Speaker 1: Welcome back to the show. Fellow conspiracy realist. Are you
Speaker 1: currently listening to us while cooking? Are you using a
Speaker 1: non stick pan? Who? Buddy, we got some news for you.
Speaker 2: Are you watching YouTube videos by the comedy music group
Speaker 2: the Non Stick Pans. Well, if you're not, you shouldn't.
Speaker 2: They do some really great David Bowie impressions. But no,
Speaker 2: the real thing, non stick pans and the cover up
Speaker 2: behind that chemical that leads to that very specific effect. Boy,
Speaker 2: oh boy, is it worth a podcast and more.
Speaker 3: We have some very specific memories about nonstick pans in
Speaker 3: this episode, and we think it might line up with
Speaker 3: some of yours. We want to hear from you, so
Speaker 3: when you finish, definitely right to us. Let us know.
Speaker 4: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
Speaker 4: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 4: learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: My name is Noel, and our compatriot Matt is actually
Speaker 1: on vacation, but we'll be returning soon. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: they call me Ben. We were joined with our super
Speaker 1: producer Paul Mission Control decand most importantly, you are you
Speaker 1: you are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
Speaker 1: want you to know.
Speaker 2: Today is one of those the more you know kind
Speaker 2: of episodes.
Speaker 1: It really, it really is on the surface, on the
Speaker 1: on the non stick frictionaliss surface. It may sound a
Speaker 1: little bit mundane, but we have uncovered a tale that
Speaker 1: is decades in the making and pretty disturbing. The story starts,
Speaker 1: uh in the time of the ancient Greeks. Really, if
Speaker 1: you think about it, the plan Greeks. Yes, that's correct.
Speaker 1: You back in the old days. For most of human history,
Speaker 1: anybody who cooked something struggled to make cook wear that
Speaker 1: wasn't a huge pain in the keyster to clean. You know,
Speaker 1: it's no secret even today that certain food stuffs can
Speaker 1: be pretty messy and leave difficult stains or residue on
Speaker 1: pots or pants. Like for instance, have you ever roasted
Speaker 1: something and then realized, you know, I have to make
Speaker 1: this taste great, because I'm going to spend some time
Speaker 1: afterwards just scrubbing the heck out of this.
Speaker 2: That's what tenfoil is for, my man. Yes, it's not
Speaker 2: only for hats.
Speaker 1: Right there we go, that's well done.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Tenfoil is an excellent example of how we have evolved
Speaker 1: strategies and technologies to combat this. You know, it's not
Speaker 1: even unfortunate, it's just an inconvenient reality of cooking. I'm
Speaker 1: glad you brought up the ancient mice knee in Greeks
Speaker 1: because they were aware of this residue problem. And more
Speaker 1: than three years ago they appeared to have invented a
Speaker 1: very clever type of ceramic griddle that functioned kind of
Speaker 1: like non stick cooking surfaces.
Speaker 2: But not through chemistry. It was through texture and craftsmanship, right, yeah, hellso,
Speaker 2: so here's the deal. These griddles that they invented had
Speaker 2: a smooth side and a side that was kind of porous,
Speaker 2: covered with these tiny holes, and they were using it
Speaker 2: to grill bread. And bread was probably placed on the
Speaker 2: side with the holes because the dough would stick if
Speaker 2: it was a completely flat surface, and they were doomed
Speaker 2: to spend hours scrubbing away this bread residue. But if
Speaker 2: they had the little pores, then it would kind of
Speaker 2: vent a little bit and it would create a surface
Speaker 2: that the bread was less likely to stick to. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Right, it's some pretty cool mcgiving there, and sadly it
Speaker 1: didn't really catch on the rest of the world. Was
Speaker 1: stuck spending hours and hours scrubbing away on ordinary pots, pans,
Speaker 1: and other cooking surfaces. So in your mind, conspiracy realist,
Speaker 1: go ahead and cue the image of a scullery maid
Speaker 1: scraping out the bottom of a huge soup pot.
