From: Robina Suwol
Date: 05 Apr 2003
Time: 12:47:00
Remote Name: 172.171.128.117
Policy memo from Environmental Working Group (EWG)
EPA Issues Powerful Indictment Of Chemical in Teflon
http://www.ewg.org/policymemo/20021113/20030328.php
Government Scientists Find Blood of U.S. Population Is Contaminated At Levels
That Could Cause Harm
EWG Concludes That Health Risks Are Even Higher Than Agency Believes
Summary
A draft risk assessment from the U.S. EPA has concluded that PFOA, a critical
component of Teflon production, and a chemical found in scores of consumer
products from clothes to stain repellents, food packaging and cosmetics,
presents unacceptably high developmental and reproductive risks to humans. Based
on powerful results from animal reproduction studies, and a comparison of blood
levels in the affected animals with blood levels in people, EPA scientists
conclude that children with the highest measured blood levels of PFOA have less
than one tenth the protection, or less than one tenth the margin of safety, than
the level the agency considers to be safe. In EPA parlance, the margin of
exposure for these children is just 7, when it should normally be 100
(EPA pg 51).
EWGs preliminary review of the EPA risk assessment and other studies conducted
by industry indicates that some children already have blood levels of PFOA at or
above the levels that cause serious toxicity in laboratory studies.
Both EPAs and EWGs analyses conclude that current PFOA exposures in children are
well above safe levels.
The EPA risk assessment is the result of an internal priority review of PFOA
prompted by unexpected toxicological and bioaccumulation discoveries(EPA pg 5)
with respect to the entire family of perfluorinated chemicals, particularly PFOS
(perfluorooctane sulfonates), the active ingredient in Scotchgard, which was
forced off the market by EPA in 2000. PFOS has many similar chemical and toxic
properties to PFOA. Neither compound breaks down in the environment, both kill
newborn rats at doses that have no effects on the mothers (dams), and both cause
a variety of cancers and other toxic effects.
According to EPA scientists, PFOA causes ?significant increases in treatment
related deaths?(EPA pg 35) in newborn animals at doses that did not affect the
mothers, and a range of serious changes in the weight of various organs,
including the brain (decrease), prostate (decrease), liver (increase), thymus
(decrease), and kidneys (increase in lower dose groups, decrease in high dose
group) (EPA pg 36). The deaths of a significant number of rat pups within 2 to 4
days after birth in experiments in which the mother was exposed is highly
unusual, and raises grave concerns about the toxicity of PFOA to people.
There is also evidence of birth defects in humans from PFOA-exposed workers.
Although the draft risk assessment says that ?reproductive outcomes have not
been examined? in people, in 1981 DuPont monitored the pregnancies of seven
women employed at its Teflon plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia. According to
an internal DuPont document made public through litigation, two of these seven
women gave birth to babies with birth defects - one an "unconfirmed" eye and
tear duct defect, and one a
nostril and eye defect. That same year, DuPont reassigned 50 women at the plant
to reduce PFOA exposure.
PFOA also causes tumors in at least 4 different organs in animal tests, and has
been associated with statistically significant increases in prostate cancer
death and incidence in PFOA plant workers in two separate studies (EPA pg
17-23). Animal data strongly support the evidence that PFOA causes prostate
cancer in humans, but the EPA has yet to evaluate those risks.
Concerns about the hazards of PFOA are heightened by the widespread exposure and
near-universal contamination of the human population with the chemical at levels
similar to those that cause organ weight changes and other indicators of
toxicity in laboratory animals. PFOA is present in the blood of more than 90
percent of the population of the United States, and levels in some people in the
general population are as high as levels found in some PFOA factory workers.
According to the EPA document, DuPont and other manufacturers do not know the
primary sources of these exposures, or why some exposures in the general
population are so high. The EPA concludes: It is not known what the
environmental concentrations of APFO (PFOA) are or the pathways of human
exposure to the general population.
Two factors, however, help to explain the situation. First, PFOA is infinitely
persistent in the environment. It never breaks down, as opposed to other long-
lived pollutants like PCBs and DDT, which have half lives measured in decades.
In addition, other major classes of chemicals, in particular a group known as
the telomer alchohols, break down into PFOA. This means that if PFOA itself were
banned today, the levels in the global environment, wildlife and people could
substantially increase, probably for decades. The total amount of PFOA generated
by DuPont and other companies will remain in the environment, and will circulate
through the biosphere and through the blood of the human race, indefinitely.
This brewing crisis represents a stunning breakdown of the regulatory system for
toxic chemicals. PFOA and related chemicals have been widely used in consumer
products for a half century, but it was not until the past several years that
scientists at the EPA had any data that indicated these levels of risk. Why?
Because industry is not required to conduct health and safety tests on
industrial chemicals like PFOA and PFOS as a condition of their sale and use, no
matter how widely those chemicals are utilized in industrial or consumer
products. This absence of real regulatory authority over the chemical industry
means that EPAs authority is largely limited to requests for data from chemical
manufacturers after contamination presents a crisis, as is the case with
PFOA.