New investigations reveal how industry and regulatory failures led to widespread contamination in North Carolina.
When chemical giant DuPont phased out a notorious toxic compound used in Teflon production, the company promoted its replacement as a safer alternative with a “favorable toxicological profile.” But internal documents and a new academic investigation reveal a troubling reality: DuPont knew the substitute chemical-marketed as “GenX”-posed significant health risks, yet commercialized it anyway with minimal regulatory oversight.
The findings-compiled by researchers from Whitman College and Northeastern University and published in the journal Environmental Science and Policy-challenge this view that such harmful chemical substitutions are simply “regrettable” accidents. Instead, the study contends that these outcomes represent “detrimental substitution”-a predictable feature of a broken regulatory system that puts corporate profits ahead of the public health.
From PFOA to GenX: A Familiar Pattern
The story begins with PFOA, also known as C8, which DuPont used for decades to manufacture Teflon and other fluoropolymers at facilities including the Fayetteville Works plant in North Carolina. By the 1960s and 1970s, internal company studies showed that PFOA was toxic and bioaccumulative, with widespread human exposure documented.
Despite legal requirements to promptly disclose substantial chemical hazards to the EPA, DuPont’s disclosures have been “incomplete or absent,” according to the study. It wasn’t until after years of contamination, lawsuits, and public pressure that the company agreed in 2006 to participate in a voluntary EPA program to phase out PFOA.
Rather than stopping the manufacture of fluoropolymers or finding fundamentally safer alternatives, DuPont turned to GenX chemicals, primarily HFPO-DA and its ammonium salt. The company had, in fact, first synthesized HFPO-DA in the early 1960s, and a 1963 study found that rats given the substance experienced “discomfort, gasping and/or tonic convulsion prior to death.” Yet this alarming finding wasn’t reported to the EPA until 2006, as DuPont prepared to commercialize GenX as PFOA’s replacement.
Red Flags Ignored
When DuPont filed for permission to commercialize the chemicals, known as GenX, in 2008, the submission included toxicity data that showed disturbing health effects. EPA scientists reviewing the application determined safe exposure levels should be 100 to 1,000 times lower than what DuPont had calculated. In 2009, the EPA issued a consent order acknowledging the substances “may present an unreasonable risk of injury to human health and the environment.”
Yet rather than prohibit production of GenX, the EPA allowed it to proceed under certain conditions, including capture-and-destroy requirements that 99 percent of the emissions be eliminated. The problem: the agency provided virtually no oversight to ensure compliance. According to a 2020 EPA Inspector General report, until 2017 the agency’s only verification efforts consisted of “tracking and reviewing information provided by the manufacturer”—essentially trusting the company to police itself.
Meanwhile, GenX chemicals had been released into North Carolina’s environment since at least 1980 as byproducts of another fluoropolymer production process, decades before commercial GenX production even began. Applications for the company’s discharge permits employed vague language that failed to clearly identify the presence of the chemicals, later becoming an issue in legal disputes about whether proper disclosure had been made.
A Community Discovers the Truth
For years, residents downstream of the Fayetteville Works plant unknowingly drank water contaminated with GenX chemicals. It wasn’t until June 2017 that contamination was uncovered by local reporter Vaughn Hagerty, who published findings from an academic study measuring GenX in both the Cape Fear River and finished drinking water supplied to more than 200,000 residents.
The revelation sparked outrage. More than 300 residents packed a community meeting organized by the local groups Clean Cape Fear and Cape Fear River Watch. North Carolina’s governor ordered investigations and requested federal health assessments. State testing discovered elevated GenX levels near the facility, and expanded well testing eventually identified more than 5,200 contaminated private wells.
Yet even as evidence mounted, the company – by then spun off as a separate entity called Chemours in 2015 – downplayed the risks. The CEO described the crisis as merely “a permitting issue” and said the company would focus on “dividends and share buybacks for our shareholders.” A company-funded toxicologist claimed he would “let his grandchildren drink the water.”
Internal actions told a different story. Two top executives at Chemours sold more than $1.7 million in company stock in the months after the public disclosure.
A System Designed to Fail
They identify three structural factors that facilitate harmful substitution: First, the growth imperative in capitalism creates pressures to put profits over safety, leading firms to withhold information, manufacture doubt about risks, and resist regulation.
Second, statutory limitations create what scholars call “institutionalized ignorance.” Chemical byproducts are not subject to the same review as commercial products. Companies control what toxicity data to generate about their own chemicals. Protections for confidential business information allow corporations to hide critical data from regulators, the public, and even different offices within the EPA itself.
Third, agencies display “regulatory reticence”-that is, failing to utilize their full statutorily granted authority. For example, after a 1991 court decision had the effect of increasing the burden of EPA rulemaking, the agency began to rely increasingly on voluntary programs rather than binding restrictions. The EPA permitted the commercialization of GenX notwithstanding its acknowledgement of unreasonable risks, did nothing to monitor compliance with the terms of its consent order, and failed to pursue enforcement despite documenting probable violations.
“The ‘regrettable’ nature of chemical substitution is a feature, not a bug, of a chemical regulatory system shaped by complicated entanglements between regulatory agencies, industry actors, and political-economic systems,” the researchers write.
Ongoing Consequences
Years after the discovery of the contamination, the production of GenX chemicals continues unabated at the Fayetteville facility, although details of the production remain shielded as confidential business information. Testing ordered by state regulators has detected more than 250 unknown PFAS compounds in water samples. The facility has repeatedly violated consent orders through chemical spills and equipment failures.
While the EPA set a drinking water limit for GenX in 2024, the agency proposed rescinding that standard in 2025 under a new presidential administration. No comprehensive health study of exposed residents has been completed, with the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry assessment still listed as “under development” eight years after being requested.
Locals are still reeling from the betrayal. “Public trust was already broken,” said one activist to researchers. “When you find out that you’ve been drinking chemical waste for decades and you were relying on your utilities and public entities to protect you from these chemicals. it’s very important that government officials work to provide as much transparency as possible. We did not see that happen.”
The pattern is not confined to North Carolina. A more recent analysis of another facility in New Jersey has found similar corporate behavior and regulatory failures with alternative PFAS chemicals.
A Call for Fundamental Change
The authors contend that preventing harmful substitution cannot be achieved by better information or voluntary industry cooperation. Reforms necessary to prevent harmful substitution include: independent review of industry toxicity data; limited exemptions for byproducts and research chemicals; reduced protection for confidential business information; expanded liability when companies spin off divisions; increased coordination among the offices responsible for regulation; and enforcement that is punitive enough in its consequences for violations.
Most fundamentally, the analysis suggests that the path to protecting public health involves confronting the economic structures that make pollution profitable. As the United Nations Human Rights Council concluded in 2023, DuPont and Chemours “disregarded human rights and environmental protections,” while the EPA and North Carolina regulators “fell short in their duty to protect the public.”
“Rather than being regrettable,” the researchers conclude, “the substitution of GenX for PFOA is a foreseeable product of structural factors – including corporate influence on science and regulation – that lead to favorable outcomes for industry to the detriment of the broader public.”
Source: Cordner, A., Allgeyer, A., Tallon, L.A., & Brown, P. (2025). “Regrettable for whom? GenX chemicals as a case study in detrimental chemical substitution.” Environmental Science and Policy, 174, 104262. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2025.104262
