Nonstick chemicals upset behavior
By Janet Raloff
From San Diego, at a meeting of the Society of Toxicology
A study in mice finds that early-life exposure to the fluorinated chemicals used in nonstick products, such as fry pans, can rewire the brain in ways that dramatically affect behavior.
Niclas Johansson and his coworkers at Uppsala (Sweden) University exposed 10-day-old male mice to a single oral dose of a nonstick agent, either PFOS (perfluorooctanesulfonic acid) or PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid). That stage of mouse life roughly corresponds to a major brain-development period in children, which lasts from shortly before birth to about age 2 years. Some groups of animals in the experiment ingested 9 to 11 milligrams of a nonstick chemical per kilogram of body weight; other groups got less than 10 percent of that amount.