Dordrecht chemical company aware of its carcinogenic PFAS pollution 30 years ago: report

NL Times | June 15, 2023

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"Teflon producer DuPont, now Chemours, has known for 30 years that they are seriously polluting the groundwater in Dordrecht with large amounts of toxic and carcinogenic PFAS, Zembla reports based on confidential documents from the chemical group. The documents showed DuPont had serious concerns about contaminating the drinking water with PFAS in the early 1990s. PFAS pollution is still a problem in Doredrecht.

In 1993, DuPont measured PFAS concentration in the groundwater in Dordrecht and found them to be 75 times higher than their own standard. The DuPont headquarters in the United States considered the contamination of the environment around the Dordrecht factory serious enough to give it “the highest priority,” according to Zembla. It appointed a PFAS coordinator in Dordrecht, which noted that broken and ruptured pipes had leaked “large quantities” of PFAS into the environment, creating “a landfill” under the factory.

In 1994, the coordinator warned in internal documents that the PFAS pollution was “very difficult to control” and that the spread of these carcinogenic substances would have “serious liability consequences.” He was specifically writing bout large amounts of PFOA, a PFAS variant that affects the immune system and can cause numerous diseases, including several types of cancer."