FAYETTEVILLE — Kuraray’s operations at its Bladen County plant are shut down while an investigation continues into Tuesday’s chemical spill into the Cape Fear River.
Kuraray America, headquartered in Houston, released a statement on Thursday. It said the 3GO plasticizer, or triethylene glycol bis(2-ethylhexanoate), escaped into a storm drain no longer in use. The drain was uncovered during a planned construction.
Clean-up operations are underway.
The spill happened about 1:45 p.m., with an alarm signaling an off-site incident. Chemours notified the N.C. Division of Environmental Quality, and Kuraray “followed up with DEQ around 3:30 p.m. to the original notification from Chemours,” the release said.
Kuraray continued operating until 5 p.m. “in an effort to understand where the release was coming from within the facility,” the release said. The company said preliminary findings show less than 30 gallons of 3GO plasticizer was released.
The chemical is used in PVB film manufacturing. It makes, the release said, a “PVB sheet more pliable when utilized in windshields to enable flexibility to absorb impact. The plasticizer is biodegradable, and according to the safety data sheet, this material does not contain any chemical components with known CAS numbers. The 3GO plasticizer is not a PFOA or other fluorinated chemical.”
A CAS number is the unique numerical identifier assigned by the Chemical Abstracts Service to every chemical substance. PFOA is an acronym for perfluorooctanoic acid.
The DEQ, in a release about the spill, said staff found a “sheen” at Outfall 2 on Tuesday during biweekly sampling. DEQ said Chemours deployed absorbent booms and partially shut down the sluice gate.
The outfall is shared by Kuraray, Chemours and Dupont Facilities’ onsite wastewater treatment plants.
DEQ also confirmed the plasticizer is a non-PFAS compound, meaning it is not part of the per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances that have caused concern, like GenX.
GenX is a trade name for C3 dimer acid, a compound used in the manufacture of products such as food packaging, nonstick coatings and firefighting foam. It’s also a byproduct of certain manufacturing processes. HFPO-DA, an acronym for hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid, is another name for the member of a family of chemical compounds known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.
Chemours has been under the microscope regionally since June 2017, when the StarNews newspaper of Wilmington reported GenX was being discharged into the Cape Fear River. The river supplies drinking water to some municipalities downstream, including Wilmington.
Kuraray, which bills itself as a world leader in performance-based polymer and synthetic chemistry technologies, said operation and construction will not resume until the probe is finished. The company said it is working to “ensure that there is no risk of an additional chemical escape.”
Kuraray said it is cooperating with Cape Fear Public Utility Authority and Brunswick County.