Federal officials are relying on research by chemical industry researchers to exclude Teflon and other fluoropolymers, a type of toxic "forever chemical," from proposed rules to protect human health and the environment. The exclusion aligns with industry demands aimed at weakening the planned measures.
The decision to use the 2022 study – which states that the authors work for the fluoropolymer industry – as a major justification to exclude the compounds raises questions about the government's claim the move will not harm people and the environment, observers say.
The study's lead author, Stephen H. Korzeniowski, states on his website he has over a decade experience lobbying Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), Health Canada, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and other national regulators on behalf of former employer, chemical giant DuPont, and other industry groups.
"The government should not be relying on industry-drafted papers, especially one that is so purely written by the industry that profits from fluoropolymers being excluded from the PFAS class," said Elaine MacDonald, health communities program director at Ecojustice.
Per- and poly-fluoroakyll substances (PFAS) are a class of about 15,000 toxic grease- and water-resistant chemicals used in everything from firefighting foam to food wrappers. Now found in the blood of nearly everyone on Earth, the chemicals can harm the reproductive and endocrine systems, increase the risk of certain cancers, and lead to developmental delays in children.
As their nickname – "forever chemicals" – suggests, PFAS accumulate in animals including humans, do not break down in nature, can move easily around the world in water, air and organisms and can persist for decades in the environment. Growing alarm about the chemicals has prompted global efforts to regulate them, including in Canada where the government last year proposed to list the entire class of chemicals as toxic.
But in July, ECCC backtracked on the proposal. In an updated draft, the ministry announced it would exclude fluoropolymers – a type of plastic that includes Teflon, and one of the largest productions and applications of PFAS – from the toxic listing. It justified the exclusion by saying that fluoropolymers "may" expose people to fewer risky chemicals than other types of PFAS.
That decision is based primarily on the 2022 study, which concluded fluoropolymers are less likely to spread widely through the environment than other PFAS. The study's conflict of interest declaration states that "the authors are employed by companies that commercially manufacture fluoropolymers." Some of the companies that manufacture those chemicals, including 3M, have been accused of deliberately hiding the health and environmental effects of their products over decades.
Unlike other PFAS, fluoropolymers are integrated into plastic products and less likely than their chemical cousins to leach into the environment. This relative immobility is the basis for the chemical industry's argument that fluoropolymers are less harmful than other PFAS and should be excluded from stricter regulations.
But researchers say focusing on the environmental impacts and potential health harms of the finished products alone hides their actual environmental impact. Manufacturing Teflon and other fluoropolymers uses other, more dangerous PFAS chemicals. These compounds are known to contaminate the environment surrounding manufacturing facilities, said Rainer Lohmann, a professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island.
"Basically, anywhere where there's a major fluoropolymer producer, they seem to have succeeded in contaminating the entire region with their production process," he said.
MacDonald, from Ecojustice, added that fluoropolymers can also break down into microplastics, which have been found everywhere on Earth and in human bodies. There is growing evidence these tiny particles harm human health and leach harmful chemicals – including PFAS – into the environment and living organisms.
Industry groups have been pushing federal officials to exclude fluoropolymers from the government's plans to more strictly regulate PFAS. This push for exclusion is evident in a 2023 submission by the the Chemistry Industry Association of Canada to government consultations on listing PFAS chemicals as toxic.
According to Canada's federal lobbying registry, six chemical or energy companies – including Shell Canada – have also lobbied the government on PFAS-related issues in the past year.
ECCC was given a day to respond to questions from Canada's National Observer on why it used the 2022 study as a source to justify excluding fluoropolymers from proposed PFAS rules, and why it did not highlight the authors' industry affiliation. It did not respond by deadline.
However, on Friday the ministry provided a statement stating it's "approach on PFAS is based on science. We have examined information from a wide range of sources (e.g., scientific journal articles, reports)...and currently our conclusions show that fluoropolymers may not be bioavailable nor mobile...The Updated Draft State of PFAS Report did not make a conclusion for fluoropolymers; instead, they will be considered in a separate assessment."
