March 26, 2024 • 33 mins
Non-stick pans are incredibly convenient -- they save hours of time, and make cooking less labor-intensive. Some might say the technology sounds too good to be true! As it turns out, that just might be the case. Tune in to learn how 3M, DuPont and other corporate entities conspired (for decades) to suppress research indicating serious medical dangers posed by Teflon and related substances.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the show. Fellow conspiracy realist. Are you
currently listening to us while cooking? Are you using a
non stick pan? Who? Buddy, we got some news for you.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Are you watching YouTube videos by the comedy music group
the Non Stick Pans. Well, if you're not, you shouldn't.
They do some really great David Bowie impressions. But no,
the real thing, non stick pans and the cover up
behind that chemical that leads to that very specific effect. Boy,
oh boy, is it worth a podcast and more.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
We have some very specific memories about nonstick pans in
this episode, and we think it might line up with
some of yours. We want to hear from you, so
when you finish, definitely right to us. Let us know.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Hello, and welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
My name is Noel, and our compatriot Matt is actually
on vacation, but we'll be returning soon. In the meantime,
they call me Ben. We were joined with our super
producer Paul Mission Control decand most importantly, you are you
you are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Today is one of those the more you know kind
of episodes.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
It really, it really is on the surface, on the
on the non stick frictionaliss surface. It may sound a
little bit mundane, but we have uncovered a tale that
is decades in the making and pretty disturbing. The story starts,
uh in the time of the ancient Greeks. Really, if
(01:56):
you think about it, the plan Greeks. Yes, that's correct.
You back in the old days. For most of human history,
anybody who cooked something struggled to make cook wear that
wasn't a huge pain in the keyster to clean. You know,
it's no secret even today that certain food stuffs can
be pretty messy and leave difficult stains or residue on
(02:19):
pots or pants. Like for instance, have you ever roasted
something and then realized, you know, I have to make
this taste great, because I'm going to spend some time
afterwards just scrubbing the heck out of this.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
That's what tenfoil is for, my man. Yes, it's not
only for hats.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Right there we go, that's well done.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Tenfoil is an excellent example of how we have evolved
strategies and technologies to combat this. You know, it's not
even unfortunate, it's just an inconvenient reality of cooking. I'm
glad you brought up the ancient mice knee in Greeks
because they were aware of this residue problem. And more
(02:58):
than three years ago they appeared to have invented a
very clever type of ceramic griddle that functioned kind of
like non stick cooking surfaces.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
But not through chemistry. It was through texture and craftsmanship, right, yeah, hellso,
so here's the deal. These griddles that they invented had
a smooth side and a side that was kind of porous,
covered with these tiny holes, and they were using it
to grill bread. And bread was probably placed on the
side with the holes because the dough would stick if
(03:31):
it was a completely flat surface, and they were doomed
to spend hours scrubbing away this bread residue. But if
they had the little pores, then it would kind of
vent a little bit and it would create a surface
that the bread was less likely to stick to. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Right, it's some pretty cool mcgiving there, and sadly it
didn't really catch on the rest of the world. Was
stuck spending hours and hours scrubbing away on ordinary pots, pans,
and other cooking surfaces. So in your mind, conspiracy realist,
go ahead and cue the image of a scullery maid
scraping out the bottom of a huge soup pot.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
That was me last night. That was you last night.
I made some rice and rice. If you let it
go a little too longer, and you let it simmer
a little too longer, it becomes this like sticky, kind
of crusty layer on the bottom, yeah, that you then
have to soak and get rid of.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
But the bottom, the rice crust tastes delicious, really huge
fan of it. Better Yet, let's cut past that image
of a scullery maid and go to a despairing TV
infomercial host. Let's imagine let's imagine this scullery maid at
the beginning of an infomercial, if they had those in
the Middle Ages throwing up their hands and wailing, There's
(04:43):
got to.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Be a better way. There has to be right.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Here are the facts. This situation began to change in
nineteen thirty eight when it kept us named. Roy Plunkett
invented something called polytetrafluoroethylene or ptfe PTFE is a type
of thing, a genre of thing known as per and
polyfluoroalcl substances or PFA's. Without going too far into the
(05:11):
weeds on the chemistry here, pfas encompass an entire family
of synthetic chemicals that have one thing in common. They
contain a carbon and fluorine atom backbone. There are hundreds
of these things out there, hundreds of known PFA compounds,
and they have varying functional groups. They can include other
elements as well, such as oxygen, hydrogen, or sulfur. Today
(05:35):
we call the stuff that Roy discovered teflon. Roy accidentally
invented this substance, but he quickly realized at a number
of unique properties. First, it had high corrosion resistance, meaning
it's less likely to degrade to rust so.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
On, which is important because when you're repeatedly using this
cookware and you're washing it, rust is likely to develop,
exactly very important that you have some kind of safeguard
against it, or else you're gonna have to keep switching
out your pots.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
And this stuff also had the lowest coefficient of friction
of any substance that had ever been manufactured before.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Now, why is this important, Ben, This is interesting to me.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Because it makes it slick, you know what I mean,
things just tend not to stick to it. This this
is something that we associate with cooking today, but originally
it had a much different use.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Yeah. Initially it was used to strengthen seals that would
be not seals like but seals like you know, seals
like a jar. To tighten strengthen these seals that would
be specifically exposed to uranium hexafluoride gas during the development
of the A bomb in World War Two. And interestingly enough,
it was considered a military secret.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
So Teflon before it was called teflon, the actual substance
was top secret. It was classified the US government. Uncle
Sam and DuPont didn't want the rest of the world
to know about this technology. DuPont actually didn't register the
Teflon trademark until nineteen forty four when they began planning
(07:17):
for commercial applications after the end of the war. They said,
you know, we paid our dues helping build the Adam Baum,
but that's kind of a niche market, so we probably
want to diversify.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yeah, well, that's that happens all the time with this
government stuff. It starts out for a very specific use,
and then they realize, okay, we can now let this
out to the public and make a little cash.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Make a little scratch. Yeah, so, well, scratch is probably
a poor trace of words. We're talking teflon, It's true.
