Johnny Vegas
While it remains one of DuPont's most valuable assets, evidence suggests that Teflon may be making people sick and harming the environment, and the fact that the company has known and concealed this for decades is not going to help its defense of an upcoming class-action lawsuit in court.
The [Environmental Protection] agency is also investigating whether the suspect chemical, a detergentlike substance called perfluorooctanoic acid, is harmful to human health, and how it has become so pervasive in the environment. The chemical -- which is more commonly known as PFOA or C-8, for the number of carbon atoms in its molecular structure -- has turned up in the blood of more than 90 percent of Americans, according to samples taken from blood banks by the 3M Co. beginning in the mid-1990s. Until it got out of the business in 2000, 3M was the biggest supplier of PFOA. DuPont promptly announced it would begin making the substance itself.
(Full article below).
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/bizfocus/archives/2004/08/08/2003197953