News Coverage
SAFE OR SORRY? NEW EVIDENCE REVEALS DANGERS OF TEFLON
Published November 14, 2003
BARBARA WALTERS, ABC NEWS
(Off Camera) Good evening and welcome to "20/20." Well, it coats the pots you cook with so the food doesn't stick. It protects the carpet your baby crawls on. You may also have it in your winter jacket, your skin lotion, even your make-up. We're talking about Teflon. And tonight, a "20/20" investigation uncovers alarming information about this much-used material.
JOHN STOSSEL, ABC NEWS
(Off Camera) It is very alarming, Barbara. I cook with Teflon. I didn't know until I watched this report that you're about to see that if Teflon gets hot enough, depends on what you're cooking or how long you leave the pot on the stove, it gives off fumes that can kill birds and make us feel as if we have the flu. Some fear an ingredient used to make Teflon may do worse things. Chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross checked it out.
BRIAN ROSS, ABC NEWS
(Voice Over) For the parents of the groom, this happy day was one they feared might never come, given how their son started life.
SUE BAILEY, MOTHER
He was born January the 15th, 1981.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) Sue Bailey's son was born with only one nostril and a deformed right eye.
SUE BAILEY
And the doctors told us not to get attached to him because he probably wouldn't make it through the night.
BRIAN ROSS
(Off Camera) What did the doctors say to you about his condition?
SUE BAILEY
They didn't know what to say. No one knew what to say. I mean, they had never seen a baby like this before. I cried so many tears, I couldn't cry another tear.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) That was 22 years ago. And now, Bucky Bailey, scarred from more than 30 surgeries, is coming forward, telling "20/20" he wants to know who or what was responsible for a life that has not been easy.
BUCKY BAILEY, SON OF SUE
I've never, ever felt normal. You can't feel normal when you walk outside and every single person looks at you. And it's not that look of, "oh, he's famous" or "he's rich." It's that look of "he's different," and you can see it in their eyes.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) This is where the Baileys and others lay the blame. The place where Sue Bailey worked when she became pregnant, the huge Dupont plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia. The place where they mix the chemicals for a product advertised as making life easier. Teflon, the famed nonstick surface on pots and pans. In a different form, used to keep stains off carpets and clothing. What Dupont calls "the housewife's best friend."
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) A $2 billion-a-year business all based on chemicals, including a chemical now linked to cancer, organ damage and other health effects in tests on laboratory animals. The same chemical that was not only in the blood of Bucky Bailey's mother, but it turns out, in the blood if virtually every American in small but detectable levels that make this a story that goes far beyond what happened in one town in West Virginia.
JANE HOULIHAN, ENVIRONMENTAL WORKING GROUP
In retrospect, this may seem like one of the biggest, if not the biggest, mistakes the chemical industry has ever made.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) Jane Houlihan and Kris Thayer of the Environmental Working Group, an activist organization, have been poring over 20 years' worth of industry and Dupont confidential documents on Teflon.
JANE HOULIHAN
And, how could they not be in our blood? They're in such a huge range of consumer products. We're talking about Teflon, Stainmaster, Gore-Tex, Silverstone. So, if you buy clothing that's coated with Teflon or something else that protects it from dirt and stains, those chemicals can absorb directly through the skin.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) According to the Federal government, some of the highest blood levels were found in a nationwide sample of children. And even Dupont says it cannot rule out that Teflon-connected products such as its Stainmaster carpet treatment give off the chemical, although at blood levels Dupont says are far too small to be a problem.
UMA CHOWDHRY, VICE PRESIDENT OF RESEARCH, DUPONT
We are confident when we say that the facts, the scientific facts, demonstrate that the material is perfectly safe to use.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) Uma Chowdhry, a vice president of research, is the Dupont executive chosen to publicly defend Teflon, the company's most value brand name. She says Teflon is completely safe, even if the key chemical is in everyone's blood.