By nineteen fifty one, DuPont had figured out uses for
teflon in large scale bread and cookie making. And we
say large scale bread and cookie making, what we mean
is the industrial level stuff. Yeah, you know, not mom
(07:59):
and pop shop base, big bread, Yeah, big cookie, big
bread and big cookie exactly. But they initially avoided marketing
teflon in consumer cookwear because they were concerned internally over
a possible health risk. They didn't really publicize this, they
just said, let's not do it yet. The credit for
the teflon revolution belongs mostly to a guy named John Gilbert.
(08:23):
While John Gilbert was working at DuPont, he realized, hey,
teflon can be used to coat the average pot and pan,
And just one year later there was a French engineer
who was experimenting with using teflon to coat his fishing
gear because it was so frictionless that it reduced the
(08:44):
likelihood of the gear tangling up interesting, and that's all
he thought about. But his wife said, hey, that looks
like it worked for fishing gear. Why don't we coat
our pots and pans and the same stuff. The idea
was a success. In nineteen fifty four, they were granted
a patent from the French government and they formed a
(09:04):
company called tefol tefal in nineteen fifty six.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
And so nowadays there are other types of nonstick coding,
but Teflon remains the most well known. I mean, it's
a household name, and it has tons of applications from
coding cables to providing corrosion resistance to industrial equipment. But
the still most widely known use the public is aware
(09:32):
of is that this is the stuff that helps you
keep from having to scrub your pots and pans for
hours at a time.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Right right, there is one small problem. Not only can
this stuff be dangerous, surprisingly so, but it turns out
that the manufacturers of teflon and related substances and the
ingredients of teflon knew about the dangers. They decided the
profits outweighed the risk, and they covered up these dangers
(09:59):
for at the very least decades. We'll be right back
after a word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
So, writing for The Intercept, journalists by the name of
Sharon Lerner exposed DuPont's multi decade cover up of what
she refers to as quote the severe harms of health
associated with a chemical known as PFOA or C eight
and associated compounds it as PFOS and gen X. Wow. Yeah,
(10:36):
that's a that's a serious name.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Well, there also used to be a pretty good comic
series might still be out called Generation X. Do you
remember that?
Speaker 2 (10:43):
I don't. Oh?
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Okay, well check it out if you're a Marvel fan.
For a long long time, few people in the public
had ever heard of C eight. C eight is one
of the essential ingredients in teflon. This stuff is everywhere.
It's called a surface and because it reduces the surface
tension of water. It's a slippery, very stable compound, and
(11:07):
it was eventually used in hundreds of products. It's in
gore tex, it's another waterproof clothing. It's a coating for eyeglasses,
for tennis rackets, it's a stain proof coating for carpets
and furniture, firefighting foam, fast food wrappers, microwave popcorn bags,
bicycle lubricants, satellite components, communication cables, ski wax, even pizza boxes,
(11:30):
wow and concerns about the safety of teflon. C eight
and other things were called long chain per fluorinated chemicals
first came to the public attention more than a decade ago.
But there's a long, often untold story about DuPont's involvement
with C eight, and until Sharon Lerner investigated this in
(11:54):
like a nineteen part series that you can read for
free online, no one had really told this story. Over
the past fifteen years, lawyers have been waging an epic
legal battle against C eight and its manufacturers are people
who use it in products, including DuPont and three M,
which manufactures some of the substances that DuPont buys to
(12:16):
create teflon. This stuff culminated in a class action lawsuit
that was it's about three thy five hundred personal injury
claims that went to trial in September of twenty seventeen.
But before we get to that, and before we get
to the EPA's involvement in Uncle Sam's involvement or collusion
(12:39):
in this sordid tail, let's look at the kind of
health effects this stuff can cause it's pretty nasty. Exposure
to these long chain per fluorinated chemicals can cause things
like ulcerative colitis, high cholesterol, hypertension, thyroid disease, testicular cancer,
kidney answer, and more. We know these aren't just rumors.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Yeah, And how come you don't hear that in the
fine print for nonstick pan commercials? Right?
Speaker 1 (13:08):
You just hear don't use a metal spatula, right, right,
And that's part of the reason, because you know that
teflon stuff can flake off and into your body. In
twenty eleven twenty twelve, after years of research, scientists published
more than three dozen peer reviewed articles on these effects,
(13:28):
and one of the most troubling parts of their findings
was that the chemicals had they affected your entire body,
not just a particular organ or system. Even very low
exposure could impact a person's health. And this stuff builds
up in your body sort of like how remember when
(13:50):
people concerned about eating too many specific types of fish
because of mercury. Of course, right, and that's still a
thing that should be concerning to people. This stuff was
the same way. It could build up in your body,
and it could build up in wildlife. But this was
also very old news old beans to DuPont because their
(14:11):
scientists had studied this chemical and related chemicals for decades
and decades, and they were very well informed about the dangers.
But instead of informing the public, instead of informing government
agencies like the EPA, instead of informing communities living near
the plants where teflon was manufactured, instead of informing their
own employees, they kept the finding secret, and they perpetrated
(14:36):
a remarkably successful cover up.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
They absolutely did. Sadly, we can rate the cover up
success in one absolutely frightening statistic, and it is this
C eight is a man made compound. It did not
exist one hundred years ago, and now it is in
the blood of ninety nine point seven percent of Americans.
And this is from a two thousand and seven analysis
(14:59):
of from the CDC. C aight is present in newborns,
breast milk, and blood from umbilical cords. It's also in
a wide range of wildlife, including loggerhead sea turtles, bottlenosed dolphins,
harbor seals, polar bears, cariboo, walras, says, bald eagles, lions, tigers,
and arctic birds. Apparently not bears.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Yeah, apparently, I'm sure, a lot of people were waiting
to hear the bears, So you could say, if you
wanted to be a little more optimistic about it, you
could say, maybe there was something wrong with the methodology
of the test, maybe the data was analyzed incorrectly, Maybe
the CDC for some reason is screwing up. But we
(15:40):
can assure you the odds of that are pretty low.
