It seems unbelievable: cookware in which food doesn’t stick! Perfect eggs that come right off the pan, no scrapping required. Sounds too good to be true, right?
Not at all! In the 70s, DuPont started to use perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, to make Teflon and Scotchgard, that amazing thing that allowed those perfect eggs to be a part of every kitchen. The military even used it to put out fires.
PFAS are known as “forever chemicals” because once released into the environment they do not break down, and they build up in our blood and organs. According to test results from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 98 percent of Americans have PFAS in their blood. Even at very low doses, PFAS chemicals in drinking water have been linked to an increased risk of cancer, reproductive and immune system harm, harm to the liver, thyroid disease and other health problems.
Recently, two movies have been released in relation to DuPont’s “forever chemicals.” Dark Waters is about Robert Bilott, an attorney who risked his life to expose DuPont’s poisoning of a West Virginia town and is currently being shown at selected theaters around the US. The Devil We Know tells the story of DuPont knowingly poisoning the water supply in West Virginia and is available on Netflix.
The EPA and Department of Defense, we are finding out, calibrated their own water tests to exclude certain harmful chemicals at lower concentrations. These tests only registered especially high concentrations of chemicals, according to the vice president of one testing company.