Teflon Town: Part 1

By VTD Editor

Aug 25 2017February 10, 2023

Investigation by Jim Therrien

NORTH BENNINGTON — "The area within a 15-mile radius of Bennington may well be the Teflon glass coating capital of the world."

That 1968 quote from the vice president of the newly formed Chemical Fabrics Corporation set the tone for a honeymoon period with the Bennington community that lasted more than 30 years.

There would be no industrial wastes from the new industry and fumes from the drying process would be odor free and non-toxic, a company official insisted in an interview with a Bennington Banner reporter in 1968.

"Absolutely no pollutants are given off by our operation," he would say.

That outsized confidence was borne out by the eventual success of the fledgling ChemFab firm located in this bucolic town in southwestern Vermont, adjacent to New York State and 10 miles north of the Massachusetts border.

ChemFab quickly became famous for Teflon-coated fiberglass fabrics used on sports stadium domes and other structures.

In retrospect, the effusive language officials used to describe the supposedly emission-free chemical plant is chilling.

That optimism was only justified if you weren't aware --- as we are today --- of the widespread, environmental damage from PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) used in the production of the company's revolutionary Teflon fabrics.

Perfluorooctanoic acid, which is highly toxic in very small concentrations, has since polluted soils and drinking water in Bennington. The Teflon byproduct has been found in other industrial sites in the United States and across the globe.

PFOA has emerged over the past two decades as an enduring contamination threat to drinking water supplies. The substance is believed to be detectable at some level in the blood of nearly every human being in the United States. Readings have been reported in animals as far north as the Arctic Circle.

The founders of Chemical Fabrics, including John R. Cook, began experimenting with Teflon coatings at the former Warren Wire Company factory in Pownal, which was established in 1947 by Cook and his partners and later sold to General Cable Corporation in the 1960s. Cook and his partners then formed Chemical Fabrics in Bennington in 1968.

The company specialized in the coating of glass fabrics and "high temperature woven products with Teflon and other insulating materials for use by the electrical and heat sealing industries," a company official told the Bennington Banner in 1970.

Teflon was the same water-dispersant material manufactured by DuPont that had become a popular pot and pan surface material that resisted sticking.

Over the first 10 years of ChemFab's existence in Bennington, the business developed new manufacturing processes and uses for Teflon coatings, including in the production of coated rolls of light, durable, long-lasting fiberglass fabrics. Those products included conveyor belting and fabric for stadium domes.

According to published histories and articles about the company, the 1970 World's Fair held in Osaka, Japan, featured lightweight vinyl-based roofing, which inspired Cook to develop a sturdier material for such roofing with fiberglass, Teflon and other substances.

ChemFab worked with DuPont and Owens-Corning on research, which resulted in the development of the Bennington company's trademark Sheerfill material, which reflected heat while allowing light to pass through. Sheerfill did not discolor when exposed to extreme temperatures. It was said to be layered and translucent rather than transparent and could be modified to fit the expected conditions at the installation site.

The company developed structural supports for the material and roofing installation techniques with New York state-based Birdair Structures Inc. The first domelike structures with Sheerfill were erected in the early 1970s.

The Pontiac Silverdome in Michigan was built in 1975, and the Carrier Dome in Syracuse, N.Y., opened in 1980. ChemFab won a contract in 1981 for the massive Hajj Terminal at the New Jeddah International Airport in Saudi Arabia, which covered 100 acres --- approximately 110 football fields. It was designed to shelter nearly 1 million pilgrims on their annual pilgrimage to Mecca.

The company's success continued even after Cook was killed in a plane crash en route to Bennington during an ice storm in 1976. ChemFab's expansion continued under his brother, Paul Cook, and his son, Warren Cook.

As demand grew, the company expanded manufacturing and/or sales operations in several countries.

In 1978, the company transferred operations to a new 43,500 square foot headquarters and manufacturing complex on Water Street (Route 67A) in North Bennington, according to the company newsletter ChemFab Today from March of that year.

A few years later, ChemFab moved its headquarters to Merrimack, New Hampshire. The firm soon after went public and was traded on the NASDAQ market.

Gross sales in 2000 were reported at $126 million.

ChemFab was purchased that year by the international firm, Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics, which moved the local operation to New Hampshire two years later, shutting down the Vermont plant.