You could also be optimistic and say, well, hey, I
don't eat loggerhead, sea turtles, bottlenose dolphins, harbor seals, polar bears,
and so on. But this is still indicative of a
widespread problem because if it's if, if it's existing, if
(16:01):
it's found existing in those animals that are, you know,
maybe not even directly part of the human food chain,
you can only imagine it likely exists in animals that
are part of the human food chain, or more commonly
found in it. In their defense, DuPont no longer uses
C eight, But at this point, removing it from Earth's
(16:24):
environment is impossible because remember we mentioned that it's a
very chemically stable compound. As far as we know, this
stuff does not break down. This means that it will
be on the planet for a long time. It may
even outlast humanity, So millions and millions of years in
(16:45):
the future. If some extraterrestrial civilization exists and for some
reason visits our planet, they may not find us, but
they will find traces of our time here. And one
of the thing you say we'll find will be teflon
in everything?
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Am I going to die?
Speaker 3 (17:06):
Ben?
Speaker 2 (17:07):
I cook with teflon pans all the time? Well, life
is a one way ride, Noel, Okay, that was a
broad question. Iselon killing me softly.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
It does pose significant health risk. And now that the
public is more aware of this situation, this epidemic, the
government has started to take action, and private litigation has
also escalated. We'll tell you a little more about the
current situation, as well as DuPont's internal battles after a
(17:40):
word from our sponsor, and we're back. Eight companies are
responsible for eight contamination in the US. DuPont is far
and away the leader here of these eight companies in
(18:01):
terms of both the use of C eight and emissions
of it. But seven others were found to have a role,
including three M. Because three M, as you said, actually
manufactured C eight or produced it and sold it to
DuPont for years while they were also very likely aware
of the dangers from the very beginning. DuPont scientists approached
(18:23):
ATE's potential dangers with a pretty high bar of rigor,
and they studied it closely. Way back in nineteen fifty four,
there was a DuPont employee named ra A. Dickinson who
noted that he had received an inquiry regarding CH's quote
possible toxicity.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Yeah. And then in nineteen sixty one, just seven years later,
in house researchers already had the short answer to Dickinson's question.
C eight was indeed toxic and should be quote handled
with extreme care, like not slathered on household goods. Right.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
By the next year, what did we say, they're sixty
one by yea. By nineteen sixty two, experiments had whittled
down these broad concerns into some red flags, and they
found some specific conditions caused by C eight. Exposure to
C eight was linked to the enlargement of rat testicles,
(19:21):
adrenal glands, and kidneys. The company even, at least in
one instance that we know of, the company even conducted
human experimentation with C eight. In nineteen sixty two, scientists
asked volunteers to smoke cigarettes laced with C eight and
they found that nice, well, at least they asked them
(19:43):
to do it. They found that nine out of ten
people in the highest dose group were noticeably significantly ill
for an average of nine hours, so as much as eighteen,
you know, and they have flu like symptoms that included chills, back, ache, fever,
and coughing. We don't know if they did a follow
up study years later to see the rates of cancer,
(20:06):
but we do know that this cover up then encompasses
more than just teflon, because remember, Teflon is a brand
name for something that is a type of PFA, and
pfas are used in so many things we mentioned, the
microwave popcorn, the firefighting foam, fast food wrappers, industrial processes.
(20:29):
They have been proven to have clear and harmful effects
on human beings and wildlife, and as we record this episode, scientists, attorneys,
and public interest groups are still working to figure out
the sheer scale of the contamination as well as the
extent of danger this poses to humans and wildlife. Like
(20:49):
here's an example. They DuPont used to get rid of
these substances by putting them in barrels and putting rocks
putting rocks in the barrels or waiting the barrels somehow
and then just dropping them in the ocean or dropping
them with water sources. So that means that there are.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
There are areas of.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
The world where the groundwater has been contaminated with this stuff.
And we don't. When I say we, I don't just
mean DuPont or the US or anything. I mean our
species hasn't figured out how to get this stuff out.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yeah, so even if that seems to be a kind
of a common issue, doesn't that we're real good at
putting stuff in, haven't quite feared how to put stuff out.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
We're all Mickey Mouse at the beginning of Fantasia, remember
when he figures out that excellent way to mop up
when he's the source of apprentice and he starts making mops,
but they make mops and then the flood begins.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
You know, But never that ever occurred to me. That
is a very good analogy, metaphor what have you, for
the exact kind of stuff we're talking about. The kid
put the magic back in the bucket, right right exactly.
I actually went to a talk recently. It was a
weird pairing. It was Jaden Smith interviewing al Gore about
climate change, and something came up at the end where
Jayden asked al Gore, like, so, what technology in the
(22:12):
future is there to pull these emissions out of the atmosphere.
And the fact of the matter is that there's something
that sort of exists, but it requires so much energy
to do it that it makes it not really cost
effective or just practical at all. So, I mean, I
guess people are thinking about this kind of stuff, but
it's like it usually is so much more of a
(22:33):
of a to do than just to maybe do a
better job of not putting the stuff in there in
the first.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Place, right, right, And this goes beyond, this goes beyond politics.
This is just a health concern. And I know some
of us in the audience may may object to the
alarmism that gets so commonly, you know, spread about in
the public sphere when we talk about these global or
macro level human threats. But the reality of the situation now,
(23:03):
at least just my opinion, the reality is the situation
now is the following. The Earth does not need humanity.
Life on Earth in some form will likely continue for
a long long time. Human life on Earth is not
a sure thing. And you know, it's not as if
(23:25):
Earth itself really has an opinion or cares. We are
just one in a long line of dominant species that
have come and gone on this little rock orbiting the Sun,
and the third one right right. And this means that
the most significant race or challenge for the human species
(23:47):
now is going to be technological innovation versus increasingly inhospitable
natural environments.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
So are we going.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
To survive as a species, you know, off planet living
in domes? There are a lot of optimistic futurists who
would say yes, Like that Polyshor movie Biodome, Biodome, there
wasn't a Baldwin into that.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
There was definitely a Baldin in that.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
I you know, that's one of those films that I
think I enjoyed when I was a kid, and I
think I'm just gonna leave it there. I don't know
if I don't know if I should rewatch it.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
I think not.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
I don't know if it's aged well, I doubt that
it has. What was the other one with the caveman,
Prisino Man, Brenda and Frasier. We's in the JITs, that's right.
