The Teflon Toxin: DuPont and the Chemistry of Deception

[LiberalArkie]

I hope no one finds this offensive, if so I will delete it.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/08/11/dupont-chemistry-deception/



KEN WAMSLEY SOMETIMES DREAMS that he’s playing softball again. He’ll be at center field, just like when he played slow pitch back in his teens, or pounding the ball over the fence as the crowd goes wild. Other times, he’s somehow inexplicably back at work in the lab. Wamsley calls them nightmares, these stories that play out in his sleep, but really the only scary part is the end, when “I wake up and I have no rectum anymore.”

Wamsley is 73. After developing rectal cancer and having surgery to treat it in 2002, he walks slowly and gets up from the bench in his small backyard slowly. His voice, which has a gentle Appalachian lilt, is still animated, though, especially when he talks about his happier days. There were many. While Wamsley knew plenty of people in Parkersburg, West Virginia, who struggled to stay employed, he made an enviable wage for almost four decades at the DuPont plant here. The company was generous, helping him pay for college courses and training him to become a lab analyst in the Teflon division.

He enjoyed the work, particularly the precision and care it required. For years, he measured levels of a chemical called C8 in various products. The chemical “was everywhere,” as Wamsley remembers it, bubbling out of the glass flasks he used to transport it, wafting into a smelly vapor that formed when he heated it. A fine powder, possibly C8, dusted the laboratory drawers and floated in the hazy lab air.

At the time, Wamsley and his coworkers weren’t particularly concerned about the strange stuff. “We never thought about it, never worried about it,” he said recently. His believed it was harmless, “like a soap. Wash your hands [with it], your face, take a bath.”



Snip

[djean111]

1. I am not offended. I believe every word. And I try to avoid that stuff.

Threw out my Teflon pans, pop popcorn like we used to when I was a kid, in a pot on the stove. But that stuff is everywhere, and admitting it is poisonous affects both profits and opens the industry up to lawsuits, so of course it will be fought and covered up.

[Mnemosyne]

2. Their slogan should be, "At least we aren't as bad as Bhopal." Criminals all. nt

[Person 2713]

3. No Teflon ! Been about 25 yrs now for me . There are some other ones under different names

It was one of those but it makes life so easy lures. Plenty more lures out there today but I already get this board is often offended so stopping with this statement

[NV Whino]

4. Here's another excerpt

Although DuPont no longer uses C8, fully removing the chemical from all the bodies of water and bloodstreams it pollutes is now impossible. And, because it is so chemically stable — in fact, as far as scientists can determine, it never breaks down — C8 is expected to remain on the planet well after humans are gone from it.

C8 is the chemical that makes Teflon, Teflon.

[sir pball]

14. Teflon is the chemical that makes Teflon Teflon, actually.

Teflon aka polytetrafluroethylene (PTFE) ≠ PFOA.

PFOA is the incredibly nasty precursor chemical to Teflon, which has been horrifically "mismanaged"* for lack of a better term - but PTFE itself is pretty much entirely harmless - PFOA: PTFE::Na&Cl:table salt. There's a very good reason it's used throughout the medical and chemical engineering industries, almost absolute non-reactivity is hard to come by. It doesn't anger or offend me that people get mixed up by somewhat confusing information, I just wish article writers would make things clearer. I don't use nonstick cookware at all, but I do own lots of gore-tex and PTFE thread tape is a godsend (BTW if you've never told your plumber explicitly not to use the tape, your pipes are full of Teflon).

* - PFOA isn't even that bad in the world of industrial-scale syntheses, it's more that it was handled so slapdash incompetently than anything.

[NV Whino]

20. Thanks for the clarification

What is most upsetting about the article is the coverup.

And, I too, have never used Teflon… or any other nonstick surfaced pan. Means I have to use a little elbow grease on my stainless steel once in a while, but elbow grease is preferable to Teflon.

I do use pipe thread tape. Be lost without that stuff.

[sir pball]

24. It doesn't do well over high heat

That's mainly why I don't use it. 20 years cooking, I never get things stuck IIRC there was a big scare a few years ago about the toxic decomposition products if a Teflon pan is allowed to overheat...but butter turned out to be just as bad.

100% agree about the cover-up; DP needs to be on a serious hook for this. Not like there was much confusion about the hazards of fluorinated compunds, "we didn't know better!" isn't going to fly.

[LiberalEsto]

5. K&R

Wow. Just wow.

I've suspected and heard for many years that Teflon is bad and avoided using it, but the number of deceptions, coverups and outright lies cited in this article is overwhelming.

The people at the top echelons of DuPont who profited from the sickness and suffering of others should be forced to sell their mansions and property to pay for medical care for the victims and cleaning up of the environment as much as possible.

[closeupready]

6. Help me here - is the claim that ALL non-stick pots are toxic?

Or, rather, the non-stick coating? I have non-stick pots, but none that are Teflon brand.

[LiberalArkie]

8. I read that ceramic was the only good non-stick. I really don't know. I wished I did.

[Nay]

17. Too bad. I've tried a few ceramic pans, but they aren't any more nonstick than

regular stainless steel. IOW, stuff sticks like crazy to it. If I have to use a tablespoon of butter to keep stuff from sticking, it ain't a non-stick pan.

