Who was on watch and ultimately responsible: DuPont CEO Crawford H. Greenewalt (1948 to 1962); DuPont CEO Lammot duPont Copeland (1962 to 1967)

In 1961—The same year as the Teflon rollout—DuPont toxicologists confirmed that C8/PFOA was toxic to animals. That year, their chief toxicologist, Dorothy Hood, cautioned in a memo to executives that the substance should be “handled with extreme care;” it didn’t stop the rollout.

In 1962, DuPont scientists conducted tests on humans, asking a group of volunteers to smoke cigarettes laced with C8. Nine out of ten people in the highest-dosed group became ill with flu-like symptoms that included chills, backache, fever, and coughing. Further experiments by DuPont linked C8 exposure to the enlargement of rats’ testes, adrenal glands, and kidneys.

In the early 1960s, DuPont buried some 200 drums of the known toxic C8 on the banks of the Ohio River near the plant. The company then began packing the waste in drums, shipping the drums on barges out to sea, and dumping them into the ocean, adding stones to make the drums sink. Though the practice resulted in a moment of unfavourable publicity when a fisherman caught one of the drums in his net, no one outside the company realized the danger C8 presented. At some point before 1965, ocean dumping ceased, and DuPont began disposing of its Teflon waste in landfills instead.

In 1965, 14 employees, including Haskell Lab’s then-director, John Zapp, received a memo describing preliminary studies that showed that even low doses of a related surfactant to Teflon could increase the size of rats’ livers, a classic response to exposure to a poison.

These are the faces of the DuPont men and women who sanctioned–encouraged–the willful harm of other life to make a profit. Despite knowing the danger posed by exposure to PFOAs of people, these DuPont CEOs chose to: 1) continue to poison the environment and people, 2) cover up their actions from authorities, and 3) fight the courts and regulators from doing the right thing when they were caught. No one went to jail. No one was fired. They just paid $$$ and shamefully kept going. This is NOT good business. This is NOT being a good person. This is gross disrespect for all life and ultimately heinous criminal behaviour deserving more meaningful prosecution than a simple fine.

References:

Fluoride Action Network Pesticide Project. “Timeline for PFOA and PFOS perfluorinated chemicals compiled by FAN’s Pesticide Project” Draft document.

Blake, Marion, Huff Post “Welcome to Beautiful Parkersburg, West Virginia”

Gaber, Nadia, Lisa Bero, and Tracey J. Woodruff. 2023. “The Devil they Knew: Chemical Documents Analysis of Industry Influence on PFAS Science.” Ann Glob Health 89(1): 37.

Halmeriks, Koen and Irina Surdu. 2020. “Dark Waters: what DuPont scandal can teach companies about doing the right thing.” The Conversation.

Kelly, Sharon. 2016. “DuPont’s deadly deceit: The decades-long cover-up behind he “world’s most slippery material.” Salon.

Lerner, Sharon. 2015. “The Teflon Toxin: DuPont and the Chemistry of Deception.” The Intercept.