{"id":11318,"date":"2015-08-21T08:00:39","date_gmt":"2015-08-21T13:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11318"},"modified":"2015-08-21T08:00:39","modified_gmt":"2015-08-21T13:00:39","slug":"the-teflon-toxin-how-dupont-slipped-past-the-epa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11318","title":{"rendered":"The Teflon Toxin: How Dupont Slipped Past the EPA"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Teflon Toxin: How Dupont Slipped Past the EPA<\/a><\/h3>\n

IKE ROMINE GREW UP<\/u>\u00a0in Blennerhasset, West Virginia, not far from DuPont\u2019s Parkersburg plant. Throughout his childhood and young adulthood, Romine was probably exposed through his drinking water to C8, a slippery, soap-like chemical used to make Teflon pans and Stainmaster carpet and hundreds of other products. His home was served by the Lubeck water district, one of six districts near the plant later found to be severely contaminated with the chemical, but his greatest exposure to C8 almost certainly came from working at the DuPont plant, where he was a welding inspector.<\/p>\n

Romine spent some of his time in the company\u2019s Teflon division, and he particularly remembers taking part in the \u201cTeflon shut down,\u201d a spring-time ritual. For a few days each year, the company would shut down operations in the plant to prepare for the coming year. Romine helped install new piping. He didn\u2019t know what C8 was at the time, but there was a white powdery substance dusting many of the surfaces in the plant. \u201cIt\u2019s on the pipe, on the inside of it,\u201d said Romine. \u201cYou don\u2019t all the time have on gloves. It\u2019s on your coveralls.\u201d<\/p>\n

Twelve years ago, when Romine was 58, he was diagnosed with kidney cancer. No one in his family had ever suffered from this rare disease. Surgeons removed the cancerous organ, leaving Romine with reduced kidney function. Now he has to urinate frequently and his doctors have suggested that he change his diet and refrain from running, an activity that had been a regular part of his life before the surgery. Every six months he must return to the doctor to have his remaining kidney checked.<\/p>\n

Today, Romine has mixed feelings about DuPont. He worked for the company full-time as a contractor for eight years, and his best friend was employed in one of DuPont\u2019s labs. \u201cIn my heart, I felt I was DuPont,\u201d said Romine, who has enduring respect for the company. \u201cDuPont has really good safety rules, good people, good personnel,\u201d he said. \u201cI enjoyed working down there.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Teflon Toxin: How Dupont Slipped Past the EPA IKE ROMINE GREW UP\u00a0in Blennerhasset, West Virginia, not far from DuPont\u2019s Parkersburg plant. Throughout his childhood and young adulthood, Romine was probably exposed through his drinking water to C8, a slippery, soap-like chemical used to make Teflon pans and Stainmaster carpet and hundreds of other products. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[8039,2517,8038,1470,8037,5567,1215],"class_list":["post-11318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-c8","tag-cancer","tag-dupont","tag-epa","tag-teflon","tag-the-intercept","tag-toxins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11318"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11319,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11318\/revisions\/11319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}