NIDAN - DuPont - Part 2 - National Priority List

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DuPont was rated as the number one worst polluter on the Political Economy Research Institute's Toxic 100 index. The company has contributed to over 20 superfund sites, which are identified as the nation's worst toxic waste sites. Sites that put people most at risk are placed on the National Priority List. Two of DuPont's sites have made the list. In addition, DuPont has numerous other contaminated sites that require clean-up and remediation.

Some of the chemicals used in pesticides produced and marketed by DuPont have been linked to brain damage and disruption of the hormone system. The company has also faced a string of lawsuits in recent years, brought by parents whose children were born without eyes. These defects are alleged to have occurred, due to the children's mothers being exposed to the fungicide Benlate, whilst pregnant.

DuPont is a major producer of formaldehyde. This chemical is a known carcinogen and is also implicated in other health problems such as respiratory illness. Despite this, DuPont has vigorously fought efforts to get the chemical banned, using spurious science and disinformation. It is one of the companies that provided funding for the Formaldehyde Institute, a corporate front group set up to defend the chemical.

DuPont and other chemical companies have been accused of trying to suppress evidence regarding the severe toxicity of dioxins, hardly surprising given the quantities of these carcinogens they churn out every year. Recently, residents in Mississippi, threatened a $3 billion lawsuit against DuPont, claiming damage from dioxin pollution.

A now-closed DuPont owned factory has contaminated the soil and groundwater surrounding a neighborhood in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey.

Dupont dumped toxic chemicals in the Pompton Lakes community for almost 100 years, causing massive damage not only to the resident's health, but to natural resources.

Tests of soil under 37 homes and apartment buildings scattered above the plume of contamination in the groundwater, found vapors above acceptable levels in more than 9 of 10 cases, indicating that vapors were likely seeping into basements.

A cancer report, by the NJ Department of Health and Senior Services, which covered the period 1979-2006, found elevated rates of two types of cancer: kidney cancer in women and non-Hodgkin lymphona in men.

About 500 concerned and rightfully angry residents turned out at a public meeting in December 2009, to demand that their community be cleaned up, that multi-billion dollar corporate polluter DuPont be held accountable, and that the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection be fired for their incompetent years of failure to enforce cleanup by DuPont.

DuPont has admitted the plant's wastewater treatment was improperly handled, and that the company was responsible for chemically contaminating the water and soil underneath hundreds of homes. Now, a disproportionately high number of people in the area are developing and dying from cancer.

One resident, Tom(?) Carroll commented, "My wife died of lung cancer in June, my stepson died of throat cancer, my neighbor across the street has it, everybody is dying around here. I've never seen anyplace like this." Eight months ago, Carroll had a cancerous kidney removed.

Carroll used to work at the plant and now says, "It was a great job when we had it, but we didn't know the ramifications would be this." The table next to him holds no less than 11 different types of medication.

Another resident, Joe Intintola Jr., shares, "It's in my colon, they want to remove half of it, I've got a pre-cancerous mass in my stomach, a mass in my chest. If I had known about this I would never have moved here."

Unfortunately and understandable, residents are having trouble selling their homes. And that leaves many of them surrounded by the contamination, and stuck breathing the toxic fumes each day.

NIDAN - DuPont - Part 1 - History

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DuPont is the third-largest chemical maker in the U.S., behind only Dow and Exxon Mobil Chemicals. In addition to chemicals, Dupont produces genetically modified seeds, synthetic fibres, coatings, electronics and security devices. DuPont's revenues totalled over $26.6 billion in 2005.

There is hardly a single chemical toxin in which DuPont has not played a major role in developing. The company pioneered the production of sulphur dioxide, leaded petrol, CFC's, and recently deep well injection of hazardous waste. The company then used dubious science, political manipulation and cover up, to avoid restrictions on their use. During its 200 years of existence, DuPont has committed a staggering amount of corporate crimes.

In the 1920s, DuPont and General Motors developed Tetraethyl Lead, or ethyl, to help car engines run more smoothly. The product has been labelled by the World Health Organisation as "the mistake of the 20th Century." The lead ingredient of leaded petrol, TEL, is said to account for 80-90% of all environmental lead contamination, and is known to retard the mental development of children, cause hypertension in adults and impair coordination. Leaded gasoline has irrevocably damaged the intelligence of two generations of American children, and is responsible for 50,000 deaths a year by heart attack and stroke.

The chemical was discovered to be dangerous to human health quite early on. In 1924, reports broke out that 80 percent of workers involved in the production of TEL, at DuPont and Standard Oil plants had been killed or severely poisoned. When TEL was pulled off the market, DuPont ran a series of advertisements in Life magazine, and managed to reverse the decision after a hearing, in which it called TEL "An Apparent Gift of God."

To entrench its market position, DuPont introduced a new car engine, that ran only on leaded petrol. The product was finally banned half a century later, after scientists conclusively proved its detrimental effects. In December 1988, the US Department of Justice sought to collect $9.2 million from DuPont, for illegally blending excessively high levels of lead, into gasoline between 1983-1985.

Once banned in the US in the 1980s, DuPont exported TEL to other countries where it was not banned. With Pemex, the Mexican Oil Company, it exported TEL to Latin America. DuPont finally sold its 40% shares in the production plant in Coatzacoalcos, Mexico in 1992. According to the Council on Economic Priorities 1993 report on DuPont, the company has "aggressively promoted the use of leaded gasoline."

In 1990, it was revealed that a former DuPont landfill site, in Newport, New Castle County, Delaware had contaminated the groundwater, both on and off the site, with heavy metals. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, the pollution potentially threatened the water supply of 131,000 people.

In March 1991, the area around DuPont's Quimica Fluor plant, in Matamoros, Mexico, was judged so toxic, that the Mexican President ordered 30,000 people to give up their homes in order to create a two mile buffer zone around the site.

In 1996, DuPont's proposal to dispose of 85 tons of toxic pollutants a year, into the Guadalupe River in Texas, prompted a local shrimper, Diane Wilson, to go on hunger strike for 31 days. The proposal related to a DuPont facility, which already disposed of 20 million gallons of wastewater a day, mainly through seven underground injection wells. Independent research has demonstrated that virtually any petrochemical plant can go to zero water discharge, with an additional capital investment of about 2 percent.

In 1998, DuPont was ordered by the US Environmental Protection Agency to carry out a $65 million clean up of its Necco Park landfill site, near Niagara Falls. This was necessary due to concerns regarding hazardous liquid seepage from the site.

In 1999, DuPont was listed by the US Public Interest Research Groups as one of the ‘Dirty Five’, the five biggest polluters in the U.S., that together spent $6,523,677 over the period 1991-1998, in lobbying Congress, the House of Representatives and Super fund-related committees, in order to prevent stricter legislation.