Teflon causes cancer....

[txaslftist]

Or at least maybe it does. Heard a report on NPR this morning that the feds are investigating DuPont for some chemical in teflon that potentially causes cancer, never breaks down in the blood stream, etc.

Maybe someone needs to tell GWB.

[KurtNYC]

1. Some of the dangers are well known and documented among bird

owners.

PTFE is the name of the product we are discussing. It is used in the manufacture of (a product name I can no longer use due to it's trademark), Silverstone, T-Fal and other "non-stick" pots and pans. It seems as though, under normal conditions, these products are perfectly safe. It is when a pot or pan coated with these materials are left on the stove for a period of time where they are heated to over 400 degrees C. and left to dry that the life threatening problem occurs. When this happens particles are released into the air and become deadly to birds and in some cases possibly humans and other household pets.

http://www.quakerville.com/features/teflon.asp

And note that Teflon is a trademarked name and there are many others.

[whistle]

2. That's a Dupont product that the company has been pushing....

...since the late 1950's. There ought to be about 1,000,000,000 people by now who have been repeatedly exposed and well on their way to developing all kinds of deadly cancers: stomach, esophagus, colon, brain, bond marrow, etc. The lawsuit against Dupont potentially can be bigger than big tobacco and asbestos. No wonder BushCo is pushing for tort reform! We must never let Bush and the republick-asses get their way.

<see>

Propaganda: The "Teflon Tactic": Denying Damage Under Corporate Capitalism
The "Teflon* Tactic": Deny, Deny, Deny

*Trademark for polytetrafluoroethylene, a substance used to provide a nonsticking coating on some cookware and industrial products

To keep their profitable chemicals on the market, corporations commonly deny, and deny time and again, that their products cause any harm. With this Teflon™ tactic companies attempt to escape blame by metaphorically coating their "chemical-X" with a non-sticking shield to repel censure.

This approach has been practiced not only by chemical companies, but also by tobacco companies, asbestos companies, drug companies, nuclear power companies and many other industries.
Corporate denial of damage often occurs in a series of retreating steps, with as much delay and obfuscation as possible at each step. The following corporate steps of denial are adapted from the arguments David Ozonoff, of Boston University, heard in his long, hard battle against asbestos:



Chemical-X doesn't hurt your health.

OK, it does hurt your health, but it doesn't cause cancer.

OK, chemical-X can cause cancer, but not our kind of chemical-X.

OK, our kind of chemical-X can cause cancer, but not the kind of cancer this person got.

OK, our kind of chemical-X can cause that kind of cancer, but not at the doses to which this person was exposed.

OK, chemical-X does cause cancer, and at this dosage, but this person got his disease from something else.

OK, he was exposed to our chemical-X and it did cause his cancer, but we did not know about the danger when we exposed him.

OK, we knew about the danger when we exposed him, but the statute of limitations has run out.

OK, the statute of limitations hasn't run out, but if we're guilty, we'll go out of business and everyone will be worse off.

OK, we'll go out of business, but only if you let us keep part of our company intact, and only if you limit our liability for the harms we have caused.


Donella Meadows has perceived that "The problem here is not any particular product or set of CEOs, but the very logic of business, which believes it MUST defend its profits and products, even if they cause grievous damage to the population at large."

Source: http://www.uwsp.edu/geo/courses/geog100/Plastics-DenyDamage.htm

[whistle]

3. Just to demonstrate how this is working with DuPont Co....

...check out this site:


http://www.ewg.org/issues/PFCs/index.php

<snip>

17 DECEMBER 2004

EWG Statement on Opening Arguments of Teflon Chemical Trial
Yesterday an Environmental Protection Agency administrative law judge held the first hearing in the trial of of EPA vs. DuPont for allegedly covering up information about the health effects of a toxic, indestructible chemical used to make Teflon that has turned up in over 95 percent of Americans' blood.

16 DECEMBER 2004

DuPont Fails to Report Another Teflon Health Study -- High Cholesterol Levels in Teflon Workers Kept from EPA
Recently revealed studies show that Italian workers whose blood contained a chemical in Teflon also had higher cholesterol levels. DuPont, Teflon's maker, still maintains there are "no known health effects" from the chemical.

17 NOVEMBER 2004

DuPont Suppresses Another Teflon Blood Study
DuPont covered up evidence of high levels of a toxic Teflon ingredient in the blood of people near a chemical plant, according to an internal study uncovered by EWG. DuPont's apparent suppression of critical health information comes amid a battle with EPA over failure to disclose previous studies.

<more, more and much more there>

[AP]

4. I had a T-fel teflon pan that I used for a while.

It started to get black flecks on it. I thought it was food getting stuck to the teflon, but it was actually the T-fel flaking off. It definitely got into some of my food.

Man, did that royally piss me off. (I was sure it was unhealthy then.)

The only reason I bought that pan was because I read somewhere that no-stick was better for you because you could cook with less butter and oil.

Now I use mostly cast-iron pans (which increases the iron in your diet) and I cook with oil and butter and smart balance (but not margarine, because its partially-hydrogenated oils are incredibly bad for your heart).

[readmylips]

5. Cast-iron pans used for centuries, no cancer reported....

I have never used teflon. I always felt suspicious of the chemicals in teflon. One time I was at a KMart and saw a lady buying these very cheap teflon..whatever the cheap pans use, and I told her how dangerous that stuff was for her family. She said, but they sell them and they're inexpensive. I told her, they're inexpensive because they are no good and dangerous.

I convinced her to go to the thrift store and find some good used cast-iron cooking utensils and some good thick aluminum pans. In her limited English, she thanked me and didn't buy those cheap pans.

[AllegroRondo]

12. You may want to watch out for aluminum too

there have been some studies that link aluminum cookware to alzheimers disease.

[TO Kid]

16. Funny thing about margarine

When it was first invented it actually improved people's health. At the time (18th century IIRC) most workers could not afford butter and their diet was mostly bread & water with the occasional veg and milk. Margarine was created as a cheap butter substitute so that workers wouldn't collapse on the job.

[AP]

17. The problem with margarine, as I understand it, is not that it's

a vegetable fat. It's that today it is made with the cheapest oil with the longest shelf-life: partially-hydrogenated vegetable oils. And those oils are extremely bad for your heart.

Margarines like Smart Balance or Earth Balance are made from vegetable oils that aren't partially-hydrogenated and are, therefore, much healthier.

[Felix Mala]

19. Lard was popular (Dripping in the UK)

Here in the Midwest, lots of kids had lard buckets that they kept at school all week to dip biscuits in for lunch. However, I think all that extra fat was burned off in the days before motorized conveyance, central heating and processed foods. (Of course, the average life span was 35 years.)

[shesemsmom]

6. We own parrots and have been cautioned about non stick cookware

can kill birds when heated in minutes. Now if it's not good for birds can it be good for us?

[ProfessorGAC]

7. Joe Jackson Was Right

The Professor

[AP]

9. She really was going out with him?

[ProfessorGAC]

10. Different Song From A Different Album

The Professor

[TO Kid]

8. Everything modern causes cancer!

It's no secret that 20th-century technological progress has been a disaster. I'm sure that before 1900 people lived longer, never died young from diseases, never died from bad water and there was no infant mortality.

[Egalitariat]

11. Do you write headlines for the National Enquirer?

That was a good one.

[Stephanie]

13. A simple google search would save you from embarrasment in future

December 17, 2004 — Yesterday an Environmental Protection Agency administrative law judge held the first hearing in the trial of of EPA vs. DuPont for allegedly covering up information about the health effects of a toxic, indestructible chemical used to make Teflon that has turned up in over 95 percent of Americans' blood. The lawsuit began after EWG gave EPA documents showing that DuPont had failed for twenty years to provide the Agency with critical health information about its Teflon chemical. After a year-long investigation EPA filed a complaint against DuPont, finding that the company engaged in unlawful behavior on three separate counts of hiding critical study results in company file cabinets for up to 20 years.

Internal DuPont documents show that in the early 1980s scientists at the company's Parkersburg, W. Va. Teflon plant discovered startling evidence that a key Teflon ingredient had contaminated local drinking water supplies, and that babies of plant workers had a Teflon ingredient in their cord blood and were born with birth defects. DuPont failed to submit these findings to the federal government, and also failed to tell workers and the local communities of the contamination. EPA lawyers have determined that these documents were suppressed in violation of two federal laws — the nation's toxic chemical pollution law (the Toxic Substances Control Act, or TSCA), and the law governing toxic chemicals at industrial facilities, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).

At the hearing, DuPont argued that it didn't have to tell EPA about the pollution connected with its highly profitable Teflon chemical, because the company was taking part in an amnesty program, the so-called Compliance Audit Program, or CAP. Provisions of the CAP program were debated, but there is one overarching point: DuPont never submitted these documents to EPA, under the amnesty program or under TSCA.

"Because DuPont did not give EPA this damaging information about their Teflon chemical under the law or under a voluntary amnesty program, they should be subject to the maximum fine of $313 million," said EWG Vice President for Research Jane Houlihan.

http://www.ewg.org/issues/PFCs/20041217/index.php

[Egalitariat]

14. Thanks for your message, Stephanie, but there's no embarrassment

I just got a kick out of the headline "Teflon Causes Cancer" and then the first line of the post is "Or at least maybe it does".

You see, the National Enquirer grabs people's attention with a headline that says "Swiss Scientist Cures AIDS", and then on page 13 you find out it was in a petri dish and no commercial drug viability is ever expected.

I appreciate your advice, and I think you too could save yourself from embarrassment by learning to read in context.

I made no judgement related to the validity of the claim that Teflon causes cancer. I'm sure it is correct. Everything causes cancer. My remark was related to the click-inducing headline, and then the disclaimer in line one that the headline may have been a little off.

[Stephanie]

15. Oh I see

But the context was not in your post, was it.

[UdoKier]

18. No it doesn't.

It's a chemical used in the production of Teflon.

There is a risk to people who work making the stuff, but the chemical is not present in the actual finished Teflon coating.

As far as I know, Teflon, and any flakes of it that may come off a pan into your food, are pretty much inert and no not leach out significant amounts of any compounds. I know a lot of hysterical lay people automatically spin stories like the original one into a grave threat from cooking on Teflon, but it really is mostly a flight of fancy, IMO.

If you like to worry, why not think about all the noxious fumes coming from your new wall paint and carpeting...

[jmowreader]

20. The chemical is called PFOA

Means "perfluorooctanoic acid." Say that one three times fast.

http://adbusters.org/metas/eco/truecosteconomics/spotlight.html

It seems that the chemistry department at UNC-Chapel Hill has figured out a way to make PTFE (Teflon) under carbon dioxide instead of under water. The new process requires no PFOA.

DuPont bought the process from UNC and converted its Teflon lines at the Fayetteville Works to PFOA-free. All of the PTFE that comes out of Fayetteville--and soon all the PTFE they make--will be made with this new process.

The fun thing is, DuPont also makes most of the PFOA used in the world at Fayetteville, but all of it is shipped elsewhere because DuPont is no longer the only manufacturer of this chemical.