The Sun Herald | 09/24/2006 | TRUCKING IN TROUBLE?: "A global controversy is being trucked to Pascagoula, traveling some 1,100 miles in tanker trucks from New Jersey to DuPont's First Chemical Corporation plant daily. The trucks, if taking the shortest route, get to Jackson County after traversing seven states on as many as nine highways. For a long stretch on that route, drivers run in the shadow of the Appalachian Mountains.
The trucks are hauling fluorotelomer alcohol, an ingredient in DuPont's line of surface-protection coatings. The alcohol is being brought from New Jersey to purify it of an unintended byproduct called perfluorooctanoic acid, also called PFOA or C8.
The alcohol is pumped through a process DuPont officials said will chemically destroy about a thousand pounds of PFOA a year. Remnants of the impurity, totaling about two pounds a year, leave the plant through Pascagoula's municipal sewage lines and go to the Moss Point/Pascagoula wastewater-treatment plant.
From there, PFOA flows with treated wastewater into the Pascagoula River, according to the company's plans submitted to Mississippi's Department of Environmental Quality.
Clean fluorotelomer alcohol is then hauled back to New Jersey to create the coatings used on a range of products."
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment