News briefs: DuPont, Teflon, EWG, Michael Dourson and EPA, alachlor, acetochlor

Walmart pushes companies to get verified by EWG... for personal care products. More about EWG verified is here. The EWG Skin Deep program rates products based on the safety of their ingredients. Many lipsticks contain lead, which causes irreversible brain damage.

Marion Nestle presents a round up of sugar industry reports. Fat isn't the biggest problem, sugar is. Read the reports and look for things like them minimizing the dangers of sugar, or focusing on the "good points". "Sugar gives you energy! But don't worry about it being an inflammatory agent."

Attorney who exposed the dangers of DuPont's Teflon wins alternative Nobel Prize called the Right Livelihood Award. Info on Teflon and studies here.

Trump's chemical safety nominee, Michael Dourson, could be bad for consumers. The EPA is already pro-poison, and frequently downplays the dangers of Roundup and other pesticides, even as farmers complain about the failure of Roundup, so this is a bad move.

Dourson was also paid by Dow and Monsanto to propose safe exposure levels for breakdown products of two widely used herbicides, alachlor and acetochlor, in an attempt to counter water standards developed by Wisconsin and Minnesota. Both chemicals are associated with higher cancer rates in male agricultural worker...

And the CDC is not much better.

Teflon

Teflon is a brand of a type of fluoropolymer coating created by DuPont, is also called PTFE (polytetrafluroethylene). It's used on lots of cookware to make them non-stick, on vascular grafts used in coronary bypass surgery, ironing board covers, heat lamps and prosthetic limbs. But it can be dangerous.

EWG has some studies showing it kills birds. Here's a quick summary from EWG:

Studies show that thermal degradation of Teflon leads to the slow breakdown of the fluorinated polymer and the generation of a litany of toxic fumes including TFE (tetrafluoroethylene), HFP (hexafluoropropene), OFCB (octafluorocyclobutane), PFIB (perfluoroisobutane), carbonyl fluoride, CF₄ (carbon tetrafluoride), TFA (trifluoroacetic acid), trifluoroacetic acid fluoride, perfluorobutane, SiF₄ (silicon tetrafluoride), HF (hydrofluoric acid), and particulate matter. At least four of these gases are extremely toxic - PFIB, which is a chemical warfare agent 10 times more toxic than phosgene (COCl₂, a chemical warfare agent used during World Wars I and II), carbonyl fluoride (COF₂ which is the fluorine analog of phosgene), MFA (monofluoroacetic acid) which can kill people at low doses, and HF, a highly corrosive gas.

Teflon can also appear on heat lamps. One University of Missouri study showed a 52% mortality rate for chicks. These chicks showed severe pulmonary damage and lung lesions. Even temperatures as low as 325F can cause deadly off gassing.