A chemical used to make Teflon somehow got into the blood of everybody on earth. How did it get there? What does this mean for our health? These are very important questions, says the Environmental Protection Agency. The answer? Nobody knows. To find out, the EPA has assembled a distinguished panel of outside experts. But they don’t start work until next month. Meanwhile, the long-lasting chemical continues to accumulate in the environment -- and in our bodies. Toxicologist Tim Kropp, PhD, senior scientist with the watchdog group Environmental Working Group, finds the situation alarming. “It doesn’t break down -- ever. It is the most persistent synthetic chemical known to man,” Kropp tells WebMD. “It would take your body two decades to get rid of 95% of it, assuming you are not exposed to any more. But you are.” The chemical is PFOA, sometimes called C-8. It’s used to make Teflon - made by DuPont -- and many, many other products. But DuPont says PFOA is used only during the manufacturing process and that there’s no PFOA in Teflon cookware or other Teflon products. PFOA gets into the environment during the manufacturing process. Indeed, the EPA and DuPont are squabbling about millions of dollars of EPA-assessed fines for allegedly slow reporting of PFOA data. But people who live nowhere near PFOA manufacturing sites have relatively high blood levels of PFOA. How that happened, and what it means for their health, is a mystery, says Jennifer Seed, PhD, EPA chief of pollution prevention and toxics in the risk assessment division of the Existing Chemicals Assessment Branch. “PFOA is present in most people’s blood in this country and beyond; it’s even in wildlife,” Seed tells WebMD. “We have absolutely no understanding at this point how it got there. It is like fairy dust.” That’s scary. So are data from animal studies showing that PFOA causes cancer, liver damage, growth defects, immune system damage, and death in lab rats and monkeys.
