November 30, 2018 • 32 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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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M Hello,
(00:24):
and welcome to the show. My name is Noel, and
our compatriot Matt is actually on vacation but will be
returning soon. In the meantime they call being Ben. We
are joined with our super producer, Paul mission controlled decant.
Most importantly, you are you, You are here, and that
makes this stuff they don't want you to know Today
(00:46):
is one of those the more you know kind of episodes.
It really, it really is on the surface, on the
on the non stick frictionalist surface. It may sound a
little bit mundane, but we have unco covered a tail
that UH is decades in the making and pretty disturbing.
(01:06):
The story starts in UH in the time of the
ancient Greeks. Really, if you think about it, yes, that's correct.
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 key star to clean.
(01:28):
You know, it's no secret even today that certain food
stuffs can be pretty messy and leave difficult stains or
residue on 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.
That's what tinfoil is for, my man, It's not only
(01:51):
for hats. Right there, we go, that's well, yeah, tinfoil
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, Snee and Greeks because they
(02:12):
were aware of this residue problem, and more than three
thousand years ago, they appear to have invented a very
clever type of ceramic grittle that functioned kind of like
non stick cooking surfaces, but not through chemistry. It was
through texture and craftsmanship. Right yeah, how so, so here's
the deal. Uh, These grittles that they invented had a
(02:34):
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
it was a completely flat surface, and they were doomed
to spend hours scrubbing away this bread residue. But if
(02:54):
they had the little pores, then it would kind of
vent a little bit and it would create a surface
bread was less likely to stick to. Yeah, right, it's
it's some pretty cool mcgivering 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,
(03:18):
go ahead and queue the image of a scullery made
scraping out the bottom of a huge soup pot. 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, you let it simmer a little
too long, and there becomes this like sticky, kind of
crusty layer on the bottom that you then have to
soak and and get it of. But the bottom, the
rice crust, tastes delicious, and the huge fan of it better. Yet,
(03:43):
let's cut past that image of a scullery made and
go to a despairing TV infomercial host. Let's imagine. Let's
imagine this scullery made at the beginning of an infomercial
if they had those in the Middle Ages throwing up
their hands and wailing. There's got to be a better way.
There has to be right. Here are the facts. This
(04:04):
situation began to change in nineteen thirty eight when a
chepists named Roy Plunkett invented something called poly tetrafluoroethylene or PTFE.
Ptf E is a type of thing, a genre of
thing known as per and polyfluoroalkal substances or pf A S.
(04:26):
Without going too far into the weeds on the chemistry here,
p f A S 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 p f A compounds,
and they have varying functional groups. They can include other
(04:47):
elements as well, such as oxygen, hydrogen, or sulfur. Today
we call the stuff that Roy discovered teflon. Roy accidentally
invented this substance, but he quickly realized at an number
of unique properties. First, it had high corrosion resistance, meaning
it's less likely to degrade to rust so on, which
(05:08):
is important because when you're repeatedly using this cookware, uh
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
your pots. And this stuff also had the lowest coefficient
of friction of any substance that had ever been manufactured before.
(05:30):
Now why is this important? Band This is interesting to
me 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. Yeah. Initially it was
used to strengthen seals that would be not seals like
(05:54):
but seals like you know, seals like 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 UM and interestingly enough, it
was considered a military secret, so teflon before it was
called teflon, the actual substance was top secret. It was
(06:18):
classified the US government. Uncle Sam and uh DuPont didn't
want the rest of the world to know about this technology.
DuPont actually didn't register the Teflon trademark until when they
began planning for commercial applications after the end of the war.
They said, you know, we we paid our dues helping
(06:39):
build the atom bomb, but that's kind of a niche market,
so we probably want to diversify. Yeah. Well, that's what
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 make a little cash, make a little scratch. Yeah, so, well,
scratch is probably a poor trace of words. Weren't talking teflon,
(06:59):
It's true. By nine 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, you know, not not
mom and pop shop big big bread. Yeah, big cookie,
big bread and big cookie exactly. But they initially avoided
(07:22):
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. While John Gilbert was working at DuPont, he realized, hey,
(07:43):
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
likelihood of the gear tangling up. Interesting, and that that's
(08:04):
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 pants in 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 company called tef all T E f A l.
