3M Knew About the Dangers of PFOA and PFOS Decades Ago, Internal Documents Show
theintercept.com
theintercept.com
It would be more accurate to say "3M knew that manufacturing non-stick pans, and a number of other products, was poisoning all of us in the '70s".
You didn't have to have a Teflon pan to be exposed and having a Teflon pan didn't increase your exposure significantly. Microwave popcorn bags and other food wrappers were hundreds of times worse.
Teflon pans remain safe to use. All these other non-stick products are potential problems but it's impractical to try to identify which ones have PFOA or PFOS... so it's a good thing it's being phased out.
Including chipping Teflon, and that winter boot waterproofing spray you have in your closet...
edit: Not sure why I'm being downvoted. The body does not have a way of breaking down the carbon-fluorine bond, therefore these chemicals tend to bioaccumulate.
Now I'm really going to reveal my ignorance...
I also don't understand how a substance with such a strong bond that we can't break it down, can interact with anything in the body. Is it something like a catalyst?
One of the biggest risks is cancer. For example, lung cancer is often caused (in part) by accumulation of soot in your lungs, or asbestos particles, that your body cannot remove. And yes, they say there is no safe exposure level to smoking or asbestos.
Other effects include mental illness, diseases of the liver or kidneys, often seen with heavy metals.
When foreign objects get in protected nooks and crannies of your body, like vital organs, and stay there for the rest of your life, bad things happen.
And just because we can't pinpoint a mechanism of action doesn't mean it doesn't cause cancer :) There have been a number of MoA's proposed for PFOA specifically. Here are a couple:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22120428
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2516576/
Not everything has been studied. And may things are difficult to study. The "little black dots" or fake dirt on fancy astroturf fields are made from recycled road tires, which are a cocktail of all kinds of bad chemicals. And when they get lodged in goalkeepers' skin over time, they enter the body and cause some pretty rare and bad blood cancers. Do I have a study I can point to that says how? No. But do you want your daughter diving on one of those turf fields? https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/27/health/artificial-turf-cancer...
If this is true it should soon show up in people who work with tires or live near highways as well?
In addition to that story there is another story I cannot find at the moment, that referenced a vegetable farm in Mexico which was linked to some bad human effects. Turns out it was right next to the highway and the pollution from diesel trucks was making it into the food. They moved the farm farther from the roadside and the problem stopped.
Data on the human health effects of PFOA are sparse. There is relatively consistent evidence of modest positive associations with cholesterol and uric acid, although the magnitude of the cholesterol effect is inconsistent across different exposure levels. There is some but much less consistent evidence of a modest positive correlation with liver enzymes. Most findings come from cross-sectional studies, limiting conclusions. Two occupational cohort studies do not provide consistent evidence for chronic disease; both are limited by sample size and reliance on mortality data. Reproductive data have increased recently but are inconsistent, and any observed adverse effects are modest.
No, just an agonist or antagonist for some hormone, neurotransmitter, etc. Just search Google Books for "fluorinated agonist" or "fluorinated antagonist". That is, it's about 3D shape, to fit some receptor protein, and not about chemical reactivity.
PFOA however has a head group that is not inert (the acid part).
More generally though the reason we don't like bio-accumulation is because it can have effects that are hard to detect and could take 20 years to show up (think asbestos). With something that is only in you body for a week, whatever it does to you would be detectable in that time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuMGc0EswTc (exploration of literature and the plastic industry's move away from BPA -- as always with Nutrition Facts, Dr. Gregor is totally calm and uses no scare tactics)
Wait. Is it still true today?
Don't just add any salt, add popcorn salt - morton sells it and it's not hard to find.
It's salt that has been much more finely ground. It made a HUGE difference in my popcorn.
Also try calling morton and asking who carries it in your area, they should be able to tell you that.
And for the sake of completeness, be sure the pot has a lid!
Oh, and if you like buttered corn, add a teaspoon or two of clarified butter to the mix. Like kettle corn? Add some sugar to taste before popping. Like it cheesy? Buy some freeze dried cheddar and add it immediately after popping. If you’re feeling fancy, try some freshly grated parmasean. Cinnamon sugar also works well, as does powdered peanut butter, a bit of cocoa, and some confectioners sugar.
