Your cookware can kill you: EPA officially warns that teflon provokes cancer

Scientists are now warning that the dangers of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and its related chemical extend far beyond contaminated communities such as Husik Falls. They threaten virtually every American, claims MSN.

When his father died of kidney cancer in 2013, it wasn't just his grief that worried Michael Hickey. John Hickey was 70 years old, never smoked and rarely drank.

The laboratory results shocked

He worked a night shift at the Saint-Gobain textile mill in their hometown of Husik Falls, New York. The factory has historically produced fabrics coated with a Teflon-like substance, similar to non-stick pans and other products. When a local schoolteacher died of cancer shortly thereafter, Hickey's suspicions rose sharply.

“It looked like cancer was everywhere in our city, and I didn't know what was going on,” he mused.

An internet search for "Teflon and Cancer" opened Pandora's Box with studies linking PFOA, a chemical in Teflon, with kidney cancer... He took samples of tap water from his home, his father's home, and several local businesses. Then he sent them to a Canadian laboratory for testing.

Each sample returned with extremely high levels of PFOA. The discovery led to intervention by all levels of government and a class action lawsuit by the villagers against Saint-Gobain, the previous owner of Honeywell International, and 3M. This summer, the lawsuit was settled in the amount of $ 65 million. This money will cover the loss of property value and medical supervision of the tenants.

PFOA Increases Cancer Risk

New documentspublished by the US Environmental Protection Agency, make the startling conclusion that PFOA is a "probable carcinogen" with little or no safe exposure.

Striking because for two decades, scientists have known that small amounts of PFOA and similar chemicals are found in the blood of more than 98% of Americans. They support independent studies that show that such chemicals markedly increase the incidence of kidney cancer. PFOA weakens the immune system and may even contribute to the birth of tens of thousands of low birth weight babies each year.

This means the EPA's recommendation for safe levels chemical in drinking water, published 5 years ago, is questionable.

It can take the EPA years to develop a new recommendation. Even so, the agency will have to weigh the benefits of filtering chemicals against the costs that could run into the billions for water utilities across the country.

1700 water sources nationwide contain PFOA

However, Americans will continue to consume chemicals that could harm them, said Scott Faber, senior vice president of a nonprofit environmental working group in Washington, DC. Tracking public records, the organization found that at least 1700 water sources across the country contain PFOA.

“Tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of Americans, are drinking a chemical that is now even more strongly linked to cancer,” Faber said.

Experts warn that the picture is much bigger. Drinking water is only one source of PFOA. Before PFOA and PFOS, a similar chemical also covered in new EPA filings, were phased out in the US in 2015, Americans were mostly exposed to common household items such as pots and pans, raincoats, carpets and food packaging. Virtually indestructible substances still remain in the environment and in animals for human consumption, such as fish.

PFOA is just one of the harmful chemicals in water

According to Philippe Grandjean, a researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health. T. Chan, widespread exposure to the average American releases enough PFOA into their bloodstream to be of concern, no matter what kind of water they drink.

Often, the harm of chemicals is not obvious, he said. For example, this can manifest itself on a child who practically does not leave the doctor's office due to another cold.

“Mothers report that their babies are more likely to get sick if they have higher prenatal or postpartum exposure to PFOA,” Granjean said. "This is already hurting the population."

And PFOA is just one of hundreds of chemicals in a broader class called per- and polyfluoroalkyls (PFAS). Although PFOA and PFOS have been phased out, PFAS replacement chemicals are currently in use. Some researchers warn that early analysis suggests they can cause the same toxic effects.

“PFAS is a public health emergency that has affected many more Americans than those affected by lead pipes or other truly serious health risks,” Faber said.

Some companies that have made or used PFAS say the research is still pending.

DuPont reaction

According to Sean Lynch, a spokesman for 3M, which is facing legal action with DuPont over the production of chemicals in the United States, the company believes that the "body of evidence" from its own and other independent studies "does not show that these substances cause adverse effects. for health ”among the general population.

However, the EPA said: in the new documents, the department concludes that the risks associated with chemicals are real.

“New data and analyzes in draft EPA documents show that toxicity values ​​(for PFOA and PFAS) are much lower than previously assumed. Including close to zero in case of certain health consequences, ”the agency said in a statement.

This information is out of date

The discovery of PFAS in the blood of ordinary Americans happened by accident more than half a century ago. It took a new generation of scientists to understand how it can affect our health.

While working as a researcher at the University of Rochester in the late 1960s, Donald Thaves was interested in a relatively new development - the addition of fluoride to drinking water.

He took a sample of his own blood and ran it through a machine that can detect incredibly small amounts of chemicals. What he saw surprised him.

“I found this extra fluoride,” Taves said, and it turned out to be more than what could be attributed to the fluoridation of drinking water.

A colleague tested samples from more than 100 donors at five blood banks in New York and Texas and found excess fluoride.

“It looks like it was some kind of pollutant in the environment,” Tews suggested. "And then I called 3M."