Speaker 2: That was me last night. That was you last night.
Speaker 2: I made some rice and rice. If you let it
Speaker 2: go a little too longer, and you let it simmer
Speaker 2: a little too longer, it becomes this like sticky, kind
Speaker 2: of crusty layer on the bottom, yeah, that you then
Speaker 2: have to soak and get rid of.
Speaker 1: But the bottom, the rice crust tastes delicious, really huge
Speaker 1: fan of it. Better Yet, let's cut past that image
Speaker 1: of a scullery maid and go to a despairing TV
Speaker 1: infomercial host. Let's imagine let's imagine this scullery maid at
Speaker 1: the beginning of an infomercial, if they had those in
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages throwing up their hands and wailing, There's
Speaker 1: got to.
Speaker 2: Be a better way. There has to be right.
Speaker 1: Here are the facts. This situation began to change in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty eight when it kept us named. Roy Plunkett
Speaker 1: invented something called polytetrafluoroethylene or ptfe PTFE is a type
Speaker 1: of thing, a genre of thing known as per and
Speaker 1: polyfluoroalcl substances or PFA's. Without going too far into the
Speaker 1: weeds on the chemistry here, pfas encompass an entire family
Speaker 1: of synthetic chemicals that have one thing in common. They
Speaker 1: contain a carbon and fluorine atom backbone. There are hundreds
Speaker 1: of these things out there, hundreds of known PFA compounds,
Speaker 1: and they have varying functional groups. They can include other
Speaker 1: elements as well, such as oxygen, hydrogen, or sulfur. Today
Speaker 1: we call the stuff that Roy discovered teflon. Roy accidentally
Speaker 1: invented this substance, but he quickly realized at a number
Speaker 1: of unique properties. First, it had high corrosion resistance, meaning
Speaker 1: it's less likely to degrade to rust so.
Speaker 2: On, which is important because when you're repeatedly using this
Speaker 2: cookware and you're washing it, rust is likely to develop,
Speaker 2: exactly very important that you have some kind of safeguard
Speaker 2: against it, or else you're gonna have to keep switching
Speaker 2: out your pots.
Speaker 1: And this stuff also had the lowest coefficient of friction
Speaker 1: of any substance that had ever been manufactured before.
Speaker 2: Now, why is this important, Ben, This is interesting to me.
Speaker 1: Because it makes it slick, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: things just tend not to stick to it. This this
Speaker 1: is something that we associate with cooking today, but originally
Speaker 1: it had a much different use.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Initially it was used to strengthen seals that would
Speaker 2: be not seals like but seals like you know, seals
Speaker 2: like a jar. To tighten strengthen these seals that would
Speaker 2: be specifically exposed to uranium hexafluoride gas during the development
Speaker 2: of the A bomb in World War Two. And interestingly enough,
Speaker 2: it was considered a military secret.
Speaker 1: So Teflon before it was called teflon, the actual substance
Speaker 1: was top secret. It was classified the US government. Uncle
Speaker 1: Sam and DuPont didn't want the rest of the world
Speaker 1: to know about this technology. DuPont actually didn't register the
Speaker 1: Teflon trademark until nineteen forty four when they began planning
Speaker 1: for commercial applications after the end of the war. They said,
Speaker 1: you know, we paid our dues helping build the Adam Baum,
Speaker 1: but that's kind of a niche market, so we probably
Speaker 1: want to diversify.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, that's that happens all the time with this
Speaker 2: government stuff. It starts out for a very specific use,
Speaker 2: and then they realize, okay, we can now let this
Speaker 2: out to the public and make a little cash.
Speaker 1: Make a little scratch. Yeah, so, well, scratch is probably
Speaker 1: a poor trace of words. We're talking teflon, It's true.
