Media Sticks Poisonous Popcorn Bags to Teflon Chemical

Media Sticks Poisonous Popcorn Bags to Teflon Chemical November 28 2005 Trevor Butterworth

Activist group plays media with whistleblowing claims. Is PFOA the new Alar - or is this the worst-reported science story of the year? Errors force ABC to change story, but rest of media fall for imaginary federal safety standard, health risks

Here’s how ridiculously easy it has become to spin the press. Two weeks ago, the Environmental Working Group (EWG), which has a long history of scare-mongering and releasing statistically-invalid studies, unveiled Glenn Evers, a “whistleblower” who once worked for DuPont as a chemical engineer, and who claimed the company was derelict in addressing the risk from papers coated with chemicals related to Teflon.

Here’s how ABC’s Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross originally reported the story’s lede for Good Morning America:

To prevent grease stains on fast food and pizza boxes, microwave popcorn bags, candy bar wrappers and hundreds of other food items, the paper is coated with a chemical that’s part of the Teflon family.

Now ABC News has learned that the Food and Drug Administration has opened an investigation into its safety, based on new information and the testimony of a DuPont Whistleblower. The reason for the new investigation, according to Ross, lies in a 1987 memo obtained by the Environmental Working Group, which apparently shows that the flurotelomer Zonyl RP was migrating from the food wrapping "at three times what the FDA allowed." (Or as the EWG claimed in their press release, Zonyl RP could contaminate food at over three times the federal safety standard).

As Evers noted, DuPont “never notified the FDA. They never said to the FDA, 'We're stopping our production of this product until we figure out what the problem is.”

BAN DIHYDROGEN MONOXIDE!
Dihydrogen monoxide is colorless, odorless, tasteless, and kills uncounted thousands of people every year. Most of these deaths are caused by accidental inhalation of DHMO, but the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide do not end there. Prolonged exposure to its solid form causes severe tissue damage. Symptoms of DHMO ingestion can include excessive sweating and urination, and possibly a bloated feeling, nausea, vomiting and body electrolyte imbalance. For those who have become dependent, DHMO withdrawal means certain death.

Dihydrogen monoxide:

is also known as hydroxl acid, and is the major component of acid rain.
contributes to the "greenhouse effect."
may cause severe burns.
contributes to the erosion of our natural landscape.
accelerates corrosion and rusting of many metals.
may cause electrical failures and decreased effectiveness of automobile brakes.
has been found in excised tumors of terminal cancer patients.
Contamination is reaching epidemic proportions!

Quantities of dihydrogen monoxide have been found in almost every stream, lake, and reservoir in America today. But the pollution is global, and the contaminant has even been found in Antarctic ice. DHMO has caused millions of dollars of property damage in the midwest, and recently California.

Despite the danger, dihydrogen monoxide is often used:

as an industrial solvent and coolant.
in nuclear power plants.
in the production of styrofoam.
as a fire retardant.
in many forms of cruel animal research.
in the distribution of pesticides. Even after washing, produce remains contaminated by this chemical.
as an additive in certain "junk-foods" and other food products.
Companies dump waste DHMO into rivers and the ocean, and nothing can be done to stop them because this practice is still legal. The impact on wildlife is extreme, and we cannot afford to ignore it any longer!

The American government has refused to ban the production, distribution, or use of this damaging chemical due to its "importance to the economic health of this nation." In fact, the navy and other military organizations are conducting experiments with DHMO, and designing multi-billion dollar devices to control and utilize it during warfare situations. Hundreds of military research facilities receive tons of it through a highly sophisticated underground distribution network. Many store large quantities for later use.

