Economic Terrorism
Business & Media Institute

ABC Slips Badly On Teflon
Broadcasts Ghost Written By Environmental Working Group

(see reader reaction to teflon article)

Friday November 14, 2003 may be remembered as the day ABC targeted DuPont’s Teflon…and missed.

“We’re gonna turn now to a “20/20 report, it will be on tonight, and it’s on the subject of Teflon.” So began Charles Gibson, introducing a segment entitled “Government Investigates Possible Health Risk” on Good Morning America.

“We are going to take “A Closer Look” at Teflon tonight,” said Peter Jennings, as he began a segment entitled “A Closer Look: Hidden Danger” on ABC’s World News Tonight

“Good evening and welcome to ‘20/20.’ Well, it coats the pots you cook with so the food doesn’t stick. It protects the carpet your baby crawls on. You may also have it in your winter jacket, your skin lotion, even your make-up. We’re talking about Teflon. And tonight, a ‘20/20’ investigation uncovers alarming information about this much used material.” That’s how Barbara Walters opened what must be characterized as one of the most egregious, one-sided and biased attacks on a product ever aired on network television.
 

ABC Airs Anti Industry Activists’ Unsubstantiated Claims

ABC teamed with the Environmental Working Group to air a series of unsubstantiated claims and allegations regarding Teflon and its chemical components:

“…now there are questions about the safety of a key chemical used to make it,” Jennings stated. “…Brian Ross finds that these helpful [Teflon coated] kitchen tools also can pose a health risk,” said Gibson. “…tonight a “20/20” investigation uncovers alarming information about this [Teflon] much-used material,” warned Walters.

     ABC’s Brian Ross implicated—without any substantiating evidence or facts whatever—DuPont and Teflon in birth defects suffered by a young man named Bucky Bailey. Jane Houlihan, of the Environmental Working Group made the astounding claim that consumer use of Teflon coated products results in harmful chemicals being “absorbed directly through the skin.” She also stated that Teflon “in retrospect…may seem like one of the biggest, if not the biggest, mistakes the chemical industry has ever made.”

Let’s Turn The Heat All The Way Up And See What Happens

     But the most spectacularly fraudulent segment occurred as Houlihan and an associate from EWG “cooked bacon” in a Teflon coated frying pan. They turned the burner on its highest level and then stood back, monitoring the temperature as the bacon sizzled. As, quite predictably, the pan continued to heat past the point at which any normal individual would have reduced the flame to allow the bacon to cook, Ross and Houlihan pretended to be astounded at the temperatures:

It Gets Really Hot!

Houlihan: “It’s heating up pretty rapidly in the first few minutes.”

Ross explains that “We went to the kitchen with members of the Environmental Working Group, an activist organization, to learn about a little-known health problem involving the mix of chemicals from Teflon. They can make you sick, cause a kind of two-day Teflon flu if a non-stick pan gets overheated starting around 500 degrees.”

Houlihan: “We’re at 480. 560. 560. At 554 degrees Fahrenheit, studies show that ultra fine particles start coming off the pan. These are tiny little particles that can embed deeply into the lungs.”

Ross: “The hotter it gets, the more chemicals are released.”

Houlihan: “And at 680, six toxic gases can come off of heated Teflon.” We guess the part where Houlihan provided the proof of her unsubstantiated assertions regarding particles and gases was left back in the editing room.

     The exhibition by Ross and Houlihan was a truly remarkable and deliberate display of chicanery. Besides insulting viewer intelligence, Ross managed to injure the state of scientific inquiry by interviewing a DuPont representative who, luckily for him, had never cooked bacon in her life.

When You Don’t Have The Science, Ambush!

Ross: “DuPont says pans don’t get hot enough with normal cooking to present a problem. But a piece of bacon was just getting crisp when this Teflon pan went past the initial danger point of 500.”

Houlihan: “This is the temperature DuPont has said is never exceeded under normal cooking conditions in the home.”

Ross then ambushes Uma Choudray, DuPont Vice President of Research, with his “evidence”: “We’ve cooked some bacon. About 500 degrees, the bacon still wasn’t done.”