BRIAN ROSS
(Off Camera) Everyone has it?
UMA CHOWDHRY
Everyone has it.
BRIAN ROSS
(Off Camera) It's in my blood, your blood?
UMA CHOWDHRY
Possibly. We do not believe there are any adverse health effects.
BRIAN ROSS
(Off Camera) Is it a good thing to have it in your blood?
UMA CHOWDHRY
There are lots of chemicals that are present in our blood.
BRIAN ROSS
But the unexpected discovery of the almost universal contamination of human blood from the Teflon chemical called C-8, combined with worrisome laboratory studies, has now led to a high-priority Federal investigation of the chemical's risks.
JANE HOULIHAN
It's a potential threat, and EPA's among fast in studying this. Human blood levels are too close to the levels that harm lab animals, that's why they're moving fast.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) But the Environmental Working Group says there's another, more immediate health problem from Teflon.
JANE HOULIHAN
It's heating up pretty rapidly in those first few minutes.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) Involving, as they showed us in the kitchen, the mix of chemicals from Teflon. They can make you sick, cause a kind of two- day Teflon flu, if a nonstick pan gets overheated, starting around 500 Degrees.
JANE HOULIHAN
At 554 degrees Fahrenheit, studies show that ultra-fine particles start coming off the pan. These are tiny little particles that can embed deeply into the lungs. It feels like the flu. Headache, chills, backache, temperature between 100 and 104 degrees.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) The hotter it gets, the more chemicals are released.
JANE HOULIHAN
And at 680, six toxic gases can begin to come off of heated Teflon.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) And it turns out, this Teflon flu is something Dupont has known about for years.
UMA CHOWDHRY
You get some fumes, yes. And you get a flu-like symptom, which is reversible. And if you follow the instructions on the pan ...
BRIAN ROSS
(Off Camera) You feel like you have the flu?
UMA CHOWDHRY
You feel like you have the flu temporarily.
BRIAN ROSS
(Off Camera) And how long does that last?
UMA CHOWDHRY
Temporary. Couple days.
BRIAN ROSS
(Off Camera) Couple days?
UMA CHOWDHRY
A couple days.
BRIAN ROSS
(Off Camera) That's temporarily?
UMA CHOWDHRY
Yeah.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) Dupont say pans don't get hot enough with normal cooking to present a problem. But this bacon was just getting crisp when the Teflon pan went past the initial danger point of 500 degrees.
JANE HOULIHAN
This is the temperature Dupont has said is never exceeded under normal cooking conditions in the home.
BRIAN ROSS
(Off Camera) We've cooked some bacon above 500 degrees, the bacon still wasn't done.
UMA CHOWDHRY
I've never cooked bacon, I can't comment.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) The Environmental Working Group has tried, without success, to get the government to order a warning put on the labels of nonstick pans. On this pan, the label says only that high heat will damage or discolor the pan.
BRIAN ROSS
(Off Camera) I think that our viewers would be surprised to know that there is such a thing as this fume fever.
UMA CHOWDHRY
It's on our web-site, always has been.
BRIAN ROSS
(Off Camera) But not on the actual product?
UMA CHOWDHRY
The manufacturer of Teflon pans does not put it on the product.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) One consumer warning Dupont does issue about Teflon fumes involves not humans, but birds. Overheated Teflon pans will actually kill birds.
SHELBY GREENMAN, BIRD OWNER
And I didn't smell anything, I didn't see any smoke.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) Shelby Greenman says her pet bird, a two-foot-high cockatoo, in a cage down the hall from the kitchen, keeled over after all the water boiled out of a nonstick pan.
SHELBY GREENMAN
As soon as they inhale it, it's over. There's nothing we can do to help them.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) Pet bird groups say thousands of birds have been killed by Teflon fumes, something Dupont says occurs because birds have small and sensitive lungs.
BRIAN ROSS
(Off Camera) In West Virginia, they used to use birds in coal mines as a warning of problems. Is this not the same thing?