Speaker 1: By nineteen fifty one, DuPont had figured out uses for
Speaker 1: teflon in large scale bread and cookie making. And we
Speaker 1: say large scale bread and cookie making, what we mean
Speaker 1: is the industrial level stuff. Yeah, you know, not mom
Speaker 1: and pop shop base, big bread, Yeah, big cookie, big
Speaker 1: bread and big cookie exactly. But they initially avoided marketing
Speaker 1: teflon in consumer cookwear because they were concerned internally over
Speaker 1: a possible health risk. They didn't really publicize this, they
Speaker 1: just said, let's not do it yet. The credit for
Speaker 1: the teflon revolution belongs mostly to a guy named John Gilbert.
Speaker 1: While John Gilbert was working at DuPont, he realized, hey,
Speaker 1: teflon can be used to coat the average pot and pan,
Speaker 1: And just one year later there was a French engineer
Speaker 1: who was experimenting with using teflon to coat his fishing
Speaker 1: gear because it was so frictionless that it reduced the
Speaker 1: likelihood of the gear tangling up interesting, and that's all
Speaker 1: he thought about. But his wife said, hey, that looks
Speaker 1: like it worked for fishing gear. Why don't we coat
Speaker 1: our pots and pans and the same stuff. The idea
Speaker 1: was a success. In nineteen fifty four, they were granted
Speaker 1: a patent from the French government and they formed a
Speaker 1: company called tefol tefal in nineteen fifty six.
Speaker 2: And so nowadays there are other types of nonstick coding,
Speaker 2: but Teflon remains the most well known. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: a household name, and it has tons of applications from
Speaker 2: coding cables to providing corrosion resistance to industrial equipment. But
Speaker 2: the still most widely known use the public is aware
Speaker 2: of is that this is the stuff that helps you
Speaker 2: keep from having to scrub your pots and pans for
Speaker 2: hours at a time.
Speaker 1: Right right, there is one small problem. Not only can
Speaker 1: this stuff be dangerous, surprisingly so, but it turns out
Speaker 1: that the manufacturers of teflon and related substances and the
Speaker 1: ingredients of teflon knew about the dangers. They decided the
Speaker 1: profits outweighed the risk, and they covered up these dangers
Speaker 1: for at the very least decades. We'll be right back
Speaker 1: after a word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 2: So, writing for The Intercept, journalists by the name of
Speaker 2: Sharon Lerner exposed DuPont's multi decade cover up of what
Speaker 2: she refers to as quote the severe harms of health
Speaker 2: associated with a chemical known as PFOA or C eight
Speaker 2: and associated compounds it as PFOS and gen X. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's a that's a serious name.
Speaker 1: Well, there also used to be a pretty good comic
Speaker 1: series might still be out called Generation X. Do you
Speaker 1: remember that?
Speaker 2: I don't. Oh?
Speaker 1: Okay, well check it out if you're a Marvel fan.
Speaker 1: For a long long time, few people in the public
Speaker 1: had ever heard of C eight. C eight is one
Speaker 1: of the essential ingredients in teflon. This stuff is everywhere.
Speaker 1: It's called a surface and because it reduces the surface
Speaker 1: tension of water. It's a slippery, very stable compound, and
Speaker 1: it was eventually used in hundreds of products. It's in
Speaker 1: gore tex, it's another waterproof clothing. It's a coating for eyeglasses,
Speaker 1: for tennis rackets, it's a stain proof coating for carpets
Speaker 1: and furniture, firefighting foam, fast food wrappers, microwave popcorn bags,
Speaker 1: bicycle lubricants, satellite components, communication cables, ski wax, even pizza boxes,
Speaker 1: wow and concerns about the safety of teflon. C eight
Speaker 1: and other things were called long chain per fluorinated chemicals
Speaker 1: first came to the public attention more than a decade ago.
