Wax and the Environment
 Not Just Faster, (Eco) Friendlier Too:
Purl Wax is equally committed to performance and the environment. All of our products are PFC free. Our Competition Microcrystalline Wax is a petroleum based wax that uses silicone additives rather than fluoro additives. Our silicone microcrystalline blends are much more inert in the environment than traditional fluoro based waxes.
Purl’s All Natural Verde Wax line is petroleum free, PFC free, soy free, biodegradable, and non toxic. Over the last 5 years we have put a tremendous amount of research into this product line. Our findings have shown that the performance of soy wax is inferior to traditional waxes. We believe this is because soy wax is actually hydrogenated soy oil and therefore lacks the molecular structure to withstand the heat and friction encountered while gliding on snow. Purl has developed a complex proprietary blend of ingredients that form naturally into hydrocarbon chains, thereby performing very comparably to petroleum based hydrocarbon waxes. Our newest version of the Verde Wax is fast, durable, and easy to scrape. Patent Pending.
Call Out:
There are several wax manufacturers producing one soy wax next to a line of fluoro waxes. It is time to ask companies and shops to stop distributing toxic fluoro waxes.
Technical Information:
In the face of the big environmental issues we are facing today ski and snowboard wax might not seem to play such an important role, but a traditional stick of wax bears a lot more toxic potential than generally known. The large majority of ski and snowboard waxes are fluorinated waxes that consist of perflourochemicals or PFC. There are two major problems with the use of PFC.
1) The production of PFC requires a highly toxic and nearly indestructible chemical called Perfluorooctanoic acid or PFOA. Once PFCs start degrading they break back down to PFOAs and are eventually shed into our water streams. PFOA is a known carcinogen that has not only been linked to cancer, but also to birth defects and liver damage.
2) PFCs are extremely potent greenhouse gases with a lifetime up to 50,000 years. In a 2003 study, the most abundant atmospheric PFC was tetrafluoromethane. The greenhouse warming potential (GWP) of tetrafluoromethane is 6,500 times that of carbon dioxide, and the GWP of hexafluoroethane is 9,200 times that of carbon dioxide. Several governments concerned about the properties of PFCs have already tried to implement international agreements to limit their usage before it becomes a global warming issue. PFCs are one of the classes of compounds regulated in the Kyoto Protocol. An industry so directly affected and threatened by climate change cannot afford to close its eyes to these facts.
References:
The New York Times Dupont Denies Poisoning Consumers with Teflon Products
August 8, 2004
“Now DuPont has to worry that Teflon and the materials used to make it have perhaps become a bit too ubiquitous. Teflon constituents have found their way into rivers, soil, wild animals and humans, the company, government environmental officials and others say. Evidence suggests that some of the materials, known to cause cancer and other problems in animals, may be
making people sick.”
EWG Project PFC Dictionary
November 2006
“Fluorotelomers break down within the body and in the environment to PFOA and similar chemicals. Once this happens, the breakdown chemicals never break down. They are the most persistent synthetic chemicals known to man.”
Mother Jones Teflon Is Forever
Published June 8, 2007
“DuPont has always known more about Teflon than it let on. Two years ago the EPA fined the company $16.5 million—the largest administrative fine in the agency's history—for covering up decades' worth of studies indicating that PFOA could cause health problems such as cancer, birth defects, and liver damage.”
Environmental Working Group Research PFCs: Global Contaminants
April 2003
“A flood of disturbing scientific findings since the late 1990s has abruptly elevated PFCs to the rogues gallery of highly toxic, extraordinarily persistent chemicals that pervasively contaminate human blood and wildlife the world over. As more studies pour in, PFCs seem destined to supplant DDT, PCBs, dioxin and other chemicals as the most notorious, global chemical contaminants ever produced.”
Alternet.org Toxic Teflon
Published January 4, 2007
“But like many "better things" produced by industrial chemistry, these products can have disastrous side effects. The chemicals used to make them or that are released when they decompose are especially troublesome. They can easily escape to roam freely around the planet, persist in the environment, contaminate the blood of people and wildlife, change body chemistry, and are accused of causing health problems, including cancer.”
“The 2004 settlement of a class-action lawsuit brought by Ohio and West Virginia residents living in the vicinity of DuPont's Washington Works plant required the company to spend more than $100 million to ensure that homes in the area are supplied with water uncontaminated with PFOA.”
“The EPA sued DuPont in 2004, charging that the company had for years been concealing information on PFOA pollution at Washington Works. A year ago, without admitting any wrongdoing, DuPont agreed to pay $16.5 million in fines and support of research and education -- the largest civil judgment EPA had ever obtained.”
Pioneer Press
Minnesota: 3M water suit goes to trial trimmed
May 4, 2009
“Chemicals found in Washington County drinking water have cost the company more than $56 million in cleanup costs, and the current lawsuit could boost that by millions.”
The News Journal (Delaware) PFOA elevated in Dupont's Del. workers
April 01, 2009
Decatur Daily, Eric Fleischauer 3M fined for chemical used in Decatur
Published April 27, 2006
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