Ken Wamsley had a successful career for years, measuring a chemical called C8 in various products. Now aged 73 and battling rectal cancer after having surgery to treat it in 2002, Wamsley talks about his days at a DuPont plant where his career was stable and enviable; spanning over four decades.
The chemical C8, “was everywhere,” as Wamsley remembers it. The fine powder used to float in the lab air, or bubbled out of the flasks he used to transport. At the time, Wamsley and his colleagues weren’t concerned about the chemical that seemed to coat the workplace. “We never thought about it, never worried about it,” he said recently.
Today, Wamsley suffers from several medical conditions, the most concerning being the rectal cancer that was preceded by the ulcerative colitis he suffered. The assurances he once had from his bosses that the chemical C8 was harmless now seem a distant conversation away; one that he ponders if anyone really knew the effects of the chemical back then.
The chemical C8 has mostly gone unnoticed, though has played a massive part in the successes of DuPont, one of the largest world corporations in existence. Its enterprise stands at $95 million in sales per day, with nylon and Lycra — some of their discoveries — becoming everyday household products. But it was their part in the production of Teflon in the 1940’s where C8 was the essential ingredient, which led to waterproof clothing and coatings for anything from eye glasses to microwave popcorn bags and carpet.
Over a decade ago, C8 raised safety concerns and questions. For the last 15 years, lawyers have been waging an epic battle on behalf of those like Wamsley, seeking compensation for injury claims that will be coming into trial this month in September. The trial will most likely highlight documents into evidence that demonstrate tests on animals involving C8 in DuPont labs, sometimes killing the animals as a result of poisoning. Links have been made to Wamsley’s condition, as well as several others, including testicular cancer, kidney cancer and thyroid disease. Scientists have revealed findings published in several articles.
“Thousands of pages of expert testimony and depositions have been prepared by attorneys for the plaintiffs. And through the process of legal discovery they have uncovered hundreds of internal communications revealing that DuPont employees for many years suspected that C8 was harmful and yet continued to use it, putting the company’s workers and the people who lived near its plants at risk,” according to Sharon Lerner, in her article covering the DuPont case.
The trial comes at a time when DuPont has been accused of concealing this knowledge from its employees, and that they may have been aware of the dangers of C8 through the conducting of their own scientific research, linking this deadly chemical to a myriad of health problems found in all corners of the globe. Startlingly, C8, which didn’t exist a century ago can now be found in the blood of 99.7 percent of Americans, according to a 2007 study from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Worse still, it has been found throughout the environment and water supplies due to its stable nature — C8 never breaks down.
DuPont no longer uses C8, but it is to be expected to remain on the planet long after its inhabitants are gone. The decades-long cover up will only start to be exposed in the trials late this year. Because of its toxicity, C8 has really become, “everyone’s problem.”
Nevertheless, in 1991, after findings and an elevated number of leukemia and cancer deaths at a West Virginia DuPont plant, DuPont released a press statement saying, “DuPont and 3M studies show that C-8 has no known toxic or ill health effects in humans at the concentrations detected… as for most chemicals, exposure limits for C-8 have been established with sufficient safety factors to ensure there is no health concern.”
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