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A chemical used in the manufacture of Teflon and other nonstick and stain-resistant products should be considered a "likely" carcinogen, according to an independent scientific review panel advising the Environmental Protection Agency. The recommendation included in the panel's final draft report is consistent with its preliminary finding, which went beyond the EPA's own determination that there was only "suggestive evidence" from animal studies that perfluorooctanoic acid and its salts are potential human carcinogens. "The predominant panel view was that the descriptor 'likely to be carcinogenic' was more consistent with currently available data, while a few panel members reached the conclusion...

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 25 (HealthDay News) -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced on Wednesday a voluntary program whereby makers of Teflon and other non-stick, stain-resistant products would cut back emissions of a suspected carcinogen, a byproduct of the manufacturing process. The companies would agree to reduce emissions of perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, and slash its use in products by 95 percent by 2010, and then completely eliminate it by 2015. The non-profit Environmental Working Group (EWG) said the move was significant, despite its voluntary nature and apparent lack of enforceability. "We want to commend the EPA for their leadership on...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Wall Street resumed its winning ways Tuesday after two new reports showed a jump in U.S. factory orders and a sharp rebound in consumer confidence. Stocks bounced back from Monday's losses after the Commerce Department said orders for big-ticket manufactured goods grew 3.4 percent in October, with increased demand for military aircraft and parts accounting for more than half of the $7.1 billion gain. Investors also found reassurance when the Conference Board said November consumer confidence rose 13.7 points to 98.9, besting economists' forecast for a reading of 90. A day earlier, the market languished as...

There has been a lot of outrage in the media concerning the burning of a couple of dead, Taliban fighters in Afghanistan in early October. Yet, the Australian journalist who videotaped the proceedings, Stephen Dupont, stated in an interview on National Public Radio yesterday that he believed the bodies were burned purely for reasons of hygiene when the local villagers refused to retrieve them, and that the American soldiers didn't do anything wrong. Go to bareknucklepolitics.com and follow the link to the NPR interview.

The Army has launched a criminal investigation following allegations that U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan burned the bodies of two dead Taliban fighters and used the charred corpses in a propaganda campaign against insurgent forces. According to The New York Times, video shown on the Australian TV show "Dateline" on Wednesday night depicts what is described as an American psychological operations team broadcasting taunts over a loudspeaker in the direction of a village thought to be sheltering Taliban fighters in an attempt to lure the fighters out into the open. A transcript of the show posted on the Special Broadcasting Service...

Teflon Nonstick Science When did every commercial product, including our most commonly used and inherently valuable forms of convenience, become a dire threat? According to some, particularly those with a political agenda that often deviates from science or provable fact, everything (or nearly everything) is a potential carcinogen, environmental hazard, or secretly destructive tool. Take, for example, the recently declared war against Teflon® (polytetrafluoroethylene). The product was discovered in DuPont's Jackson Laboratory in New Jersey in 1938, and introduced commercially in 1946. Teflon® is employed as a nonstick coating in kitchen utensils, clothing, carpeting, commercial flooring, food packaging, as well...

Teflon accusation doesn't stick Michael Fumento July 21, 2005 Two law firms filed a class action lawsuit Tuesday (July 19) on behalf of consumers regarding a chemical used to make Teflon called perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). The lawyers claim PFOA may be hazardous and want DuPont, Inc, the maker of Teflon, to pay $5 billion. If the suit pans out, whatever is left after attorneys’ fees would go to replace everyone’s cookware, impose a warning label on other Teflon products, and pay for medical monitoring and more research. "I don't have to prove that it causes cancer,” one of the slick...

Only in America: today, a group of Florida attorneys filed a $5 billion class action suit against DuPont claiming that the company has for decades failed to notify consumers of the health risks posed by "Teflon chemicals." The plaintiffs want DuPont to spend $5 billion to replace the cookware that is allegedly dangerous and provide medical monitoring for the plaintiffs who used the cookware. The suit also demands that Teflon-coated products in the future carry health warning labels. The suit charges that the "Teflon chemical" PFOA is a" carcinogen" -- defined here as a chemical that causes cancer in rodents....