I love popcorn. :)
I make mine in a special bowl in the microwave (because I'm lazy) using ghee, so yeah...
add a teaspoon or two of clarified butter to the mix
To save some calories I add a bit of splenda afterwards (heat seems to destroy splenda, so it's got to be after the fact). Not as good, but better than nothing.
I tried that once and ruined a pan - the sugar just burnt and stuck to it. Salt's OK beforehand, but now I always add sugar after popping.
Not to mention you can customize the popcorn better if you like to add seasoning.
I always assumed there was some magic technology in microwave popcorn bags.
nope. The bag prevents the popcorn from scattering, and any kind of bag or container will work
It is like saying that fruit juice is 100x more dangerous than clean water. It may be true by some metric but it is completely meaningless.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytetrafluoroethylene#Safety
The idea that you could possibly buy a pan without chemicals is nuts
I've used mostly cast iron and wood since I started cooking, with some steel pans for acidic things and special cases. As a bonus, you never have to throw it away - if you somehow get it rusty enough that steel wool won't do the job (say, leave it in a moldy basement for a few years), just take it to your local auto body shop for sandblasting and re-season.
I hate non-stick pans. I can't baby them (I'm not responsible enough) and things just stick endlessly for me. It's just a bad experience. Invest in some nice, non-non-stick pans and you won't have stickage.
And "before using them" means also: before putting on that oil. Heat empty first, then oil.
Non-stick is good for things not used for frying: rice cookers, loaf pans, muffin baking sheets, ...
'The pan must surprise the eggs'
I use butter mostly, and wait for the water to boil off before adding the eggs. Works fine.
I agree that avoiding non-stick is probably minimally beneficial, but knowing that normal pans can be cooked on without things sticking, I avoid them.
This thread has really diverted into a pile of anecdotes. :)
A well seasoned cast iron pan is almost as convenient, so it’s not impossible.
Chefs take their frustration out on pans and slam, toss, and scrape them to oblivion.
Edit: adding an anecdote about cooking eggs:
In one restaurant I worked, it was part of the interview process to ask a chef to make an omelette. If the eggs got stuck to the pan or the omelette was destroyed, they didn’t get hired.
When I asked our Sous Chef why this was so difficult he explained that it’s a basic skill that every chef should have and understand the chemical reaction of proteins in a high heat pan with oil.
This is why I don't understand many of the arguments against federal regulation. I know regulation hurts the economy and makes doing business harder. I understand. But most corporations will not self-regulate even when people's lives are at stake.
Also, it doesn't make business that much harder unless you built your business on being shady. See: the recent GDPR kerfuffle. For some it was just business as usual on May 26th.
Patagonia has switched to shorter-chain PFCs for many of its coatings (C6 instead of C8). They are also actively investing in research for alternative chemicals with adequate performance.
Nikwax, which sells re-waterproofing products, never uses fluorinated compounds and is a good brand to look for at the store.
They will because people will still buy their crap. There are plenty of lazy, misinformed, ignorant people who would do anything to keep happy-poisoning themselves, including fighting legislation meant to protect them.
Existing businesses might go belly up, but new ones will spring up to fill the post-regulation needs, and as long as there are businesses doing stuff the economy will grow.
There is much less evidence that the economy suffers under regulations than the opposite. Just look at California, for instance.
And then they'll eat their babies. More realistically though they'll try to buy these companies to get their talent and patents. So in the end you banned the poisonous stuff, people who innovated made a lot of money and everybody's better off.
Maybe my hypothesis is overly optimistic but yours is comically grim. Do you think that we shouldn't have banned asbestos or leaded paints? That's exactly the kind of completely dogmatic rant I complained about in my sibling comment. "Things don't work perfectly all the time so let's do absolutely nothing".
Interestingly that whole cryptocurrency epic we're witnessing is quite educative from that point of view, it makes the dogmatic "government = bad" position rather precarious and forces a more nuanced approach from either side.
Regulations can legitimately protect the public, or they can originate from well organised companies and other groups wanting anti-competitive practices to protect their own position.
So somewhat problematically arguments against regulation either tend to originate from people and companies who want to benefit from its absence, and typically don't care, or don't want to care, about the larger cost of their actions; or from people and companies trying to compete against the former.
