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Californians Don’t Need a Daily Serving of Toxic Perfluorinated Chemicals: Governor Should Sign SB 1313
By Bill Magavern
Director
Sierra Club California
Americans eat 90 acres of pizza a day, and consume more than 16 billion quarts of popcorn each year. Those hungry folks could be getting a hidden side order of perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs), compounds within certain grease-proof coatings that come out whenever those packages break down.
You may find PFCs in anything that’s made to repel grease, such as pizza, popcorn and French fry containers. A carcinogen, they now show up in more than 98 percent of Americans’ blood, and in 100 percent of 293 newborns tested by scientists in a recent study. Worst of all, these compounds never break down – they’ll stay in our soil, our water and our bodies indefinitely.
That’s why Sierra Club California and its labor and community-group allies have worked so hard to pass Senate Bill 1313. SB 1313 sets a safer standard for controlling these toxic compounds in food packaging, to protect California families from the risk of cancer.
It hasn’t been easy so far. We’ve had a lot of strong opposition from the chemical industry. Ignoring multiple studies, manufacturers of these chemicals argue there isn’t enough scientific evidence tying PFCs to cancer. They also say it will be too hard to stop using these chemicals.
Too hard? Burger King already phased out PFCs from its containers… in 2002.
We urge Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign SB 1313 into law. California families should be free to think about what’s in the food they eat, not what’s around it.
Read this July 2008 LA Times story to learn more.
Comments
too bad David Lazarus got quite a few scientific issues wrong/allowed misleading statements/didn't know what he was talking about in the LA Times story. he characterized the two extreme sides of the arguments. to find some middle ground:
PFOA is not used to prevent food from sticking to paper packaging (it's an unintended contaminant)
PFOA levels are declining in the U.S. population (EWG's statements mislead you to think they are increasing)
PFOA was detected in 99.7% of Americans (more impressive looking than 98%)
http://www.ehponline.org/members/2007/10598/10598.pdf
PFCs are noted for their thermal stability and do not easily break down (unless you overheat a Teflon pan)
and PFOA may be having developmental health effects on Americans at current levels. (by lowering birth weights - industry argues that possibility is not necessarily harmful to health)
PFOS is also decreasing in the blood of Americans (at a more rapid rate than PFOA)
The fluorinated chemicals (fluorpolymers or fluorotelomers) used on the paper are not used to keep food from sticking, but rather to stop oil from soaking into paper, because no one wants wet oily paper food wrappers as saturated evidence of all the fat they are ingesting, which good job Bill Magavern, you got that part right!
Posted by: john at September 9, 2008 06:09 PM
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