I don't know if I'll watch that one.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
No, you shouldn't. You know what I did the other
night I watched Phantom Menace again for the first time
in a long time. That movie is problematic on many levels.
Let me tell you, is that what we chargearbeings That
one that is a racial caricature, but there's a bunch
of other ones. There's like the Trade Federation. Guys. We're
kind of like these very cliche, almost like Asian caricatures,
(24:57):
and there's just tons of them. Not to mention the
right is quite hackneyed.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
It's yeah, it's it's strange. I read this has nothing
to do with anything, certainly not the fate of the planet.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
But I've had a minute kind of had to do
with the fate of the planet a planet.
Speaker 4 (25:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
But but.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
There is a very interesting fan theory that initially I dismissed,
and it argues that in the initial stages of planning
for Phantom Menace and the movies at that would come after,
George R. Binks was supposed to be like a low
key sith lord and then later exposed as a sith lord.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Oh wow, it's.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Again, it's a fan theory. I haven't seen anything that
made that counted as smoking gun level evidence.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
This is evil sith power just to like annoy you
to death.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Well, it's interesting because he shows remarkable agility in some areas.
I don't you'll have you'll have to read. I'm sure
it's available on cracked or one of the other one
of the other popular fan theory analysis sites. But back
to the back to the Teflon menace. For lack of
a better term, in February of this year of twenty eighteen,
(26:13):
three MS settled a lawsuit with Minnesota for eight hundred
and fifty million dollars in essence admitting, according to Shannon Lerner,
that they acted with a deliberate disregard for the high
risk of injury to the citizens and wildlife of Minnesota.
And they they went for this settlement eight hundred and
(26:35):
fifty million dollars. It's not going to put them in
the poorhouse, but it is a significant chunk of change.
They went for the settlement because the Minnesota Attorney General's
office released a huge set of documents, internal studies by
scientists at THREEM, memos, emails, and research reports that detailed
what THREEM knew about the harmful potential of these chemicals
(27:00):
right now, right now, there's probably already at least according
to the CDC, some kind of PFA in your system,
in your body as you hear this, unless what point
three percent of the population. And one of the one
of the most widely acknowledged possible dangers of teflon, and
(27:22):
this was acknowledged publicly way before the lawsuits began, is
that if you have a teflon pan and you overheat
it to about six hundred degrees fahrenheit, it will it
could release toxic gases. But again, that didn't seem like
too much of a concern because very few people cook
stuff at six hundred degrees That's true. Here's a question
(27:42):
for you to leave us with. What's the alternative is?
You know, I have some non nonstick pans.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
They are a bit of a pain in the butt
when you cook certain things on them. But typically when
you're watching like cooking shows and like chefs and stuff
and high level cooks, they're not really using nonstick pans
all the time. They're using like copper pans and like
nicer stainless steel pans, right or le Crouse exactly. So
what's the what's the difference and what and is it?
Is it literally just a matter of well you might
(28:09):
have to pre soak them a little longer, take better
care of them. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
There are some manufacturers of nonstick pans that are advertised
as non toxic. So one example would be something like Willing,
which is just the word Willing with a Z.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
They're a German.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Company that made that made their name I believe in knives,
but they use a lot of They also manufacture a
lot of ceramic nonstick cookware. And then there's a thing
called green Pan. They use something called thermalon. It's a
patented ceramic nonstick layer that's made out of sand. Essentially,
(28:49):
it doesn't have lead or cadmium or pfas or PFOA
or all the other stuff. And the problem with that
stuff is it's heat resistant up to four hund and
fifty degrees cells, meaning that it won't release toxic fumes
unless you heat it past that. You can find other alternatives,
several of them are higher end, so they're going to
(29:12):
be more of an investment. But for their part, DuPont
has instituted some other substances to replace C eight because,
as we said, they no longer use that and the
EPA has been involved. It says it remains committed to
evaluating PFOA and PFOS under the regulatory determination process using
(29:38):
the best available science. As part of their evaluation, they
are going to be reviewing all newly available scientific info,
including the report by the ATSDR, the Agency for Toxic
Substances and Disease Registry. They also said they are taking
steps to accelerate quote the determination process before for the
(30:00):
existing statutory deadline, which is twenty twenty one, So in
a few years this stuff will change. But maybe the
last thing we should end on here is as of
November twenty eighteen, the EPA also found that the chemicals
manufacturers used to replace these original toxic substances like C eight,
were themselves toxic, so they replaced it with a different
(30:24):
with a different dangerous chemical. That's where we're at now.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Oh cool, slightly lesser of the two evils.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
It's I believe it's gen x is one of the
ones that they said was still dangerous, but hopefully yeah,
is it is slightly lesser. And look, we're we're not
saying that if you use a nonstick pan you are
going to die. We're saying that exposure to the substances
used to make teflon are are quite dangerous and a
(30:53):
lot of the a lot of the lawsuits came about
from former DuPont employees or employee of the manufacturers of
these substances, or people living near the plants or disposal sites.
So it's not Cooking with a non stick pan is
not the same thing as just huffing straight pfoas.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Oh good, So there's that right, cool. Yeah, that's comforting.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
And if you would like to read the full series
on the intercept, I want to tell you that it
is excellent. It is very thorough. It's quite long. It's
a long greed, but it's worth your time if you
would like to learn more about how this successful cover up,
this successful corporate conspiracy to disguise the health risk of
(31:39):
these substances actually evolved and developed over time, as well
as where it is at currently. Thank you so much
for checking out our show. Let us know what you
think is this is this situation wherein a large company
just wasn't aware of the science. Is this being exaggerated
(32:02):
by alarmist interest groups or is there a real and
genuine threat and if so, why or why not you
can find us on Instagram, you can find us on Facebook,
you can find us on Twitter. We'd especially like to
recommend Here's where it gets crazy, our community Facebook page
where you can hang out with your fellow conspiracy realist
(32:25):
and you know, see some funny memes.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Yeah, we've been known to lurk. We have, indeed, Yes,
so do all this.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
And that's the end of this classic episode. If you
have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can
get into contact with us in a number of different ways.
One of the best is to give us a call.