Aiding and abetting all this, are theoretical (and incorrect) arguments from economics about self-regulating systems, which in the case of economics, and apparently only in economics, are devoid of features such as positive and negative feedback loops.
That seems to be the case in this very example. TFA kicks off with "News that the Environmental Protection Agency pressured the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry to suppress a study showing PFAS chemicals to be even more dangerous than previously thought".
Also look at the water problems in Flint, MI, where governmental empire building led to a lot of health problems. It's sometimes the government's own refusal to self-regulate that causes the problems.
So it's wrong to believe that corporations are necessarily the culprits, and we can count on government to save us.
Yes, we need some regulations, especially when we're talking about tragedy-of-the-commons destruction of public resources. But don't go into it with a naive idea of "corporations evil, the government will save us".
It’s the reason why the SEC never caught Maddoff (who ran the SEC!!!), or literally ANY of the 2007/08 bad actors. Or why the EPA sat quiet on the 3M situation other than small slap on the wrist fines.
The only way around the corruption in the system is the open flow of information, which has only just been picking up steam. The amateur and crowd sourced expert/investigator is our best hope to find the truth in these situations.
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awikipedia.org+%22heal...
How does that search demonstrate anything?
https://www.nationalreview.com/2011/01/welcome-machine-kevin...
All you need to keep businesses honest is to let individuals/localities/states sue the hell out of the businesses if they are harmed by the business.
The only place regulations make sense is where harm is at a very large (country/planet) scale, where there is no coming back from, such as climate change.
That's a downside, but not at all a reason to write all regulations off.
I'd hate to live in a self regulating society where disputes are resolved by legal action. I'm guessing you're pro legal regulation in this dystopia?
All you need to do to refute this is look at the history of fraud, incompetence and other abuse in the Bitcoin/*coin marketplace. Adam Smith's invisible hand drives price competition in the marketplace, but it doesn't govern conduct.
Punting the need for regulation to the courts is just robbing justice from the public at large. Instead of having a rule that can be easily enforced and understood through the regulatory process, you're going to organically create rules via litigation and precedent. But in the process you're raising the bar in terms of cost and preventing entities without the resources to litigate from realizing justice.
This is a Fast Company post about The Intercept’s report. Might we prefer to link to it instead?
On the other side anti-regulatory proponents fund hundreds of think tanks and keep on aggressively pushing their agenda in the media and then when the environmental damage or fraud is revealed they make themselves scarce or evade responsibility. This is not a good model to run a society. It puts individual greed over the common good and destroys the commons.
Civilized society has never worked without laws which is what regulations are and and its high time basic tested principles are not allowed to be muddied by self interested parties with PR budgets. Depending on 'goodwill', 'self-regulation' and 'ethics' is a fairy tale version of reality.
The French company Tefal sells its frying pans across Europe. It is one of the most popular kitchen product around. As the name suggests, these used Teflon as some point. Is Teflon really not used any more in making these pans, and if not, then what is?
EDIT: I suspect that in the quotation above, the author really meant "PFOA" not Teflon.
> Tefal/T-fal non-stick coating is a technical coating made from a polymer name polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE). It is PTFE which gives the cookware the non-stick properties. Public health authorities in Europe and in the USA demonstrated that PTFE is an inert substance which does not chemically react with food, water or domestic cleaning products. It is totally harmless in case of ingestion. These Public health authorities confirmed the harmlessness of PTFE non-stick coatings in cookware. In fact, PTFE is so safe that it is frequently used in the medical profession to coat pacemakers and the tiny tubes made to replace arteries. It is also used for surgical procedures for the benefit of patients with severe kidney disease, and some joint prostheses are also partly coated with PTFE.
> PFOA is the standard English abbreviation of perfluorooctanoic acid. PFOA is used in the manufacturing process of many products such as non-stick coatings, compatible microwave packaging, some textiles, stain resistant carpet, pizza boxes which do not absorb fat, etc. On its finished products, Tefal/T-fal's commitment is to guarantee the absence of PFOA, lead and cadmium and to guarantee that its products with Tefal/T-fal non-stick coating are harmless for the environment and the consumer.