(08:24):
In nineteen fifty six. 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 um use
(08:47):
the public is aware of is that this is the
stuff that helps you keep from having to scrub your
pots and pants for hours at a time. 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
(09:09):
about the dangers. They decided the profits outweighed the risk,
and they covered up these dangers four at the very
least decades. We'll be right back after a word from
our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. So, writing for
(09:34):
The Intercept, journalist by the name of Sharon Learner exposed
DuPont's multidecade cover up of what she refers to as
quote the severe harms of health associated with a chemical
known as pfo A or C eight and associated compounds
which as PFOS and gen X. Wow, that's a serious name. Well,
(09:55):
there also used to be a pretty good comic series
might still be out called Generation X. Do you remember?
I don't? 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 surficant because it reduces the
(10:18):
surface tension of water. It's a slippery, very stable compound,
and it was eventually used in hundreds of products. It's
in gortex, it's another waterproof clothing, it's coding for eyeglasses,
for tennis rackets, it's a stainproof coating for carpets and furniture,
firefighting foam, fast food rappers, microwave popcorn bags, bicycle lubricants,
(10:42):
satellite components, communication cables, ski wax, even pizza boxes, 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
(11:06):
C eight, and until Sharon Learner investigated this in 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 A and its manufacturers. Are people who use
it in products, including DuPont and three M, which manufactures
(11:29):
some of the substances that DuPont buys to create teflon.
This stuff culminated in a class action lawsuit that was
it's about three thousand five personal injury claims that went
to trial in September of But before we get to that,
(11:50):
and before we get to the e p a s
involvement in Uncle Sam's involvement or collusion in this uh
in this sort of 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 ultrative colitis, high cholesterol hypertension, thyroid disease, testicular cancer,
(12:16):
kidney cancer, and more. We know these aren't just rumors. Yeah,
and how come you don't hear that in the fine
print for non stick pan commercials? Right? You're just here,
don't use a metal spatula's right. And that's that's part
of the reason, because you know that teflon stuff can
flake off and into your body. In two thousand and
eleven two thousand twelve, after years of research, scientists published
(12:41):
more than three dozen peer reviewed articles on these effects,
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
(13:04):
up in your body sort of like how, um, remember
when people concerned about eating too many specific types of
fish because of mercury. Of course, right, and that's 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 Depont
(13:27):
because their 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 e p A, instead
of informing communities living near the plants where teflon was manufactured,
instead of informing their own employees, they kept the finding
(13:51):
secret and they perpetrated up remarkably successful cover up. They
absolutely did. Um. Sadly, we can rate the cover up
success in one absolutely frightening statistic. Um, and is this
C eight is a man made compound, did not exist
one years ago, and now it is in the blood
of point seven percent of Americans, and this is from
(14:15):
a two thousand seven analysis of data from the c
d C C eight is present in newborns, breast milk,
and blood from umbilical cords. It's also in a wide
range of wildlife, including loggerheads, sea turtles, bottlenose dolphins, harbor seals,
polar bears, cariboo, Wallace's bald eagles, lions, tigers, an arctic birds.
(14:35):
Apparently not bears. 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 c d C for some reason is screwing up,
(14:57):
but we can assure you the odds of that are
pret be 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 it's existing,
(15:17):
if it's found existing in those animals that are, you know,
maybe not even directly part of the human food chain,
then 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
(15:41):
Earth's 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, millions of years in
(16:02):
the future US. If some extraterrestrial civilization exists and for
some reason visits our planet, they may not find us,
but they will find traces of our of our time here,
and one of the things they will find will be
teflon in everything. Am I gonna die bend? I cook
(16:24):
with teflon pans all the time? Well, life is a
one way ridinal. Ok. That was a broad question. Is
taflon killing me softly? Uh? 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
(16:46):
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 word from our sponsor and we're back, eight
(17:08):
companies are responsible for C eight contamination in the US.
