West Virginia daily

DuPont Co. hid studies showing the risks of a Teflon-related chemical used toline candy wrappers, pizza boxes, microwave popcorn bags and hundreds of otherfood containers, according to internal company documents and a former employee.

The chemical Zonyl can rub off the liner and get into food. Once in aperson's body, it can break down into perfluorooctanoic acid and its salts,known as PFOA, a related chemical used in the making of Teflon-coated cookware.

The Environmental Protection Agency has been trying to decide whether toclassify PFOA as a "likely" human carcinogen. The Food and DrugAdministration, in a letter released Wednesday evening by DuPont, said it wascontinuing to monitor the safety of PFOA chemicals in food.

At the same time, a former DuPont chemical engineer, Glenn Evers, toldreporters at a news conference at EWG's office that the company long suppressedits studies on the chemical.

"They are toxic," Evers said of the PFOA chemicals. "They getinto human blood. And they are also in every one of you. Your loved ones, yourfellow citizens."

Evers had a different view: "It is my belief DuPont pushed me out of thecompany" because he started raising concerns about the chemicals' safety.

Evers said he decided to talk publicly about the PFOA problem after filing acivil suit against DuPont this month in a Delaware court. Evers' aim is mainlyto "set the record straight" about the chemical and his own career,said Herb Feuerhake, Evers' lawyer.

But Evers said he also hoped to influence the outcome of an EPA hearing laterthis month on whether DuPont had withheld from EPA the study on PFOA andpossible birth defects. The company could be fined millions of dollars.

After EWG tracked down Evers - who had provided expert, unpaid testimony intwo lawsuits against DuPont - the 47-year-old Delaware resident said he talkedit over with his priest, who told him, "`You can't dance with thedevil.'"

"These products are safe for consumer use," the company said in astatement. "FDA has approved these materials for consumer use since thelate 1960s, and DuPont has always complied with all FDA regulations andstandards regarding these products."

The company said Evers "had little if any direct involvement in PFOAissues while employed at DuPont. ... Evers expressed a wide range of personalopinions that are inaccurate, counter to FDA's findings, and which DuPontstrongly disputes."

The environmental group on Wednesday gave the FDA and the EPA copies ofDuPont-sponsored internal studies indicating higher dangers from Zonyl than thegovernment knew, including its ability to migrate into the food.

One of the documents, a 1987 memo, cites laboratory tests showing thechemical came off paper coating and leached into foods at levels three timeshigher than the FDA limit set in 1967. Another document, a 1973 Dupont study inwhich rats and dogs were fed Zonyl for 90 days, said both types of animals hadanemia and damage to their kidneys and livers; the dogs had higher cholesterollevels.

"What makes this worse is that DuPont knew at that time that Zonylbreakdown-products, such as PFOA, in food were very persistent in theenvironment and were contaminating human blood, including the fetal cord bloodof babies born to DuPont female employees," EWG Senior Vice PresidentRichard Wiles wrote to FDA and EPA officials.

Wiles asked the agencies to determine whether DuPont should be penalized forwithholding the studies. Last year, based on another DuPont document that theenvironmental group obtained, EPA alleged the company had repeatedly failed overa 20-year period to submit required data about PFOA. The document referred to astudy that suggested possible links between PFOA and birth defects in infants.

EPA spokeswoman Eryn Witcher said Wednesday the agency "has an extensiveeffort under way to determine the sources of PFOA, how the public is beingexposed, and whether these exposures pose a potential health risk."

In August, he told a Mississippi court that all three of DuPont's U.S. plantswere releasing "massive amounts" of dioxin - a class of organicchemicals that EPA studies have shown pose a possible cancer risk in humans. Inthat case, an oyster fisherman who claimed dioxin from a DuPont plant caused hisrare blood cancer was awarded $14 million in actual damages and his wifereceived $1.5 million.

He also testified last year in a West Virginia case in which DuPont agreed toa $107.6 million settlement of a class-action suit. Residents around a plantnear Parkersburg, W.Va., had said that PFOA contaminated their drinking watersupplies. DuPont also remains the target of another class-action suit over PFOAseeking $5 billion.

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