Our number is one eight three three STDWYTK. If you
don't want to do that, you can send us a
good old fashioned email.
Speaker 4 (32:53):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
Stuff they Don't Want you to Know is a production
of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome back to the show. Fellow conspiracy realist. Are you
currently listening to us while cooking? Are you using a
non stick pan? Who? Buddy, we got some news for you.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Are you watching YouTube videos by the comedy music group
the Non Stick Pans. Well, if you're not, you shouldn't.
They do some really great David Bowie impressions. But no,
the real thing, non stick pans and the cover up
behind that chemical that leads to that very specific effect. Boy,
oh boy, is it worth a podcast and more.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
We have some very specific memories about nonstick pans in
this episode, and we think it might line up with
some of yours. We want to hear from you, so
when you finish, definitely right to us. Let us know.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Hello, and welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
My name is Noel, and our compatriot Matt is actually
on vacation, but we'll be returning soon. In the meantime,
they call me Ben. We were joined with our super
producer Paul Mission Control decand most importantly, you are you
you are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Today is one of those the more you know kind
of episodes.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
It really, it really is on the surface, on the
on the non stick frictionaliss surface. It may sound a
little bit mundane, but we have uncovered a tale that
is decades in the making and pretty disturbing. The story starts,
uh in the time of the ancient Greeks. Really, if
(01:56):
you think about it, the plan Greeks. Yes, that's correct.
You back in the old days. For most of human history,
anybody who cooked something struggled to make cook wear that
wasn't a huge pain in the keyster to clean. You know,
it's no secret even today that certain food stuffs can
be pretty messy and leave difficult stains or residue on
(02:19):
pots or pants. Like for instance, have you ever roasted
something and then realized, you know, I have to make
this taste great, because I'm going to spend some time
afterwards just scrubbing the heck out of this.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
That's what tenfoil is for, my man. Yes, it's not
only for hats.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Right there we go, that's well done.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Tenfoil is an excellent example of how we have evolved
strategies and technologies to combat this. You know, it's not
even unfortunate, it's just an inconvenient reality of cooking. I'm
glad you brought up the ancient mice knee in Greeks
because they were aware of this residue problem. And more
(02:58):
than three years ago they appeared to have invented a
very clever type of ceramic griddle that functioned kind of
like non stick cooking surfaces.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
But not through chemistry. It was through texture and craftsmanship, right, yeah, hellso,
so here's the deal. These griddles that they invented had
a smooth side and a side that was kind of porous,
covered with these tiny holes, and they were using it
to grill bread. And bread was probably placed on the
side with the holes because the dough would stick if
(03:31):
it was a completely flat surface, and they were doomed
to spend hours scrubbing away this bread residue. But if
they had the little pores, then it would kind of
vent a little bit and it would create a surface
that the bread was less likely to stick to. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Right, it's some pretty cool mcgiving there, and sadly it
didn't really catch on the rest of the world. Was
stuck spending hours and hours scrubbing away on ordinary pots, pans,
and other cooking surfaces. So in your mind, conspiracy realist,
go ahead and cue the image of a scullery maid
scraping out the bottom of a huge soup pot.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
That was me last night. That was you last night.
I made some rice and rice. If you let it
go a little too longer, and you let it simmer
a little too longer, it becomes this like sticky, kind
of crusty layer on the bottom, yeah, that you then
have to soak and get rid of.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
But the bottom, the rice crust tastes delicious, really huge
fan of it. Better Yet, let's cut past that image
of a scullery maid and go to a despairing TV
infomercial host. Let's imagine let's imagine this scullery maid at
the beginning of an infomercial, if they had those in
the Middle Ages throwing up their hands and wailing, There's
(04:43):
got to.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Be a better way. There has to be right.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Here are the facts. This situation began to change in
nineteen thirty eight when it kept us named. Roy Plunkett
invented something called polytetrafluoroethylene or ptfe PTFE is a type
of thing, a genre of thing known as per and
polyfluoroalcl substances or PFA's. Without going too far into the
(05:11):
weeds on the chemistry here, pfas encompass an entire family
of synthetic chemicals that have one thing in common. They
contain a carbon and fluorine atom backbone. There are hundreds
of these things out there, hundreds of known PFA compounds,
and they have varying functional groups. They can include other
elements as well, such as oxygen, hydrogen, or sulfur. Today
(05:35):
we call the stuff that Roy discovered teflon. Roy accidentally
invented this substance, but he quickly realized at a number
of unique properties. First, it had high corrosion resistance, meaning
it's less likely to degrade to rust so.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
On, which is important because when you're repeatedly using this
cookware and you're washing it, rust is likely to develop,
exactly very important that you have some kind of safeguard
against it, or else you're gonna have to keep switching
out your pots.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
And this stuff also had the lowest coefficient of friction
of any substance that had ever been manufactured before.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Now, why is this important, Ben, This is interesting to me.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Because it makes it slick, you know what I mean,
things just tend not to stick to it. This this
is something that we associate with cooking today, but originally
it had a much different use.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Yeah. Initially it was used to strengthen seals that would
be not seals like but seals like you know, seals
like a jar. To tighten strengthen these seals that would
be specifically exposed to uranium hexafluoride gas during the development
of the A bomb in World War Two. And interestingly enough,
it was considered a military secret.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
So Teflon before it was called teflon, the actual substance
was top secret. It was classified the US government. Uncle
Sam and DuPont didn't want the rest of the world
to know about this technology. DuPont actually didn't register the
Teflon trademark until nineteen forty four when they began planning
(07:17):
for commercial applications after the end of the war. They said,
you know, we paid our dues helping build the Adam Baum,
but that's kind of a niche market, so we probably
want to diversify.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yeah, well, that's that happens all the time with this
government stuff. It starts out for a very specific use,
and then they realize, okay, we can now let this
out to the public and make a little cash.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Make a little scratch. Yeah, so, well, scratch is probably
a poor trace of words. We're talking teflon, It's true.