Speaker 1: But there's a long, often untold story about DuPont's involvement
Speaker 1: with C eight, and until Sharon Lerner investigated this in
Speaker 1: like a nineteen part series that you can read for
Speaker 1: free online, no one had really told this story. Over
Speaker 1: the past fifteen years, lawyers have been waging an epic
Speaker 1: legal battle against C eight and its manufacturers are people
Speaker 1: who use it in products, including DuPont and three M,
Speaker 1: which manufactures some of the substances that DuPont buys to
Speaker 1: create teflon. This stuff culminated in a class action lawsuit
Speaker 1: that was it's about three thy five hundred personal injury
Speaker 1: claims that went to trial in September of twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: But before we get to that, and before we get
Speaker 1: to the EPA's involvement in Uncle Sam's involvement or collusion
Speaker 1: in this sordid tail, let's look at the kind of
Speaker 1: health effects this stuff can cause it's pretty nasty. Exposure
Speaker 1: to these long chain per fluorinated chemicals can cause things
Speaker 1: like ulcerative colitis, high cholesterol, hypertension, thyroid disease, testicular cancer,
Speaker 1: kidney answer, and more. We know these aren't just rumors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And how come you don't hear that in the
Speaker 2: fine print for nonstick pan commercials? Right?
Speaker 1: You just hear don't use a metal spatula, right, right,
Speaker 1: And that's part of the reason, because you know that
Speaker 1: teflon stuff can flake off and into your body. In
Speaker 1: twenty eleven twenty twelve, after years of research, scientists published
Speaker 1: more than three dozen peer reviewed articles on these effects,
Speaker 1: and one of the most troubling parts of their findings
Speaker 1: was that the chemicals had they affected your entire body,
Speaker 1: not just a particular organ or system. Even very low
Speaker 1: exposure could impact a person's health. And this stuff builds
Speaker 1: up in your body sort of like how remember when
Speaker 1: people concerned about eating too many specific types of fish
Speaker 1: because of mercury. Of course, right, and that's still a
Speaker 1: thing that should be concerning to people. This stuff was
Speaker 1: the same way. It could build up in your body,
Speaker 1: and it could build up in wildlife. But this was
Speaker 1: also very old news old beans to DuPont because their
Speaker 1: scientists had studied this chemical and related chemicals for decades
Speaker 1: and decades, and they were very well informed about the dangers.
Speaker 1: But instead of informing the public, instead of informing government
Speaker 1: agencies like the EPA, instead of informing communities living near
Speaker 1: the plants where teflon was manufactured, instead of informing their
Speaker 1: own employees, they kept the finding secret, and they perpetrated
Speaker 1: a remarkably successful cover up.
Speaker 2: They absolutely did. Sadly, we can rate the cover up
Speaker 2: success in one absolutely frightening statistic, and it is this
Speaker 2: C eight is a man made compound. It did not
Speaker 2: exist one hundred years ago, and now it is in
Speaker 2: the blood of ninety nine point seven percent of Americans.
Speaker 2: And this is from a two thousand and seven analysis
Speaker 2: of from the CDC. C aight is present in newborns,
Speaker 2: breast milk, and blood from umbilical cords. It's also in
Speaker 2: a wide range of wildlife, including loggerhead sea turtles, bottlenosed dolphins,
Speaker 2: harbor seals, polar bears, cariboo, walras, says, bald eagles, lions, tigers,
Speaker 2: and arctic birds. Apparently not bears.
Speaker 1: Yeah, apparently, I'm sure, a lot of people were waiting
Speaker 1: to hear the bears, So you could say, if you
Speaker 1: wanted to be a little more optimistic about it, you
Speaker 1: could say, maybe there was something wrong with the methodology
Speaker 1: of the test, maybe the data was analyzed incorrectly, Maybe
Speaker 1: the CDC for some reason is screwing up. But we
Speaker 1: can assure you the odds of that are pretty low.