UMA CHOWDHRY
I'm sorry. People should not, people should not have birds in an unventilated kitchen.
BRIAN ROSS
(Off Camera) But if it will kill a bird, wouldn't it at the very least do some harm to a tiny baby?
UMA CHOWDHRY
There is no evidence that it causes harm.
BRIAN ROSS
(Off Camera) But as a scientist, doesn't that seem logical to you?
UMA CHOWDHRY
I don't think you can compare birds and babies.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) But in the end, the greatest concern about Teflon is possible long-term harm to a generation that is growing up around Teflon products.
LOCAL RESIDENT, MALE
If you have neighbors like Dupont, you won't need no enemies.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) And scientists say if there is any long-term harm, the first place to look would be at the people who have had the greatest exposure to the key chemical used to make Teflon. The people who work and live and drink the water near the Dupont Teflon plant in West Virginia, including Debra Cochran and her family.
DEBRA COCHRAN, LOCAL RESIDENT
Everybody knows it there. They know it's in the water, but nobody seems to know what to do about it.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) But now a lawsuit brought by local residents, including the family of Bucky Bailey, accuses Dupont of trying to cover up what it knew about Teflon's risks, back to the year Bucky Bailey was born, 22 years ago.
SUE BAILEY
I'm angry that it wasn't stopped in 1981, when they knew about it, that it went on.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) Perhaps most telling, these internal Dupont documents, only now made public, show the company knew that of eight women working on the Teflon line in 1981, two had children with birth defects. Not just Bucky Bailey's mother, but another mother who "20/20" was also able to locate. Her son, too, had a birth defect involving the eye.
KAREN ROBINSON, MOTHER
Dupont should be held accountable for their actions in keeping all this secret from the public.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) Karen Robinson, now a grade school principal, says she only recently found out that she had an extremely high level of the Teflon chemical C-8 in her blood when she was pregnant. And she fears her second child also was affected.
KAREN ROBINSON
I gave birth to a daughter. Two years ago, we discovered that she has a birth defect that affects her kidneys. One kidney did not grow. One kidney grew to three times its normal size.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) Dupont denies it was trying to cover up what happened to the children of Karen Robinson or Sue Bailey. It says the reason it didn't disclose the birth defects study to the government for 22 years was that it found nothing to connect the defects with the Teflon chemical. And Dupont continues to insist it's safe for its workers to handle it.
UMA CHOWDHRY
And what I'm saying to you is that in the general population, incidences of birth defects are not uncommon.
BRIAN ROSS
(Off Camera) Two out of eight workers is not uncommon?
UMA CHOWDHRY
This was not a statistically valid sampling.
BRIAN ROSS
(Off Camera) You studied eight women who worked with C-8. Two of them had children with birth defects. That would not be significant?
UMA CHOWDHRY
We have had scientists pore over the data. In the realm of scientific fact, this is not considered a statistically significant sample. All the other children were normal. And since then, we have not seen a preponderance of birth defects.
BRIAN ROSS
(Off Camera) Have you done a study to see?
UMA CHOWDHRY
No, we have not.
BRIAN ROSS
(Voice Over) Those studies are finally happening. But Bucky Bailey and his family, and others, say, why did it take so long? Now, 22 years later, what happened to Bucky Bailey has become part the Federal government's high-priority review of whether the Teflon chemical that's in everyone's blood is safe.
BUCKY BAILEY
I have to think about if I want to have children or not. And I cannot put them through what I went through.
BARBARA WALTERS
(Off Camera) So the big question is, should you throw out your Teflon and other nonstick cookware? At this point, the Federal government is saying no, you shouldn't. It's conducting a major investigation right now. The results are expected in the coming months and we'll be staying on top of that story. In the meantime, some suggestions. Don't let your Teflon pots burn or the liquid in them boil away. And don't leave an empty Teflon pot on high heat. We'll be right back.