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January 27, 2006

PFOA – Whoa!

PFOA may be the sneakiest toxic chemical you never heard of – at least until last Wednesday. That’s when the Environmental Protection Agency made headlines by “inviting” the eight companies that make this pernicious compound to voluntarily eliminate it by the year 2015.  So far, chemical manufacturing giant Dupont has agreed.

Why all the fuss? The man-made PFOA, says EPA, “is very persistent in the environment, was being found at very low levels both in the environment and in the blood of the general U.S. population, and caused developmental and other adverse effects in laboratory animals.”

Ken Cook, president of the non-profit research institute Environmental Working Group, which for four years has pressed EPA to regulate PFOA, was more direct. He said laboratory tests EWG commissioned this past summer found that “many of these chemicals reach American babies while they are still in the womb,” potentially leading to birth defects.

Having never heard of PFOA before, I wanted to know just how big this problem really was, so I called Tim Kropp, a Ph.D. toxicologist and the senior scientist who studies PFOA at EWG.

“It’s everywhere,” he said. And it’s used in thousands of industrial and manufacturing applications.

PFOA is what gives non-sticky substances their non-stickiness. It makes it possible for clothes to repel water and grease. The chemical prevents stains from sticking to carpets and fabrics. When used to make Teflon, PFOA keeps food from glomming on to pots and pans.  “Manufacturers use it on carpet, clothing, and furniture to help fight off dirt. Processors add it to microwave popcorn bags and the sheets in home-delivered pizza boxes to contain grease. The “wax” paper sheets you use to put a donut in a bag at the grocery store? It’s “waxy” thanks to PFOA. Those are the sorts of places where this chemical is applied intentionally,” said Kropp.  That actually sounded pretty good to me. Then Kropp dropped the bad news. “It’s probably gotten into your blood because you’ve breathed it or eaten it, just by accident. It’s been found in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It’s in the bodies of Arctic seals.”

My heart sank. As a mom who happily chose microwave popcorn for her kids so they wouldn’t have to fuss with oil in a pan on a hot stove, I wondered how much of this stuff my children had already eaten. And what about that pair of stain-resistant pants my teenager just bought? Would he be breathing in PFOA every time he got dressed for school? And the new furniture for the family room that came with the stainbuster (i.e., PFOA) guarantee? Did we need to cover it in plastic and sit on the floor?

I had heard the warnings about Teflon pans years ago and am in the process of changing over to cast iron. But the popcorn bag? The pizza box.? This was too much. Not necessarily because I now know how awful all the consequences of PFOA exposure are, but to a great degree because I don’t. Tim Kropp says that one of the biggest problems with this chemical is that once it gets in your blood, it persists there for about 20 years. Twenty years! But still, scientists haven’t discovered the extent of the damage PFOA can do. So it will be lurking there, maybe doing nothing, maybe causing trouble, for decades.

I don’t intend to wait around doing nothing while this chemical figures out whether or not it’s going to wreak havoc on my system or that of my family. And I sure as heck don’t intend to keep using it if I can avoid it. Hopefully, the other seven companies that manufacture PFOA will follow Dupont’s lead and agree to phase out production of PFOA. Even if they do, 2015 is a long time to wait to see the planet rid of this menace. In the meantime, here are several actions we can all take to distance ourselves from PFOA:

• Avoid products that promise to be non-stick or stain-proof. Alternatives to non-stick pans include cast iron, stainless steel,  porcelain enameled cast iron.
• Get an air-popper for your microwave, or follow these instructions to microwave your own popcorn using a paper bag.
• If you’re getting a pizza delivered, ask the pizza maker to omit the protective “grease sheet” from the box.
• Join Environmental Working Group’s campaign to pressure PFOA manufacturers to speed up the timetable for phasing out their use of the chemical.

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