DuPont‘s C-8 saga didn’t start – or end – with the 2005 settlement in the Leach case. C-8 was used at DuPont’s Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, WV starting in 1951. Almost from the start, DuPont knew about the dangers of C-8, but they hid that information from their own workers and the public. Read some of their stories here:
Stories
I worked for Heist on and off for 20 years. We were contracted to dispose of the C-8. We would clean the C-8 out with a sump pump. From there we would separate the liquid and the solid and put the solid in drums that were shipped off. The liquid would be dumped directly into the pond.
DuPont knew it had contaminated the Lubeck Water System’s wells, so the company decided to purchase the wells and pay for new ones farther away for Lubeck. Unfortunately, these wells were downstream because the company claimed that the ‘high river’ water was not of the quality they needed.
The solid waste from the Teflon unit would be packed into drums and loaded into trucks that would bring the waste south to Letard in Mason County once a month. The people around there didn’t know.
For example in Cincinnati the DuPont Fort Hill Works plant caused elevated levels. There were also some of the highest levels in Bloomington, Delaware.
We’d try to boon it or get it all out, but DuPont didn’t want to make a big deal out of it and didn’t want want to make people nervous by announcing that it had happened. The powder would float for awhile, but eventually it would sink.
I worked in the Teflon unit and it was my job to extract the waste, put it into dumpsters, and get it sent to Letard, which was the dump site south of the Washington Works plant.