DUPONT
The Miracles of Science.TM
"As the world has changed, we have reinvented ourselves for each era."
Corporate Headquarter:
DuPont Building
1007 Market Street
Wilmington, DE 19898
U.S.A.
Tel. (302) 774-1000
Company Web Site:
www.dupont.com
CEO:
Ellen J.
Kullman
COMPANY HIGHLIGHTS:(this is just a small glimpse)
*1802 Dupont founded by Eleuthère Irénée du Pont. Specializes in gunpowder and explosives. By 1902 it controls 75% of the explosives market. It is thought that about 40% of the explosives used in World War I were Dupont's.
*1928 Thomas Midgley Jr. invents formula for CFCs to be used in refrigerators. Works for General Motors at the time. General Motors and Dupont create Kinetic Chemical Company to produce Freon. From 1930-1935, 8 million refrigerators sold containing Freon (which is trademarked to Dupont). Freon was thought to be a "non-toxic" replacement for ammonia and methyl chloride which were formerly used in fridges. The CFCs eventually helped deplete the ozone layer.
*1902-1975 Dupont buries waste along Christina River in Delaware, which becomes a Superfund site. The US Army Corps of Engineers, US Fish and Wildlife Service and EPA sign off on the site in 2002 citing continued monitoring was no longer necessary.
*1970s-2001 produces fungicide Benlate which the EPA eventually classifies as a possible carcinogen. The chemical only undergoes evaluation when farmers complain of crop loss. Dupont had conducted crop tests with Benlate in Costa Rica in 1992, records to were apparently destroyed. 500 US and 25 Scottish mothers sue Dupont on behalf of their children who are born with anophthalmia.
*1974 Gerard Colby Zilg publishes "Dupont: Behind the Nylon Curtain." It sells out it's first 10,000 printing. The New York Times labels the book "something of a miracle," since Zilg is a 25 year old congressional aide at the time of the its publication. He accesses large quantities of research material in part due to his government position. The book is slated to be selected by Fortune Book Club (subsidiary of Time Inc.). Dupont threatens to stop all ads with Time Inc., the book is subsequently ignored and no longer promoted. Zilg successfully sues his publishers.
In the book Zilg traces the Dupont family tree and the company's dealings with IG Farben, the German chemical giant responsible for producing gases for concentration camps. Dupont was under congressional investigation for it's continued business dealings with Nazi Germany, despite the American governments protests.
*1975-1986 largest producer of tetraethyl lead (TEL) for leaded gasoline, which was phased out in America by 1986. Despite studies showing the chemical to be extremely toxic, especially to children, Dupont continued to make and export it until 1991.
*1991 Dupont sues towns, school districts and small businesses for a municipal landfill dumping dispute. 1% of municipal waste was hazardous, while Dupont was responsible for the rest. Still, Dupont believed the municipality should share in the cost of the toxic cleanup.
*1994 Dupont fails to provide worker safety labels on 40 brands of pesticides, EPA sues.
*2001 releases 3.3 tons of para-xylene from its Nashville, Tennessee plant. Dupont's 2001 Toxic Release Inventory shows that half of all reported dioxin pollution in the U.S. comes from them. Dupont Dow Montz, Louisiana plant cited as one of the USA's dirtiest plants.
*2001 starts a $300 million joint venture with Dow and Cargill to make plastics from corn. No independent studies are conducted to confirm claims that this process is environmentally friendly and non toxic.
*2002 Dupont notifies the Contra Costa County of California that a product that they produced called Sierra-Crete contained dioxins. Sold the material as a road base which ended up on 36 miles of roads in east Contra Costa County. Studies conducted by the county and Dupont conclude that the health risks from the dioxins were not significant.
*2005 Dupont sued for dioxin contamination from the Dupont DeLisle facility on the St. Louis Bay, Mississippi by 1,995 plaintiffs. Many plaintiffs, including children, suffer from rare cancers. Dupont's spokesperson Mary Campbell maintains that "the science doesn't support them (the plaintiffs)." Dupont asks the judge to lower damages and to have the verdict reversed.
The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) found that dioxins released by the DeLisle plant into the air and water over the past 25 years pose "no apparent health risk" to the public. According to the Sierra Club, the "ATSDR based this on one small, inadequate fish study with samples collected just two weeks after a large number of fish were released into the Bay of St. Louis by a local fish hatchery. ATSDR also completely failed to consider the impacts of the dioxin-laden waste being trucked without tarps covering the trucks up Kiln-DeLisle and Edwin Ladner roads to the 16th Section landfill. In the report, ATSDR states that the agency “does not have enough information to know if exposure to dioxins will result in reproductive or developmental effects in people,” despite numerous studies by both government agencies and academia, including the National Academy of Sciences, that provide findings to the contrary. In addition, total dioxin TEQs in waste from the facility greatly exceed even some Superfund sites such as the NY/NJ Harbor."
*2005 California Department of Toxic Substances Control reports high levels of arsenic, lead and tetrachloroethane (PCE) at Dupont's former Antioch, California plant.
*2005 Dupont fined for hiding information about dangers of the toxic chemical perfluoroctanoic acid or PFOA, that's used to make the non stick coating Teflon (on pots and pans for cooking), grease resistant paper coatings used in microwave popcorn, fast food and candy wrappers and pizza box liners. Dupont withheld the information for more than 20 years. Glen Evers, a company engineer, becomes a whistle blower when he admits the company knew and hid the health effects of PFOA. The EPA lists the chemical as a likely carcinogen. Despite this, there are no water quality standards for PFOA.