Speaker 1: You could also be optimistic and say, well, hey, I
Speaker 1: don't eat loggerhead, sea turtles, bottlenose dolphins, harbor seals, polar bears,
Speaker 1: and so on. But this is still indicative of a
Speaker 1: widespread problem because if it's if, if it's existing, if
Speaker 1: it's found existing in those animals that are, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe not even directly part of the human food chain,
Speaker 1: you can only imagine it likely exists in animals that
Speaker 1: are part of the human food chain, or more commonly
Speaker 1: found in it. In their defense, DuPont no longer uses
Speaker 1: C eight, But at this point, removing it from Earth's
Speaker 1: environment is impossible because remember we mentioned that it's a
Speaker 1: very chemically stable compound. As far as we know, this
Speaker 1: stuff does not break down. This means that it will
Speaker 1: be on the planet for a long time. It may
Speaker 1: even outlast humanity, So millions and millions of years in
Speaker 1: the future. If some extraterrestrial civilization exists and for some
Speaker 1: reason visits our planet, they may not find us, but
Speaker 1: they will find traces of our time here. And one
Speaker 1: of the thing you say we'll find will be teflon
Speaker 1: in everything?
Speaker 2: Am I going to die?
Speaker 3: Ben?
Speaker 2: I cook with teflon pans all the time? Well, life
Speaker 2: is a one way ride, Noel, Okay, that was a
Speaker 2: broad question. Iselon killing me softly.
Speaker 1: It does pose significant health risk. And now that the
Speaker 1: public is more aware of this situation, this epidemic, the
Speaker 1: government has started to take action, and private litigation has
Speaker 1: also escalated. We'll tell you a little more about the
Speaker 1: current situation, as well as DuPont's internal battles after a
Speaker 1: word from our sponsor, and we're back. Eight companies are
Speaker 1: responsible for eight contamination in the US. DuPont is far
Speaker 1: and away the leader here of these eight companies in
Speaker 1: terms of both the use of C eight and emissions
Speaker 1: of it. But seven others were found to have a role,
Speaker 1: including three M. Because three M, as you said, actually
Speaker 1: manufactured C eight or produced it and sold it to
Speaker 1: DuPont for years while they were also very likely aware
Speaker 1: of the dangers from the very beginning. DuPont scientists approached
Speaker 1: ATE's potential dangers with a pretty high bar of rigor,
Speaker 1: and they studied it closely. Way back in nineteen fifty four,
Speaker 1: there was a DuPont employee named ra A. Dickinson who
Speaker 1: noted that he had received an inquiry regarding CH's quote
Speaker 1: possible toxicity.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then in nineteen sixty one, just seven years later,
Speaker 2: in house researchers already had the short answer to Dickinson's question.
Speaker 2: C eight was indeed toxic and should be quote handled
Speaker 2: with extreme care, like not slathered on household goods. Right.
Speaker 1: By the next year, what did we say, they're sixty
Speaker 1: one by yea. By nineteen sixty two, experiments had whittled
Speaker 1: down these broad concerns into some red flags, and they
Speaker 1: found some specific conditions caused by C eight. Exposure to
Speaker 1: C eight was linked to the enlargement of rat testicles,
Speaker 1: adrenal glands, and kidneys. The company even, at least in
Speaker 1: one instance that we know of, the company even conducted
Speaker 1: human experimentation with C eight. In nineteen sixty two, scientists
Speaker 1: asked volunteers to smoke cigarettes laced with C eight and
Speaker 1: they found that nice, well, at least they asked them
Speaker 1: to do it. They found that nine out of ten
Speaker 1: people in the highest dose group were noticeably significantly ill
Speaker 1: for an average of nine hours, so as much as eighteen,
Speaker 1: you know, and they have flu like symptoms that included chills, back, ache, fever,
Speaker 1: and coughing. We don't know if they did a follow
Speaker 1: up study years later to see the rates of cancer,
Speaker 1: but we do know that this cover up then encompasses
Speaker 1: more than just teflon, because remember, Teflon is a brand
Speaker 1: name for something that is a type of PFA, and
Speaker 1: pfas are used in so many things we mentioned, the
Speaker 1: microwave popcorn, the firefighting foam, fast food wrappers, industrial processes.