To which Choudray responds: “I’ve never cooked bacon. I can’t comment.” Now there’s a scientist. She’s unwilling to engage in mere speculation. But, as any normal individual who actually has cooked bacon knows, you don’t set the burner to the highest possible temperature and stand back. And, in fact, it is quite obvious that the “Teflon flu,” while certainly a possibility should one engage in the outrageous abuse of cookware like that of Ross and Houlihan, is exceptionally rare.

No News At All

Teflon cookware has been in use for more than 50 years. An early story on “Teflon flu” appeared back in 1987. In an article entitled “Nonstick Drip Pans Catch Heat,” Mary Daniels writing in the Chicago Tribune reported that:

“Dr. Roger Wells, researcher at the University of New Hampshire did the initial work revealing human hazards of PTFE coatings: ‘The industry has to be prepared for the idiot who is going to use it,’ Wells says. ‘The industry is responsible for misuse. They always bottom line the safety of a product with normal use. . . . My point is, misuse happens. Every single case of Teflon toxicosis has been misuse. Gasoline is safe, but I wouldn't walk through a forest fire with a can of it. People don't do what they're supposed to do.’”

And, indeed DuPont and “the industry” did respond to the situation, by withdrawing from the market drip plates—the little “saucers” under the burner that collect spills from boil-over—that were coated with Teflon. Those were the only items that, during normal use, would regularly achieve a temperature in excess of 500 degrees Fahrenheit.

Why Not Rig The ‘Experiment?’

And while Ross would have had viewers believe that he and Houlihan were just a couple of folks cooking bacon in the kitchen, in fact they were deliberately staging an event by abusing the product. There was little, if any, difference between what Ross and Houlihan did and what “reporters” for NBC’s Dateline did during an “expose” in which they rigged a truck’s gas tanks to ensure they would explode.

Back in 1987 the Tribune’s Daniels was a bit more factual in her reporting, and far less alarmist: “While the Consumer Products Safety Commission acknowledges that it has the authority in this issue, Dr. Rita Orzel, a toxicologist with the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) in Bethesda, Md., says the commission is not conducting an investigation.

’There is no evidence that consumers have experienced a problem as far as documented cases go,’ Orzel adds. ‘We are interested in receiving complaints of that nature. We really can't do anything unless an unusual injury comes from the use of a product. The individual can file a petition with the commission, but it must contain data to support your petition.’

A Non Existent ‘Crisis’…

Ross and Houlihan would have a hard time explaining precisely how, in the 16 year interval, during which hundreds of millions of meals have been cooked using Teflon coated cookware, there has not been an “epidemic” of Teflon flu. Are we to believe that the Consumer Products Safety Commission has been covering up the epidemic?

…Unless You’re A Bird

In fact, the only “community” really exercised about the dangers of overheated Teflon is the one comprised of bird owners. They’ve been alerting each other to the dangers since at least 1987. They have also been warning of scented candles, Glade plug-ins, bleach, Comet, model glue, electric cords, overhead fans, houseplants, the toilet, Windex, perfume, and at least 80 other common household substances including 14 that we regularly eat.

As Ross puts it, in typical indictment fashion: “It turns out this is a problem well known to, among of all people, owners of pet birds. Teflon fumes will kill birds. DuPont knows this. It warns bird owners not to have pet birds in the kitchen when cooking with Teflon.”

Consumer Product Safety Commission Dismissed Concern

Turns out the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission knows something about all this too. As The News Journal of Wilmington, DE reported: “In a June 27 letter, the commission told Environmental Working Group officials that the evidence birds are harmed is not relevant to human health. ‘You do not make any factual connection between the bird-related incidents you cite and a threat to human health,’ the letter said.

It might have been useful for “20/20” to have mentioned that in its report. But if Ross had mentioned that, he might have had to add the following, also reported by The News Journal last July:

“The Consumer Product Safety Commission has rejected a petition by an environmental group to require health warning labels on cookware made with Teflon and other nonstick coatings. The federal agency said the Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Working Group did not provide enough information to support its allegations that fumes emitted by coated pots and pans at high temperatures sicken people. The commission said that the petition failed to show that toxic chemicals ‘are released in amounts that would be expected during a consumer's use of the product and that these amounts would cause human illness or injury.’”

The CPSC says Teflon is perfectly safe. That’s apparently not enough to convince ABC, but it’s good enough for us.

(see reader reaction to teflon article)