This headline isn't exactly accurate and the article is misleading. PFOA was used in the process of affixing Teflon to surfaces but is not present in the pan itself. PFOA has built up in the environment as a result of the manufacturing processes that use it.
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.
PFOA/S are bad, but ALL organofluorines are bad. That is pretty much a settled fact even though industry press will only point to peer-reviewed studies on specific molecules like PFOA/S.
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.
Do you have any recommendations on where we could read more about the hidden history of PFOAs and teflon? These days all the nonstick pans say PFOA-free, but if they were never present in the actual pan, is it just a marketing gimmick? Like putting gluten-free on old foods that never contained gluten, or bpa-free on things that historically didn't use bpa?
It’s pretty easy to heat up a nonstick-pan to temperatures where it releases toxic fumes. Just put it on an induction stove without anything in it. A very typical thing to do.
Sad, but hardly surprising. It sometimes seems like every company in this position did similar things. Tobacco, Oil, CFCs, Leaded gasoline etc... I'm sure I could come up with others if I looked.
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.
I don't think it's a given that it hurts the economy. Someone has to research, develop, and manufacture the non-toxic alternatives. How is that money not part of the economy?
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.
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.
The regulations frequently don't help, and because people have come to rely on them, even wind up harming the situation.
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".
Regulations are written by large corporations to protect themselves.
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.
Eh, I'm not entirely sure people knew about these things when they occurred. I mean, people generally don't want to explicitly kill other people even for a profit. For instance, with your reference to leaded gasoline, or "ethyl" gasoline, its creator, Thomas Midgley Jr., inhaled the stuff in a press conference to prove it was safe. Lead poisoned.
Regulations are generally bad because they can be gamed. They produce a huge population of rent seeking parasites who work for the government to make regulation complex so only they can understand it, then move to private sector to help the business game the broken system they themselves created.
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.
This is why its naive to think consumer choice can replace regulations because in most cases consumers are in the dark like in this case, or are not a collective to effect change and that then destroys the commons. The feedback loop is too long.
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.
"Right now it’s hard to find a pan that uses Teflon in the old continent."
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.
Yes according to their faq they use PTFE and not PFOA, but not sure since when.
> 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.
A point that I've read in N.N. Taleb's incerto series is that it is a matter of scale. A small artisan who puts their name on their product is less likely to poison you and fuck your life up. Megacorps though operate with a very different risk profile and can take pretty antisocial decisions.
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.
PFAS are suddenly a HUGE issue here in Michigan. Paper mills and tanneries were using and dumping it wholesale in the 60s. Now it's come back to bite us and PFAS is showing up in pretty much every municipality's water supply:
From the article, the EPA sat on this information for quite a long time. While 3M was heavily fined - were any EPA employees held responsible?
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?
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.
I wonder if BAM[1] coatings suffer from any of these ills (or anything else which would prevent them from being used in cookware), seems like they would be a decent way to go if the cost could be improved.
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.
This is merely an example of many of living in a poorly regulated market where profits are constantly put ahead of people's lives and profits. If el chapo or Pablo Escobar sold nonstick pans or the chemicals to make them you think they would have continued this study and ruined their profits? No? Then why get mad at 3M? This is the system we as Americans have agreed to put in place. Most people would do the same thing in their position. Profit and ignore the negative consequences while lobbying to keep regulators away. After all, it's not their lives being put at risk...
Without knowing too much about PFOA specifically, I would hazard a guess that the chemical itself is not necessarily dangerous - it's the delivery via aeresol that would worry me. Namely, spraying down pans to apply Teflon and spraying it as Scotchguard. There are plenty of chemicals that are perfectly fine inert, but when you push them into the air haphazardly they get into really bad places and create negative environmental effects.
Knowing a lot about PFOA (Wolverine World Wide operated a tannery in my home town and dumped Scotchguard-treated leather scraps in the swamp, now I have 100 ppt PFOA in my well water), it is incredibly dangerous. They were incredibly careful to wear the full gamut of protective gear when handling it, but assumed the infinite sink of nature would dilute it to safety. A few decades later, it's still not diluted to safe levels.
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...
"Social networks knew all along that the dopamine-based intermittent reward system of their products was causing decreased attention spans, addictive behaviors, and mental illness, but continued expanding until the whole globe was in a stupor."
The science was mostly settled and obvious on climate change, to the extent that the corporate actors with the most incentive to pretend it was nothing acknowledged it. They invested heavily in contingency plans under the assumption that it was only a matter of time until regulation made it untenable to burn fossil fuels for energy on anything like the previous scale. Nothing was done.
One big one is air pollution. It is huge in terms of health affects on the population but we ignore it because of the feeling that it cannot be helped. When we finally clean our air it is going to seem ridiculous that we accepted our faith to live our whole lives in toxic fumes for two whole centuries.
[+] [-] UnderProtest|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] hammock|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] genericone|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|7 years ago|reply
Wait. Is it still true today?
[+] [-] nielsbot|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] legulere|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fhood|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] kungtotte|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] neffy|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] CWuestefeld|7 years ago|reply
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".
[+] [-] complexmango|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] andrewmcwatters|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SpecialistEMT|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] poke111|7 years ago|reply
https://www.nationalreview.com/2011/01/welcome-machine-kevin...
[+] [-] geezer|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jccc|7 years ago|reply
This is a Fast Company post about The Intercept’s report. Might we prefer to link to it instead?
[+] [-] driverdan|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sctb|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throw2016|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Mediterraneo10|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] conradfr|7 years ago|reply
> 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.
[+] [-] shriphani|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] pwned1|7 years ago|reply
http://search.mlive.com/?q=pfos
[+] [-] tomohawk|7 years ago|reply
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-...
[+] [-] gwbas1c|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ars|7 years ago|reply
The pan itself, once made, is not poisoning anyone.
[+] [-] microcolonel|7 years ago|reply
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_magnesium_boride
[+] [-] weavie|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peatmoss|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] mark-r|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] post_break|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mnm1|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] legitster|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LeifCarrotson|7 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] al_ramich|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Retric|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nostrademons|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nealabq|7 years ago|reply
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.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070707/quotes
[+] [-] thatjsguy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neffy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] patmcguire|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcny|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fogleman|7 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate
[+] [-] lumberjack|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] izzydata|7 years ago|reply
(I don't actually believe this is true. Don't hurt me.)
[+] [-] jbob2000|7 years ago|reply