Fluorine
Fluorine is a highly reactive and dangerous element. It is encountered in nature in a stable version called fluoride, and it is in this form that is added to everyday goods such as toothpaste. It is essential to humans, but only in very small amounts, as it doesn’t take much before it becomes toxic to us.
In people it mainly accumulates in the teeth and bones, where it kindly converts the calcium phosphate into a stronger material. It’s for this reason that It’s is added to water in many countries (including many areas of England), though as NHS dentists are now scarce, this may be seen as less necessary in the prevention of tooth decay. Some toothpastes also contain fluorides to enhance tooth enamel. The debate over fluoridation as a form of mass poisoning or cheap healthcare has played out cyclically over many years, though non-vegetarian humans get plenty of fluoride from food, particularly anything we eat that comes from the sea. When we’re not eating it or drinking it we’re also being prescribed it to cure everything from gonorrhoea to helping stave off fungal diseases for transplant patients.
Fluorine is also used to make polytetrafluoroethylene, otherwise known as PTFE or Teflon. It is used everywhere from nuclear power stations, to plumbing tape, to waterproof jackets, to glass etching to frying pans.
Fry the Police
PTFE is also used to coat certain types of hardened, armor-piercing bullets. KTW is the trade name for a ptfe coated bullet developed to ‘help police in gunfights against barricaded perpetrators, especially those shooting from inside of a car.‘ These are often referred to as "cop-killer" bullets (even in the COMPREHENSIVE TERRORISM PREVENTION ACT of the US’s Senate in 1995), where PTFE’s supposed ability to ease a bullet's passage through police body armor saw it banned in sales to the public. Despite this, both commercial and clandestine manufacture ensures that ptfe continues to do the slipperiest of things, and help in the fight both for and against crime.
Sticky things
Something that has stuck to Teflon is the idea that it’s a spin-off from the early NASA space program. Roy Plunkett of DuPont accidentally discovered PTFE in 1938 during a disastrous attempt to make a new CFC refrigerant. DuPont trademarked Teflon as the name in 1944 and by 1950, was producing over 450 tonnes per year in Parkersburg, West Virginia.
An early user was the Manhattan Project where PTFE (known as K416 back then), was used to coat valves and seals in the pipes holding highly reactive uranium hexafluoride in the uranium enrichment plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
Later, in 1954, an engineer called Marc Grégoire, saw another potential for PTFE (and being French) created the first pan coated with Teflon non-stick resin, allowing him to make omelletes with ease, and thus a whole culinary industry was born. In 1969 this remarkable material, which started out as a bit of pointless goo did eventually find its way to the moon and back, where it was used in the spacesuits of astronauts as it doesn’t react with other chemicals, is highly resistant to heat, and is slippery enough to not be abrasive in the rough and tumble of space.
Another overly expensive use of Teflon was found in the shape of the Millennium dome, whose structure is substantially made of Teflon, and is one of the few examples where the material had failed to stop the mud from sticking to it as an overly expensive and pointless project during its early incarnation as a site for millennial celebrations. Gecko’s, despite their legendary ability to stick to pretty much anything, wouldn’t be able to stick to it however.
Teflon sticks around
In August 2, 2004 consumeraffairs.com reported that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had begun a major investigation into DuPont, accusing the company of withholding more than 20 years of evidence “that a perfluoronated compound used to make Teflon endangered its workers and the public. Company memos show the compound was passed in 1981 from a pregnant employee to her fetus, but DuPont allegedly failed to report the information to the EPA as required under federal law. The company has denied the allegations.”
Studies have found small amounts of perfluoronated compounds have in the blood of virtually every person tested for them in the United States, including in children as young as 2. With levels of the compounds in some children as high as those for chemical-plant workers, and close to levels that caused developmental problems in rats.
The compounds also show up in foods such as apples, bread, green beans and ground beef. Scientists don't know how the compounds are being released into the environment. There is speculation that as Teflon, Stainmaster, Scotchgard, Gore-Tex and similar products age, the compounds break down and enter the environment.
Other likely routes include unreported releases of the chemicals into air and water. DuPont settled for $300 million in a lawsuit filed by residents near its manufacturing plant in Ohio in 2004. This was based on groundwater pollution in the chemical used in Teflon production.
A study involving researchers from 10 nations (published on the Internet by Environmental Science & Technology) analyzed blood from 473 samples from four continents. Levels of the most common compounds proved highest in the United States and Poland, and lowest in India. So that appears to be where most of it ends up, but where the process begins, industrially at least, is as the mineral fluorospar, which is mined in China, Mexico and Western Europe. The majority of this mineral goes into industrial smelting and refining of metals, with some being used to manufacture hydrofluoric acid, and eventually ends up as fluorine gas for etching glass (particularly lightbulbs) and making chlorinated fluorocarbons for refrigeration and aerosols. This latter use has become restricted after the volatile and long lasting gases were shown beyond reasonable doubt to be creating large holes in the ozone layer at both poles, which, thanks to international treaties is now closing up again.