DuPont is far and away the leader here of these
eight companies in terms of both the use of C
A 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
(17:30):
and sold it to DuPont for years. While they were
also very likely aware of the dangers from the very beginning.
DuPont scientists approached cates 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 R. A.
(17:51):
Dickinson who noted that he had received an inquiry regarding
C quote possible toxicity. Yeah, and then in one just
seven years later, in house researchers already had the short
answer to Dickinson's question, um C eight was indeed toxic
and should be quote handled with extreme care, like not
(18:12):
slathered on household goods. Right by the next year, what
do we say there? Sixty one by by nineteen sixty
two experiments had um whittled down these broad concerns into
some red flags, and they found some specific conditions caused
(18:33):
by C A. Exposure to SEE eight was linked to
the enlargement of rat testicles, 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
(18:56):
with C eight and they found that well, at least
they asked him to do it. Uh. They found that
nine out of ten people in the highest dost group
were noticeably significantly ill for an average of nine hours,
so as much as eighteen you know, uh, And they
have flu like symptoms that included chills, backache, fever, and coughing.
(19:17):
We don't know if they did a follow up study
years later to see the rates of cancer, 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 p F A, and
p f A s are used in so many things.
(19:39):
We mentioned the microwave popcorn, the firefighting foam, fast food rappers,
industrial processes. 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,
(20:03):
as well as the extent of danger this poses to
humans and wildlife. Like here's the example. The DuPont used
to get rid of these substances by putting them in
barrels and putting rocks, uh, putting rocks in the barrels,
or waiting the barrels somehow, and then just dropping them
in the ocean or dropping them in water sources. So
(20:24):
that means that there are, um there are areas of
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. Yeah,
(20:44):
so even if that seems to be a kind of
a common issue, doesn't We were real good at putting
stuff in, haven't quite figared to have to put stuff out.
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 user prinice and he starts
making mops, but they make mops and then the flood begins,
(21:06):
you know. But I never that ever occurred to me.
That is a very good, uh analogy, metaphor what have
you for the exact kind of stuff we're talking about.
You can't put the magic back in the bucket, right exactly.
I actually went to a talk recently. It was it
was a weird pairing. It was Jaden Smith interviewing al
Gore about climate change, and something came up at the
end where Jaden asked al Gore, like, so, what technology
(21:29):
in the future is there to pull uh 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
(21:50):
more of a of a to do then just to
maybe do a better job of not putting the stuff
in there in the first 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
(22:13):
talk about these global or macro level human threats. But
the reality of the situation now, at least, and just
just my opinion, the reality of situation now is the following.
The Earth does not need humanity. Life Unearth in some
form will likely continue for a long long time. Human
(22:36):
life on Earth is not a sure thing, and you know,
it's it's not as if 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
(22:58):
right right, And this means that the most significant race
or challenge for the human species now is going to
be technological innovation versus uh increasingly inhospitable natural environments. So
are we going to survive as a species, um you know,
(23:19):
off planet living in domes there? There are a lot
of optimistic futurists who would say, yet, like that poly
shore movie biodome, biodome wasn't a Baldwin into that. There
was definitely a Baldwin in that. 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 going
to leave it there. I don't know if I don't
know if I should rewatch it. I think not. I
(23:40):
don't know if it's aged well, I doubt that it has.
What was the other one, um, with the Caveman, Brenda
and Fraser. I don't know if I watched that one, No,
you shouldn't. You know what I did the other night, Um,
I watched Phantom Menace again for the first time in
a long time. That movie is problematic on many levels.
(24:03):
Let me tell you 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, and there's just tons of them.
Not to mention the writing is quite hackneyed. It's yeah,
it's it's strange. I read this has nothing to do
(24:23):
with anything, certainly not the fate of the planet, but
uh have been a menace kind of had to do
with the fate of the planet a planet. Yeah, but
but there is a very interesting fan theory that initially
I dismissed. Uh and it argues that in the initial
stages of planning for Phantom Menace and the movies at
(24:47):
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. It's again, it's a fan theory.
