Maryland sues maker of Gore-Tex, alleging decades of pollution
The company denies the allegations, saying it is “surprised by the Maryland Attorney General’s decision” given the company’s engagement with state regulators.
Steve Thompson
The Washingtom Post, 20/12/24
Maryland is suing the maker of Gore-Tex, the material used in popular waterproof fabrics, alleging the company knew for decades that substances used in its manufacture posed significant health risks in the Cecil County area but failed to notify the state or nearby communities about the dangers.
The Delaware-based company, W.L. Gore & Associates, operates more than a dozen facilities just across the state line in and around Elkton, Maryland. State officials say Gore polluted the area’s groundwater, surface water and soils with “forever chemicals,” even while company officials understood the potential for harm.
“It is unacceptable for any company to knowingly contaminate our drinking water with these toxins, putting Marylanders at risk of severe health conditions,” Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown (D) said in a statement Wednesday as his office filed a complaint in U.S. district court on behalf of the state’s departments of environment, health and natural resources.
The suit seeks to hold Gore liable for the state’s costs to investigate and clean up the contamination, as well as other damages.
The state’s action follows another lawsuit filed by a Maryland family, as well as a class-action lawsuit, making similar claims. During the past couple of years, Gore has worked to limit potential damage by conducting sampling around the sites and providing bottled water and water filtration systems to nearby residents, according to a company website, forward.gore.com.
The company denies the state’s allegations and “is surprised by the Maryland Attorney General’s decision to initiate legal action, particularly in light of our proactive and intensive engagement with state regulators over the past two years,” Gore spokeswoman Amy Calhoun said this week in a statement.
“Gore has been a community partner as well as a manufacturer of products of high societal value in Maryland for decades,” the Gore statement said. “Our friends, families, neighbors and fellow Associates call Cecil County home and it’s important to us that we are a valued member of the community.”
Situated in the northeast corner of Maryland, Cecil County is mostly rural. Gore, which has operated there for more than 50 years, is the county’s largest private-sector employer with about 2,900 workers, the Cecil County Chamber of Commerce said in 2022.
The company’s best-known product, Gore-Tex, has been used in electronics, medical devices, air filters, industrial sealants and dental floss. But what made it a household brand was its use — stretched into a flat membrane and laminated with materials to create a breathable, waterproof fabric — to create camping tents, jackets, gloves, shoes and other outdoor gear.
The privately held company reports $4.8 billion in annual revenue.
The company’s manufacturing processes long relied on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — known as PFAS — high levels of which the Environmental Protection Agency says have been shown to lead to health hazards such as developmental delays in children, increased risk of some cancers and reduced immune system responses.
“Gore knew that PFAS, now commonly referred to as ‘forever’ chemicals, were persistent and would remain in the environment for hundreds of years, leaving a toxic legacy for generations to come,” Maryland’s lawsuit says.
The suit traces Gore’s history from its founding by an engineer for the chemical company DuPont through what the suit characterizes as the two companies’ close relationship over the decades.
As early as the 1960s, according to the lawsuit, DuPont scientists issued internal warnings about the toxicity of perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, a variety of PFAS that would be used by Gore.
“By 1979, DuPont had data indicating that its workers exposed to PFOA had a significantly higher incidence of health issues than did unexposed workers,” Maryland’s lawsuit says. The suit describes a meeting a few years later among DuPont officials, by which time they were aware PFOA had been detected in drinking water near a DuPont plant.
“The employees in attendance at the 1984 Meeting spoke of the PFOA issue as ‘one of corporate image, and corporate liability,’” Maryland’s lawsuit says. One of those employees later became a Gore employee whose role “included advising Gore on how to minimize PFOA emissions at its Maryland facilities,” the suit says.
In 2004, the EPA filed an enforcement action against DuPont related to PFOA, and the company settled by agreeing to pay more than $16 million in penalties and for environmental projects, which the agency then called the “largest civil administrative penalty EPA has ever obtained under any federal environmental statute.”
Gore announced in 2014 that it had eliminated PFOA from its production of weatherproof fabrics.
This week’s statement from Gore after Maryland filed its suit expressed surprise given the company’s recent water-testing efforts.
“As recently as yesterday morning, we submitted to the state a detailed testing report for our Cherry Hill facility, which summarizes nearly two years of comprehensive groundwater investigation,” the statement said.
The statement said such efforts demonstrate “Gore’s continuous, proactive engagement with the Maryland regulators since learning two years ago about the presence of PFOA in groundwater near our Cherry Hill facility.”
Maryland’s suit expresses frustration from state officials that Gore’s efforts have not gone far enough. It says the company initially agreed to sample water within a quarter-mile radius of the Cherry Hill facility, forcing the state to pay for expanded sampling to homes within a mile radius.
“Data collected to date show exceedingly high levels of PFOA around the Cherry Hill and Fair Hill facilities,” the lawsuit says.
“Although Gore is now conducting a limited investigation into the extent of PFAS contamination around its facilities,” Maryland’s suit says, “this investigation comes decades after Gore knew of the potential risks.”
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