by Maceo Martinet
Daily Lobo columnist
Here's a look at a pair of everyday chemicals and how they affect our world.
Sweet and deadly
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In 1965, a chemist working late into the night trying to develop a drug for ulcers accidentally discovered a chemical that is 180 times sweeter than sugar and has no calories.
Several years later, scientists discovered this chemical was not just sweet, it was deadly. This caught the attention of the Pentagon, and the chemical was added to a list of prospective biochemical-warfare weapons.
Today, this chemical - known as aspartame, or by most of us as NutraSweet or Equal - is consumed on average every day by one in 15 people worldwide, in products ranging from sports drinks to vitamin pills. How did a neurologically damaging compound, denied approval by the Food and Drug Administration for eight years, find its way into the little bags of sugar we stir into our morning coffee?
Well, let's just say it was a sweet and deadly process. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan appointed Arthur Hayes as new FDA commissioner. A couple of months into the job, Hayes approved the use of aspartame as a food sweetener, ignoring his own internal FDA findings.
The company that manufactured aspartame at the time, and was poised to make a lot of money if the chemical was approved, was headed by none other than Donald Rumsfeld, who was also part of Reagan's team in Washington.
Two years later, Hayes resigned as FDA commissioner and went on to work for the chief public relations firm for - you guessed it - the company that manufactured aspartame. A couple of years after Hayes resigned and aspartame went on to be approved for use as a tabletop sweetener, an additive in children's vitamins and carbonated beverages, an investigative report concluded that more than 10 federal officials involved in the decision to approve aspartame were working in the private sector linked to the aspartame industry, whose sales amount to more than $1 billion a year.
Recent efforts in the 2006 Legislature to ban aspartame in New Mexico were unsuccessful. This is just a little taste of how what is sweet for some people can be deadly for the rest of us.
A non-sticking mess
I bet there was a moment in your life that you could not fathom how the act of heating a tortilla on your nonstick pan could be related to the lives of polar bears in the Arctic. Well, my friend, in these times of economic and cultural globalization, we have successfully brought together some of the most unrelated things on Earth, such as warm tortillas and polar bears. Try to stick with me.
The nonstick substance coating your pan, your cooking utensils, and anything else that is coated with a stain repellant is made from multiple compounds we commonly know as Teflon. Over time, Teflon degrades, and its compounds evaporate into the atmosphere, where they are carried by cold air moving toward the North Pole.
The snowflakes falling peacefully above the Arctic Circle are laced with small amounts of Teflon, as well as many other contaminants that we have added to the atmosphere. Through the natural cycles of life, the Teflon and other contaminants move into the food web of the Arctic Circle. Some of the Teflon finds a home inside the bodies of polar bears.
Polar bear cubs don't even know what the world outside of their den looks like, and yet their bodies are already filled with Teflon and hundreds of other toxic chemicals which they received from drinking their mother's milk.
But you don't have to go to the Arctic to find Teflon-related contamination. In one study, 96 percent of children in 23 U.S. states were found to have Teflon-related compounds in their bloodstream. What has contaminated polar bear cubs has also contaminated human children.
It is crazy how something celebrated because it prevents stains on pants and carpets is at the same time finding its way into the bloodstream, staining the next generation in ways we don't even realize.
The DuPont Company recently agreed to pay the Environmental Protection Agency a little more than $10 million in fines and more than $6 million for environmental cleaning from Teflon-related contamination in Ohio and West Virginia. This might seem like a shining example of industry accountability, but it is worth mentioning that DuPont settlement amounts to about 5 percent of yearly revenue from Teflon-related products alone.