I haven't in anything that made that counted as smoking
gun level evidence. Was his evil sith power just to
like annoy you to death. Well, it's interesting because he
(25:09):
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 or the other one of the other popular
fan theory analysis sites. But back to the back to
the Tethlon Menace. For lack of a better term. In
February of this year of two thousand eighteen, three M
(25:31):
settled a lawsuit with Minnesota for eight hundred and fifty
million dollars in essence admitting, according to Shannon Learner, 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 fifty million dollars. It's
(25:53):
not gonna it's not gonna put them in the poorhouse,
but it is a significant chunk of change. They went
for the settlement because the minnesoter To Attorney General's office
released a huge set of documents, internal studies by scientists
at three M memos, emails, and research reports. The detailed
what three m knew about the harmful potential of these
(26:16):
chemicals right now, Right now, there's probably already, at least
according to the CDC, some kind of p f A
in your in your system, in your body as you
hear this, unless what point three of the population. And
one of the one of the most widely acknowledged possible
(26:38):
dangers of teflon, and 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.
(26:59):
Here's a question for you have to leave us with
what's the alternative is I you know, I have some
non non stick pans. 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 non stick pans all the time. They're all they're
using like copper pans and like nicer stainless steel pans
(27:19):
right le Cruse exactly. So what's the what's the difference
and what and is it? Is it literally just a
matter of well you might have to pre soak them
a little longer, take better care of them. Yeah, there
are some manufacturers of non stick pans that are advertised
as non toxic. So one example would be something like Willing,
(27:42):
which is just the word Willing with a Z. They're
a German company that made that made their name, I
believe in knives, but they use a lot of They
also manufacture a lot of ceramic non stick cookwear. And
then there's a thing called green pan. They use some
thing called thermalon. It's a patented ceramic nonstick layer that's
(28:05):
made out of sand. Essentially, it doesn't have lead or
cadmium or p f A S or p f O
A or all the other stuff. And the problem with
that stuff is its heat resistant up to four and
fifty degrees celsius, meaning that it won't release toxic fumes
unless you heat it past that. You can find other alternatives,
(28:26):
several of them are higher end, so they're going to
be more of an investment. But for their part, DuPont
has um instituted some other other substances to replace C
eight because as we said, they no longer use that.
And the e p A has been involved, it says
(28:48):
it remains committed to evaluating PFOA and p fos under
the regulatory determination process using the best available science. As
part of their evaluation, they are going to be reviewing
all newly available scientific info uh and including the report
by the a t s DR, the Agency for Toxic
(29:08):
Substances and Disease Registry. They also said they are taking
steps to accelerate quote the determination process before the existing
statutory deadline, which is so in a few years this
stuff will change. But maybe the last thing we should
end on here is as of November, the e p
(29:30):
A 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 with a different
dangerous chemical. That's where we're at now. Cool is it
slightly lesser of the two evils? It's I believe it's
(29:51):
gen x is one of the ones that they said
was still dangerous. But hopefully yea, it is. It is
slightly lesser. And look, we're not saying that if you
you is a non stick pan, you are going to die.
We're saying that um exposure to the substances used to
make teflon are are quite dangerous and a lot of
the a lot of the lawsuits came about from former
(30:15):
DuPont employees or employees 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 p F O
A S. So there's that, right, that's comforting. And if
(30:35):
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 read,
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 these substances
(30:57):
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 where in a large company just
wasn't aware of the science. Is this being exaggerated by
(31:20):
alarmistum 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 especially like to
recommend Here's where it Gets Crazy, our community Facebook page
where you can hang out with your fellow conspiracy realist
(31:42):
and you know, see some funny means. We've been known
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those things. And if you don't want to do any
of those things, you don't have to. We just recommending it.
