HomeDuPont in the News

Questions about DuPont unsettle town
Many defend plant, but dioxin concerns others

Sunday, 02/25/07

The Tennessean
By ANNE PAINE and BRAD SCHRADE, Staff Writers

NEW JOHNSONVILLE, Tenn. — A team of steelworkers union members sweating in the heat knocked on the doors of about 500 homes here last summer with a message that could upend this quiet town — or signify nothing.

They were asking about health problems and handing out DVD copies of a documentary film about people in Mississippi who say they are seriously ill because of a nearby DuPont plant.


The DuPont plant sits behind the TVA plant in New Johnsonville near the Tennessee River.
(JOHN PARTIPILO / THE TENNESSEAN)

Almost 2,000 lawsuits have been filed in that state by people claiming DuPont made them or their children sick.

The Mississippi plant makes the same white pigment for paints, plastics and paper as the huge DuPont facility in this small Tennessee River town about 65 miles west of Nashville.

Both plants produce dioxin waste, a toxic substance.

New Johnsonville doesn't cotton much to criticism of a company that is viewed as the economic backbone of the area and a supporter of schools, parks and ball teams.

Some residents have blasted the outsiders, though others say they want answers to questions raised about possible contamination. Humphreys County had the highest cancer rate in the state during the most recent reporting period, according to the state Health Department's cancer registry.

In the middle on the issue is the state of Tennessee, where environmental officials were surprised to learn that the plant produces dioxin, and that it's the fourth-largest producer of dioxin in the nation.

"No one on the staff knew dioxin was in the material," said Mike Apple of the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation.

A United Steelworkers member pointed out to TDEC a couple of months ago that DuPont reports each year to the federal government that it sends multiple pounds of the substance to an on-site landfill and traces of it to the Tennessee River. The data are published on the Internet.

Apple said that DuPont should have told the state it was producing dioxin. The company's previous requests for landfill permits, including one that is pending, don't mention the substance.

DuPont officials say that the 48-year-old plant — the largest of its kind in the world — is safe, and that the company is committed to safety and protecting the environment. They also say they did everything that the law required.

"We've publicly reported the emissions" to the EPA, Nate Pepper, a DuPont spokesman, said in a telephone interview last week.

As to why state documents don't reflect the dioxin, he said:

"We're not really in a position to speculate on that. We really don't have more to say on that question.

"We've publicly reported our emissions as required."

Andrew Scott of Soil Water Air Protection Enterprise, part of the UCLA School of Public Health, delivers a presentation on dioxin and explains how his organization tests homes and blood for contamination. His presentation was part of a meeting in New Johnsonville for residents concerned about health problems potentially caused by the DuPont plant in their town. (ALAN POIZNER / FOR THE TENNESSEAN)

Plant is largest of its kind

Twenty-four hours a day in New Johnsonville, DuPont workers churn out an additive that makes many things whiter than white, as commercials used to say.

Titanium dioxide, known by its chemical formula of TiO2, goes into paper, automobile finishes and plastic to whiten them, brighten them and make them opaque.

DuPont's New Johnsonville facility is the largest of its kind in the world, turning out 350,000 tons of the white stuff a year, or nearly 1,000 tons a day.

A flip through some old plant yearbooks shows smiling employees, posing in groups, many of them with white chalklike powder covering their limbs and clothes. Others pose in front of pallets of cement-style sacks labeled with the familiar DuPont oval logo and the brand name "Ti-Pure."

The mineral ilmenite — a titanium- and iron-containing ore that is mined from the earth — is treated in DuPont's process with chlorine and heat.

It's the addition of chlorine that creates dioxin, a colorless compound that has been deemed likely to cause cancer and auto-immune disorders.

Since the year 2000, DuPont's riverbank complex has been generating an average of 16 pounds of it a year, a total of 81 pounds in that time.

A fraction of it went into the Tennessee River, the EPA said. The bulk ended up in a landfill on DuPont's 1,500-acre campus. The plant has permits for three active landfills, and has three others that are no longer used.

DuPont's TiO2 plant on Mississippi's Gulf Coast — where scores claim dioxin has made them sick — is the nation's third-largest dioxin producer, according to federal data. A DuPont TiO2 plant in Delaware, where a community fight has festered over a 500,000-ton pile of hazardous waste, is No. 1.

"Pure" dioxin, one of the chemical's many variations, was discovered on the Mississippi plant's site after the judge, while hearing the first of the 2,000 lawsuits, ordered DuPont to allow the plaintiff's attorneys to run tests.

The plaintiff, an oyster fisherman with a cancer called multiple myeloma, won a more than $14 million judgment, which is under appeal.

How much dioxin the New Johnsonville plant has generated since its opening in the late 1950s is unclear. The federal government has required it be reported only since 2000. The landfill permits granted by TDEC to DuPont, and re viewed by The Tennessean this month, do not mention that dioxin would be put in them.

The company has so far not provided the state with details about the type of dioxin it creates. Some versions are less harmful than others; "pure" dioxin has been labeled as one of the most toxic chemicals known to science.

DuPont e-mailed the newspaper last week to say that most of the dioxin it puts out is "of low toxicity," and that pure dioxin was found in only nine of 150 test samples at the plant site. The company, which has focused on reducing dioxins, was given an EPA award this year for reducing the dioxin from its three TiO2 plants in this country.

Town relies on DuPont

Before New Johnsonville, there was old Johnsonville — now mostly underwater.

The damming of the Tennessee River to form Kentucky Lake in the 1940s covered the little town, and residents rebuilt just south of its old location.