By nineteen fifty one, DuPont had figured out uses for
teflon in large scale bread and cookie making. And we
say large scale bread and cookie making, what we mean
is the industrial level stuff. Yeah, you know, not mom
(07:59):
and pop shop base, big bread, Yeah, big cookie, big
bread and big cookie exactly. But they initially avoided marketing
teflon in consumer cookwear because they were concerned internally over
a possible health risk. They didn't really publicize this, they
just said, let's not do it yet. The credit for
the teflon revolution belongs mostly to a guy named John Gilbert.
(08:23):
While John Gilbert was working at DuPont, he realized, hey,
teflon can be used to coat the average pot and pan,
And just one year later there was a French engineer
who was experimenting with using teflon to coat his fishing
gear because it was so frictionless that it reduced the
(08:44):
likelihood of the gear tangling up interesting, and that's all
he thought about. But his wife said, hey, that looks
like it worked for fishing gear. Why don't we coat
our pots and pans and the same stuff. The idea
was a success. In nineteen fifty four, they were granted
a patent from the French government and they formed a
(09:04):
company called tefol tefal in nineteen fifty six.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
And so nowadays there are other types of nonstick coding,
but Teflon remains the most well known. I mean, it's
a household name, and it has tons of applications from
coding cables to providing corrosion resistance to industrial equipment. But
the still most widely known use the public is aware
(09:32):
of is that this is the stuff that helps you
keep from having to scrub your pots and pans for
hours at a time.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Right right, there is one small problem. Not only can
this stuff be dangerous, surprisingly so, but it turns out
that the manufacturers of teflon and related substances and the
ingredients of teflon knew about the dangers. They decided the
profits outweighed the risk, and they covered up these dangers
(09:59):
for at the very least decades. We'll be right back
after a word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
So, writing for The Intercept, journalists by the name of
Sharon Lerner exposed DuPont's multi decade cover up of what
she refers to as quote the severe harms of health
associated with a chemical known as PFOA or C eight
and associated compounds it as PFOS and gen X. Wow. Yeah,
(10:36):
that's a that's a serious name.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Well, there also used to be a pretty good comic
series might still be out called Generation X. Do you
remember that?
Speaker 2 (10:43):
I don't. Oh?
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Okay, well check it out if you're a Marvel fan.
For a long long time, few people in the public
had ever heard of C eight. C eight is one
of the essential ingredients in teflon. This stuff is everywhere.
It's called a surface and because it reduces the surface
tension of water. It's a slippery, very stable compound, and
(11:07):
it was eventually used in hundreds of products. It's in
gore tex, it's another waterproof clothing. It's a coating for eyeglasses,
for tennis rackets, it's a stain proof coating for carpets
and furniture, firefighting foam, fast food wrappers, microwave popcorn bags,
bicycle lubricants, satellite components, communication cables, ski wax, even pizza boxes,
(11:30):
wow and concerns about the safety of teflon. C eight
and other things were called long chain per fluorinated chemicals
first came to the public attention more than a decade ago.
But there's a long, often untold story about DuPont's involvement
with C eight, and until Sharon Lerner investigated this in
(11:54):
like a nineteen part series that you can read for
free online, no one had really told this story. Over
the past fifteen years, lawyers have been waging an epic
legal battle against C eight and its manufacturers are people
who use it in products, including DuPont and three M,
which manufactures some of the substances that DuPont buys to
(12:16):
create teflon. This stuff culminated in a class action lawsuit
that was it's about three thy five hundred personal injury
claims that went to trial in September of twenty seventeen.
But before we get to that, and before we get
to the EPA's involvement in Uncle Sam's involvement or collusion
(12:39):
in this sordid tail, let's look at the kind of
health effects this stuff can cause it's pretty nasty. Exposure
to these long chain per fluorinated chemicals can cause things
like ulcerative colitis, high cholesterol, hypertension, thyroid disease, testicular cancer,
kidney answer, and more. We know these aren't just rumors.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Yeah, And how come you don't hear that in the
fine print for nonstick pan commercials? Right?
Speaker 1 (13:08):
You just hear don't use a metal spatula, right, right,
And that's part of the reason, because you know that
teflon stuff can flake off and into your body. In
twenty eleven twenty twelve, after years of research, scientists published
more than three dozen peer reviewed articles on these effects,
(13:28):
and one of the most troubling parts of their findings
was that the chemicals had they affected your entire body,
not just a particular organ or system. Even very low
exposure could impact a person's health. And this stuff builds
up in your body sort of like how remember when
(13:50):
people concerned about eating too many specific types of fish
because of mercury. Of course, right, and that's still a
thing that should be concerning to people. This stuff was
the same way. It could build up in your body,
and it could build up in wildlife. But this was
also very old news old beans to DuPont because their
(14:11):
scientists had studied this chemical and related chemicals for decades
and decades, and they were very well informed about the dangers.
But instead of informing the public, instead of informing government
agencies like the EPA, instead of informing communities living near
the plants where teflon was manufactured, instead of informing their
own employees, they kept the finding secret, and they perpetrated
(14:36):
a remarkably successful cover up.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
They absolutely did. Sadly, we can rate the cover up
success in one absolutely frightening statistic, and it is this
C eight is a man made compound. It did not
exist one hundred years ago, and now it is in
the blood of ninety nine point seven percent of Americans.
And this is from a two thousand and seven analysis
(14:59):
of from the CDC. C aight is present in newborns,
breast milk, and blood from umbilical cords. It's also in
a wide range of wildlife, including loggerhead sea turtles, bottlenosed dolphins,
harbor seals, polar bears, cariboo, walras, says, bald eagles, lions, tigers,
and arctic birds. Apparently not bears.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Yeah, apparently, I'm sure, a lot of people were waiting
to hear the bears, So you could say, if you
wanted to be a little more optimistic about it, you
could say, maybe there was something wrong with the methodology
of the test, maybe the data was analyzed incorrectly, Maybe
the CDC for some reason is screwing up. But we
(15:40):
can assure you the odds of that are pretty low.