It's not required. You can also just send us a
good old fashioned email where we are conspiracy at how
stuff works dot com.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M Hello,
(00:24):
and welcome to the show. My name is Noel, and
our compatriot Matt is actually on vacation but will be
returning soon. In the meantime they call being Ben. We
are joined with our super producer, Paul mission controlled decant.
Most importantly, you are you, You are here, and that
makes this stuff they don't want you to know Today
(00:46):
is one of those the more you know kind of episodes.
It really, it really is on the surface, on the
on the non stick frictionalist surface. It may sound a
little bit mundane, but we have unco covered a tail
that UH is decades in the making and pretty disturbing.
(01:06):
The story starts in UH in the time of the
ancient Greeks. Really, if you think about it, yes, that's correct.
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 key star to clean.
(01:28):
You know, it's no secret even today that certain food
stuffs can be pretty messy and leave difficult stains or
residue on 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.
That's what tinfoil is for, my man, It's not only
(01:51):
for hats. Right there, we go, that's well, yeah, tinfoil
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, Snee and Greeks because they
(02:12):
were aware of this residue problem, and more than three
thousand years ago, they appear to have invented a very
clever type of ceramic grittle that functioned kind of like
non stick cooking surfaces, but not through chemistry. It was
through texture and craftsmanship. Right yeah, how so, so here's
the deal. Uh, These grittles that they invented had a
(02:34):
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
it was a completely flat surface, and they were doomed
to spend hours scrubbing away this bread residue. But if
(02:54):
they had the little pores, then it would kind of
vent a little bit and it would create a surface
bread was less likely to stick to. Yeah, right, it's
it's some pretty cool mcgivering 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,
(03:18):
go ahead and queue the image of a scullery made
scraping out the bottom of a huge soup pot. 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, you let it simmer a little
too long, and there becomes this like sticky, kind of
crusty layer on the bottom that you then have to
soak and and get it of. But the bottom, the
rice crust, tastes delicious, and the huge fan of it better. Yet,
(03:43):
let's cut past that image of a scullery made and
go to a despairing TV infomercial host. Let's imagine. Let's
imagine this scullery made at the beginning of an infomercial
if they had those in the Middle Ages throwing up
their hands and wailing. There's got to be a better way.
There has to be right. Here are the facts. This
(04:04):
situation began to change in nineteen thirty eight when a
chepists named Roy Plunkett invented something called poly tetrafluoroethylene or PTFE.
Ptf E is a type of thing, a genre of
thing known as per and polyfluoroalkal substances or pf A S.
(04:26):
Without going too far into the weeds on the chemistry here,
p f A S 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 p f A compounds,
and they have varying functional groups. They can include other
(04:47):
elements as well, such as oxygen, hydrogen, or sulfur. Today
we call the stuff that Roy discovered teflon. Roy accidentally
invented this substance, but he quickly realized at an number
of unique properties. First, it had high corrosion resistance, meaning
it's less likely to degrade to rust so on, which
(05:08):
is important because when you're repeatedly using this cookware, uh
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
your pots. And this stuff also had the lowest coefficient
of friction of any substance that had ever been manufactured before.
(05:30):
Now why is this important? Band This is interesting to
me 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. Yeah. Initially it was
used to strengthen seals that would be not seals like
(05:54):
but seals like you know, seals like 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 UM and interestingly enough, it
was considered a military secret, so teflon before it was
called teflon, the actual substance was top secret. It was
(06:18):
classified the US government. Uncle Sam and uh DuPont didn't
want the rest of the world to know about this technology.
DuPont actually didn't register the Teflon trademark until when they
began planning for commercial applications after the end of the war.
They said, you know, we we paid our dues helping
(06:39):
build the atom bomb, but that's kind of a niche market,
so we probably want to diversify. Yeah. Well, that's what
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 make a little cash, make a little scratch. Yeah, so, well,
scratch is probably a poor trace of words. Weren't talking teflon,
(06:59):
It's true. By nine 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, you know, not not
mom and pop shop big big bread. Yeah, big cookie,
big bread and big cookie exactly. But they initially avoided
(07:22):
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. While John Gilbert was working at DuPont, he realized, hey,
(07:43):
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
likelihood of the gear tangling up. Interesting, and that that's
(08:04):
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 pants in 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 company called tef all T E f A l.