David E. Barber knows the North Bennington plant well. He has lived near the factory for more than 40 years and worked in the plant for more than two decades, beginning in 1979.

Barber said the plant ran 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with larger and smaller tower operations sometimes running on different weekly schedules.

"Overtime was never an issue," he said.

Fabrics were coated with Teflon "in the towers," or vertical drying ovens, Barber said. In the beginning, there were four towers at the North Bennington plant -- Towers A, B, C and D.

A single "tower" held a vertical loop of fabric, which proceeded slowly through a stainless steel tray near the bottom of the array up into a heated area toward the roof, where the Teflon "was baked in," Barber said.

Over time, a number of newer tower operations were set up, labeled Tower E through at least the letter M, he said. The speed of coating operations varied, Barber said, from 3 feet to 5 feet per minute to up to 21 feet per minute at one point.

The largest tower, Barber said, created the wide architectural fabrics used in sports domes and similar structures.

The manufacturing process involved filling stainless steel trays with a thin, milky liquid and running the rolls through them one or more times, depending on the fabric. With a tower running at about 5 feet per minute, it would take three or four hours to coat a 300-yard roll of fabric, Barber said.

When he first started at ChemFab, "we didn't even have stainless steel pitchers to scoop the Teflon out, which came later," he said.

"You bring in a milk carton from home; you cut the top off, and then you just put it in this 30-gallon drum and it would sink to the bottom. So you rolled your shirt sleeve up and reached down in the Teflon drum and you pulled it up. To me, it looked like low-fat milk; it was real thin and watery … Then you go to the sink and you wash off your arms."

The intensity of fumes from the drying process "depended on what we ran," Barber said.

There were complaints from plant neighbors about the smoke or fumes, he said, "but it wasn't always bad; it was hit and miss. I do know that at night we ran a lot of crap because it would smoke so bad, and they didn't want the neighbors to complain, because you could see the smoke pouring out of the top."

The odor always seemed the same to him, regardless of the fabric, he said. "It was just a nasty smell, and it was like a hazy smoke, a blue haze … We all stayed under the fresh air ducts --- they pumped in fresh air from outside near each machine."

An elaborate system of ventilation with 6-inch wide vents brought outside air to each machine, he said.

The company also spent "a lot of money on abaters," Barber said.

The gas-fired abaters in the tower stacks sucked in the chemical fumes and burned the toxic by-products, he said.

Barber lives directly behind the Teflon factory and his well is contaminated with PFOA. He said he is fortunate that he has had no serious health issues as yet.

His well was found to have 38 parts per trillion of PFOA before a carbon filtering unit was installed. While that was not among the highest readings found in area wells (up to more than 2,000 parts per trillion), Barber's blood test revealed a relatively high level. His blood had a microgram per liter level in the 400s, he said, way above the average for the U.S. population: 2.1 micrograms per liter.

About 500 Bennington residents in the area of contamination have been tested for PFOA. The Vermont Department of Health has reported the average level of blood contamination at 10 micrograms per liter. The highest concentration found in a local resident was around 1,125 micrograms per liter.

State officials said PFOA blood levels are known to slowly fall over time with no additional exposure to the chemical, but they can also build up in organs of the body even if the source, such as drinking water, is not at a high level.

Studies have indicated that PFOA exposure contributes to high cholesterol, high blood-pressure, immune system effects, thyroid disease, kidney cancer and testicular cancer.

In Bennington, the state Health Department determined that drinking contaminated water was probably the most significant source of exposure but working with PFOA also could have a serious effect.

As he recounted how workers at the plant dipped their hands in the liquid Teflon, Barber said "I just feel bad we weren't told."

Workers who got the Teflon liquid on their hands and smoked cigarettes would get sick from inhaling the chemicals in the vapor, Barber said, contracting what is known as Teflon flu, or "polymer fume fever."

William Bolton began working at the Warren Wire Co. plant in Pownal in the early 1960s. He believes working at the plant and later living in a house near the North Bennington plant, likely affected his health, leading to cancer and a bypass operation.

"When we first started, [the Warren Wire mill] was not always vented properly," Bolton said. The indoor air could become "like a blue cloud," he said, "and we would all get the shakes."

