PFOA non-stick, DU PONT

PFOA Non-Stick Coating by DuPont is Discouraged

People might think that chemical companies strive to create chemicals that are as harmless as possible and provide strict safety instructions for their use when they are not, but history has shown that this is not the case. Instead, the industry promotes chemicals as harmless even when they are well aware of the risks.

DuPont, Legal Battles

We list only one case according to The Intercept: “Concerns about the safety of Teflon, C8, and other long-chain perfluorinated chemicals first drew public attention more than a decade ago, but DuPont’s long history of involvement with C8 has never been fully known…

A long list of documents helped clarify matters regarding C8, DuPont, and the intermittent attempts by the Environmental Protection Agency to address the public health threat. This story is based on many of those documents, which until they were filed as evidence in these trials, had been hidden in DuPont’s archives.

Among them are redactions of experiments on rats, dogs, and rabbits showing that C8 was linked to a wide range of health problems that sometimes killed laboratory animals.”

Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA, also known as C8), was for decades an essential ingredient in DuPont’s non-stick cookware. The chemical is also used in hundreds of other non-stick and stain-resistant products, from microwave popcorn bags, fast food wrappers to waterproof clothing and treatments for furniture and carpet that repel dirt. It is also found in flame retardant chemicals and consequently in items treated with flame retardants, ranging from children’s products to furniture and electronics.

PFOA is a fluorinated chemical—it’s the fluorine atoms that provide that slippery characteristic. The first time I learned about the dangers of fluorinated non-stick coatings was in 2001, and since then I have been warning against the use of such products. “Once in your body, perfluoroalkyls tend to remain unchanged for long periods of time.

The most commonly used perfluoroalkyls (PFOA and PFOS) remain in the body for many years. Your body takes about four years to reduce the level by half, even if you no longer consume any more.” While there is an incredible variety of chemical names in this group of chemicals, if an item is either non-stick, waterproof, or stain-resistant, it will have some type of fluorinated coating, making it slippery, and you can assume it may be problematic.

In 2005, a group of three scientists was convened as part of a settlement to determine the effects of the chemical on people. After seven years of research, the results detailed in more than three dozen peer-reviewed articles, the C8 Scientific Panel linked PFOA to:

• Ulcerative colitis

• High cholesterol

• Pregnancy-induced hypertension

• Thyroid disease

• Kidney and testicular cancer

Its health effects are considered widespread and occurred even at very low levels of exposure. According to The Intercept, DuPont was aware of many of these risks; however, it kept this knowledge secret, even from its own workers who came into direct and prolonged contact with the chemical.

Confidential documents from 1980 show that the company knew that the lethal oral dose of C8 in rhesus monkeys was one ounce per 150 pounds. Tests also showed that the chemical was more toxic when inhaled; however, the risk to workers was not verified.

PFOA Pollution Could Be Permanent

The three-part exposé by The Intercept titled “The Teflon Toxin: Dupont and the Chemistry of Deception” details DuPont’s long and extensive history of deception, stating: “Another revelation about C8 makes all of this more unsettling and provides the following globally significant evidence: This deadly chemical that DuPont continued to use after knowing it was linked to health problems is now practically everywhere. An artificial compound that did not exist a century ago, C8 is in the blood of 99.7 percent of people, according to a 2007 analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control, as well as in newborn babies, breast milk, and umbilical cord blood.

And because it is so chemically stable—in fact, as far as scientists can determine, it never degrades—it is expected that C8 will remain on the planet long after humans disappear from the planet.”

PFOA Dubbed the “Tobacco of the Chemical Industry”

Like tobacco, the litigation against C8 may forever change the way people view these chemicals. In fact, PFOA is being called the “tobacco of the chemical industry” due to corporate cover-ups for decades regarding its health effects, pending lawsuits, and how difficult it is to hold companies accountable for producing products that cause diseases, even after the evidence is clear.

In DuPont’s case, they had evidence of harm in animals—from liver toxicity and kidney damage to death—for decades, but the company did not inform its regulators about a potential problem. Then there were the company workers, some of whom had babies with birth defects after working in the company’s PFOA division.

DuPont Was Found Guilty in the Ohio Cancer Case

Since the mid-1960s, Teflon waste has been routinely disposed of in landfills. In the past, DuPont also disposed of the hazardous chemical by dumping barrels into the sea—which was actually legal at the time—and about 200 barrels of C8 were also dumped near the plant on the banks of the Ohio River. In 1984, according to testimony, DuPont’s own tests established that C8 had leaked into the local drinking water.

By 1989, DuPont knew that C8 caused testicular tumors in rats—and even classified