(08:24):
In nineteen fifty six. 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 um use
(08:47):
the public is aware of is that this is the
stuff that helps you keep from having to scrub your
pots and pants for hours at a time. 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
(09:09):
about the dangers. They decided the profits outweighed the risk,
and they covered up these dangers four at the very
least decades. We'll be right back after a word from
our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. So, writing for
(09:34):
The Intercept, journalist by the name of Sharon Learner exposed
DuPont's multidecade cover up of what she refers to as
quote the severe harms of health associated with a chemical
known as pfo A or C eight and associated compounds
which as PFOS and gen X. Wow, that's a serious name. Well,
(09:55):
there also used to be a pretty good comic series
might still be out called Generation X. Do you remember?
I don't? 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 surficant because it reduces the
(10:18):
surface tension of water. It's a slippery, very stable compound,
and it was eventually used in hundreds of products. It's
in gortex, it's another waterproof clothing, it's coding for eyeglasses,
for tennis rackets, it's a stainproof coating for carpets and furniture,
firefighting foam, fast food rappers, microwave popcorn bags, bicycle lubricants,
(10:42):
satellite components, communication cables, ski wax, even pizza boxes, 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
(11:06):
C eight, and until Sharon Learner investigated this in 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 A and its manufacturers. Are people who use
it in products, including DuPont and three M, which manufactures
(11:29):
some of the substances that DuPont buys to create teflon.
This stuff culminated in a class action lawsuit that was
it's about three thousand five personal injury claims that went
to trial in September of But before we get to that,
(11:50):
and before we get to the e p a s
involvement in Uncle Sam's involvement or collusion in this uh
in this sort of 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 ultrative colitis, high cholesterol hypertension, thyroid disease, testicular cancer,
(12:16):
kidney cancer, and more. We know these aren't just rumors. Yeah,
and how come you don't hear that in the fine
print for non stick pan commercials? Right? You're just here,
don't use a metal spatula's right. And that's that's part
of the reason, because you know that teflon stuff can
flake off and into your body. In two thousand and
eleven two thousand twelve, after years of research, scientists published
(12:41):
more than three dozen peer reviewed articles on these effects,
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
(13:04):
up in your body sort of like how, um, remember
when people concerned about eating too many specific types of
fish because of mercury. Of course, right, and that's 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 Depont
(13:27):
because their 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 e p A, instead
of informing communities living near the plants where teflon was manufactured,
instead of informing their own employees, they kept the finding
(13:51):
secret and they perpetrated up remarkably successful cover up. They
absolutely did. Um. Sadly, we can rate the cover up
success in one absolutely frightening statistic. Um, and is this
C eight is a man made compound, did not exist
one years ago, and now it is in the blood
of point seven percent of Americans, and this is from
(14:15):
a two thousand seven analysis of data from the c
d C C eight is present in newborns, breast milk,
and blood from umbilical cords. It's also in a wide
range of wildlife, including loggerheads, sea turtles, bottlenose dolphins, harbor seals,
polar bears, cariboo, Wallace's bald eagles, lions, tigers, an arctic birds.
(14:35):
Apparently not bears. 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 c d C for some reason is screwing up,
(14:57):
but we can assure you the odds of that are
pret be 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 it's existing,
(15:17):
if it's found existing in those animals that are, you know,
maybe not even directly part of the human food chain,
then 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
(15:41):
Earth's 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, millions of years in
(16:02):
the future US. If some extraterrestrial civilization exists and for
some reason visits our planet, they may not find us,
but they will find traces of our of our time here,
and one of the things they will find will be
teflon in everything. Am I gonna die bend? I cook
(16:24):
with teflon pans all the time? Well, life is a
one way ridinal. Ok. That was a broad question. Is
taflon killing me softly? Uh? 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
(16:46):
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 word from our sponsor and we're back, eight
(17:08):
companies are responsible for C eight contamination in the US.
