California to ban PFOA under Prop 65. Great! But what even is PFOA?

The California Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Health and Hazard Assessment, or OEHHA, said March 19th, 2021 that PFOA “meets the criteria for listing as known to the state to cause cancer under Proposition 65”.

This is fantastic news for anyone who likes to drink water in the United States!

If you haven’t seen Dark Waters, with the illustrious artist and activist Mark Ruffalo playing the real life hero, Robert Bilott, then we’ll go ahead and recommend it as a place to start to understand why this is huge.

Okay, but what is PFOA?

PFOA (Perfluorooctanoic acid), also know as C8 by DuPont, is a man-made toxic “forever chemical” belonging to a group of these bad boys knows as PFAS (perfluoroalkyl substances). They are forever chemicals because, well, they stick around forever. PFOA is the most notorious, they even made a movie about it! It has been used most famously on non-stick cookware, but also on food packaging, and flame resistant carpets and fabrics. Today the most common forms of exposure are drinking water, household dust, and fast food packaging. If you’re not sure about the PFOA content of your pots and pans, we urge you to purchase new ones. New, quality cookware out there will state that it contains no PFOA.

Thanks for the heads up! But why is it so bad I need upgrade my pans?

Due to evidence, particularly from the C8 Health Project with 69,030 that PFOA can cause a number of serious health conditions, such as developmental issues to fetuses and infants, cancer - particularly testicular and kidney, liver damage, and disorders of the thyroid and immune system.