Speaker 1: They have been proven to have clear and harmful effects
Speaker 1: on human beings and wildlife, and as we record this episode, scientists, attorneys,
Speaker 1: and public interest groups are still working to figure out
Speaker 1: the sheer scale of the contamination as well as the
Speaker 1: extent of danger this poses to humans and wildlife. Like
Speaker 1: here's an example. They DuPont used to get rid of
Speaker 1: these substances by putting them in barrels and putting rocks
Speaker 1: putting rocks in the barrels or waiting the barrels somehow
Speaker 1: and then just dropping them in the ocean or dropping
Speaker 1: them with water sources. So that means that there are.
Speaker 2: There are areas of.
Speaker 1: The world where the groundwater has been contaminated with this stuff.
Speaker 1: And we don't. When I say we, I don't just
Speaker 1: mean DuPont or the US or anything. I mean our
Speaker 1: species hasn't figured out how to get this stuff out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so even if that seems to be a kind
Speaker 2: of a common issue, doesn't that we're real good at
Speaker 2: putting stuff in, haven't quite feared how to put stuff out.
Speaker 1: We're all Mickey Mouse at the beginning of Fantasia, remember
Speaker 1: when he figures out that excellent way to mop up
Speaker 1: when he's the source of apprentice and he starts making mops,
Speaker 1: but they make mops and then the flood begins.
Speaker 2: You know, But never that ever occurred to me. That
Speaker 2: is a very good analogy, metaphor what have you, for
Speaker 2: the exact kind of stuff we're talking about. The kid
Speaker 2: put the magic back in the bucket, right right exactly.
Speaker 2: I actually went to a talk recently. It was a
Speaker 2: weird pairing. It was Jaden Smith interviewing al Gore about
Speaker 2: climate change, and something came up at the end where
Speaker 2: Jayden asked al Gore, like, so, what technology in the
Speaker 2: future is there to pull these emissions out of the atmosphere.
Speaker 2: And the fact of the matter is that there's something
Speaker 2: that sort of exists, but it requires so much energy
Speaker 2: to do it that it makes it not really cost
Speaker 2: effective or just practical at all. So, I mean, I
Speaker 2: guess people are thinking about this kind of stuff, but
Speaker 2: it's like it usually is so much more of a
Speaker 2: of a to do than just to maybe do a
Speaker 2: better job of not putting the stuff in there in
Speaker 2: the first.
Speaker 1: Place, right, right, And this goes beyond, this goes beyond politics.
Speaker 1: This is just a health concern. And I know some
Speaker 1: of us in the audience may may object to the
Speaker 1: alarmism that gets so commonly, you know, spread about in
Speaker 1: the public sphere when we talk about these global or
Speaker 1: macro level human threats. But the reality of the situation now,
Speaker 1: at least just my opinion, the reality is the situation
Speaker 1: now is the following. The Earth does not need humanity.
Speaker 1: Life on Earth in some form will likely continue for
Speaker 1: a long long time. Human life on Earth is not
Speaker 1: a sure thing. And you know, it's not as if
Speaker 1: Earth itself really has an opinion or cares. We are
Speaker 1: just one in a long line of dominant species that
Speaker 1: have come and gone on this little rock orbiting the Sun,
Speaker 1: and the third one right right. And this means that
Speaker 1: the most significant race or challenge for the human species
Speaker 1: now is going to be technological innovation versus increasingly inhospitable
Speaker 1: natural environments.
Speaker 2: So are we going.
Speaker 1: To survive as a species, you know, off planet living
Speaker 1: in domes? There are a lot of optimistic futurists who
Speaker 1: would say yes, Like that Polyshor movie Biodome, Biodome, there
Speaker 1: wasn't a Baldwin into that.
