DOVER, Del. — The DuPont Co. is requesting a hearing before an administrative law judge about a government complaint that the company failed to provide information about the potential health and environmental risks of a chemical used to make Teflon.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency alleged last month that DuPont repeatedly failed over a 20-year period to submit information the company had obtained regarding the synthetic chemical perfluorooctanoic acid, known as PFOA or C-8.
The EPA is seeking millions of dollars in fines from DuPont for two violations of the Toxic Substances Control Act and one violation of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.
In a 57-page response filed Wednesday, DuPont said it had no legal obligation to provide information to the EPA about PFOA levels it found in the blood of pregnant employees at its Washington Works plant near Parkersburg, W.Va., and in nearby drinking water supplies. "DuPont fully and promptly reported to EPA all of the information it was supposed to report," attorneys for the company wrote.
The EPA is still reviewing DuPont's response, a spokeswoman said.
According to federal regulators, DuPont learned from blood sampling of pregnant workers in 1981 that the chemical had transferred through the placenta of at least one woman to her fetus.
The government contends that information confirming the transplacental movement in humans of PFOA, which the EPA said is associated with developmental effects and liver toxicity in animals, reasonably supports the conclusion that the chemical presents a substantial risk to human health and thus should have been reported under TSCA.
DuPont argues in its response that the EPA knew chemicals such as PFOA are likely to pass through the placentas of animals. The company also said "the trace amount of PFOA found to have crossed the placenta would pose no risk to human health" and thus did not trigger the reporting requirement.
The EPA also alleges that DuPont had learned by 1991 that PFOA was present in public water supplies in West Virginia and Ohio near the Washington Works facility at levels approaching four parts per billion in some samples, well above a voluntary community exposure guideline of one part per billion that DuPont set that year. DuPont contends that the voluntary exposure guideline did not amount to a reporting threshold. It also notes that a C-8 toxicity assessment team that included EPA representatives settled on a health screening level of 150 ppb in 2002.
The EPA is using voluntary company guidelines to suggest that DuPont violated government reporting requirements, said Stacey Mobley, DuPont's general counsel. "I look at this thing as no good deed goes unpunished," he said.
DuPont also denies that it failed to provide EPA with toxicological information about PFOA, specifically transplacental movement in humans, despite a 1997 request for such information under the terms of an EPA-issued RCRA permit. The company said in its response that PFOA is not regulated as a hazardous waste under RCRA, and that the mere presence of PFOA in a blood sample does not lead to the conclusion that it has any toxic effect.
DuPont's failure to report what it knew about PFOA amounts to "a massive violation, both of law ... and good conscience," said Tim Kropp, a senior scientist with Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit advocacy group. "Comprehensively, they had a lot of information about potential adverse health effects ... and they didn't divulge that information to anyone," Mr. Kropp said.
While seeking administrative penalties against DuPont, the EPA is conducting a separate investigation to determine what, if any, risks to human health or the environment are posed by PFOA.
The EPA began taking a closer look at PFOA last year after the Environmental Working Group, relying on an internal DuPont document that surfaced in a class-action lawsuit by residents living near the West Virginia plant, complained that DuPont should have turned over information about the chemical to EPA but had not. The trial in the West Virginia lawsuit is scheduled to begin next month.
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