“Lawyers have filed a new class action lawsuit against DuPont and Chemours claiming that the two firms contaminated the Cape Fear River in North Carolina with fluorosurfactants. The river is a source of drinking water for much of the southeast part of the state.
The filing, made late last month, consolidates and updates three class action suits filed since October by lawyers representing thousands of people who claim they are ill or could get ill because they drank water from the Cape Fear River and from wells surrounding the plant, now run by DuPont spin-off Chemours. A judge in the U.S. Federal District Court in Wilmington, N.C., ordered the consolidation in early January to streamline the effort to try claims.
The consolidated suit charges that DuPont dumped potentially toxic fluorosurfactants from the Fayetteville, N.C., plant starting in the 1980s. It also claims that DuPont knew that some of those fluorosurfactants, such as perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), had toxic effects on laboratory animals as far back as the 1960s…
The suit seeks funding for an epidemiological study to gauge the impact of PFOA, other polyfluoroalkyl substances, and GenX—which Chemours considers a safer alternative to PFOA—on residents along the Cape Fear River. It also seeks undetermined compensatory and punitive damages for illness, reduced property value, and the cost of water filtration.”
Read the full article by Marc Reisch.