Add Dupont to your Christmas card list

[racquetman]

Thanks Dupont. Thanks for killing us all. I know I appreciate it, and I'm sure many others do also.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-dupont15dec15,1,642927,print.story?coll=la-headlines-business&ctrack=1&cset=true

Here are some highlights:

Chemical giant DuPont Co. will pay the largest administrative fine in the history of the Environmental Protection Agency to settle charges that it hid information for more than 20 years indicating that a compound used to make Teflon poses a substantial threat to human health.

Perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, a synthetic compound pioneered by DuPont and used for 50 years, has been found in the blood of 95% of Americans tested. It persists in the environment indefinitely and migrates long distances in the air. Researchers have found it in the blood of polar bears near the North Pole.

Here's the comic relief quote:

"This settlement sends a strong message that companies are responsible for promptly informing EPA about risk information associated with their chemicals."

Yes, because I'm sure 16.5 million dollars puts a big dent in this billion dollar corporation. They must be panicking.

I'm not in a particularly good mood at the moment, but even if I was the happiest I have ever been, I feel confident in saying that I would have no problem lining up the people that are responsible for covering this data up and shooting them all dead while laughing uncontrollably.

You want to know why we're all dying of cancer - irresponsible corporations who could give a damn about your or I.

 

[Sheep]

I'm not in a particularly good mood at the moment, but even if I was the happiest I have ever been, I feel confident in saying that I would have no problem lining up the people that are responsible for covering this data up and shooting them all dead while laughing uncontrollably.

Agreed

SheepStar

 

[hifiman]

Well...they sponsor the 24 car, so they can't be all that bad.

 

[racquetman]

Well...they sponsor the 24 car, so they can't be all that bad.

Come live by the superfund site they're responsible for in my neck of the woods. You may change your racing team loyalties .

 

[Rock&Roll Ninja]

Why must all the delicious things be bad!

R.I.P. Teflon "pan candy". Now we must burn our eggs to save our children.

 

[furrycute]

Well, Dupont is not all evil. Can you imagine a world without plastics? And we have had many good uses of teflon, from cookware linings, to speaker cones, to artificial joint linings, to catheter tube linings, etc. We would be living in the chemical dark ages without Dupont.

And can you imagine the weight of gallon sized milk glass bottles?


Just use plastics judiciously. Plastics of any kind will melt at high enough temperatures. So purchase metal cookware and kitchen appliances if you can. That means no more plastic coffee makers (all present day coffee makers are made of those cheap plastic, I can't imagine how much melted plastic gets into your coffee every morning), no more plastic food storage containers in the microwave, no more plastic spatulas, no more disposable plastic forks/knifes/spoons for your take-out foods, no more plastic containers for your Chinese take-out hot and sour soup, etc.

Anyway, anything that generates heat better be in contact with metal, ceramic, glass, wood, or bamboo. Heat will melt plastic, regardless of what the manufacturer says.

 

[T2T]

Well, Dupont is not all evil.

Agreed. We have to thank them for coming up with kevlar, which is protecting our troops in Iraq and other areas where there's conflict.

 

[racquetman]

Well, Dupont is not all evil. Can you imagine a world without plastics? And we have had many good uses of teflon, from cookware linings, to speaker cones, to artificial joint linings, to catheter tube linings, etc. We would be living in the chemical dark ages without Dupont.

And can you imagine the weight of gallon sized milk glass bottles?


Just use plastics judiciously. Plastics of any kind will melt at high enough temperatures. So purchase metal cookware and kitchen appliances if you can. That means no more plastic coffee makers (all present day coffee makers are made of those cheap plastic, I can't imagine how much melted plastic gets into your coffee every morning), no more plastic food storage containers in the microwave, no more plastic spatulas, no more disposable plastic forks/knifes/spoons for your take-out foods, no more plastic containers for your Chinese take-out hot and sour soup, etc.

Anyway, anything that generates heat better be in contact with metal, ceramic, glass, wood, or bamboo. Heat will melt plastic, regardless of what the manufacturer says.

You sound like a company spokesman. "Sure we poisoned you for 20 straight years, but look at how much more convenient we made your lives."

Instead of going back to the drawing board after finding that PFOA was toxic, they just couldn't pass up the opportunity to make billions of dollars.

Plastics in food preparation is a definite no-no. It is not just heat, but cold that can cause plastics to leach dioxins, which are known carcinogenic compounds. I work in an environmental lab and am very familiar with the analysis of these compounds.

I think you are giving Dupont way too much credit. Dupont didn't invent plastics (do a search for history of plastics). The corporation holds some important patents, but corporations don't discover and invent things. People do. If people at Dupont didn't discover/invent teflon, kevlar, etc . . . someone somewhere else would have. The corporation itself is responsible for providing a safe product to consumers, and clearly they didn't do that - and they clearly didn't care.

