Absolutely Avoid Using This Cookware, Unless You Want To FRY Your Health!

Learn why we should avoid this kind of cookware. Check out the article we found over at Mercola.

By Dr. Mercola

Deceptive and manipulative public relations strategies are the standard approach of the chemical industry.

People may believe chemical companies would strive to create chemicals that are as harmless as possible, and to provide strict safety instructions for use when they’re not, but history has shown that this isn’t the case.

Instead, the industry promotes chemicals as harmless even when they are well aware of the risks.

What’s worse, companies have been repeatedly found to have lied to federal and local regulators, consumers, and even their own employees about the toxicity of various chemicals.

They have also willfully ignored pollution problems caused by their activities. A classic example of this is the recent article I posted on the use of lead by the gasoline industry, which dumped millions of tons of lead into the environment over 80 years.

‘Epic’ Legal Battle Against DuPont Sheds Light on Deceptive Practices

DuPont is one such company, which has recently seen a slew of negative press following the filing of thousands of personal injury claims in what The Intercept calls “an epic legal battle” against the company — a battle that has been waged for the last 15 years, with little media coverage.

According to The Intercept:

“Concerns about the safety of Teflon, C8, and other long-chain perfluorinated chemicals first came to wide public attention more than a decade ago, but the story of DuPont’s long involvement with C8 has never been fully told…

[A] long trail of documents has emerged that casts new light on C8, DuPont, and the fitful attempts of the Environmental Protection Agency to deal with a threat to public health.

This story is based on many of those documents, which until they were entered into evidence for these trials had been hidden away in DuPont’s files.

Among them are write-ups of experiments on rats, dogs, and rabbits showing that C8 was associated with a wide range of health problems that sometimes killed the lab animals.”

DuPont’s Toxic Legacy: PFOAs

Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA, also known as C8), was an essential ingredient in DuPont’s non-stick cookware for decades.

The chemical is also used in hundreds of other non-stick and stain-resistant products, from microwave popcorn bags and fast-food wrappers to waterproof clothing and soil-repellant carpet and furniture treatments.

It’s also found in flame retardant chemicals, and hence items treated with flame retardants, which run the gamut from children’s items to furniture and electronics.

PFOA is a fluorinated chemical — it’s the fluorine atoms that provide that hallmark slipperiness. I first became aware of the dangers of fluoride-impregnated non-stick coatings back in 2001, and have warned about using such products ever since.

According to the CDC’s “Fourth National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals,” published in 2009, 12 different perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) were detected in Americans, including PFOA.

According to the Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry (ATSDR):

“Once in your body, perfluoroalkyls tend to remain unchanged for long periods of time. The most commonly used perfluoroalkyls (PFOA and PFOS) stay in the body for many years. It takes approximately four years for the level in the body to go down by half, even if no more is taken in.”

While there’s a dizzying array of chemical names in this group of chemicals, if an item is either non-stick, waterproof, or stain-resistant, it has some type of fluoride-impregnated coating that provides the slipperiness, and you can assume it can be problematic.

DuPont Found Liable for Ohio Cancer Case

Since the mid-1960s, Teflon waste has been routinely disposed of in landfills. In the past, DuPont also got rid of the hazardous chemical by dumping barrels of it out at sea — which was actually legal at the time — and some 200 drums of the C8 were also dumped near the plant on the bank of the Ohio River. The latter is what resulted in some 3,500 lawsuits being filed against DuPont.

The first case to reach trial was that of an Ohio woman named Carla Bartlett, who claimed C8-contaminated tap water caused her to develop kidney cancer. The case went to trial in September. As reported by Bloomberg:

“DuPont told their employees to wear gas masks and gloves while working with C-8, but ‘no one tells Ms. Bartlett to wear gloves and a gas mask before she takes a shower,’ Mike Papantonio, a lawyer for Bartlett, said to a jury and a packed Columbus, Ohio, courtroom in opening arguments…

Damages would be borne by Chemours, the company spun off July 1 that continues the Teflon business and which had agreed to take on many of DuPont’s legal obligations. Based on past settlements for personal injuries and wrongful deaths, that exposure could be about $498 million… Anything over $500 million might push Chemours into bankruptcy…”

On October 7, 2015 DuPont/Chemours was found liable for negligence in this case. After less than one day of deliberations, the jury awarded Bartlett a total of $1.6 million in damages: $1.1 million for negligence, and another $500,000 for emotional distress. The verdict is a sign of what’s in store for DuPont as the remaining 3,500 pending cases move forward. As reported by The Intercept:

“The presentation of historical documents was designed to convince the jury that the company acted irresponsibly… Bartlett’s lawyers laid out a clear timeline that began in the 1950s, when DuPont first learned of the chemical’s potential toxicity. By 1966, some DuPont employees realized that C8 was seeping into groundwater. By 1980, after the company instituted regular testing of its own employees, DuPont had evidence that C8 was present in workers’ blood — and within two more years there was evidence that the contamination persisted in human tissues.

By 1984, according to testimony, DuPont’s own testing had established that C8 had leaked into local drinking water. In 1989, DuPont knew that C8 caused testicular tumors in rats — and even classified C8 as a possible carcinogen. But rather than reporting these developments, Mike Papantonio told the jury, ‘They hid this information from the public for at least 16 years.'”

Next Article: Some Reasons Why You Should Buy And Use Cast Iron Cookware In Your Kitchen

Read full article: DuPont: Masters of Deception