Speaker 2: There was definitely a Baldin in that.
Speaker 1: I you know, that's one of those films that I
Speaker 1: think I enjoyed when I was a kid, and I
Speaker 1: think I'm just gonna leave it there. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I don't know if I should rewatch it.
Speaker 2: I think not.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's aged well, I doubt that
Speaker 1: it has. What was the other one with the caveman,
Speaker 1: Prisino Man, Brenda and Frasier. We's in the JITs, that's right.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'll watch that one.
Speaker 2: No, you shouldn't. You know what I did the other
Speaker 2: night I watched Phantom Menace again for the first time
Speaker 2: in a long time. That movie is problematic on many levels.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you, is that what we chargearbeings That
Speaker 2: one that is a racial caricature, but there's a bunch
Speaker 2: of other ones. There's like the Trade Federation. Guys. We're
Speaker 2: kind of like these very cliche, almost like Asian caricatures,
Speaker 2: and there's just tons of them. Not to mention the
Speaker 2: right is quite hackneyed.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, it's it's strange. I read this has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with anything, certainly not the fate of the planet.
Speaker 2: But I've had a minute kind of had to do
Speaker 2: with the fate of the planet a planet.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But but.
Speaker 1: There is a very interesting fan theory that initially I dismissed,
Speaker 1: and it argues that in the initial stages of planning
Speaker 1: for Phantom Menace and the movies at that would come after,
Speaker 1: George R. Binks was supposed to be like a low
Speaker 1: key sith lord and then later exposed as a sith lord.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, it's.
Speaker 1: Again, it's a fan theory. I haven't seen anything that
Speaker 1: made that counted as smoking gun level evidence.
Speaker 2: This is evil sith power just to like annoy you
Speaker 2: to death.
Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting because he shows remarkable agility in some areas.
Speaker 1: I don't you'll have you'll have to read. I'm sure
Speaker 1: it's available on cracked or one of the other one
Speaker 1: of the other popular fan theory analysis sites. But back
Speaker 1: to the back to the Teflon menace. For lack of
Speaker 1: a better term, in February of this year of twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: three MS settled a lawsuit with Minnesota for eight hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty million dollars in essence admitting, according to Shannon Lerner,
Speaker 1: that they acted with a deliberate disregard for the high
Speaker 1: risk of injury to the citizens and wildlife of Minnesota.
Speaker 1: And they they went for this settlement eight hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty million dollars. It's not going to put them in
Speaker 1: the poorhouse, but it is a significant chunk of change.
Speaker 1: They went for the settlement because the Minnesota Attorney General's
Speaker 1: office released a huge set of documents, internal studies by
Speaker 1: scientists at THREEM, memos, emails, and research reports that detailed
Speaker 1: what THREEM knew about the harmful potential of these chemicals
Speaker 1: right now, right now, there's probably already at least according
Speaker 1: to the CDC, some kind of PFA in your system,
Speaker 1: in your body as you hear this, unless what point
Speaker 1: three percent of the population. And one of the one
Speaker 1: of the most widely acknowledged possible dangers of teflon, and
Speaker 1: this was acknowledged publicly way before the lawsuits began, is
Speaker 1: that if you have a teflon pan and you overheat
Speaker 1: it to about six hundred degrees fahrenheit, it will it
Speaker 1: could release toxic gases. But again, that didn't seem like
Speaker 1: too much of a concern because very few people cook
Speaker 1: stuff at six hundred degrees That's true. Here's a question
Speaker 1: for you to leave us with. What's the alternative is?
Speaker 1: You know, I have some non nonstick pans.
Speaker 2: They are a bit of a pain in the butt
Speaker 2: when you cook certain things on them. But typically when
Speaker 2: you're watching like cooking shows and like chefs and stuff
Speaker 2: and high level cooks, they're not really using nonstick pans
Speaker 2: all the time. They're using like copper pans and like
Speaker 2: nicer stainless steel pans, right or le Crouse exactly. So
Speaker 2: what's the what's the difference and what and is it?
