Time to Stick It to Teflon

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What Does DuPont Know, and When Did They Know It?

From the Chicago Tribune, 2/20/06

Now, something finally seems to be sticking to Teflon--a nasty environmental tempest that has maker DuPont Co. and cookware companies worried that garage sales in the coming weeks will be stuffed with discarded non-stick pots and pans.

Now if somebody would just publish a report that said Corvettes cause cancer, I’d go to some of those garage sales…

Home chefs have questioned the safety of non-stick cookware since an Environmental Protection Agency advisory board asked regulators in late January to examine whether a chemical that gets slippery Teflon and similar coatings to bond to a pan can cause cancer.

And just to be on the safe side, I’m never going to cook again. With any type of pot or pan.

Both Teflon-maker DuPont and the EPA said cooks had little to worry about. The EPA raised questions about the chemical, perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, after studies found it to be in low levels in the blood of 90 percent of Americans, said Susan Hazen, the EPA's acting assistant administrator. Although the source of the exposure is unknown, she said cookware was an unlikely culprit. PFOA is in the non-stick substance sprayed onto cookware. The pan then goes through a heating process in which virtually all of the PFOA is destroyed, according to DuPont.

By releasing it into the air, where 90% of the population absorbs it by breathing. Wonder where they found that ‘other’ 10%? Antarctica? Or did those folks just have something far worse in their blood streams that ate up the PFOA?

Last year, the EPA fined DuPont $16.5 million--the largest administrative fine in EPA history--alleging that the company hid data on toxicity and health effects of PFOA for more than 20 years and contaminated the drinking water supply next to a DuPont plant in West Virginia. PFOA causes liver cancer, reduced birth weight, immune-system suppression and developmental problems in laboratory animals exposed to high doses.

But this isn’t anything to get alarmed about…