Chemours v. DuPont: Who will pay for Mid-Ohio Valley C8 Claims?

DuPont and Chemours are suing each other over C8 liabilities. More specifically, they are squabbling over who is going to pay for personal injury claims brought by members of the class after the 2017 settlement of 3,500 cases for $670 million.

All of this is the result of a class action lawsuit filed in Wood County Circuit Court against DuPont in 2002 over the contamination of several Mid-Ohio Valley water supplies, which resulted from manufacturing processes at DuPont Washington Works near Parkersburg, West Virginia. The case brought to light the family of hightly fluorinated chemicals we now call PFAS - thousands of manmade industrial solvents. C8 is DuPont's trade name for the substance they used in the manufacture of Teflon and other consumer applications at Washington Works since the 1950s. C8 refers to its durable 8 carbon chain. The family of forever chemicals were developed to be indestructible for the Manhattan Project.

The members of the class in the Wood County case are those individuals who lived or worked in one of the contaminated areas and drank the water for at least a year prior to 2004.

The groundbreaking lawsuit was determined not by the courts, but by a court approved method of scientific discovery proposed by the attorneys for the class. The C8 Health Project collected the blood and medical histories of nearly 70,000 Mid-Ohio Valley residents who had been exposed through their contaminated drinking water. The information gathered was studied by three epidemiologists - the C8 Science Panel - who assessed the data together with the information discovered in other scientific studies around the globe and determined that for this population there was a probable link between six human health conditions and C8 exposure. The conditions included: kidney cancer, testicular cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, pre-eclampsia, and medically diagnosed high cholesterol.

DuPont agreed to build and maintain water treatment facilities for the six impacted communities named in the suit. They are: Little Hocking, Belpre, Pomeroy, Tuppers Plains-Chester in Ohio and Lubeck and Mason County, West Virginia. As a condition of the settlement agreement, DuPont would remain responsible for the maintenance of these water filtration systems if C8 exposure could be linked to human disease. It was.

Further, based on the findings of the C8 Science Panel, eligible class members who developed the linked human health conditions could file personal injury claims against DuPont. The bulk of those, 3,5oo cases, were settled with the 2017 agreement.

However, there is an expectation that individuals who live here will continue to be diagnosed with the conditions because they have been exposed for decades - and are being exposed still. The C8 Medical Monitoring Program was also provided for in the class action settlement, which means that class members are entitled to medical screenings regarding the linked health conditions. And, people who are diagnosed with one or more of the linked human health conditions have two years from the date of their diagnosis to file a personal injury claim against DuPont.

In order to provide for these personal injury claims, in the 2017 settlement agreement DuPont and Chemours both agreed to share the financial responsibility and set aside funds. Now these future liabilities have become a source of contention between DuPont and the spin-off company that was designed to handle the escalating global crisis and liabilities associated with PFAS exposure.

Newly released court documents reveal Chemours claims its parent company systematically underestimated the cost of handling environmental problems resulting from PFAS contamination not only in the Mid-Ohio Valley, but also in places like New Jersey and North Carolina. There is mounting pressure from other states, as well, as communities all over the country become aware of their own exposure problems.

While Chemours claims DuPont low-balled estimates of future liabilities, DuPont claims the company acted within its legal rights in creating Chemours and claims it did so with the DuPont stockholders' best interests in mind. In a motion to dismiss, DuPont contends Chemours must solve this dispute in private arbitration rather than the courts.

Until yesterday, DuPont successfully kept the court documents sealed.

In 2017, DuPont and Chemours jointly agreed to pay $250 million for future settlement claims involving class members in the Mid-Ohio Valley over the next five years - or from 2018 to 2022. Chemours alleges DuPont isn't paying their share and is asking that DuPont be made responsible for all of the historical liabilities that have exceeded the certified cost expectations.

Column by Callie Lyons

#PFAS #exposedwithoutconsent #PFASisPoison

PFAS Exposure Leads to Breastfeeding Problems

Not only do PFAS forever chemicals cross the placenta and expose an unborn baby to industrial solvents while still in the womb; a new study reveals that a mothers' ability to breastfeed is also negatively impacted by this chemical exposure.

In June, experts, scientists, advocates and impacted community members from all over the world gathered at Northeastern University in Boston to compare notes and share information about the family of chemicals called PFAS, which includes the substance familiar to Mid-Ohio Valley residents as C8 or PFOA and the replacement chemical called Gen-X.

This family of forever chemicals was developed for the Manhattan Project. They were designed to last. And, so they do. The halflife in humans is on the order of eight years or so - more for longer chain chemicals. The damage to the environment is so extensive that experts estimate cleanup, if it were possible, could take 1,000 years.

Consider that the nation's rivers have been used as dumping grounds for industry for decades. It's estimated that millions of unsuspecting Americans are drinking water contaminated with the Teflon toxin and its ugly cousins.

While this is an enormous problem, we are just now discovering some of the impacts the widespread contamination is having on our highly exposed community. The information that came to light about breastfeeding was a shock.

If you are a young mother or if you know a young mother, chances are you have heard anecdotes about girls having serious problems making enough milk. It's a crushing experience that takes a serious toll on a new mother's confidence and mental health. Trying and repeatedly failing is hard on mother and baby. The battle can go on for hours, days or weeks - depending on the will of the mother, the health of the baby, and the environment of support for the pair.

The new mother feels deficient if she is unable to perform in this way. Yet, it happens all the time in the Mid-Ohio Valley. Never did I suspect that this, too, is a PFAS exposure related problem.

We have known for some time that an unborn child becomes exposed through the mother. Babies are born with higher exposure levels than their mothers. And, we knew that highly fluorinated chemicals also are delived to the child through breastmilk. However, it's worth noting that experts still believe breastfeeding is the best - even if the exposure is being passed along to the child.

But the information that came out of Boston recently was something unprecedented.

The preliminary results of a study from Denmark showed that PFAS in a mother's blood negatively impacts her ability to produce enough milk to feed the baby. Researchers said this production problem occurs even at the so-called normal averages found in the blood of Americans who do not live in the Mid-Ohio Valley or near another site that is emitting the carcinogenic family of chemicals. This result is seen at what scientists and researchers call "background" levels because they are fairly typical across the population. (Meaning PFAS exposure without consent is a factor for all Americans.)

Here in the Valley, because of the operations of manufacturing facilities, residents are faced with a much heavier chemical burden through not only drinking water, but also air, soil, produce, and who knows how many other pathways to exposure. While water filtration systems have been placed in some communities to reduce exposure, some significant areas have been left out. Take Parkersburg, for example. In any case, the existing filtration systems will not catch the Gen-X (C6) and may not work on the thousands of other compounds that fall under the PFAS classification.

In 2009, the Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry issued an advisory that never quite made it to the public's awareness. It said that baby formula should not be made with the water. It further advised that young children, seniors, and those with compromised immune systems should not drink the water. That advice was given to the Mid Ohio Valley Health Department so that it might be passed on to residents. However, officials at the health department decided not to "scare" the public with this information.

Reducing exposure is recommended for everyone in as much as that can be accomplished when you're living in the toxic soup of industry.

Medical professionals need to be aware that their over exposed mothers are going to have problems. Protocols need to be adjusted to accommodate this information and to make the situation easier for mother and child.

For the rest of us who probably know and love at least one young mother, now that we have identified the problem, let's use this information to provide support, encouragement and options for our babies and their mothers.




#PFAS #exposedwithoutconsent #PFASisPoison




Column by Callie Lyons