Teflon, and the products that contain PFOA, are everywhere — from pots and pans, to Gore-Tex jackets, carpet coatings, computer chips, engine fuel lines and even pizza boxes... The issue now before the EPA is whether a chemical that's become a part of everyday life is also a threat

<p>BLAIR, Neb. — He operates 90,000 feet of hissing pipes and dozens of enormous churning vats — an industrial jungle with a single, remarkable purpose: "Essentially," plant manager Bill Suehr says, "we've got corn coming in at one end and plastic coming out the other."</p>

A few years ago, I moved to a small town in west central Virginia. Waynesboro. Our main employer for many years has been a DuPont plant (now no longer owned by DuPont) which produced much of the company's Spandex. In the course of doing this, they pumped a lot of mercury into the local river. So much so that the city now recommends that no one eat fish they catch from there. It would be nice to remove it. The apparent problem is that mercury settles to the bottom and attempts to remove it simply stir it up and send...

DuPont and 3M, makers of Teflon and Scotchgard, will remove a key ingredient used to make nonstick and stain-resistant products that also contaminates our bodies and the global environment. The move away from the chemical, known as PFOA, affects just a small fraction of DuPont's and 3M's business and won't take effect until the end of 2006. The compound, being studied by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a potential carcinogen, will still be used in other consumer and industrial products. "It's a small part of our sales," DuPont spokesman R. Clifton Webb said Tuesday. "We're taking this step not...

In 1945 Clement Attlee led the British Labour Party to victory over Winston Churchill's Conservative Party. He then proceeded to socialize much of the British economy, for he believed that "the creation of a society based on social justice . . . could only be attained by bringing under public ownership and control the main factors in the economic system." Labour's goal was to get rid of the waste and irrationality that, in the socialist view, doomed market economies to failure. Fast forward six decades, and you hear an Attlee echo--Sen. Hillary Clinton telling a California audience last summer that...

Boston Red Sox fans celebrated a World Series victory for the first time in 86 years. Weekly Reader grade school students can celebrate being better pollsters than Zogby, Fox and CBS: in October, as in 11 of the previous 12 elections, they correctly picked the winner of the presidential campaign. And SpaceShipOne became the first private craft ever to reach space--71 miles above the earth. So 2004 was a very good year in America. It was a good year too in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Iraq. On the other hand, it was a very bad year for the United Nations, Russia,...

Pursue Happiness, Vote GOP The real reason Republicans win. BY PETE DU PONT Monday, November 29, 2004 12:01 a.m. A prescient friend among serious Democrats explained last week what was wrong with his party and how it had contributed to liberalism's defeat on Nov. 2. He believes a growing majority of Americans simply don't trust Democrats because Democrats don't trust Mr. and Mrs. America to make sound decisions for themselves and their families. Blue-collar Americans believe liberals are anti-Christian and seek to suppress all public expression of religious beliefs, including school prayer. That they are amoral--or, as Irving Kristol once said,...

If the Democratic Party allows itself to be defined by Ted Kennedy, Michael Moore and the editorial page of the New York Times, while Republicans, their president and their strengthened congressional majorities encourage the pursuit of happiness in an opportunity and ownership society, then Mr. and Mrs. America will make sure conservatives are in power for a great many years to come.

DuPont in deep water over Teflon's hidden danger to humans and the environmentWhile it remains one of DuPont's most valuable assets, evidence suggests that Teflon may be making people sick and harming the environment, and the fact that the company has known and concealed this for decades is not going to help its defense of an upcoming class-action lawsuit in court NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE , NEW YORK Sunday, Aug 08, 2004,Page 12 The Washington Works plant near Parkersburg, West Virginia, where DuPont has made Teflon -- and allegedly concealed its polluting and life-threatening properties -- for decadesPHOTO: NY TIMES...

An important and serious argument is going on in Washington about whether taxes on Americans' incomes should stay where they are or dramatically rise, and whether government spending should continue its accelerating growth. We know what Democrats think. They despise tax cuts and believe government spending should be higher. Washington Republicans, on the other hand, are unsure of themselves. They used to be for lower taxes and smaller government; now they seem to want bigger spending even if it means higher taxes, abandoning Reagan conservatism for '60s liberalism. In other words, this is a battle for the heart of the...

Since his death a great deal has been written about Ronald Reagan. About his vision and his ability to communicate with regular Americans. About the extraordinary economic growth his tax rate reductions created, and his belief that Soviet communism was an evil empire, not an alternative form of government that must be understood. About his foreign policy leadership that led Sen. Ted Kennedy to eulogize him as "the president who won the Cold War." But Reagan was something more: a turning-point president who believed that the policy directions of the past were wrong, and that with different policies our future...

<p>"The U.N.'s mechanisms for controlling Oil-for-Food contracts were inadequate, transparency went by the wayside, and effective internal review of the program did not occur. . . . If the United Nations cannot be trusted to run a humanitarian program, its other activities, including peacekeeping, arms inspection regimes or development projects may be called into question."</p>