Bolton said the company "was doing all experimental stuff at that time, and we bought our stuff from DuPont."

He said the milky liquid from barrels marked Teflon and containing a warning label was used in coatings for wire, fabrics and other products.

The substance trademarked during the mid-1940s by DuPont as Teflon was discovered in the late 1930s by a scientist working for DuPont, and the company began to use the chemical in a variety of products in the years that followed. The first non-stick Teflon coated pans appeared in the early 1960s.

"Down there, at Warren Wire, we didn't have any scrubbers," Bolton said, referring to exhaust venting units. "That stuff just went out of the stack. And if we had fog, or real heavy air, that stuff would not go out of the stack properly; it would sink back into the building. And we would end up getting the shakes."

He added, "I have had bladder cancer and everything else --- a bypass. And a lot of that stuff, I presume, probably comes right from this."

The Warren Wire workers "kind of bathed in the stuff; we all did," he said. "Almost all the guys I worked with there are dead, and they all died of cancer."

Bolton, who later became a contractor and was involved in a renovation project at ChemFab's North Bennington factory, said the ventilation system seemed an improvement over that of the Pownal operation. But emissions from chemicals baked dry during the coating process still smelled strongly of sulfur and created the familiar whitish-blue haze, he said

"When we first moved here, our porch was not covered, and we couldn't stand the smell," said his wife, Linda Bolton. "And there were hardly any birds around. It is only in the past five years [long after the plant shut down] that there are birds here."

Those issues were not noticeable when they purchased their home near the plant in 1991, the Boltons and others in the area said, because the odors and haze would come and go, depending in part on wind direction. In general, though, they said the emission problems intensified --- as did the complaints of neighbors --- when business boomed at the plant.

Bolton said he thought the biggest problem was that the abater units in the exhaust stacks were inadequate or sometimes malfunctioned.

The Boltons, unlike many other neighbors of the North Bennington plant, have town water because they are on the state highway. But their swimming pool was greatly affected, they said, with a haze settling in the water when the air was calm.

"Any time we had heavy air that pool would be all blue," Bolton said. "And in the yard the smell would just take your breath away."

He added, "That stuff would lay down on everything. You couldn't open the windows."

When he complained to factory officials, he said, "the first thing they said over there was, ‘you know, if people complain too much these people are all going to lose their jobs.’ And right away you say to yourself, ‘oh man, if that goes out … everything else here is falling apart.’’’

Neighbors of the factory filed numerous complaints about odors and fumes, especially during the years leading up to the plant closure in 2002, two years after its purchase by Saint-Gobain. When the plant closed, neighbors said, they thought their problems were over --- only to learn in 2016 of the groundwater contamination.

North Bennington resident William Bolton worked at the Warren Wire Co. factory, which state officials believe to be the source of PFOA contamination in Pownal. Photo by Jim Therrien/VTDigger

Saint-Gobain eliminated about 90 jobs when it closed the North Bennington plant in 2002. The company said it was streamlining operations.

An official also told the Bennington Banner that the plant's ongoing challenge of keeping emissions within Vermont regulatory standards was a factor in the decision to close the plant.

Flash forward to today, and an insurer for the current owners of the Warren Wire factory in Pownal is dealing with water contamination issues discovered in early 2016. The facility, now a warehouse on Route 346, is also considered by Vermont officials to be a source of PFOA pollution.

In Bennington, the state has been negotiating with Saint-Gobain to address the contamination around the ChemFab sites and provide permanent alternative sources of safe drinking water for the affected residents. In late July, officials announced a partial settlement with the company, which agreed to fund $20 million in municipal water line extensions to about 200 properties in the western sector of the contamination zone.

Further negotiations and environmental testing are continuing for the eastern sector, east of Route 7A and the rail line, and the state hopes to have a similar agreement for those properties by early 2018.

The company also has supplied bottled water and carbon filtering units for contaminated private wells while negotiating with the state over the cost of extending water lines to affected properties.

The fallout from the ChemFab years also includes a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of scores of Bennington residents over property value and other financial losses and distresses stemming from PFOA contamination in private wells and soils.

Additional suits are expected to follow in state court, attorneys have said, filed by individuals over the health effects of exposure to PFOA.

Don't miss a thing. Sign up here to get VTDigger's weekly email on the energy industry and the environment.