I'll tell you what I think. Regardless of whether this thing has teeth, I know that I happen to know numerous individuals who have various illnesses, all classfied as auto-immune disorders - these range from MS to interstitial cystitis to lupus, fibromyalgia, ITP (I can't even remember what this stands for but it's similar to lupus). Why are so many people coming down with these disorders? Also, the common allergies many of us have are classified as AI disorders and these were quite rare even as far back as the early 1900's so what's the scoop? I've read up a bit on this and there doesn't seem to be an easy answer. It makes me wonder though with all these chemicals lining our food, plastics and so on. As a dear toxicologist friend of mine told me years ago, "we don't really know." When they determine how many ppm or ppb are safe for human consumption, it is based on statistical analysis and we all know that no one individual is identical to another. Who can say? Some people die if they eat a peanut.

re: the "Environmental Working Group"*(in case you all were curious):

* Supporter of radical environmentalist causes
* Heavily funded by the Ford Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts, the W. Alton Jones Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, and the Turner Foundation

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) presents a dual example of bad science masquerading as environmental activism, and political corruption run amuck in the philanthropy business. Ostensibly created in 1993, the EWG actually began receiving foundation money in 1989 under the leadership of Kenneth Cook, at that time vice-president of the publishing house Center for Resource Economics/Island Press (CRE/IP). Early supporters included the Hewlett and Ford Foundations and the Pew Charitable Trusts, and by 1993 the group had accepted nearly $5 million.

CRE/IP was founded as Island Press in 1979 by Catherine Mellon, and was reorganized as the CRE/IP in 1984; the operations of CRE/IP were headed by Tides Foundation director Charles Savitt. Drummond Pike, founder of the Tides Foundation, has also served on the boards of both CRE/IP and EWG from its inception. In 1993, Cook separated EWG from CRE/IP and moved it under the umbrella of the Tides Foundation. In 1996, the Tides Foundation spun off the Tides Center and EWG was shifted to the new entity. In 1999, EWG incorporated as a separate entity.

In agriculture, EWG has been a leading proponent of the virtues of organic foods, despite the fact that those virtues are largely illusory. A 1999 report by EWG, How 'Bout Them Apples, claimed that children who ingested apples with legal residues of methyl parathion could suffer dizziness, nausea, or other illness. The EPA flatly denied the claim, which EWG could not substantiate. The legal limit of atrazine in drinking supplies is 3 parts per billion. EWG attempted to claim that the federal standard was 0.15 parts per billion, a statement that was simply untrue and was designed to garner headlines and induce panic. In 1996, EWG produced its landmark Shoppers Guide to Pesticides in Produce; EWG ignored the volume of pesticides, the real measure of toxicity, and focused instead on the number of stray or trace levels detected, a number which in no way illustrates potential health risks. The EPA quickly denounced the Guide as junk science, and the Guide's mastermind, EWG's Richard Wiles, conceded to investigative reporter Matt Labash that EWG did not have a single scientist or doctor on its staff. Despite the Guide's lack of scientific credibility, EWG's website trumpets the fact that organic food giant, Stonyfield Farms, has given EWG a grant to re-release the work.

EWG has published a Farm Subsidy Database that ignores how much subsidy money has been given for soil conservation and farm and timberland retirement. In addition, while EWG claims that subsidies have gone to wealthy corporations, EWG's own database makes clear that often those "subsidies" are actually negative subsidies, i.e., fines or other payments made by corporations to the Agriculture Department.

EWG has desperately waged war with chemical companies, using the Freedom of Information Act to acquire data that it intends to feed to lawyers, hoping to generate harassing lawsuits. Currently, EWG is attacking DuPont over Teflon, and hopes to involve the 3M Company in the suit. EWG has harassed the lumber and timber industries over the use of arsenic as a wood preservative, despite the EPA's assertion that the minimal level of arsenic constitutes no public health risk. EWG has manufactured alarmist statistics on the elevated level of PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) in farm-raised salmon, despite the fact that the National Cancer Institute denies that the trace levels of PCBs pose any health risk whatsoever. EWG has attacked the use of pesticides at virtually every opportunity, despite the minimal health risks posed by pesticides and the potential bacteriological dangers posed by organic foods, the industry which has been the real beneficiary of EWG's "science."

* Source: discoverthenetwork.org

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