The researcher's premonitions were correct, and his discovery laid the foundation for many years of calculations. PFAS chemical companies such as 3M and DuPont used them in their consumer products, causing them to enter the bloodstream of hundreds of millions of Americans.

Steenland's research

Unlike fluorides in drinking water, PFAS are synthetic and bind fluorine to carbon molecules to form one of the strongest bonds in chemistry. This means that chemicals do not degrade or accumulate in the environment and in the human body.

Kyle Steenland, an epidemiologist at Emory University in Georgia, is one of the modern day researchers trying to figure out what kind of threat this poses.

In the 2000s, he was part of a group of independent scientists who studied 70 people on the West Virginia-Ohio border who were exposed to high levels of PFOA at a local DuPont plant. After years of study, the scientist said in three separate studies that experts found "strong evidence of kidney cancer" - the same disease that overtook John Hickey in Hoosick Falls.

In addition, Steenland and colleagues found "plausible links" between GAJR and diagnosed high cholesterol, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, testicular cancer, and pregnancy-induced hypertension.

Scott Bartell, a researcher at the University of California, Irvine, began studying the levels at which PFOA can cause kidney cancer. What he found added to the worry. This substance posed a hazard not only at levels found in highly exposed populations such as Husick Falls and West Virginia, but also at levels found in drinking water everywhere.

PFOA affects reproductive health

In 2016, the EPA set a guideline level for a chemical in drinking water of no more than 70 parts per trillion (ppt). But Bartell's calculations showed that someone who drank the chemical for ten years had a 16% higher risk of kidney cancer than someone who didn't.

Even more worrisome, Bartell said, are the new EPA documents. They said that PFOA may be even more carcinogenic than his research showed.

“It's a little outdated,” Bartell said of the results contained in the documents released by the EPA in November. "It confirms what many of us have already thought."

The EPA's findings are relevant to Tracy Woodruff, director of the Reproductive Health and Environment Program at the University of California, San Francisco.

Her research shows that the average American woman has enough PFOA in her blood for her baby to have about 30 grams of weight lost at birth.

On an individual basis, this may not seem like much. But for mothers whose babies are on the verge of a clinically low birth weight of 2,4 kg, this could be critical, Woodruff said. The risks are also increased for those with extra PFOA in their blood. Woodruff's study estimates that if a million women whose blood levels of PFOA were much higher than average instead had only average amounts of this element in their blood, they would not have had low birth weight babies. Thus, there would be 40 fewer newborns with low birth weight.

Reaction 3M

Although this study was completed many years ago, Woodruff draws on other studies as well. She claims that the new EPA documents took a similar approach and have now come to the same conclusions.

When asked about 3M's response to new EPA documents, Lynch pointed to earlier reviews from the CDC, the International Agency for Research on Cancer and other government health agencies that conclusively failed to find a causal relationship between PFAS and human health effects.

The company noted that research shows the average American's blood levels of PFOA and PFOS are declining.

Daniel Turner, a spokesman for DuPont de Nemours, a legal entity spun off from the original DuPont in 2019, said only that the company does not “manufacture or use” PFOA or PFOS in its products and otherwise supports the development of EPA regulations.

The Hoosick Falls-based Saint-Gobain textile company said it never made the chemicals, but bought them from third-party suppliers. Company spokesman Peter Clarke said that in addition to the legal settlement it negotiated this summer, the company paid for new filtration systems for drinking water in Husik Falls.

What's next

After the council of scientists reviews the new EPA documents, the agency will need to determine a safe limit for the chemicals. The agency has set a target for the fall of 2022, and the regulation will take effect in a year.

The Environmental Protection Agency said it plans to update its medical guidelines “as soon as possible”.

The EPA may ultimately decide to set a safe limit at zero and require drinking water utilities to filter out any detectable amount of chemicals. Or he may decide that the costs outweigh the benefits.

"These are huge amounts"

While the EPWG and others advocate strict chemical regulation, the American Plumbing Association, a non-profit organization representing water utilities nationwide, is calling for a cautious approach to these calculations.

“The lower the EPA limit, the more utilities will have to spend on new water supplies or installing and maintaining treatment systems,” said Steve Via, the group's director of federal affairs. Since the cost of a single system is often millions of dollars, the total can be in the billions.

“These are huge sums,” he said, adding that the money is needed to eliminate other risks, such as lead pipes. "At the end of the day, you have to ask yourself: is this the best way to manage risk?"

Other claims may come from the judicial system. Rob Bilott is an Ohio attorney who sued DuPont and set up a scientific commission that examined the health effects of PFOA in West Virginia.

He has now filed a nationwide class action suit in federal court demanding that 3M, DuPont and other companies that used the chemicals pay for research to determine their health effects. If approved, he will represent any American who has PFOA and at least one other PFAS in their blood.

“We don't need to spend decades fighting in court to acknowledge this threat and hold accountable the companies that created this mess,” Bilott said. - Science exists. The public health threat is real. "