You could also be optimistic and say, well, hey, I
don't eat loggerhead, sea turtles, bottlenose dolphins, harbor seals, polar bears,
and so on. But this is still indicative of a
widespread problem because if it's if, if it's existing, if
(16:01):
it's found existing in those animals that are, you know,
maybe not even directly part of the human food chain,
you can only imagine it likely exists in animals that
are part of the human food chain, or more commonly
found in it. In their defense, DuPont no longer uses
C eight, But at this point, removing it from Earth's
(16:24):
environment is impossible because remember we mentioned that it's a
very chemically stable compound. As far as we know, this
stuff does not break down. This means that it will
be on the planet for a long time. It may
even outlast humanity, So millions and millions of years in
(16:45):
the future. If some extraterrestrial civilization exists and for some
reason visits our planet, they may not find us, but
they will find traces of our time here. And one
of the thing you say we'll find will be teflon
in everything?
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Am I going to die?
Speaker 3 (17:06):
Ben?
Speaker 2 (17:07):
I cook with teflon pans all the time? Well, life
is a one way ride, Noel, Okay, that was a
broad question. Iselon killing me softly.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
It does pose significant health risk. And now that the
public is more aware of this situation, this epidemic, the
government has started to take action, and private litigation has
also escalated. We'll tell you a little more about the
current situation, as well as DuPont's internal battles after a
(17:40):
word from our sponsor, and we're back. Eight companies are
responsible for eight contamination in the US. DuPont is far
and away the leader here of these eight companies in
(18:01):
terms of both the use of C eight and emissions
of it. But seven others were found to have a role,
including three M. Because three M, as you said, actually
manufactured C eight or produced it and sold it to
DuPont for years while they were also very likely aware
of the dangers from the very beginning. DuPont scientists approached
(18:23):
ATE's potential dangers with a pretty high bar of rigor,
and they studied it closely. Way back in nineteen fifty four,
there was a DuPont employee named ra A. Dickinson who
noted that he had received an inquiry regarding CH's quote
possible toxicity.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Yeah. And then in nineteen sixty one, just seven years later,
in house researchers already had the short answer to Dickinson's question.
C eight was indeed toxic and should be quote handled
with extreme care, like not slathered on household goods. Right.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
By the next year, what did we say, they're sixty
one by yea. By nineteen sixty two, experiments had whittled
down these broad concerns into some red flags, and they
found some specific conditions caused by C eight. Exposure to
C eight was linked to the enlargement of rat testicles,
(19:21):
adrenal glands, and kidneys. The company even, at least in
one instance that we know of, the company even conducted
human experimentation with C eight. In nineteen sixty two, scientists
asked volunteers to smoke cigarettes laced with C eight and
they found that nice, well, at least they asked them
(19:43):
to do it. They found that nine out of ten
people in the highest dose group were noticeably significantly ill
for an average of nine hours, so as much as eighteen,
you know, and they have flu like symptoms that included chills, back, ache, fever,
and coughing. We don't know if they did a follow
up study years later to see the rates of cancer,
(20:06):
but we do know that this cover up then encompasses
more than just teflon, because remember, Teflon is a brand
name for something that is a type of PFA, and
pfas are used in so many things we mentioned, the
microwave popcorn, the firefighting foam, fast food wrappers, industrial processes.
(20:29):
They have been proven to have clear and harmful effects
on human beings and wildlife, and as we record this episode, scientists, attorneys,
and public interest groups are still working to figure out
the sheer scale of the contamination as well as the
extent of danger this poses to humans and wildlife. Like
(20:49):
here's an example. They DuPont used to get rid of
these substances by putting them in barrels and putting rocks
putting rocks in the barrels or waiting the barrels somehow
and then just dropping them in the ocean or dropping
them with water sources. So that means that there are.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
There are areas of.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
The world where the groundwater has been contaminated with this stuff.
And we don't. When I say we, I don't just
mean DuPont or the US or anything. I mean our
species hasn't figured out how to get this stuff out.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yeah, so even if that seems to be a kind
of a common issue, doesn't that we're real good at
putting stuff in, haven't quite feared how to put stuff out.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
We're all Mickey Mouse at the beginning of Fantasia, remember
when he figures out that excellent way to mop up
when he's the source of apprentice and he starts making mops,
but they make mops and then the flood begins.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
You know, But never that ever occurred to me. That
is a very good analogy, metaphor what have you, for
the exact kind of stuff we're talking about. The kid
put the magic back in the bucket, right right exactly.
I actually went to a talk recently. It was a
weird pairing. It was Jaden Smith interviewing al Gore about
climate change, and something came up at the end where
Jayden asked al Gore, like, so, what technology in the
(22:12):
future is there to pull these emissions out of the atmosphere.
And the fact of the matter is that there's something
that sort of exists, but it requires so much energy
to do it that it makes it not really cost
effective or just practical at all. So, I mean, I
guess people are thinking about this kind of stuff, but
it's like it usually is so much more of a
(22:33):
of a to do than just to maybe do a
better job of not putting the stuff in there in
the first.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Place, right, right, And this goes beyond, this goes beyond politics.
This is just a health concern. And I know some
of us in the audience may may object to the
alarmism that gets so commonly, you know, spread about in
the public sphere when we talk about these global or
macro level human threats. But the reality of the situation now,
(23:03):
at least just my opinion, the reality is the situation
now is the following. The Earth does not need humanity.
Life on Earth in some form will likely continue for
a long long time. Human life on Earth is not
a sure thing. And you know, it's not as if
(23:25):
Earth itself really has an opinion or cares. We are
just one in a long line of dominant species that
have come and gone on this little rock orbiting the Sun,
and the third one right right. And this means that
the most significant race or challenge for the human species
(23:47):
now is going to be technological innovation versus increasingly inhospitable
natural environments.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
So are we going.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
To survive as a species, you know, off planet living
in domes? There are a lot of optimistic futurists who
would say yes, Like that Polyshor movie Biodome, Biodome, there
wasn't a Baldwin into that.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
There was definitely a Baldin in that.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
I you know, that's one of those films that I
think I enjoyed when I was a kid, and I
think I'm just gonna leave it there. I don't know
if I don't know if I should rewatch it.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
I think not.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
I don't know if it's aged well, I doubt that
it has. What was the other one with the caveman,
Prisino Man, Brenda and Frasier. We's in the JITs, that's right.
I don't know if I'll watch that one.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
No, you shouldn't. You know what I did the other
night I watched Phantom Menace again for the first time
in a long time. That movie is problematic on many levels.