Sitting right on the river, where U.S. 70 crosses the wide waters, the small town became a mini-haven for big industries: TVA has a huge coal-burning electricity-generating plant, and other plants nearby make chemicals and gases for industrial use.

But the biggest name in New Johnsonville is DuPont. When news came in the late 1950s that the chemical conglomerate was coming to town, the city put on a parade.

Today the plant employs nearly 1,000 people, half as many as live in the town
itself. With the big industries has come pollution. Rural Humph reys County produced the eighth-largest amount of toxic material of any county in the U.S. in 2004, according to the most recent federal records.

No one has made a connection between the health of the New Johnsonville community and DuPont — or any of the neighboring industries. But the steelworkers union and the Sierra Club are questioning if there is one.

In data for 1999-2003, Humphreys County had the state's highest cancer incidence, though state Health Department officials say breast cancer rates, among the types listed as high in the county, were not accurately reported.

On the issue of health and the environment, several New Johnsonville residents interviewed said they side with DuPont.

"DuPont's always treated the community good, and the people I've talked to want to support them," said Lance Loveless, a member of the City Council and head of the city Police and Fire departments.

"They're not concerned with DuPont's issues. They're concerned about people raising questions."

Loveless said his father worked at the plant for 37 years, and pointed out that he's not riddled with health failings.

Likewise, state Rep. John Tidwell, an engineer who retired from DuPont in 1998 after 34 years, said that he was never asked to do anything that was environmentally unsound — and that the company employs trained professionals to safely handle otherwise dangerous chemicals.

During his 27 years at the plant, New Johnsonville City Councilman Joe Dellinger recalled, any environmental issue was quickly corrected. Now 69, Dellinger said he does not fear the plant is polluting the river, which he fishes on almost daily.

"If there'd been something wrong with those fish, I'd have been dead a long time ago," he said.

Some want answers

But others, including Tim Simmons, say they want more information and question the fact why everyone — including the federal government — must rely on DuPont to do the testing and report the results.

Simmons, a TVA employee, said he intends to get his home tested for dioxin and other pollutants. His father, a TVA retiree, might also.

"I'm not that concerned, but it doesn't keep me from wanting to know answers," said James Simmons.

"If no one has anything to hide, put it out there. Some people say there's hazardous material. Some say there's not. It is either hazardous or not."

People in New Johnsonville don't question DuPont publicly, said Martha Binkley, who sued the company in Humphreys County courts after the death of her husband, Michael, who she said died after breathing in a dangerous substance while working at the DuPont facility in Old Hickory. She lost her case.

"A lot of people were put out — 'How dare you do this!' " she recalled. "Here were other people who said, 'Go get them.' But you can't get DuPont. DuPont is bigger than God."

The situation has come to a head in recent months after DuPont asked the state for
permission to change how it will shape part of one of its landfills, and for permission to put solids from its wastewater treatment settling ponds in it.

That's when the Sierra Club and the steelworkers union ramped up their work in Humphreys County. Both groups have been active in the push for environmental reforms near the DuPont plant in Mississippi.

The Sierra Club is a national environmental group that has a chapter in Tennessee. The union has members at some industries in New Johnsonville, but not at DuPont.

"Tennessee citizens have the right to know if the dioxins are there," said Joan Hill, a trainer with the union in Nashville.

"If they're at levels that are unacceptable, are they getting into the groundwater and the drinking water, the fish?" she asked. "Are they landing in people's houses through dust?"

To some local residents, the trouble is being stirred up by outsiders.

"It sticks in my craw that people come from somewhere else and pick on local industry," said Ben Brewer, who moved to town in the early 1970s and for many years ran the local diner Bondo's, now run by his son and called Jeff's Place.

State takes notice

DuPont's landfill permit — which the state had been poised to issue — is on hold.

A company that failed to disclose to the state the presence of a hazardous chemical like dioxin could have a landfill permit revoked, or face fines, TDEC spokeswoman Dana Coleman said.

But the DuPont dioxin data on the EPA's Web site don't give TDEC enough information to make a call on those, Coleman said. Instead, the state has asked DuPont for more detailed information, and decisions about the next step will be made after the state gets those answers.

For the longer term, TDEC plans to make a habit of reviewing federal records on the Internet to check behind industries that generate toxic waste. The agency hadn't done so in the past, Apple said, but will from now on.

Meanwhile, DuPont continues working around the clock making titanium dioxide. The company announced last fall it will invest an additional $30 million in its New Johnsonville facility to make titanium tetrachloride, which a company in Utah will use to make titanium metal.

Joe Dellinger intends to keep fishing. And Loveless says he's not worried, pointing to the DuPont managers who make their homes in his community: "They're not going to raise their kids here if they think there's a problem."

PDF: Notice for the public hearing on DuPont's landfill permit application

PDF: Comments by the Sierra Club in response to DuPont's landfill permit request

PDF: Comments by Dupont at landfill permit hearing

EPA's Toxics Release Inventory, searchable by ZIP code, town, state, chemical or industry.

PDF: Counties ranked by toxins (Compiled by The Tennessean)

Tennessee Health Department cancer registry

Draft Exposure and Human Health Reassessment of 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo- p -Dioxin (TCDD) and Related Compounds (EPA, 2005)

Latest update on the Dioxin Reassessment (Center for Health, Environment and Justice, updated 2006)

Dioxin for all facilities, all industries in U.S. (Toxic Release Inventory, 2004)

Activists take aim at cleanup plan: Consultant's criticism of DuPont settlement on Iron Rich fuels fire (The News Journal, 3/1/07)

DuPont to upgrade Tenn. factory (Wilmington News Journal, 10/27/06)

Child death trial against DuPont pushed back to May (Associated Press, 8/21/06)