DuPont is far and away the leader here of these
eight companies in terms of both the use of C
A 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
(17:30):
and sold it to DuPont for years. While they were
also very likely aware of the dangers from the very beginning.
DuPont scientists approached cates 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 R. A.
(17:51):
Dickinson who noted that he had received an inquiry regarding
C quote possible toxicity. Yeah, and then in one just
seven years later, in house researchers already had the short
answer to Dickinson's question, um C eight was indeed toxic
and should be quote handled with extreme care, like not
(18:12):
slathered on household goods. Right by the next year, what
do we say there? Sixty one by by nineteen sixty
two experiments had um whittled down these broad concerns into
some red flags, and they found some specific conditions caused
(18:33):
by C A. Exposure to SEE eight was linked to
the enlargement of rat testicles, 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
(18:56):
with C eight and they found that well, at least
they asked him to do it. Uh. They found that
nine out of ten people in the highest dost group
were noticeably significantly ill for an average of nine hours,
so as much as eighteen you know, uh, And they
have flu like symptoms that included chills, backache, fever, and coughing.
(19:17):
We don't know if they did a follow up study
years later to see the rates of cancer, 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 p F A, and
p f A s are used in so many things.
(19:39):
We mentioned the microwave popcorn, the firefighting foam, fast food rappers,
industrial processes. 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,
(20:03):
as well as the extent of danger this poses to
humans and wildlife. Like here's the example. The DuPont used
to get rid of these substances by putting them in
barrels and putting rocks, uh, putting rocks in the barrels,
or waiting the barrels somehow, and then just dropping them
in the ocean or dropping them in water sources. So
(20:24):
that means that there are, um there are areas of
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. Yeah,
(20:44):
so even if that seems to be a kind of
a common issue, doesn't We were real good at putting
stuff in, haven't quite figared to have to put stuff out.
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 user prinice and he starts
making mops, but they make mops and then the flood begins,
(21:06):
you know. But I never that ever occurred to me.
That is a very good, uh analogy, metaphor what have
you for the exact kind of stuff we're talking about.
You can't put the magic back in the bucket, right exactly.
I actually went to a talk recently. It was it
was a weird pairing. It was Jaden Smith interviewing al
Gore about climate change, and something came up at the
end where Jaden asked al Gore, like, so, what technology
(21:29):
in the future is there to pull uh 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
(21:50):
more of a of a to do then just to
maybe do a better job of not putting the stuff
in there in the first 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
(22:13):
talk about these global or macro level human threats. But
the reality of the situation now, at least, and just
just my opinion, the reality of situation now is the following.
The Earth does not need humanity. Life Unearth in some
form will likely continue for a long long time. Human
(22:36):
life on Earth is not a sure thing, and you know,
it's it's not as if 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
(22:58):
right right, And this means that the most significant race
or challenge for the human species now is going to
be technological innovation versus uh increasingly inhospitable natural environments. So
are we going to survive as a species, um you know,
(23:19):
off planet living in domes there? There are a lot
of optimistic futurists who would say, yet, like that poly
shore movie biodome, biodome wasn't a Baldwin into that. There
was definitely a Baldwin in that. 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 going
to leave it there. I don't know if I don't
know if I should rewatch it. I think not. I
(23:40):
don't know if it's aged well, I doubt that it has.
What was the other one, um, with the Caveman, Brenda
and Fraser. I don't know if I watched that one, No,
you shouldn't. You know what I did the other night, Um,
I watched Phantom Menace again for the first time in
a long time. That movie is problematic on many levels.
(24:03):
Let me tell you 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, and there's just tons of them.
Not to mention the writing is quite hackneyed. It's yeah,
it's it's strange. I read this has nothing to do
(24:23):
with anything, certainly not the fate of the planet, but
uh have been a menace kind of had to do
with the fate of the planet a planet. Yeah, but
but there is a very interesting fan theory that initially
I dismissed. Uh and it argues that in the initial
stages of planning for Phantom Menace and the movies at
(24:47):
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. It's again, it's a fan theory.