The ministry's move to remove fluoropolymers from its proposed rules suggests those industry lobbying efforts have worked, MacDonald said. Using a study with self-declared ties to the chemical industry to back up the ministry's decision to exclude fluoropolymers "just kind of shows a little bit of what's happening behind the scenes in terms of where the government is taking the industry's word," she said.
Update: This story was updated to include comment from Environment and Climate Change Canada.
Comments
We r letting big corporations provide the science on safety of their products! Think cigarettes folks then write your MP
Neoliberalism is the free market working only for big business with encouragement from all keels of government.
Regs and laws are protect us, supposedly but the reverse has happened, profits over health and poisons
Ignorance of the problems to come should not absolve the need to implement proven and newly improved procedures from being used to correct the "this is what we have always done" bias in our confused ecosystems. Ultra high temperatures using wet mixtures at 60 percent water can be used to generate heat and other benefits.
Wet mixtures of what, please, and aren't "ultra high temperatures" already heat?
Heat isn't always a benefit. Ask Los Angeles.
It makes me laugh that the Feds' would even consider research by the industry they are suppose to protect us from around health and the environment. That is just as bad as considering oil & gas industry research showing they are good citizens when it comes to health and climate change.
I wonder how many federal employees first did a turn working for O&G or other chemical industries. I'd be surprised if we here in Canada don't have the same revolving door between industry and its regulators.
The thing that bothers me most is not that individual products are toxic, but that whether individuals personally choose to use them or not, the products aren't labelled as toxic, we all are exposed when a critical proportion of the population chooses to use, and the choices themselves are necessarily blind, given that there's little to no public education about their harms.
From the licensing POV, Health Canada's approach doesn't protect us from anything: it measures what it considers to be a "tolerable" limit as to individual exposure -- which is ridiculous, given the huge variance in people's individual capacity to break down and excrete any given toxin. And it "weighs" "negative outcomes" (against even disabling illness, ruined lives and even death) against "economic benefits." And that's not economic benefits to you and me, it's to GDP.
I will never forget the night, when the internet was still young, that I found the MSDS (Materials Safety Data Sheets) for chemicals that had been found in my blood, and that our government knew of the hazards, including the cognitive and other health problems I was suffering from, and licensed the products anyway, because the economic benefits (to industry, agriculture and GDP) "outweighed" the health hazards to people who were exposed to them.
I was flooded with relief that I my problems weren't because I lacked discipline, moral fibre, or effort. And then sheer anger, experienced never before and never after that, at the Powers that Be, and their utter abrogation of responsibility to people and their welfare.
That was well over a quarter century ago.
As to the "safety" of carcinogenic and neuro-active chemicals in foods, I first found out about that from a health research chemist while hitch-hiking, now over half a century ago.
Until then, I thought "the government" kept us all safe, that doctors knew everything about health, and even, to some extent, that if it was allowed on TV, it must be true.
Since then (and before then), there's been ever-increasing exposure to any given chemical, and to the number of harmful chemicals, to the point that one simply cannot consume air, water or food that is totally safe.
DDT was banned for personal use in the late 60s or early 70s. But it took 20-25 years to ban it outright ... by then there were deformed pigeons hobbling along on our sidewalks, various birds were nearly extinct because their eggs' shells were so soft they couldn't support the growth of the baby birds forming within, and it was in the blood of pregnant mothers, and in the intra-uterine structures supporting the developing fetus.
The main problem with "research" is that it tends to be designed to generate the outcome desired by its funders. There are reams and reams of studies about that, even delineating categories of "fudging." It really *should* be taken as a given that industry research needs to be replicated by independent researchers (we used to do that at Health Canada) before it can form the basis of approvals or reviews. Health Canada routinely ignores research that contradicts HC's earlier findings.
I've talked down dozens of people who'd just discovered that here in Canada and in the US, their governments and regulatory bodies just aren't "all good," in almost any area of governance or regulation one chooses to look at.
So while I expect to vote Liberal in the next federal election it s only because there are no other grown ups in the room.
I m so angry with Liberals for allowing this, among other egregious violations.
However the cons and their little buds the NDP, and currently manifested would render us so much less safe.
How did wonderful Canada fall to this?
Well the harper years were a huge cut off from government as protector, but I did expect better from the Liberals.
Who pulls their strings? Same corporate interests still there?