 |
Toxic Teflon: Lessons From a Frying Pan.
Toxic teflon has been covered up by slippery multinationals for years.
|
they get, no? No. A bit of research cast this preconceived ideas to the
winds.
I found out that the natty stuff that stops my fried eggs, pancakes,
bangers and fish cakes from sticking to my pan is probably a bad idea to
keep around my home and family. Teflon is, by all appearances, a
slippery customer.
So I started to look for a teflon-free pan, and you know what? I could
not find anything resembling a frying pan at any of my local stores that
was not either smothered in teflon or was manufactured out of tin foil,
waiting to warp when it first sensed the rays of a distant star.
But what is my flap about teflon? After all this is the space age and
teflon was sold to us as a material developed for the space race. I
remember when the first of these pans arrived on our distant shores, the
story was that they were modelled on the heat shields of the early
Mercury and Apollo space programmes, which were rumouredly coated with
the stuff. The truth, as usual, is somewhat more prosaic.
Teflon was discovered when a scientists were searching in the 1930’s for
a better refrigerant cooling gas, working with gasses of the
cloroflourocarbon (CFC) family. CFCs are the family of gasses now banned
under the Montreal Protocol, because of their proven abilty to deplete
atmospheric ozone, particularly above the Antartctic. The scientist, Roy
Plunkett, had stored this gas, Tetraflouroethalene (TFE) in cannisters
for later use. When he opened the valve to tap off the gas, nothing came
out. Weighing the cylinder showed that it remained full. A puzzled
Plunkett shook the cannister and some flakes fluttered out. These were
found to be polymerised tetraflouroethaline (polyflourine or PTFE) which
was later trademarked as Teflon® by DuPont, the multinational chemical
corporation that developed it.
Further investigation found this material possessed some amazing
properties. It was super-slippery. It was insoluable in just about
anything, including concentrated acid, alcohol or acetone. It did not
rot or swell, degrade in sunlight, and was unaffected by mould or
fungus. It was resistant to spot heat and electrical arcs but when
heated above a certain temperature it melted and then evaporated, with
its waste gasses etching glass. This last property should have raised
flags but it was years before Teflon found a real home.
By the Second World War DuPont had both managed to manufacture the
Teflon in economic quantities and identified potential uses, such as its
chemical stability and electrical resistance.
It was within the Manhattan A-bomb project that a use was first
identified for the use of teflon. The uranium refining process uses
corrosive uranium hexaflouride gas and teflon was able to protect the
equipement. DuPont accordingly reserved its entire production of Teflon
for government use for the course of the war.
So it was not the space race that prevented your egg from glomming to
your pan like contact adhesive; it was the arms race. How unappetising.
But the story becomes less tasteful.
It turns out that it was not DuPont who first stuck teflon to frying
pans. In the 1950s a French engineer experimenting with Teflon was
prompted by his wife to try to put this substance on her frying pan.
They never looked back after launching T-Fal pans as an international
brand. By the 1960s everyone was getting in on the action and today
non-stick pans have become the norm.
But as we all know Teflon has a wonderful property of not being very
durable, forcing us to evaluate either a new teflon pan or an
alternative every few years. The combination of intense heat and of
mechanical abrasion gradually wears teflon off pans. Hence my conundrum.
More worrying was a nasty side effect that was first noticed by bird
fanciers. When these pans were subjected to high heat, birds in the home
suddenly died. Was this the canary in the coal mine?
This syndrome was linked to the vaporisation of the perfluorooctanoic
acid, or PFOA, intrinsic to the manufacture of Teflon. This family of
chemicals, present in the blood of over 90% of US citizens, has recently
been under scrutiny for thier negative effects. PFOA has been linked to
cancer, birth defects and other negative health effects.
What is really alarming is the degree of coverup by DuPont, revealed by
groups like the US Environmental Working Group (EWG). The EWG has
revealed how DuPont apparently has known of the dangers of this compound
for decades. Studies run half a century ago indicate that DuPont was
fully cogniscant of the fact that heated Teflon could release fumes
causing polymer fume fever. Experiments were run in the 1960s with
volunteers smoking teflon in cigarettes, causing the flu-like symptoms,
including chills, dizziness, backache and coughing.
Experiments on mammals breathing fumes showed no immediate ill effects,
but as noted, birds died. Since people suffering from teflon fume fever
did not die, no long term risks were deemed to exist by DuPont. At least
publically.
What is far more worrying are recent results from tests on Rats,
examining the effect of teflon on offspring. These tests show serious
organ damage, including impairment of the pituatory gland, the master
gland of the body. The offspring, even when lightly exposed, suffered
from low birth weight and weight gain. Heavy exposure was potentially
life threatening. The company has, according to EWG, settled the fine
for $15 million, as opposed to the $183 millon they could have been
fined for supressing studies linking birth defects in employees to their
chemical alone. A sweetheart deal for big chemical?
The US Environmental Protecion Agency (EPA) has classified teflon
chemicals as carcinogens, causing causing testicular, pancreatic,
mammary and liver tumors in rats. Numerous studies show damage to the
throid gland, an increasingly common modern affliction.
More worryingly, scientists have not found any safe dosage of these
chemicals on the immune system, where four organs and nine varieties of
immune regulating cells are found to be affected.
Workers in DuPonts plants and those living in proximity to the plants
have shown disconcerting levels of teflon related illnesses.
3M, the giant chemical company that used Teflon in its Scotchguard
products - until unilaterally halting its use in 2000 - found serious
damage to young rats whose parents were exposed to the chemical.
As if this were not all worrying enough, the relationship between Teflon
and destruction of the Ozone layer has been raised. Because of its close
chemical relationship to CFCs, the refrigerants linked to ozone
destruction, Teflon is quite possibly responsible for unexplained
increases in ozone depletion.
This modern marvel is now ubiquitous and because it is virtually
indestructable - unless its burned – it is going to be with us for a
long time. It is in DuPonts gore-tex fabric (did Al Gore have something
to do with this?), it lines backpacks, it is in our plumbing systems, it
is on non-stick pans of varieties and qualities.
Teflon may have seemed like a great idea 50 years back. Now we are
routinely exposed to a virtually indestructable chemical, that
accumulates in living things, that is tranferred to offspring and that
is linked to damage of all sorts of important bodily functions, the
disruption of which are proven to cause serious illness.
It has taken 50 years for the remarkable shortcomings of this chemical
to be exposed. At least 1, 500 new chemicals are marketed annualy. The
US EPA reviews a miniscule proportion of them in a case of don’t look
and you won’t find. There is even less oversight of these chemicals in
the developing world.
We are creating a toxic soup where even materials which appear to
epitomise the advance of science are, when closely examined, shown to
create a potentially disasterous set of effects on our bodies and those
of our children.
So where do I go from here? Well, I am going to get a good old fashioned
restaurant style frypan, either in polished steel or cast iron and care
for it until it gets a patina that slides those omlettes right off the
pan. Just like the one Granny had.
Toxic Teflon Frying Pans
|
|
