What's more, Mabury said, the intermediate steps in that breakdown process produce molecules that have been shown in experiments to be 10,000 times more toxic than PFOA itself. "In going from diPAPs to PFOA, you go through things that have been entirely ignored by essentially all of the academic research community," Mabury said. "This is not something you want to be a common contaminant in humans. Certainly not at the concentrations its at." The team also found high levels of diPAPs in sewage sludge and paper pulp, suggesting that these chemicals might be getting into the water supply and onto farm fields, as well. Already, the Environmental Protection Agency has convinced 3M, the only U.S. manufacturer of PFOS to stop using that chemical. The EPA has also been encouraging companies to reduce emissions and find alternatives for PFOA and many of its precursor molecules as they further investigate the chemical. The new work suggests that diPAPs themselves need more attention. "We were told before that PFOS and PFOA don't do anything," said John Giesy, an environmental chemist and toxicologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. "Well, in fact, they do. They're quite potent toxicants through a couple mechanisms of action. The question for me and people like me now is: What do these chemicals do?" So far, no one has studied the health effects to humans of exposure to food-wrapper chemicals or their breakdown products. But, Giesy said, it's worth looking into right away. "I don't know if it's time to panic, and I doubt it is," he said. "But we really don't know what it's doing. It's something we need to worry about. It's something we need to find out about." Related Links: |
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