Let me tell you, is that what we chargearbeings That
one that is a racial caricature, but there's a bunch
of other ones. There's like the Trade Federation. Guys. We're
kind of like these very cliche, almost like Asian caricatures,
(24:57):
and there's just tons of them. Not to mention the
right is quite hackneyed.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
It's yeah, it's it's strange. I read this has nothing
to do with anything, certainly not the fate of the planet.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
But I've had a minute kind of had to do
with the fate of the planet a planet.
Speaker 4 (25:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
But but.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
There is a very interesting fan theory that initially I dismissed,
and it argues that in the initial stages of planning
for Phantom Menace and the movies at that would come after,
George R. Binks was supposed to be like a low
key sith lord and then later exposed as a sith lord.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Oh wow, it's.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Again, it's a fan theory. I haven't seen anything that
made that counted as smoking gun level evidence.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
This is evil sith power just to like annoy you
to death.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Well, it's interesting because he shows remarkable agility in some areas.
I don't you'll have you'll have to read. I'm sure
it's available on cracked or one of the other one
of the other popular fan theory analysis sites. But back
to the back to the Teflon menace. For lack of
a better term, in February of this year of twenty eighteen,
(26:13):
three MS settled a lawsuit with Minnesota for eight hundred
and fifty million dollars in essence admitting, according to Shannon Lerner,
that they acted with a deliberate disregard for the high
risk of injury to the citizens and wildlife of Minnesota.
And they they went for this settlement eight hundred and
(26:35):
fifty million dollars. It's not going to put them in
the poorhouse, but it is a significant chunk of change.
They went for the settlement because the Minnesota Attorney General's
office released a huge set of documents, internal studies by
scientists at THREEM, memos, emails, and research reports that detailed
what THREEM knew about the harmful potential of these chemicals
(27:00):
right now, right now, there's probably already at least according
to the CDC, some kind of PFA in your system,
in your body as you hear this, unless what point
three percent of the population. And one of the one
of the most widely acknowledged possible dangers of teflon, and
(27:22):
this was acknowledged publicly way before the lawsuits began, is
that if you have a teflon pan and you overheat
it to about six hundred degrees fahrenheit, it will it
could release toxic gases. But again, that didn't seem like
too much of a concern because very few people cook
stuff at six hundred degrees That's true. Here's a question
(27:42):
for you to leave us with. What's the alternative is?
You know, I have some non nonstick pans.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
They are a bit of a pain in the butt
when you cook certain things on them. But typically when
you're watching like cooking shows and like chefs and stuff
and high level cooks, they're not really using nonstick pans
all the time. They're using like copper pans and like
nicer stainless steel pans, right or le Crouse exactly. So
what's the what's the difference and what and is it?
Is it literally just a matter of well you might
(28:09):
have to pre soak them a little longer, take better
care of them. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
There are some manufacturers of nonstick pans that are advertised
as non toxic. So one example would be something like Willing,
which is just the word Willing with a Z.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
They're a German.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Company that made that made their name I believe in knives,
but they use a lot of They also manufacture a
lot of ceramic nonstick cookware. And then there's a thing
called green Pan. They use something called thermalon. It's a
patented ceramic nonstick layer that's made out of sand. Essentially,
(28:49):
it doesn't have lead or cadmium or pfas or PFOA
or all the other stuff. And the problem with that
stuff is it's heat resistant up to four hund and
fifty degrees cells, meaning that it won't release toxic fumes
unless you heat it past that. You can find other alternatives,
several of them are higher end, so they're going to
(29:12):
be more of an investment. But for their part, DuPont
has instituted some other substances to replace C eight because,
as we said, they no longer use that and the
EPA has been involved. It says it remains committed to
evaluating PFOA and PFOS under the regulatory determination process using
(29:38):
the best available science. As part of their evaluation, they
are going to be reviewing all newly available scientific info,
including the report by the ATSDR, the Agency for Toxic
Substances and Disease Registry. They also said they are taking
steps to accelerate quote the determination process before for the
(30:00):
existing statutory deadline, which is twenty twenty one, So in
a few years this stuff will change. But maybe the
last thing we should end on here is as of
November twenty eighteen, the EPA also found that the chemicals
manufacturers used to replace these original toxic substances like C eight,
were themselves toxic, so they replaced it with a different
(30:24):
with a different dangerous chemical. That's where we're at now.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Oh cool, slightly lesser of the two evils.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
It's I believe it's gen x is one of the
ones that they said was still dangerous, but hopefully yeah,
is it is slightly lesser. And look, we're we're not
saying that if you use a nonstick pan you are
going to die. We're saying that exposure to the substances
used to make teflon are are quite dangerous and a
(30:53):
lot of the a lot of the lawsuits came about
from former DuPont employees or employee of the manufacturers of
these substances, or people living near the plants or disposal sites.
So it's not Cooking with a non stick pan is
not the same thing as just huffing straight pfoas.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Oh good, So there's that right, cool. Yeah, that's comforting.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
And if you would like to read the full series
on the intercept, I want to tell you that it
is excellent. It is very thorough. It's quite long. It's
a long greed, but it's worth your time if you
would like to learn more about how this successful cover up,
this successful corporate conspiracy to disguise the health risk of
(31:39):
these substances actually evolved and developed over time, as well
as where it is at currently. Thank you so much
for checking out our show. Let us know what you
think is this is this situation wherein a large company
just wasn't aware of the science. Is this being exaggerated
(32:02):
by alarmist interest groups or is there a real and
genuine threat and if so, why or why not you
can find us on Instagram, you can find us on Facebook,
you can find us on Twitter. We'd especially like to
recommend Here's where it gets crazy, our community Facebook page
where you can hang out with your fellow conspiracy realist
(32:25):
and you know, see some funny memes.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Yeah, we've been known to lurk. We have, indeed, Yes,
so do all this.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
And that's the end of this classic episode. If you
have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can
get into contact with us in a number of different ways.
One of the best is to give us a call.
Our number is one eight three three STDWYTK. If you
don't want to do that, you can send us a
good old fashioned email.
Speaker 4 (32:53):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
Stuff they Don't Want you to Know is a production
of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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