By the way, 2004 revenues for Dupont (taken from their website) = 27.3 billion dollars. Ya, that 16.5 million dollar slap on the wrist really hurt.

Do you really not understand that this company knew it was poisoning each and every one of us and they just didn't care? This is no different than the whole Erin Brochovich / hexavalent chromium thing. It blows my mind that anyone would defend the people of this company!!

And yes, it would be absolutely terrible if I had to buy my hormone laden milk in pint size glass jars instead of gallon cartons. I don't think I could survive such a burden.

**sorry if this post sounds harsh, but I analyze groundwater all day, and sometimes the data just puts me in a bad mood**

 

[furrycute]

Can plastics leak toxic compounds even if they are placed in cold storage? Is that true? Wow, that just puts a whole new perspective on food storage. I have all my meat stored in plastic bags in the freezer, I thought that was safe.

So now what, replace all plastic food storage containers with ceramic ones? Stainless steel storage containers are definitely not safe for long term food storage. If there is any salt in the food, it will pit the metal surface, you'll end up eating the metal dissolved in food. That's what my mom always told me since I was a little kid.

I guess it's glass or ceramic ware then for food storage then. Bummer.


I understand where you are coming from. But Dupont is not the only company guilty of "poisoning" us. All manufacturing processes put pollutants into our environment, it's not just Dupont. Back in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, almost all people in Britain had black lungs because of all that smoke coming from the factory chimneys. The exhaust coming out of the backs of cars is literally poisonous if you breathe in enough of that stuff. Buildings with closed circulation systems have mold spores all over the ventilation ducts. The list goes on.

Pollution is an inevitable part of living in an industrial society. There is no escaping it.



Would consumers have voluntarily given up on those teflon coated non-stick pans even if Dupont had informed us about the dangers? This is not going to happen, because we are so used to the benefits of teflon. People will only stop using teflon only if the government mandated a cessation of the use all teflon containing products.



Plus, the females in our society voluntarily pop in birth control pills (once a day) that wreck harvoc with their hormone systems. And those estrogen pills have been linked to increased incidence of breast and ovarian cancer. But are people going to stop taking birth control pills? No.

And all those lipstick, women all over the world literally consume hundreds of thousands of tons of that stuff. Stop thinking for a moment the color on women's lips, think about actually ingesting that stuff. It really grosses me out. Ingesting all that chemical can't be good for health. But I have no proof.


And all those artificial food colorings, food additives, preservatives. In large enough quantities (either in single dose or accumulated over long periods of time) they are all toxic. But are we going to stop consuming them? No.

 

[racquetman]

Can plastics leak toxic compounds even if they are placed in cold storage? Is that true? Wow, that just puts a whole new perspective on food storage. I have all my meat stored in plastic bags in the freezer, I thought that was safe.

So now what, replace all plastic food storage containers with ceramic ones? Stainless steel storage containers are definitely not safe for long term food storage. If there is any salt in the food, it will pit the metal surface, you'll end up eating the metal dissolved in food. That's what my mom always told me since I was a little kid.

I guess it's glass or ceramic ware then for food storage then. Bummer.


I understand where you are coming from. But Dupont is not the only company guilty of "poisoning" us. All manufacturing processes put pollutants into our environment, it's not just Dupont. Back in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, almost all people in Britain had black lungs because of all that smoke coming from the factory chimneys. The exhaust coming out of the backs of cars is literally poisonous if you breathe in enough of that stuff. Buildings with closed circulation systems have mold spores all over the ventilation ducts. The list goes on.

Pollution is an inevitable part of living in an industrial society. There is no escaping it.



Would consumers have voluntarily given up on those teflon coated non-stick pans even if Dupont had informed us about the dangers? This is not going to happen, because we are so used to the benefits of teflon. People will only stop using teflon only if the government mandated a cessation of the use all teflon containing products.



Plus, the females in our society voluntarily pop in birth control pills (once a day) that wreck harvoc with their hormone systems. And those estrogen pills have been linked to increased incidence of breast and ovarian cancer. But are people going to stop taking birth control pills? No.

And all those lipstick, women all over the world literally consume hundreds of thousands of tons of that stuff. Stop thinking for a moment the color on women's lips, think about actually ingesting that stuff. It really grosses me out. Ingesting all that chemical can't be good for health. But I have no proof.


And all those artificial food colorings, food additives, preservatives. In large enough quantities (either in single dose or accumulated over long periods of time) they are all toxic. But are we going to stop consuming them? No.

I don't know if I'd worry about using plastics for cold storage. I read about someone testing water from a plastic bottle they had in a freezer. They supposedly found unsafe levels of dioxins and phthalates. This could be true or not true, but I like to error on the side of caution.

I guess that is my whole point in general. Inform me of the hazards and let me make my own decisions. I really don't care what other people do. You're certainly correct in saying that it probably won't stop most people from using these products, but I'm not one of them.

I'm just picking on Dupont because they are the easy target at the moment.