News Coverage
Draft EPA Reports Finds Risks From Teflon Ingredient
Published April 4, 2003
A draft risk assessment by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finds that a key chemical that is used to make Teflon and is found in a wide range of consumer products presents high developmental and reproductive health risks to humans, in particular to children and women of childbearing age.
A collection of animal reproduction studies and comparisons of blood levels in the affected animals with blood levels in people indicated that children with the highest measured blood levels of the chemical have less than one tenth the margin of safety the EPA considers acceptable.
The EPA's draft risk assessment of ammonium perfluorooctane (PFOA) was analyzed by the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit environmental research group.
"Both EPA's and EWG's analyses conclude that current PFOA exposures in children are well above safe levels," according to EWG's analysis.
EWG says the concern over the hazards of PFOA are heightened by "the widespread exposure and near-universal contamination of the human population" with the chemical at levels similar to those that indicated toxicity in laboratory animals.
PFOA is present in the blood of more than 90 percent of the population of the United States, and levels in some people in the general population are as high as levels found in some PFOA factory workers, EWG reports.
Studies show the chemical accumulates because it is extremely slow to break down. It is not know how people are directly exposed to it or how exposure would accumulate.
The EPA risk assessment was prompted last September by the agency's growing concern with the entire family of perfluorinated chemicals, in particular perfluorooctane sulfonates (PFOS), the active ingredient in Scotchguard. The government removed Scotchguard, a fabric protector, from the market in 2000.
PFOS and PFOA share many similar chemical and toxic property, and neither compound breaks down in the environment.
PFOA is manufactured by Dupont and used to make Teflon, which is widely used in cookware. The company refers to the chemical as C-8 and is contesting a class action suit that claims C-8 is harmful to the environment and human health.
"This brewing crisis represents a stunning breakdown of the regulatory system for toxic chemicals," according to EWG's report.
The organization blames a legacy of lax regulation of the chemical industry for a lack of data about the health risks of such widely used chemicals.
The EPA has not said when its draft report will be released.