Just when I thought I couldn’t be any angrier at DuPont, the company announces it will buy a water-purification company.
The 2018 documentary “The Devil We Know” and the 2019 movie “Dark Waters” reveal how DuPont Chemical released gunk related to the manufacturing of Teflon and various waterproofing products into the atmosphere.
For decades, the company dumped toxic chemicals into the nation’s waters. One such substance, PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid, also known as C8), is now estimated to be in the blood of 99 percent of Americans, including newborns.
The coverup by the company extends 70 years, as revealed in detailed reporting by Sharon Lerner of The Intercept. Research by DuPont’s own scientists revealed as early as 1961 that C8 was toxic. The company even performed human tests in 1964, asking volunteers to smoke cigarettes laced with C8 and noting that they were sick for hours after.
Nonetheless, DuPont forged ahead with its manufacturing, burying drums of C8 on the banks of the Ohio River near its manufacturing plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia, and out at sea.
Later, the company dumped its miracle toxin straight into the Ohio River and submerged it in unlined landfills. Women were moved off the line that specifically handled C8 over concerns about birth defects. Employees were diagnosed with leukemia and kidney cancers at higher-than-average rates. A farmer whose land is adjacent to one of DuPont’s landfills lost his entire herd.
Eventually, after a class-action suit and plenty of bad publicity (although not nearly enough, to my way of thinking), DuPont settled for what a layman might think of as an astronomical figure but which really represents only a small part of one year’s profit, admitted no guilt (still doesn’t), and switched out C8 with another type of wonder ick possessing similarly-concerning side effects.
Ultimately, the DuPont debacle illustrates the danger of something our current administration touts as a benefit — rolling back environmental safeguards like the Clean Water Act in the name of increased profits.
In the case of DuPont, such safeguards likely wouldn’t have mattered. The company avoided fallout by staying several steps ahead of the EPA (which issued an advisory for PFOA and similar compounds only in July 2016), engaging in corporate capture (basically infiltrating government agencies with people sympathetic to a company’s views) and writing checks big enough to make the problem go away.
Now, in the ultimate act of corporate hubris, DuPont will buy Desalitech Ltd., which makes reverse osmosis products to remove the same types of toxins that DuPont dumped into our water.
Yes, you read that correctly: The company that made billions by creating this mess will now be paid to clean it up. That’s good work if you can get it. Just ask the manufacturers of naloxone, which stops opioid overdoses and is manufactured by some of the same pharmaceutical giants who gave us opioid addicts in the first place.
According to a report by the Environmental Working Group, Desalitech makes about $6.5 million a year. This isn’t chump change, but it is minuscule compared to the $84 billion that DuPont made from the beginning of 2018 through July of last year.
So either DuPont executives see environmental clean-up as a huge growth area or views Desalitech as a way to position itself for any future problems with chemical disposal. Or both.
It’s always possible, I suppose, that DuPont wants to do the right thing and use Desalitech to clean up all the water it has helped to pollute for free.
If you believe that, I have some chemically contaminated land I’d like to sell you, cheap.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
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