On  7-Jan-2005, "Andrew Neilson"  wrote:

> Now, let's look at the teflon issue.  I fully acknowledge that there is
> conflicting data.  I am not an expert on these types of chemicals.  I have
> been, however, a firefighter in the past.  Firefighters are taught that
> the
> products of combustion (i.e. smoke) are not predictable.  If you have a
> number of different compounds burning, there is no way to predict what the
> combustion will produce.  There is a synergistic effect between the
> chemicals present and the particular temperature, which can produce many
> different "brews".  The difference of a few degrees can change the
> composition of the products.  The upshot is that smoke can be very deadly.
> In fact, in a fire, far more people are killed by the smoke than by the
> flames.


Copyright © 2005 Chicago Tribune

      EPA charges DuPont hid Teflon's risks

            Tue Jan 18, 9:40 AM ET

      By Michael Hawthorne Tribune staff reporter

      More than 50 years after DuPont started producing Teflon near this
      Ohio River town, federal officials are accusing the company of hiding
      information suggesting that a chemical used to make the popular stick-
      and stain-resistant coating might cause cancer, birth defects and
      other ailments.
      Environmental regulators are particularly alarmed because scientists
      are finding perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, in the blood of people
      worldwide, and it takes years for the chemical to leave the body. The
      U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites) reported last
      week that exposure even to low levels of PFOA could be harmful.
      With virtually no government oversight, PFOA has been used since the
      early 1950s in the manufacture of non-stick cookware, rain-repellent
      clothing and hundreds of other products. The EPA says at this point
      there is no reason for consumers to stop using those items. But so
      many unresolved questions remain about PFOA that the agency is asking
      an outside panel of experts to assess the risks.
      "The fact that a chemical with those non-stick properties nonetheless
      accumulates in people was not expected," said Charles Auer, director
      of the EPA's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics
      Critics say the lack of knowledge about PFOA and related
      chemicals--called perfluorinated compounds--exposes a system where
      environmental regulators largely rely on companies that profit from
      industrial chemicals to sound alarms about their safety. Questions
      about potential effects on human health and the environment often
      aren't raised until years after a chemical is introduced to the
      marketplace.
      The long and mostly secret history of PFOA began to unravel down the
      road from DuPont's Teflon plant in a West Virginia courtroom, where a
      Parkersburg family began asking questions in the late 1990s about a
      mysterious wasting disease killing their cattle.
      Jim and Della Tennant suspected the culprit might lurk in a
      froth-covered creek that meandered past a DuPont landfill near the
      Teflon plant before spilling into their pasture. Their lawsuit ended
      with a monetary settlement that avoided assigning blame for the dead
      cows, but the legal battle uncovered a trove of industry documents
      about PFOA.
      One document detailed how DuPont scientists started warning company
      executives to avoid human contact with PFOA as early as 1961. Industry
      tests later determined the chemical accumulates in the body, doesn't
      break down in the environment and causes ailments in animals,
      including cancer, liver damage and birth defects.
      Recent studies have found that PFOA levels in some children are in the
      range of those that caused developmental problems in rats.
      "We're not very popular with some of the folks over at the plant,"
      said Della Tennant, who lives in a subdivision known as DuPont Manor,
      a sign of the firm's importance in this corner of Appalachia. "But I
      don't know how you could sleep at night not telling people about this
      contamination."
      If found guilty of illegally withholding information by an
      administrative law judge, DuPont could face more than $300 million in
      fines--about $100 million more than the company is estimated to make
      each year from products manufactured with PFOA.
      DuPont already has agreed to pay up to $345 million to settle another
      lawsuit filed on behalf of 60,000 West Virginians and Ohioans whose
      drinking water is contaminated with PFOA. Much of what the public is
      starting to learn about the chemical comes from industry documents
      submitted during court proceedings.
      Those documents also prompted the EPA's ongoing review of health
      risks, which could lead to rules that limit or phase out the use of
      PFOA.


      Company's responsibility


      Company officials say they share the government's concerns about the
      presence of PFOA in human blood but contend that they did nothing
      wrong and that the chemical affects animals differently than people.
      "DuPont remains confident that based on over 50 years of use and
      experience with PFOA there is no evidence to indicate that it harms
      human health or the environment," company spokesman R. Clifton Webb
      said.
      The company's Teflon plant--a sprawling complex of towers, smokestacks
      and metal buildings--rises above the flood plain in a sharp bend of
      the Ohio River. The area has become something of a makeshift
      laboratory as scientists scramble to learn more about chemicals behind
      world-famous brand names such as Teflon, Stainmaster and Gore-Tex.
      Since 1976, federal law has required companies to disclose what they
      know about any risks posed by toxic chemicals. The EPA says
      independent efforts to figure out how people are exposed to PFOA and
      what it might do to them should have started by the early 1980s, when
      DuPont discovered an employee had passed the chemical to her fetus.
      Among other things, the EPA accuses DuPont of failing to notify the
      agency when two of five babies born to plant employees in 1981 had eye
      and face defects similar to those found in newborn rats exposed to
      PFOA.
      DuPont also has known since at least 1984 that water wells in West
      Virginia and Ohio were contaminated with PFOA, according to company
      records. But people who rely on the wells for drinking water didn't
      find out until 2002, when internal DuPont documents started pouring
      into court.
      "Someone made a conscious decision to expose us to this without
      telling us," said Robert Griffin, general manager of the Little
      Hocking Water Association, which supplies drinking water to 12,000
      Ohio customers from wells across the river from the Teflon plant.
       "If you wanted people to be lab rats for such a long period, nobody
      would ever allow it," Griffin said.
      Company lawyers contend DuPont wasn't obligated to share the
      information because PFOA doesn't meet the legal definition of a toxic
      chemical that poses a "substantial risk."
      DuPont documents, though, show company officials were worried the
      public would learn that PFOA had contaminated local water supplies.
      One benefit of settling the lawsuit over the Tennant family's dead
      cattle, company attorneys advised in an internal e-mail, would be
      preventing the release of information about PFOA in the water.
      "Biggest potential downside: plant contamination issues surface, case
      becomes class action," DuPont attorney Bernard Reilly concluded in a
      March 2000 e-mail outlining tradeoffs if the company chose to fight
      the Tennants in court.
      DuPont says it has reduced air and water emissions of PFOA by 90
      percent at the Teflon plant. Yet levels of the chemical in water wells
      on the Ohio side of the river are the highest recorded to date,
      according to tests last fall.
      "Drinking water data in possession of DuPont `reasonably supports the
      conclusion' that PFOA `presents a substantial risk of injury to
      health,'" the EPA wrote in an October filing.

