Teflon Chemical A Likely Carcinogen

Finding By EPA Panel Is Disputed By DuPont

(AP) 
Cory-Slechta also noted that an unpublished study from the 1980s linking PFOA to mammary tumors in laboratory rats was considered by the panel because it was peer-reviewed within the EPA and included in the original risk assessment submitted by the agency for review.

The same could not be said for a 2005 review sponsored by the DuPont and 3M Co. challenging the earlier study's conclusion.

"We do not feel that it rose to the same level of scrutiny as the other information we were considering," she said.

But 3M scientist John Butenhoff accused the panel of making "selective use" of information to make an unwarranted recommendation about PFOA's potential carcinogenicity.

Robert Rickard, director of health and environmental sciences at DuPont's Haskell Laboratory, said the company had asked the review panel after its February 2005 meeting if it would be appropriate to submit new data, and was told it could.

The only SAB member to offer significant criticism of the PFOA review panel was James Bus, a lead toxicologist for Dow Chemical Co.

Bus, who did not submit his written comments until shortly before Wednesday's meeting, said the review panel should have considered the DuPont-3M paper, and should have offered a stronger rationale for upgrading the recommended cancer descriptor from "suggestive evidence" to "likely carcinogen."

Johnson, the EPA administrator, is free to accept the SAB's recommendations regarding PFOA, or to reject them.

The EPA will use the report "as well as all new information that becomes available, to formulate the next steps in our continuing assessment of these chemicals," said Oscar Hernandez, director of the risk assessment division in the EPA's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics.