Teflon concerns may stick

Class action, anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Teflon concerns may stick


Panmakers worry cancer questions will eat into sales

For home cooks and professional chefs, Teflon might be the best kitchen innovation since sliced bread became a cliche. A pan with the non-stick coating makes easy-to-lift omelets and cleans up like a dream.

Umm, not if every pan causes cancer. Then, it really isn't the greatest thing since bread knives. More like the greatest thing since DDT. This article is like a mish-mash of DuPont-approved press releases about how Teflon is nothing to worry about, but then the article switches gears to:

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.

In humans, the effects of lower doses are unknown, but it is transferred to fetuses. An ongoing study by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore found the compound in the umbilical cord blood of 298 of 300 newborns. Because there is little information about how the chemical affects humans, the EPA asked U.S. companies last month to voluntarily eliminate public exposure to the chemical. DuPont pledged to meet the deadlines.

But the voluntary phaseout will not end the sale of Teflon and other products like T-Fal's cookware, though it is expected to curtail the release of the chemical into the atmosphere. Regulators have to act, said Joe Hotchkiss, chairman of Cornell University's department of food science, because they don't know whether the problems that result from a high level of PFOA exposure in animals will crop up in humans with much lower contamination.

90%:
Percentage of Americans whose blood contains low levels of perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, used in the making of non-stick cookware. In high doses, the chemical causes cancer in lab animals

Thus, we no longer use Teflon or Teflon-related pans, at home at least. Who knows what is used in restaurants?

Tags: environment, /Teflon