guide and direct Cape Fear River Watch�s efforts to work with NCDENR to improve the quality and vitality of the Cape Fear River. A thorough and accurate understanding of everything the North Carolina is doing to protect this valuable river and the people who live, work, and play on the river is critical to determining how Cape Fear River Watch�s advocacy can be applied to complement and augment the State of North Carolina�s work to secure the future of this valuable natural resource.
Sincerely yours,
Douglas Springer
Riverkeeper
Cape Fear River Watch, Inc.
PFOA (C-8) AND DUPONT DISCHARGE PERMIT
January 23, 2007
Environmental Management Commission/ NPDES Unit
1617 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-1617
Re: Draft Permit NC0003573
To Whom it May Concern:
Thank you for the opportunity for Cape Fear River Watch Inc. to comment on this draft permit. Cape Fear River Watch has been a proponent of water quality in southeastern North Carolina since 1993. Our mission is to protect and improve the water quality of the Lower Cape Fear River Basin through education, advocacy, and action. We have the following comments relating to the draft NPDES permit for the DuPont Fayetteville Works wastewater treatment plant.
The permit should require monitoring and compliance with effluent limits for PFOA (C8). The company has indicated that all the discharge from the PFOA plant is treated off site. This should either be made a requirement of the renewed permit or else effluent limits promulgated for PFOA. There is nothing in the proposed permit to prevent DuPont from treating the PFOA discharge on site and if this is done there would be no requirement for them to monitor for PFOA in the discharge.
In addition, the interim groundwater standard of 2.0 parts per billion for PFOA is too lax. This standard relieves DuPont of nearly all clean up responsibilities for the discharge that has been previously reported. North Carolina state health officials have stated that the standard for PFOA should be zero until the health risks are fully understood. Elsewhere, the standard has been set at 0.5 ppb. This would serve as a more appropriate interim standard.
The downstream mixing zone of 4,500 feet should be removed. Instead, monitoring should be required at the point where the DuPont discharge enters the Cape Fear River.
The daily maximum limitation for fluoride (7,917 pounds per day) seems extremely high. This is a concern because fluoride accumulates in animal bones, in plants and in the soil. If this limit remains in the final permit, the permit should also require monitoring of fluoride accumulation in river sediment and additional bioaccumulation studies on lower trophic catfish since they concentrate fluorides and some metals in their tissues.
For hexachlorobenzene, the phrase “sufficiently sensitive” relating to testing method is too ambiguous. The required method sensitivity should be more discretely defined.
In addition, we request a public hearing on this permit, and that we be notified about the date, time and place of the hearing when it is scheduled. Thank you for your consideration of these comments.
Sincerely,
Paul Nelson
President
PFOA (C 8) FOUND IN EMPLOYEES’ BLOOD
Chemical found in DuPont workers
Controversial PFOA was in blood of employees at Chesterfield plant
BY JOHN REID BLACKWELL
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Sep 30, 2006
A controversial man-made chemical has been found in blood samples taken from some employees of a DuPont Co. plant in Chesterfield County.The substance, known as PFOA, was detected at varying levels in blood samples taken in May and June from workers at the company’s Spruance plant, a union representing workers there said. The company confirmed the results.
The company offered the blood tests, and 89 employees accepted, after a union that represents many DuPont workers raised concerns about the chemical. The substance has been found in the blood of workers at other DuPont sites such as a plant in Fayetteville, N.C.
PFOA, short for perfluorooctanoic acid, is used in the production process for Teflon, an ingredient in nonstick cookware and all-weather clothing.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency says PFOA does not pose a concern to consumers using those products, but the potential health effects on people exposed to higher levels of the chemical are still being investigated and are disputed.
Some studies have indicated it can cause liver, developmental and reproductive problems in laboratory animals, the EPA said.
DuPont said it believes PFOA does not pose a health risk to the general public. The company said a health study it is conducting on more than 1,000 workers at a plant near Parkersburg, W.Va., has indicated no association between exposure to PFOA and health problems.
The company hired an independent laboratory to analyze the Spruance employees’ blood samples.
Because the results of individual tests are confidential, neither the company nor the union said how many of the 89 employees tested positive for PFOA.
Those who did test positive had PFOA in their blood ranging from 0.5 parts per billion to 800 parts per billion, the union said. The average of those tested was 66 parts per billion.
Because PFOA is a persistent chemical that does not break down in the environment, it has been found at low levels in the blood of the general U.S. population, at a mean level of about 5.6 parts per billion, but it has been found in much higher levels in workers, the EPA said.
Jay Palmore, president of Ampthill Rayon Workers, a union that represents about 1,200 local DuPont employees, said the highest PFOA level at the plant — 800 parts per billion — was detected in a female employee, but he declined to offer specifics.
Palmore said he was one of the employees who took a blood test and that his results showed a PFOA level of 8 parts per billion.
“I haven’t worked in Teflon since 1976,” he said. Now a technical assistant in the research department, Palmore said he has worked in almost every part of the plant in his 33 years there.
“We don’t know for sure what it is going to do to humans,” Palmore said. “To me, it would be a good idea to keep track of it. I don’t want to put DuPont out of business. No one wants to do that. I really think it should be a regulated material. The government needs to step in and do that.”
An EPA science advisory board said this year that PFOA should be considered a “likely carcinogen.”
DuPont disputes that.
“To date, there are no human health effects known to be caused by PFOA,” the company said in a statement. “Based on health and toxicological studies conducted by DuPont and other researchers, DuPont believes the weight of evidence indicates that PFOA exposure does not pose a health risk to the general public.”
PFOA was not manufactured at the Spruance plant, and DuPont says only small amounts of it were present in the Teflon production line that operated there from 1953 to 2004.
The PFOA controversy has been a repeated source of tension between DuPont and the United Steelworkers Union, which represents 1,800 DuPont employees at other plants, but none at Spruance.
That union claims DuPont has failed to protect workers from the potential hazards of PFOA, while DuPont says the union is engaged in a campaign to make the company look bad.
Several times this year, the Steelworkers Union and the Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club, an environmental-protection group, have collected water samples from sites nearby the plant and its discharge site into the James River. Those samples, the groups said, have shown PFOA contamination in trace amounts in ground and surface water around the plant.
After those concerns were raised, DuPont agreed to collect water samples from wells on plant property and the James River in cooperation with the EPA. The results from those tests are pending.
Last year, DuPont agreed to pay a $16.5 million penalty to the EPA for allegedly withholding information about the potential health and environmental risks posed by PFOA after the chemical was found in the blood of workers and in groundwater around the plant in Parkersburg.
The company also agreed last year to pay $107 million to settle a lawsuit filed by residents near the plant.
Contact staff writer John Reid Blackwell at John Reid Blackwell or (804) 775-8123.
DANGER – LEARN ABOUT APFO OR C8
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 .
