When reading ‘The
Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare’ article, six different levels
of ethics can be found; personal, community, professional, state, federal, and
corporation. Of the six levels of ethics, ethics at the corporate level were
broke the most.
For some
background information, DuPont has been using a chemical commonly known as C8,
or scientifically as Perflourooctanoic acid or PFOA, and PFOA was originally
made by 3M. DuPont started purchasing PFOA from 3M in 1951 for use in
manufacturing Teflon. PFOA was originally created by 3M four years earlier.
PFOA was yet to be classified by the federal government as a hazardous
substance, so how to dispose of the chemical came from 3M. One of DuPont’s
first breaking of the corporate ethical code was by not following 3M’s
directions of how to dispose of PFOA. It was recommended that PFOA was to be
incinerated or sent to chemical-waste storage facilities. DuPont’s own
directions were that it was not to be flushed into surface water or sewers.
However, over the decades that
followed, hundreds of thousands of pounds of PFOA powder was disposed of
through outflow pipes into Ohio River while sludge containing PFOA was dumped
into digestion ponds, which seeped into the ground and into the water table. This
water table supplied water to communities across Parkersburg, Vienna, Little
Hocking and Lubek, totaling more than 100,000 people.
The next notable breakage of the
corporate ethics was the secret conduction of medical studies for more four
decades. Starting in 1961, DuPont researches found that the compound could
increase the size of livers in rats and rabbits. During the 1970s, they
discovered high concentrations of PFOA in the blood of factory workers at their
Washington Works plant. In 1981, 3M found that ingestion of PFOA in rats lead
to birth defects. DuPont wanted to test children that were born to workers in
the Teflon division and found two cases of birth defects in the seven children
that were born. In all three incidents, DuPont did not share their findings.
Another instance in when DuPont
broke corporate ethics was during the ‘90s when DuPont knew that PFOA caused
cancerous testicular, pancreatic and liver tumors in lab animals. As a result,
they began looking for an alternative to PFOA. In 1993, they sent out an
interoffice memo that detailed how they believe that they were able to
successfully find an alternative to PFOA. However, corporate headquarters
decided against it as products manufactured with PFOA were an important part of
DuPont’s business, bringing in over $1 billion in revenue.
Another major breakage, and probably the largest
one was back in August of 2000. Rob Billot, who was the lawyer pursuing this
case, sent his findings to Christie Whitman, administrator of the E.P.A., and
John Ashcroft, the United States attorney general. To protect themselves and
their interests, DuPont reacted immediately and issued a gag order against
Billet to prevent his findings in the Tennant case from reaching the
government. For a company to do that required a lot of guts realizing how bad
it looks to the public and had a small chance of success. Luckily for Billot ,
a federal court denied the gag order and his letter went to the attorney
general and the heads of the E.P.A.
