Invista Sues DuPont: Chemical Maker Cites Environmental, Health Risks That Weren’t Disclosed

By Allison Miles, Victoria Advocate, Texas

Mar. 27–Textile and chemical producer Invista sued DuPont Co. on Wednesday for $800 million, citing serious environmental hazards and public health risks.

Those violations include incidents at Invista’s Victoria plant, as well as 13 other plants in five countries.

Invista bought DuPont’s Textile and Interiors business for $4 billion on April 30, 2004, and discovered environmental problems less than a month later, according to the lawsuit.

Victoria’s benzene treatment unit was among the first finds. The lawsuit claims the plant had operated illegally since 2000.

Short-term benzene inhalation could cause drowsiness, headaches and irritation in humans, while long-term exposure could include blood and reproductive disorders, according to the Environmental Protection Agency Web site. Long-term exposure to high levels of benzene in the air can cause leukemia.

Claims regarding the Victoria plant include:

–Improperly designed pipe systems, which allowed benzene vapors to enter the atmosphere.

–Failure to replace a vessel’s steel support system, creating the possibility to expose people to nitric off-gas, which could result in chemical or thermal burns.

–Failure to replace an “employee emergency notification system,” which required repair at least four years before the Invista purchase.

Issues at the Victoria plant were immediately remedied, Invista spokeswoman Mary Beth Jarvis said, and no longer pose a threat to the area.

The lawsuit outlines claims from the company’s other U.S. and foreign sites, including a 12-year stint in which the company released benzene vapors into the air in Orange and a December 2004 pipe explosion at a Maitland, Ontario plant, which came after DuPont failed to address corrosion under insulation.

A DuPont news release called Invista’s allegations “grossly exaggerated and misguided” and said the company will defend itself.

“Invista’s allegations are based purely on a contract dispute —plain and simple,” DuPont general counsel Stacey J. Mobley said in the release.

Jarvis said Invista did not notice the discrepancies before the sale because DuPont allowed only limited review of the plants.

Invista attempted to communicate with DuPont throughout the process, which included an 18-month audit that turned up 687 violations, but DuPont often failed to answer, the lawsuit said.

“There has been a significant effort since 2004 to try to prompt DuPont to live up to its responsibilities,” she said. “Ultimately, we were ignored by DuPont.”

Through the suit, filed in the U.S. District Court Southern District of New York, Invista seeks more than $800 million in compensatory damages, plus punitive penalties.

Invista seeks punitive damages “because DuPont knew of several of the more dangerous safety and environmental violations, knew those violations placed its workers and the public at risk, took no action to rectify them, and failed to disclose them to Invista,” the lawsuit said.

Invista reports it has spent more than $140 million in locating and fixing the violations, a cost DuPont is responsible for through the companies’ purchase agreement, the lawsuit said.

“Invista’s losses are staggering,” the lawsuit said.

Invista claims it had to act swiftly to report the violations and avoid criminal prosecution. Invista, the EPA and the Department of Justice have agreed to a consent decree in which the company agreed to pay a civil penalty of $1.7 million and install major pollution controls at its various plants to resolve DuPont’s failures, according to the lawsuit.

“The consent decree focuses on two significant areas of DuPont’s historical noncompliance: its reckless treatment and false reporting of benzene, and its failure to obtain federal permits prior to making major modifications to its equipment,” the lawsuit said. By making the changes to its equipment without obtaining required federal permits, “DuPont for years avoid implementing costly air-quality control technology as required by the Clean Air Act and state and local air regulations.”

In his statement, Mobley said DuPont is a leader in terms of workplace safety and works well with compliance agencies.

Victoria resident Abel Garcia, a retired operator and production supervisor who worked at DuPont for 32 years, said the company always did what it could in terms of environmental and safety issues.

“In my years there, there was never a time that DuPont would try to circumvent any laws,” he said.

Calls to DuPont were not immediately returned.

Allison Miles is a reporter for the Advocate. Contact her at 361-580-6511 or amiles@vicad.com.

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