*2005 Dupont agrees to pay more than $107 million to settle a class action lawsuit filed in 2001 by Ohio and West Virginia residents who claim that Dupont intentionally withheld information about the human health threat of PFOA. Fined 10-25 million dollars to resolve federal environmental complaints of Pascagoula plant discharges when it failed to report information about PFOA risks.
*2006 Delaware, home Dupont's headquarters and a number of plants, including the Edge Moor plant, ranks #1 in the United States in the production of dioxins, furans and polychlorinated biphenyls. For years Dupont, local citizens and government have argued about how to remove or contain a 500,000 ton pile up of dioxin contaminated leftovers from one of Dupont's processing plants. Dupont had previously hoped to "seal" the 15 acre waste next to the Delaware River.
Dupont releases waste from Red Lion plant in Delaware for about ten years, labels it a miscalculation. When cited, Dupont proposed trading pollution credits. The deal was accepted.
*2006 Group of Costa Rican fern growers receive multimillion dollar award from Dupont for damages to their crops caused by the fungicide Benlate. Benlate promotes excessive bacterial growth in plants it is used on, resulting in recurring losses in perennial crops such as leather leaf ferns. Evidence presented during the trial suggested that Dupont employees were told to "eliminate" records pertaining to Benlate. Dupont has paid more than $1 billion in settlements and legal fees on claims of damage from Benlate.
*2007 European Union sues Dupont and others for price fixing of rubber. Damages reach $358 million.
*2007 Delaware Department of Natural Resources & Environmental Control (DNREC) raises concerns about Hay Road Sludge Drying Site on Cherry Island where hexachlorobenzine is buried with other unidentified waste.
*2008 The New York Times reports that Governor Joe Manchin III of West Virginia filed a brief to the Supreme Court to review a $382 million judgment against Dupont, the largest civil penalty ever against Dupont. The penalty was a result of Dupont's zinc-smelting plant in Spelter, West Virginia. Dupont was accused of "deliberately endangering those residents by dumping toxic arsenic, cadmium and lead at the plant." It was the first time in history that a West Virginia governor - Manchin, a Democrat - had filed a brief for which the state was not a party. The Governor had met with Dupont's lawyer and vice president to discuss the brief and requested assistance from Dupont with procedural requirements for filing.
*2008 Shareholders request the Board of Directors to report its annual expenditures for each year from 1996 through 2006, on attorney’s fees, expert fees, lobbying, and public relations/media expenses, relating to DuPont’s environmental pollution with PFOA and related fluorocarbon compounds or by dioxins, as well as expenditures on contaminated sites.
Want to know more?
"Greenwash: The Reality Behind Corporate Environmentalism" by Kenny Bruno.
"Dupont: Behind the Nylon Curtain," by Gerard Colby Zilg
"Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of everyday Products," by Mark Shapiro
* Becomes a member of "World Council of Sustainable Development," a front group of 150 large multinational companies to address food production, climate change, landfills, mining, etc., presenting case studies and publications on those issues. In 2009, launches "thinking Globally, Acting Locally" a catchphrase borrowed from the environmental movement's "act locally, think globally."
Member companies include Dow Chemical, Dupont, General Motors, Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, General Electric, BASF, Bayer, Akzo Nobel, Novartis, Mitsubishi Chemical. It even gives out a "Distinguished Service Award."
The Council was founded by Stephan Schmidheiny who began as CEO of Eternit AG, a maker of asbestos construction materials. He has been a board member of Nestle, Swatch, and UBS. He is currently facing criminal charges in Italy for negligent behavior in exposing Eternit workers to asbestos.
*1983 Dupont launches "Preserving Open Land" to detail Dupont's supposed history of environmental commitments.
* Hires the Weinberg Group, a Washington DC-based consulting company that is currently under congressional investigation, specifically for its role in generating doubt about research on Bisphenol A. John Dingell has said, "the tactics apparently employed by the Weinburg Group raise serious questions about whether science is for sale at these consulting groups, and the effect this faulty science might have on the public health." The group has advised chemical companies, pesticide makers, and pharmaceutical companies. They devised a strategy for Dupont to diffuse the controversy over PFOA, the chemical to make Teflon. Gaffney, the Weinberg's Product Defense Vice-President outlined a plan for Dupont to"develop 'blue ribbon panels' of thought leaders on issues related to PFOA" and to "coordinate the publishing of white papers on PFOA, junk science and the limits of medical monitoring."
* 2008 Wildlife Habitat Council awards Dupont a "Signature of Sustainability" award. Dupont is one of the founding members of Wildlife Habitat Council. Other members include Monsanto, Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhilips, 3M, BASF, Bayer, Eli Lilly, Merck, Pfizer, and Dow Chemical.
*2008 Dupont, Monsanto and PR firm Burson-Marsteller are a few of the member companies of Alliance for Abundant Food and Energy. The organization aims to "use lobbyists on Capital Hill and national ads to build the case for fuels such as ethanol and bio diesel." Ethanol emissions have shown to have negative health effects and land usage for fuel crops has sparked food riots in several countries.
*Hires Ogilvy Public Relations firm to "boost brand equity." The PR firm helps launch Corian surfaces and Teflon with campaigns like "Search for the Greatest Grilled Cheese Sandwich in America."
