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When a letter to the editor appeared in a prestigious medical journal reporting the death of a patient linked to a common countertop material, the manufacturer’s response was not just immediate, it was published simultaneously. DuPont challenged the report that impugned Corian, a product it argued was perfectly safe, if used as directed.
The patient who succumbed to fatal lung disease did not renovate kitchens as his day job. He worked, ironically, as a respiratory physiologist, scientifically studying lung function until his breath was taken away. His connection to the countertoping was working on his own for 16 years in garage where he “ground, machined, drilled, and sanded Corian (http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc1404786).” The report in the New England Journal of Medicine includes a color photograph of the garage workshop demonstrating a small mound of Corian dust, crediting the picture to the patient himself, Dr. G. Leroy Eckardt. The report also documented microscopic images of his lung tissue laden with particles along with the results of sophisticated scanning that confirmed the presence of a metallic material called aluminum trihydrate, the main mineral component in Corian.
It is not unusual to publish a single medical case as a brief report or scientific letter to a journal. Frequently, follow-up correspondence appears offering related observations or raising questions about the content. It is highly unusual, however, to provide corporate rebuttal space that follows in the next column, as was allotted DuPont. Not that the company was entirely satisfied even with this concession, noting “We would have liked the opportunity to review or discuss this matter with the authors before publication.” A few months later, another letter did appear in which physicians questioned certain aspects of the case. In responding to this, the original authors finally had a forum to answer DuPont as well (http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc1407658). Both the patient and one of the treating physicians had independently contacted DuPont for more information, it seems, “but received no assistance. The DuPont material safety data sheet for Corian does not mention aluminum trihydrate , the major constituent...”
The larger a product market is, the bigger the stakes are if consumers get jittery. Manufacturers do not worry that there will be a sudden groundswell of demand for a product that does no harm to those that make or work with it (sandblasted jeans stayed popular). Rather, there is always the risk of misplaced fear of harm among the end-users. The case of a weekend warrior dosing his lungs with dust from a commercial product in his home workshop, as opposed to a salaried worker, only upped the ante.
The stakes were already high. Synthetic countertops make up very large market indeed. The market is so huge that this even can be the stuff of unflattering metaphor, as in poet Ken Bastock’s work Methodist Hatchet. When the Canadian journal Walrus reviewed this collection, it took particular note of one of his lyric lines: “You don’t have to watch Property Virgins to catch the sting of ‘Corian slab in the calibrated / cubism of the kitchen’ (http://thewalrus.ca/the-walrus-reads-8-4/).”
Corian has been promoted for lyrical applications more far reaching than mundane countertops but just as concrete. Its properties have appealed especially to forward thinking designers. The avatar of the Corian avant-garde may be the Bronx Museum of Arts “Lobby-For-The-Time-Being” by Vito Acconci, originally constructed for the centenary of the Grand Concourse in 2009. As the Museum press release described it, “Acconci takes half-inch thick slabs of white matte Corian® and treats it as a fabric for the installation—a hard fabric, to be slit, folded, stretched and curved into complex geometries (http://images.bronxmuseum.org/www_bronxmuseum_org/090602_AcconciLobby.p…).”
There is no way of knowing how many would be designers, sculptors, and conceptual artists are currently at work in garages and loft spaces attempting to manipulate Corian. They are unlikely to idly leaf through the pages of the New England Journal of Medicine. But if they go to Wikepedia for Corian, under the subheader “Fabricator Safety” they can read about Leroy Eckardt’s case and then come to a final concluding sentence “DuPont scientists responded that exposure to other materials could not be ruled out.” Caveat emptor. The article also has a boxed header, “This article contains content that is written like an advertisement. Please help improve it by removing promotional content and inappropriate external links, and by adding encyclopedic content written from a neutral point of view. (September 2015) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corian).” Feel free to borrow from this post.
