How Teflon Poisoned the World

Hello! This is the story of how Polytetrafluoroethylene, brand name Teflon, has poisoned almost the entire world with Perfluorooctanoic acid, PFOA, which is cancer-causing. The amount of PFOA in the average person isn't necessarily harmful, but nevertheless PFOA can be found in dolphins in Florida, the rain in Tibet, household dust, and food and water. It's basically everywhere. Yay.

Sources:
EPA Advisory Landing Page

EPA proposes regulation

Federal Register EPA Plan summary

NC EPA GENX

EPA GenX Toxicity Report

PFAS EPA Roadmap

PFOA In rain worldwide

PFOA PFOS in China

EWG- PFC

CDC PFOA Fact Sheet

American Cancer Society – PFOA

3M Taves 1975 Document

1977 Fluoride In Blood Timeline

3M Knew About Dangers – The Intercept

Teflon's Toxic Legacy – EcoWatch

C8 Suspected In Birth Defects – Delaware Online

Roanoke River Contamination

NCBI – Forever Chemicals in Blood Stats
Agency for Toxic Substances And Disease Registry – PFAS Study

Rob Bilott – NYT Magazine

[ogarcia]

I was a jet engine mechanic in the US Air Force in the 1960s. Many of the hoses on the engines were lined with Teflon. We were told that if there ever was an engine fire in the hangar, to run, because the burning Teflon in the hoses releases a poisonous gas. When I came out of the Air Force, I was surprised to learn that they were selling frying pans lined with Teflon.

[bladdnun]

Private citizens who would be found guilty of deliberately dumping large quantities of highly toxic waste would serve long prison sentences. Companies doing this should not be fined, they should be dismantled as criminal organizations.

[marcmarc]

This will never stop until we stop suing companies, and start criminally prosecuting the individuals responsible within the company.

[jliller]

I used to work with a guy who half-jokingly, half-seriously liked to say "If it doesn't cause cancer it's not durable."

[FixedFace]

"don’t scratch the pan, the coating is poisonous"

me as a child thinking "excuse me wot?"

[moistmike]

My neighbor was rinsing a couple of paint brushes in the gutter in front of his house. The paint was a common, water-soluble latex he'd used in a couple rooms in his home. Some Karen nextdoor reported him to the city authorities and he had to pay over $20 THOUSAND dollars in fines plus attorney's fees defending himself. His daughter had to wait 3 extra years to attend medical school because he had to use the tuition money he'd saved for her to pay his lawyer's fees.

All over two paint brushes. And DuPont keeps poisoning the world.

[bowtiejess]

My town has a particularly high amount of this, many people have water that tested so high that the local government has had to install filter systems in their houses. We are warned not to eat fish from any of the local waterways and to avoid the foam in the lakes whilst swimming.
Thanks dupont.

[heavymetalpermaculture]

I missed the part where these chemicals were banned by the EPA, and the people who made them went to prison for poisoning millions of people and animals. .

[Rosie-ue]

The saddest part of it all is that Dupont just moved to the Netherlands and continued their polluting activities over there and are still getting away with it. Many of the people there are chronicly ill from swimming and eating crops grown using water from the area.

[sevenproxies]

There was a pfos and pfas scandal in Sweden recently too.

3M and Dupont put these chemicals into fire extinguishers as well. So after years of fire stopping exercises in certain areas by the Swedish fire brigade, the stuff had contaminated the ground water of the local areas, polluting the inhabitants with it who drank water from the wells and the local water treatment plants.

[NASkeywest]

The fact these companies got caught poisoning people and covering it up….and got away with it Is absurd

[jonrod]

My dad worked for Sunbeam Corp. He was a teflon spray painter. He never got cancer during the 21 years he was there...go figure. Anyway, the company folded and moved. He collected his pension up until that went under and bankruptcy kicked in. PBGC paid my dad 10 cents on the dollar and we were screwed. He tried to work again but he was too aged and weak. He sort of cracked under the pressure and wasn't the same man. Most of the family had to distance themselves from him.To this day the suffering is felt. Sunbeam destroyed my dad & family. Just like the teflon that destroyed a segment of the world.

[sarielle]

Why isn't it simply forbidden for companies to dump ANYTHING into bodies of water? (as it is where I live)

[Nozomu]

Imagine living in a dystopian country where government agencies can just settle criminal cases with corporations.

[KenSP]

In case you didn't know the movie called *Dark Waters (2019)* tells the real-life story of Rob Bilott, the lawyer who took on chemical giant DuPont after discovering that the company was polluting drinking water with the harmful chemical PFOA.

[andrewdreasler]

8:07 "They promised to use the land for non-hazardous landfill, but instead dumped chemicals right into the creek." Which seems to bring the moral of: If a corporation is trying to buy land, assume that they will strip away all resources and poison the ground with the most toxic substances in the universe.

[dgsantafedave]

When the Ohio lawsuit was in process they tried to find a human that did not have PFOA's in the bloodstream. They only found one tribe in the South Pacific whose blood was not tainted by PFOA's. That is the definition of a forever chemical!

[richarddelconnor]

When I was in elementary school in the early 1960s, I told my mom I had a creepy feeling about our Teflon pans. My mother discounted my concern. In the early 1970s when I was living on my own, my mother gave me all of her Teflon cookware. All of it went immediately into the trashcan.

[ultratumba]

You could've included Teflon poisoning in birds. People literally had their parakeets die on the spot from inhaling the PTFE fumes wafting from their pans.

[carnosaur]

I'll never understand how the individuals within companies are not held accountable for crimes they commit through a company.
Additionally, if a company is considered its own entity akin to a person, why can it not be punished as such? or even more simply, if a company causes large scale damage or break established laws, why is it not just forcefully shut down?

With these kinds of cases, i always wonder, "what would the consequences be if a privatte person did this?" and the answer is almost always lifelong concecutive jail sentences, we should hold companies and tthe individuals within them equally accountable.