DuPont to test Ohio wells for Teflon

DuPont to test Ohio wells for Teflon

	Published : Tue, 06 Mar 2007 22:58 By : Agencies Print this Story

BELPRE, Ohio (AP) - Within weeks, testing for the presence of a chemical used to make Teflon that's been found in the blood of Ohio and West Virginia residents will start extending to hundreds and perhaps thousands of isolated wells.

As soon as its plan for the project is approved, DuPont Co. will send letters to about 3,000 homes in southern Washington County and across the Ohio River outside Parkersburg, W.Va., to ask if they are served by a well instead of a municipal system.

If it's a well, the company will send trained samplers to collect samples to test for ammonium perfluorooctanoate, also known as PFOA and C8. The company is already paying to install carbon filters on municipal water treatment plants.

'It's a very large undertaking,' said Karen Johnson, chief of the ground water and enforcement branch for Region 3 of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 'It's going to take months.'

As the result of a class-action lawsuit claiming the DuPont plant contaminated water supplies, DuPont agreed to provide bottled water for residents in six Ohio and West Virginia municipal water districts near its Washington Works Plant in Parkersburg until permanent filters were installed to remove C8.

The product is widely used to produce the nonstick substance Teflon and a variety of other products from flooring to clothing.

A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency science panel has issued a draft report saying C8 is 'likely' carcinogenic. DuPont claims the chemical is safe for humans.

Initial results of blood screening found that residents near the plant had about 60 times the level of C8 in their blood as the national average.

The testing, outlined by DuPont and the EPA in December, is moving outward in circles from the plant south of Parkersburg. The first sampling, started five years ago, was of water supplies within two miles of the plant.

If levels are found that exceed 0.5 parts per billion -- equivalent to a few drops in a railway tanker car -- another round of testing will be conducted as far north in Washington County as the city of Marietta, and Williamstown, W.Va., across the river.

The first phase of well testing is for households outside of Ohio's Little Hocking Water District, which has already been tested. It includes part of Decatur, Troy, Belpre, Dunham, Barlow and Warren townships.

In West Virginia, well testing will be east of the Lubeck water district and in the city of Vienna.