[Person 2713]

18. I also use heat glass and also a parchment paperlayer if it's the oven goes to 435

Frying I use the new nonstick ceramic ones out there or stainless . Cast iron is too heavy for me
Not this brand but like this
http://www.amazon.com/Textured-Ceramic-Non-Stick-Coating-Germany/dp/B004CSXMP6

[LiberalArkie]

21. I bought some ceramic fry pans and like them, they are expensive, but I made the mistake

of frying a couple of eyes and sliding the eggs around in the pan and they flew right out. The dog caught it in the air. I just don't know if the coating is really safe.

[Person 2713]

22. Yes it is avoiding the known carcinogens of Teflon but really who knows??? For what I call heavy

frying I still use stainless . Good catch doggie !

[shanti]

23. that's why PAM was invented n/t

[Warpy]

26. I had a thrift shop Le Creuset frypan that was fairly nonstick

I used the hell out of that thing for about three years until the chip that had put it into the thrift shop developed into a big crack across the pan. I loved it. When it died, I bought a new Wagner cast iron pan and set about seasoning it. That was nonstick, too, once it was coal black with toasted layers of oil and grease.

[smirkymonkey]

28. They are great pans but they are SO heavy!

I had a set of Chantal pans which are coated w/ enamel. When I moved back from out West they ended up in storage in my parents barn in upstate NY and I think they are still there. I don't drive and they never come to Boston to visit so I have been using cheap pans from Amazon since I've lived here - teflon coated!

[meow2u3]

25. The best nonstick pan is a seasoned iron frying pan IMO

You can't beat cast iron for flavor, either.

[NeoGreen]

7. The Compound Which Shall Not Be Named...

Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA),
also known as C8 and perfluorooctanoate, is a synthetic perfluorinated carboxylic acid and fluorosurfactant. One industrial application is as a surfactant in the emulsion polymerization of fluoropolymers. It has been used in the manufacture of such prominent consumer goods as Teflon. In 2013, Gore-Tex eliminated the use of PFOAs in the manufacture of its weatherproof functional fabrics. PFOA has been manufactured since the 1940s in industrial quantities. It is also formed by the degradation of precursors such as some fluorotelomers.

PFOA persists indefinitely in the environment. It is a toxicant and carcinogen in animals. PFOA has been detected in the blood of more than 98% of the general US population in the low and sub-parts per billion range, and levels are higher in chemical plant employees and surrounding subpopulations. How general populations are exposed to PFOA is not completely understood. PFOA has been detected in industrial waste, stain resistant carpets, carpet cleaning liquids, house dust, microwave popcorn bags, water, food, some cookware and PTFE such as Teflon.

As a result of a class-action lawsuit and community settlement with DuPont, three epidemiologists conducted studies on the population surrounding a chemical plant that was exposed to PFOA at levels greater than in the general population. The studies concluded that there was probably an association between PFOA exposure and six health outcomes: kidney cancer, testicular cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, hypercholesterolemia (high cholesterol), and pregnancy-induced hypertension.

When I worked under contract for the DuPont Remediation Group, there were two compounds jokingly referred to as The Compound(s) Which Shall Not Be Named, and while it was "joked about", the ban on including the chemical names in any company email was real.

PFOA was one of the compounds, and was a company wide Compound-Non-Grata.

The other one was Hexachlorobutadiene, but it was generally only Compund-Non-Grata in relation to the Site I was working on.

[enough]

9. Interesting perspective. (nt)

[enough]

10. Wondering why you think this might be offensive.

Is it because we are not supposed to criticize Monsanto for fear of being labeled anti-science?

[LiberalArkie]

11. No, just that it seems if I post anything, someone is offended.

[tkmorris]

12. The implication being that we get offended at everything?

That's offensive.

[closeupready]

15. I disagree, and your mockery of DU is offensive!

!!

[Person 2713]

19. Proving the poster' s point for a disclaimer !

[enough]

30. I hear you. (nt)

[mopinko]

13. a pox on humanity.

and an even bigger one on avian life.

[u4ic]

29. My parrot

Was the reason I stopped using it. I haven't used any Teflon cook or bakeware for 15 yrs. Cast iron for me.

[restorefreedom]

16. i have always been leery

guess i am an old fart but i like stainless steel and cast iron.

we wonder why cancer rates skyrocket and yet we eat, breathe, drink, and apply all kinds of stuff every day. scary.

[KT2000]

27. we will never get a handle

on our healthcare system until fewer people are getting sick. The myth is that if you eat right, get exercise etc you will live a long life. This is baloney as the great omission is the chemical soup we live in every moment of our lives. Some can affect fetal development (birth defects, neurological damage, diabetes and on and on). That is what we know about the individual chemicals but we know nothing of the chemical soup that combines various chemicals into other substances.

Articles such as this are more important that many other posts on this site and I wish more people cared. The lives of families can be defined by the effects of toxic chemicals whether it is a special needs child, lost fertility, middle-age cancers etc. If you are poor, there is a possibility that a toxic waste dump (legal or illegal ones) nearby. Rich neighborhoods are far from them.

If a parent up to 3 generations ago had occupational exposure to toxic chemicals, that could increase cancer risk for current generations as well.

They are invisible so they are out of mind and the corporations invented the word chemophobia (mental condition) to describe those who are concerned.