|
September 25, 2009
|
 |
What chemical component of gear is the next BPA?
— The Editors
Santa Fe, New Mexico
 If I could really predict the future, I'd be death-gripping a Scotch right now in front of a giant-screen TV at the Bellagio, having just bet my bank account on some big sports event. And I'd be happy. In other words, I've got no clue what will set the tree-embracing world's hair on fire the way BPA did. But I do know what should: polytetrafluoroethylene, or PTFE. You'll find it in nearly all of your non-stick camping cookware. What does PTFE do? We know for sure that it can make you sick.
Heat a Teflon-coated pan above 660 degrees, and it creates fumes that produce flu-like symptoms in humans (nausea, headache, chills, fever, and the like). DuPont, which makes Teflon, even admits to this (read the ABC News article here). Heat it above 396 degrees, and it could kill your pet bird if it's in the kitchen, according to the non-profit Environmental Working Group, which asked the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to put warning labels on PTFE-based nonstick pots and pans, but was denied. DuPont insists, like Kevin Bacon in Animal House: remain calm, all is well. They say that people usually don't heat their pans to 660 degrees, and that the health effects are temporary. Unless you're a parakeet, of course.
There's another, even scarier downside to PTFE. The chemical that's used to make it, known as C8, has been deemed a "likely carcinogen" by the Environmental Protection Agency. Four years ago, DuPont paid more than $16 million to settle a lawsuit by the EPA, which alleged the company hid the effects of C8, and its possible contamination of drinking water near a Teflon plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia. According to an article in the Charleston, West Virginia Gazette, "EPA alleged that DuPont withheld for more than 20 years the results of a test that showed at least one pregnant worker from the Parkersburg plant had transferred the chemical from her body to her fetus." As part of the settlement, the company was supposed to research whether Teflon and other PTFE products can, in fact, "break down into C8" and pose health hazards to consumers, the article says, but the ever-sage Bush administration in its waning days earlier this year gave DuPont a three-year extension to report its findings. (Though I'm sure the public's best interest was completely at heart in this decision.)
|
|
Do you have a question of your
own?
|
|
So, what can you do? Buy titanium or stainless-steel camping cookware, like the kind that MSR makes. But it seems almost impossible to avoid the alphabet soup of chemicals like BFA or PTFE in our pots, pans, dishes, or water bottles--unless we eat and drink solely out of our hands. Come to think of it, maybe that's how I should take that Scotch if I ever do make it to the Bellagio's sports book.
Eco Adventurer
Greg Melville is the author of Greasy Rider, a new book in which he drives across the country in a fry-oil-powered car investigating the future of green technology. A journalist who has written for Outside, The New York Times, and Popular Mechanics, Melville blogs about all things eco at greasyriderbook.blogspot.com. He lives with his wife, kids, and dog in Asheville North Carolina.
|
