http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0407270348jul27,1,4603358.story?coll=chi-news-hed
July 27, 2004
Chicago Tribune
(AP photo for the Tribune
by Jayme Clifton Halbritter)
Marvel chemicals
pop up in animals all over world
Teflon and Scotchgard,
found from the Arctic to Lake Michigan, are raising health concerns
By Michael Hawthorne
Tribune staff reporter
Chemicals used to make Teflon and Scotchgard have been promoted as modern
marvels for their ability to keep food from sticking to pots and fast-food
packaging, repel stains on carpets and furniture and make water roll off coats
and clothing.
Now scientists are finding that the chemicals also have managed to spread
throughout the world. Researchers have detected them in polar bears roaming
near the Arctic Circle, dolphins swimming in the Mediterranean Sea off the
coast of Italy and gulls flying above ocean cliffs outside Tokyo.
Known as perfluoronated compounds, the chemicals also were
recently detected for the first time in the Great Lakes, one-fifth of the
Earth's fresh water and the source of drinking water for more than 7 million
people in Illinois and 33 million others in the United States and Canada.
After decades of use with little government oversight, the chemicals are confounding
scientists with their pervasiveness in the environment and raising concerns
about their potential impact on public health. Perfluoronated
compounds have been found in the blood of virtually every person tested for
them in the United States, including children as young as 2.
The compounds have been linked to cancer, developmental
problems, liver damage and other ailments in animals, though the effects
on humans remain sharply disputed.
Industry records show manufacturers have been concerned about the safety of
the chemicals since the early 1960s, but government regulators and academic
researchers have only recently begun to study them in the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency's most extensive scientific review of a chemical in the
agency's 34-year history.
Earlier this month, the agency accused DuPont Co. of withholding for more
than 20 years of evidence that a perfluoronated compound used to make Teflon
endangered its workers and the public.
Company memos show the compound was passed in 1981 from a pregnant employee
to her fetus, but DuPont allegedly failed to report the information to the
EPA as required under federal law. The company has denied the allegations.
EPA officials became increasingly concerned after 3M, once the world's leading
manufacturer of perfluoronated compounds, revealed that its studies found
small amounts in people across the United States. Other
3M tests found the compounds in foods such as apples, bread, green beans and
ground beef.
Studies in the Great Lakes and other spots around the world are attempting
to provide clues about how the chemicals are moving into the environment and
contaminating the blood of humans and wildlife.
"We really don't know how they are getting there," said Keri Hornbuckle,
an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University
of Iowa.
In the first published study of its kind, Hornbuckle
and two colleagues found that concentrations of perfluoronated compounds in
Lakes Erie and Ontario were similar to those detected hundreds of miles away
near 3M chemical plants in Alabama, Florida and Georgia.
Other teams of researchers are expected to report soon that they have found
the chemicals in the rest of the Great Lakes and in smaller, more remote bodies
of water. The information will be used to calculate how intensively the chemicals
accumulate in fish and could help determine how humans are exposed.
2 theories on release
Products made with the chemicals are sold under brand
names such as Teflon, Stainmaster, Scotchgard and Gore-Tex. Some researchers
theorize that as such products age or suffer wear and tear, the compounds
break down and enter the environment. Others think there are unreported releases
of the chemicals into air and water.
"In some of the more remote, landlocked lakes, the only other way it
could get there is if some hiker left his Gore-Tex jacket behind," said
Matt Simcik, an assistant professor of environmental and occupational health
at the University of Minnesota, who headed a team that detected the chemicals
in Lake Michigan.
There are several types of perfluoronated compounds. But
all of them appear to break down in the environment or the body to one of
two chemicals, perfluorooctane sulfate or perfluorooctanoic acid, according
to industry research. Neither PFOS nor PFOA, as the chemicals are known, appears
to break down further.
"There are rocks that break down faster than these
compounds," said Timothy Kropp, senior scientist at the Environmental
Working Group, a non-profit research organization in Washington that
has urged the EPA to ban perfluoronated compounds. "The very thing that
makes them good for industry makes them bad for people."
Pressed by the EPA to contain the original formulation of Scotchgard, 3M decided
in May 2000 to stop making perfluoronated compounds. The
chemicals still are synthesized by a handful of other companies, including
DuPont, the maker of Teflon and Stainmaster products. (3M now makes
a related chemical that, the company says, does not accumulate in the environment.)
A DuPont spokeswoman said the company was unaware of the Great Lakes studies
and could not comment. The chemical giant has repeatedly insisted there is
no evidence that PFOA, which the company uses as a processing aid during the
manufacturing of Teflon, causes adverse health effects in humans.
Mindful of the economic impact of a multibillion-dollar industry, EPA officials
have said there is no reason for consumers to stop using products made with
the chemicals. But the agency's investigation could lead to regulations and
potentially could force DuPont and other manufacturers to phase out their
use.
EPA officials stepped up their investigation last year
after agency scientists raised concerns about potential links between PFOA
and reproductive and developmental problems in young girls and women.
Levels of PFOA reported in some children have been as high as those for chemical-plant
workers and were close to levels that caused developmental problems in rats.
Prompted by internal company memos obtained by lawyers in a class-action lawsuit
against DuPont, the EPA accused the company this month of failing to report
23 years ago that the chemical could cause birth defects. The company could
face more than $300 million in fines.
Toxicity known
in 1981
DuPont memos show company officials were aware of a March 1981 study by 3M
that found PFOA was toxic to newborn rats. The chemical
killed some of the rats and caused others to be born with eye and face defects.
That same year, two of five babies born to employees exposed to the chemical
at a DuPont plant outside Parkersburg, W.Va., had similar birth defects.
DuPont
moved female employees out of the PFOA area of the plant and advised all of
its PFOA workers not to give blood,
but the company later lifted those restrictions and allowed women to return
to their regular jobs.
A class-action lawsuit was filed by neighbors of the West Virginia plant whose
drinking water is contaminated with PFOA.
Lawyers for the neighbors recently obtained e-mails from a DuPont
attorney who said company officials might have underestimated potential health
risks associated with PFOA.
"The good news is that levels in drinking water are lower than levels
set using even the most conservative extrapolation techniques," Bernard
J. Riley wrote in a December 2001 e-mail to his son. "The bad news is
that it still is there, and folks do not like it. I would not."
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune
