Cycle race sponsor DuPont manufactured the toxic chemical found in Teflon and other water-resistant products

CYCLE racing has a troubled history of doping, as we know. Riders taking dangerous chemicals to assist them in their work.  Today the sport insists doping is not so nearly as widespread as before.

But given this history of chemical abuse in cycling, how ironic that a sponsor associated with the sport is chemical giant, the American company, DuPont, based in West Virginia.

You may be aware of the dark side to this company. I wasn’t until recently. This astonishing and alarming story was only revealed in all its gory details a few years ago after lengthy litigation spanning two decades. It tells how DuPont manufactured a toxic chemical knowing it to be a health risk, and which has ultimately killed people. The record states it has made its way into the blood stream of every person on the planet.

Non-stick Teflon (left) non toxic (right)

Some might ask if this case is any worse than the health risks from burning oil and there are millions of vehicles, factories out there burning the black gold.

The big difference, though, insofar as oil is concerned, is that it was nearly a century after oil was first used in the automotive industry (1859, in the USA, I believe) before the risks became known. So this was in the 1960s and yes, you guessed it, oil companies kept quiet about it! Shush. Money to be made.

They probably would have kept the lid on it had they known from the beginning!

However, if there is a distinction to be made it is that DuPont knew the health risks when first making PFOA, kept quiet and went ahead anyway. Money to be made.

As bad as each other. We’re all fucked, if the truth be known.

Anyway, back to the DuPont story which really has pissed me off given that they boast to making stuff to make our lives easier and healthier.

There are three aspects to it, the exposure of employees to the chemical PFOA,  the dumping the toxic waste into the water supply and onto the land and  using this chemical in a wide range of water-resistant products used world-wide.

This from The Conversation: By 1989, many DuPont employees were diagnosed with cancer and leukaemia. Yet while these events were detailed in internal corporate documents, the media only reported the toxic spills in 2000. In 2001, a class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of Parkersburg residents. On February 13 2017, DuPont agreed to pay US$671 million to settle the case.

*The Conversation is a network of not-for-profit media outlets publishing news stories and research reports online, with accompanying expert opinion and analysis.

I became aware of this scandal recently after watching the true life film, Dark Waters.

Dark Waters is a 2019 American legal thriller film directed by Todd Haynes and written by Mario Correa and Matthew Michael Carnahan. The story is a dramatization of lawyer Robert Bilott's case against the chemical manufacturing corporation DuPont.

After many years DuPont was eventually forced to settle over 3500 personal injury claims arising from the leak of poisonous waste products into the water supply in West Virginia.

The day after watching this disturbing film, Dark Waters I turned on the television to watch a bike race and caught sight of the finish line banner. It has the name DuPont writ large upon it.

Hell, I thought! 

Clearly, the scandal which is revealed in terrifying detail in the film, has barely touched DuPont, as though the story belonged to a parallel universe. And here they are, few years down the line with a stake in sport, what we might call a “green washing” arrangement.

But it won’t ever wash with the people of West Virgina who took the major hit from this company’s work.

For this is a tragedy in human and also animal terms - one farmer lost his entire herd of cattle poisoned from drinking contaminated water. The farmer, Earl Tennant, discovered his cattle were dying. He was sure they were drinking contaminated water from a creek on his land and he was proved right. 

Tennant wanted answers and so lawyer Rob Bilott took up his case and was shocked at the sheer scale of this scandal which has reached far beyond West Virginia.

He wrote a book about it, “Exposure: Poisoned Water Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer’s 20-year Battle against DuPont.”

This book was the story behind the thriller I saw recently -  Dark Waters -  and the documentary, The Devil We Know.

The chemical at the centre of this is called perfluorooctanic acid (PFOA) – also known as C-8. It is called a “forever chemical” for it will last forever in the environment.

The film gets to the nitty gritty. This chemical is used in the production of Teflon and other stain and water resistant products.

The story revealed how PFOA is linked to serious diseases such as kidney cancer, testicular cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease and pregnancy-induced hypertension.

Bilott says that a small group of people …. “coordinated the intentional manufacture and release of a lethal poison that had special properties that meant, once released into the world, it would be inevitable that it would make its way into the blood of virtually every person on the planet, even babies in their mother’s womb, and stay there, like a ticking bomb.”

Here is DuPont’s mission statement. “…to create sustainable solutions essential to a better, safer and healthier life for people everywhere.”

Net sales last year were $16.7bn, up 16 per cent on the previous year.

(The Organic Consumers Association tells the story in lurid detail

'The Devil We Know:' How DuPont Poisoned the World with Teflon - Organic Consumers)