In fact, that site tells us nothing, because PFOA is largely a problem for the workers manufacturing it, so telling us that it's not in the "finished products" doesn't address the main concern. Furthermore, other synthesis routes aren't necessarily better; you have to have a reactive organofluoride at some point in the pipeline.
"PTFE is so safe that it is frequently used in the medical profession to coat pacemakers and the tiny tubes made to replace arteries" was written by a 3M corp comms flunky.
This is what we like to call “faint praise”.
Teflon: much much safer than a second heart attack.
Regulation must keep a watchful eye on the megacorp - a small fishing operation is a net positive for society but a fisheries giant can drive entire species to extinction and threaten food supplies.
MTBE is another example of a colossal screw up on the part of the EPA. EPA required an oxygenate to be added to gas (even though car technology had long since moved on - so no actual benefit). Then, when MTBE was used and became known as problematic, they stalled efforts for several years to stop its use. The result is that MTBE polluted much of our ground water.
Anyone at the EPA get held accountable?
Today, we have gas that is more expensive, less effective, and likely more polluting due to these regulations. We also cannot buy gas cans without those crazy spouts because the ethanol in today's gas evaporates so easily, causing smog, that they had to add more regulations on spouts to try to prevent that. Anyone ever used one of those spouts without spilling gas?
https://fee.org/articles/government-reformulated-gas-bad-in-...
It's great for my lawn tractor and snow blower, but it won't fill a car. If you need to fill a car, look for one of the automotive racing gas cans with a very long spout. I don't remember the brand name, but my John Deere dealer sells them.
The pan itself, once made, is not poisoning anyone.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_magnesium_boride
High fives for iron. I bought an old cast iron pan from a second hand store that had been machined to a very smooth finish. After cooking eggs in it, I immediately stripped and sanded my modern Lodge cast iron.
The difference is pretty big. It may not be as non-stick as Teflon, but it’s pretty darned non-stick. I assume my cast iron is also putting less cancer in my body.
> I assume my cast iron is also putting less cancer in my body.
what were your abrasives bonded together with, and how much of it ended up stuck in the surface of the cast iron?
Once you’re done, give it a rinse, wipe dry thoroughly, and then season immediately or it’ll rust.
I like to initially season by heating to a very hot temp, and then using flax seed oil on a paper towel held by tongs, and brush thin layers of oil on that will smoke and turn amber colored immediately. I don’t like the oven method that people write about on the internet, because the seasoning doesn’t last, it takes forever to do, and it takes way more energy to hear and cool. The “wipe oil on to hot skillet” approach works better and only takes a few minutes.
Still, you can't just go to the store and pick one up. I give new ones that I smooth out and season as short notice gifts.
The article is newsworthy because WWW are claiming 3M assured them it was safe until 2003 when they stopped using it because the FDA told them to. And 3M is claiming that there wasn't sufficient evidence to say it could be bad until they finally did. And rational people are looking at the whole thing knowing that everyone knew it was bad but they kept using it because it made them money.
To be fair, I and thousands of my neighbors now have a whole-house carbon filter that costs thousands in my home - bought, installed, and maintained on WWW's dime - that takes that 100 ppt down to nondetectable levels. That keeps my toddler safe. But I have been drinking it for 30 years...
Dr. Melik: This morning for breakfast he requested something called "wheat germ, organic honey and tiger's milk."
Dr. Aragon: [chuckling] Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties.
Dr. Melik: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or... hot fudge?
Dr. Aragon: Those were thought to be unhealthy... precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.
Dr. Melik: Incredible.
- some foodstuff is optimized for addictiveness, with far too much sugar, starting at the craddle.
- nutrition science has been purposefully sent in the wrong direction for decades.
I've worked on diabetes medical devices for about 8 years, did some research on diabetes to augment my ability to work on said diabetes medical devices, and personally know several people with type 1 diabetes and as well type 2 diabetes.
Did you mean instead to write: Sugar causes type 2 diabetes, not fat?
I suppose high sugar consumption could cause it, but it doesn't look like that is the typical mechanism.
Shows us something peer reviewed.
Edit: I haven't found anything to definitively say Greger is a quack, but given that searching his name brings up mainly alternative medicine type sites, I remain suspicious.
[0] http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-air-pollution-0428-pictur...
(I don't actually believe this is true. Don't hurt me.)