      Scientists are just now starting to learn how much of the chemical is
      in people's blood and how far it has traveled from the handful of
      sites where PFOA is manufactured or used--information that highlights
      new challenges for scientists and regulators.
      Substances added to food are regulated by the Food and Drug
      Administration (news - web sites) and must undergo rigorous testing
      before their use. But critics say that with industrial chemicals, the
      EPA is limited by laws that make it difficult to order testing.
      The agency reported in 1998 that it had no toxicity data or "safe
      level" for 43 percent of the 2,800 chemicals produced in volumes of 1
      million pounds a year or more.
      "It borders on the ridiculous," said Tim Kropp, a senior scientist
      with the non-profit Environmental Working Group, which has helped draw
      the EPA's attention to PFOA and other compounds. "There is no way
      consumers can be knowledgeable about all of these chemicals. That's
      why we need the government to ensure they are safe."
      EPA case evolves

      The EPA's case against DuPont gradually has evolved over four years as
      industry concerns about PFOA came to light.
      Agency officials initially were worried about a related perfluorinated
      chemical in Scotchguard, the stain-resistant coating pioneered by 3M.
      Regulators started focusing on PFOA after the EPA pressured 3M in 2000
      to stop making the compounds, prompted by research that found the
      chemicals in human blood and in foods such as apples, bread, green
      beans and ground beef.
      3M had been the chief supplier of PFOA to DuPont, which now makes the
      chemical at a plant in North Carolina.
      DuPont announced last week that a new study of more than 1,000 workers
      at the Teflon plant found virtually no health effects from exposure to
      PFOA. Some workers were found to have higher-than-expected cholesterol
      levels.
      Tests on lab animals have found links to illnesses including liver and
      testicular cancer, reduced weight of newborns and immune-system
      suppression. The findings concern EPA officials because rats flush the
      chemical out of their bodies within days, while PFOA stays in human
      blood for at least four years.
      As a result, the EPA says, the potential for human health effects
      cannot be ruled out.
      "Low-level exposure to people over time produces blood concentrations
      that may be of concern," Auer said. "As time goes on and the
      opportunity for exposure continues, those blood concentrations could
      move to even higher levels."
      Scientists still aren't sure how PFOA is spreading around the planet.
      Although DuPont says the manufacturing process leaves only trace
      amounts of the chemical in non-stick cookware and other goods, some
      researchers think that as Teflon products age they release chemicals
      that then break down into PFOA.
      The compound also is released into air and water during manufacturing.
      Studies that have found PFOA in salmon in the Great Lakes, polar bears
      in the Arctic and dolphins in the Mediterranean Sea suggest the
      chemical travels easily through the atmosphere.
      Another theory the EPA and academic researchers are testing is that
      other perfluorinated chemicals, known as telomers, break down to PFOA.
      Made by DuPont and other companies, telomers are used in stain- and
      grease-repellent coatings for carpets, clothing and fast-food
      packaging.
      Researchers studying PFOA levels in the Great Lakes think that when
      carpets and clothing treated with telomers are cleaned, some of the
      chemicals wash into sewage treatment plants that are not equipped to
      remove them before wastewater is dumped into lakes and rivers.
      Landfill runoff could be another source.
      Last spring, former DuPont chemist Glenn Evers told a lawyer for
      people living near the DuPont plant that the chemicals can be absorbed
      from french fry boxes, microwave popcorn bags and hamburger wrappers,
      among other items, according to a partial transcript filed by the EPA.
      The company responded by describing Evers as a disgruntled former
      employee with little direct knowledge of PFOA.

      Reactions in community

      In Parkersburg, some are reluctant to question one of the community's
      leading benefactors, even after the PFOA contamination became public.
      With more than 2,000 employees, the Teflon plant is the largest
      manufacturer in a valley lined with plastics factories and refineries,
      a hub of economic strength in a region plagued by chronic
      unemployment.
      "We're not ignoring it, but you've got to look at all the good things
      they do," said George Kellenberger, president of the Mid-Ohio Valley
      Chamber of Commerce (news - web sites).
      But others drawn to the area by the promise of a good job and the
      rolling, pine-covered hills aren't so sure.
      By the time Matt and Melinda McDowell built their dream home a few
      miles north of the Teflon plant, DuPont had known for more than a
      decade that the local water supply was contaminated with PFOA.
      Like thousands of others in the valley, the McDowells recently
      received a letter informing them that DuPont promises to install
      treatment equipment for six area water systems under terms of the
      recent legal settlement.

      But they worry about their two sons, ages 8 and 12, who have drunk and
      breathed PFOA for most of their lives.
      "We are subjecting our children and ourselves to a giant science
      experiment," Matt McDowell said. "We don't know what it's
doing to us.
      But the bottom line is it doesn't belong in drinking water and it
      definitely doesn't belong in our bodies."
Copyright © 2005 Chicago Tribune


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