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Steelworkers, Sierra Club Sue to Protect Consumers from Cancer-Causing Chemical |
The United Steelworkers (USW), the Sierra Club and several other labor and environmental groups are going to court to force California to protect residents from a “likely” cancer-causing chemical used in the manufacture of Teflon.
The chemical, known as PFOA, is used by DuPont in making nonstick and stain-resistant coatings for products from pots and pans to carpets and clothes. It has been found to be a “likely” carcinogen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The groups filed suit last week after the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment failed to consider adding PFOA to a list of cancer-causing chemicals that fall under strict exposure and discharge regulations.
Under Proposition 65—approved by California voters in 1986—the governor-appointed Carcinogen Identification Committee (CIC) must annually update the list of cancer-causing chemicals. The union and environmental groups had petitioned the health hazard assessment agency to expedite consideration of the DuPont chemical, but the agency refused.
The agency has been criticized for its inaction during the past several years. In the last five years, it has not independently listed any new chemicals, while removing four chemicals from the list.
Says Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope:
The state has put California families and workers at risk by allowing companies to use cancer-causing chemicals without disclosing it. People have a right to know if a product they use every day, like a frying pan, is endangering them. That’s the purpose of Proposition 65.
USW President Leo W. Gerard says:
Workers, their families and communities in the United States and around the world face enough challenges as a result of unchecked globalization, but we cannot allow the State of California to wait any longer on this serious issue. We demand to know what the state is doing to protect these communities.
The lawsuit asks that the state be required to consider and list chemicals in a prompt manner and also that the health hazard assessment agency be compelled to place PFOA into consideration for listing at the next CIC meeting.
This is the latest action by the Steelworkers and Sierra Club through their Blue-Green Alliance, a partnership sponsored by the Public Health Institute. Also joining the suit are the Natural Resources Defense Council, California Labor Federation, Environmental Law Foundation and Environment California.
In a related development, the Columbus Post Dispatch reports DuPont has spent more than $6 million since 2005 to protect the 12,00 residents of Little Hocking, Ohio, and five other Ohio River communities from being exposed to the same chemical through their drinking water.
The paper writes that the company spent $3 million on bottled water and $3 million on a drinking water filter system after the chemical was found in the water systems of Little Hocking and several nearby towns. DuPont claims the chemical poses no threat. But as the paper reports:
The company agreed to filter the water at Little Hocking and five other water systems as part of a 2005 lawsuit settlement that could reach $343 million.
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The last three paragraphs of the article show the truth about corporate America’s supposed caring about employees and people who live in the areas of the plants. After writing about DuPont’s $6 million spending on bottled water and a water filter system for the town, the truth comes out in the final paragraph:
“The company agreed to filter the water at Little Hocking and five other water systems as part of a 2005 lawsuit settlement that could reach $343 million.”
No, they did not do it out of caring, but to save their rear ends in a lawsuit settlement. Only a court decision could make them do it, and then they did it only to show what a “good and kind company” they are to make some points for their side in the settlement. What a joke, “we’ll pollute your water, then we’ll give you bottled water and a filter to show what good guys we are”….and ten years down the road after repeated tests finally prove beyond a doubt that PFOA’s are a hazard, they will say “Oops, we didn’t know it was that hazardous, sorry about all those cancers and premature deaths, but it wasn’t really our fault. People kept buying those products so we had to keep producing them.”
Go ‘Granny’, I couldn’t have said it better. It is sad that there has to be so many groups and organizations out there to protect us, the average consumer, from the irresponsible, reckless practices of the corporations that run this country; and these environmental and socially responsible groups and organizations are only as good as the individual voices, us, can holler loud enough to make a difference.