Speaker 2: Is it literally just a matter of well you might
Speaker 2: have to pre soak them a little longer, take better
Speaker 2: care of them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There are some manufacturers of nonstick pans that are advertised
Speaker 1: as non toxic. So one example would be something like Willing,
Speaker 1: which is just the word Willing with a Z.
Speaker 4: They're a German.
Speaker 1: Company that made that made their name I believe in knives,
Speaker 1: but they use a lot of They also manufacture a
Speaker 1: lot of ceramic nonstick cookware. And then there's a thing
Speaker 1: called green Pan. They use something called thermalon. It's a
Speaker 1: patented ceramic nonstick layer that's made out of sand. Essentially,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have lead or cadmium or pfas or PFOA
Speaker 1: or all the other stuff. And the problem with that
Speaker 1: stuff is it's heat resistant up to four hund and
Speaker 1: fifty degrees cells, meaning that it won't release toxic fumes
Speaker 1: unless you heat it past that. You can find other alternatives,
Speaker 1: several of them are higher end, so they're going to
Speaker 1: be more of an investment. But for their part, DuPont
Speaker 1: has instituted some other substances to replace C eight because,
Speaker 1: as we said, they no longer use that and the
Speaker 1: EPA has been involved. It says it remains committed to
Speaker 1: evaluating PFOA and PFOS under the regulatory determination process using
Speaker 1: the best available science. As part of their evaluation, they
Speaker 1: are going to be reviewing all newly available scientific info,
Speaker 1: including the report by the ATSDR, the Agency for Toxic
Speaker 1: Substances and Disease Registry. They also said they are taking
Speaker 1: steps to accelerate quote the determination process before for the
Speaker 1: existing statutory deadline, which is twenty twenty one, So in
Speaker 1: a few years this stuff will change. But maybe the
Speaker 1: last thing we should end on here is as of
Speaker 1: November twenty eighteen, the EPA also found that the chemicals
Speaker 1: manufacturers used to replace these original toxic substances like C eight,
Speaker 1: were themselves toxic, so they replaced it with a different
Speaker 1: with a different dangerous chemical. That's where we're at now.
Speaker 2: Oh cool, slightly lesser of the two evils.
Speaker 1: It's I believe it's gen x is one of the
Speaker 1: ones that they said was still dangerous, but hopefully yeah,
Speaker 1: is it is slightly lesser. And look, we're we're not
Speaker 1: saying that if you use a nonstick pan you are
Speaker 1: going to die. We're saying that exposure to the substances
Speaker 1: used to make teflon are are quite dangerous and a
Speaker 1: lot of the a lot of the lawsuits came about
Speaker 1: from former DuPont employees or employee of the manufacturers of
Speaker 1: these substances, or people living near the plants or disposal sites.
Speaker 1: So it's not Cooking with a non stick pan is
Speaker 1: not the same thing as just huffing straight pfoas.
Speaker 2: Oh good, So there's that right, cool. Yeah, that's comforting.
Speaker 1: And if you would like to read the full series
Speaker 1: on the intercept, I want to tell you that it
Speaker 1: is excellent. It is very thorough. It's quite long. It's
Speaker 1: a long greed, but it's worth your time if you
Speaker 1: would like to learn more about how this successful cover up,
Speaker 1: this successful corporate conspiracy to disguise the health risk of
Speaker 1: these substances actually evolved and developed over time, as well
Speaker 1: as where it is at currently. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for checking out our show. Let us know what you
Speaker 1: think is this is this situation wherein a large company
Speaker 1: just wasn't aware of the science. Is this being exaggerated
Speaker 1: by alarmist interest groups or is there a real and
Speaker 1: genuine threat and if so, why or why not you
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Speaker 2: Yeah, we've been known to lurk. We have, indeed, Yes,
Speaker 2: so do all this.
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