By Jon Hood
ConsumerAffairs.com
September 8, 2010
Non-stick cookware might be easier to use than the polished pots and pans the professionals use, but its Teflon coating has long given consumers pause. The chemicals found in the coating have already been linked to cancer, birth defects, and behavioral problems.
Now a new study suggests that those chemicals may also raise children's cholesterol levels.
The study, being published in the September issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, found that children with higher levels of certain chemicals in their bloodstream had higher levels of total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol -- the kind you don't want.
The study specifically zeroed in on perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonate (PFOS), both of which are essential materials in non-stick cookware. The study, which examined over 12,000 children in the mid-Ohio river valley in 2005 and 2006, compared subjects with the highest PFOA levels to those with the lowest. The first groups' total cholesterol levels were 4.6 points higher, and their LDL levels were 3.8 points higher.
The study, authored by Stephanie Frisbee of the West Virginia University School of Medicine, noted that there is no definitive proof that the chemicals actually cause cholesterol levels to rise, but she called it a matter worth additional research.
Latest negative findings
The study is hardly the first to show potentially negative effects from PFOA. A suspected carcinogen, PFOA has been shown to cause liver cancer in rodents and rainbow trout, and has been linked to birth defects and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children.
PFOA and PFOS are also prevalent in humans' bloodstreams. An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study found that the substances are present in the bloodstreams of over 90 percent of Americans. In 2008, researchers found traces of the substances in human breast milk, with levels high enough to elicit a warning that milk should be considered as an additional source of PFCs [perfluorinated compounds] when determining a child's total exposure.
Those findings, while perhaps alarming, are not surprising in light of the fact that up to 70 percent of cookware in the U.S. has a non-stick coating. PFOA is also found in stain-resistant carpeting, microwave popcorn bags, and grease-resistant food containers like pizza boxes and french fry containers.
In 2006, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched a global stewardship program encouraging companies to voluntarily reduce PFOA levels by 95 percent by 2010 and to eliminate them completely by 2015.
A major class action lawsuit involving non-stick cookware was dismissed last year by a federal judge in Iowa. The judge ruled that the lawsuit, which alleged that housewares company DuPont knew for over 20 years that its non-stick cookware could make consumers sick, concerned individual issues that couldn't be properly tried as a class action.