I haven't in anything that made that counted as smoking
gun level evidence. Was his evil sith power just to
like annoy you to death. Well, it's interesting because he
(25:09):
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 or the other one of the other popular
fan theory analysis sites. But back to the back to
the Tethlon Menace. For lack of a better term. In
February of this year of two thousand eighteen, three M
(25:31):
settled a lawsuit with Minnesota for eight hundred and fifty
million dollars in essence admitting, according to Shannon Learner, 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 fifty million dollars. It's
(25:53):
not gonna it's not gonna put them in the poorhouse,
but it is a significant chunk of change. They went
for the settlement because the minnesoter To Attorney General's office
released a huge set of documents, internal studies by scientists
at three M memos, emails, and research reports. The detailed
what three m knew about the harmful potential of these
(26:16):
chemicals right now, Right now, there's probably already, at least
according to the CDC, some kind of p f A
in your in your system, in your body as you
hear this, unless what point three of the population. And
one of the one of the most widely acknowledged possible
(26:38):
dangers of teflon, and 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.
(26:59):
Here's a question for you have to leave us with
what's the alternative is I you know, I have some
non non stick pans. 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 non stick pans all the time. They're all they're
using like copper pans and like nicer stainless steel pans
(27:19):
right le Cruse exactly. So what's the what's the difference
and what and is it? Is it literally just a
matter of well you might have to pre soak them
a little longer, take better care of them. Yeah, there
are some manufacturers of non stick pans that are advertised
as non toxic. So one example would be something like Willing,
(27:42):
which is just the word Willing with a Z. They're
a German company that made that made their name, I
believe in knives, but they use a lot of They
also manufacture a lot of ceramic non stick cookwear. And
then there's a thing called green pan. They use some
thing called thermalon. It's a patented ceramic nonstick layer that's
(28:05):
made out of sand. Essentially, it doesn't have lead or
cadmium or p f A S or p f O
A or all the other stuff. And the problem with
that stuff is its heat resistant up to four and
fifty degrees celsius, meaning that it won't release toxic fumes
unless you heat it past that. You can find other alternatives,
(28:26):
several of them are higher end, so they're going to
be more of an investment. But for their part, DuPont
has um instituted some other other substances to replace C
eight because as we said, they no longer use that.
And the e p A has been involved, it says
(28:48):
it remains committed to evaluating PFOA and p fos under
the regulatory determination process using the best available science. As
part of their evaluation, they are going to be reviewing
all newly available scientific info uh and including the report
by the a t s DR, the Agency for Toxic
(29:08):
Substances and Disease Registry. They also said they are taking
steps to accelerate quote the determination process before the existing
statutory deadline, which is so in a few years this
stuff will change. But maybe the last thing we should
end on here is as of November, the e p
(29:30):
A 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 with a different
dangerous chemical. That's where we're at now. Cool is it
slightly lesser of the two evils? It's I believe it's
(29:51):
gen x is one of the ones that they said
was still dangerous. But hopefully yea, it is. It is
slightly lesser. And look, we're not saying that if you
you is a non stick pan, you are going to die.
We're saying that um exposure to the substances used to
make teflon are are quite dangerous and a lot of
the a lot of the lawsuits came about from former
(30:15):
DuPont employees or employees 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 p F O
A S. So there's that, right, that's comforting. And if
(30:35):
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 read,
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 these substances
(30:57):
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 where in a large company just
wasn't aware of the science. Is this being exaggerated by
(31:20):
alarmistum 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 especially like to
recommend Here's where it Gets Crazy, our community Facebook page
where you can hang out with your fellow conspiracy realist
(31:42):
and you know, see some funny means. We've been known
to a lerk we have. Indeed, yes, so do all
those things. And if you don't want to do any
of those things, you don't have to. We just recommending it.
It's not required. You can also just send us a
good old fashioned email where we are conspiracy at how
stuff works dot com.
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