Teacher Talks Personal Teflon Story

Hi, class. My name is Rachel Props. And I am a teacher here in Harrison county. I was born and raised in Parkersburg West Virginia, which is one of the birthplaces of Teflon, it's something that you are going to learn about in class. My dad actually worked for Teflon and as a little kid, I got to go to the factory and see it being made, and I thought it was so amazing. Because stuff didn't stick to it. As I got older, it was really sad because almost everybody I knew started to die from cancer. And a lot of them were people that I grew up knowing because my dad worked with them and they worked at Teflon around all of these chemicals. As I got older, I started to develop health problems and eventually was diagnosed with three different things that are caused by the chemicals that they used at the local plant to make Teflon. One of the things that happened was when I had my baby, I got very, very sick and almost died. That is a complication that can happen as a result of the CH that DuPont makes at Washington works in Parkersburg, Washington works is the name of all the different chemical plants that are there and Teflon is just one of them. So for me, I grew up around it. It is what my dad did for a living. It's how we got food and so in many ways I was thankful for that place because it helped my family live. But it also took people away from me and made my life very sad in different ways. One of the things that they would do every year to try to make people happy and forget about all these things that Teflon were causing was they would have a giant picnic and they would bring in rock walls and we would have swimming pools and water slides and all kinds of things and we would swim in that water that was so dangerous that was literally killing cows. So one of the things about Teflon to be aware of is that it made our lives very easy. But the women that worked around it when they had babies, their babies, a lot of times we're missing part of their face or part of their hands. The benefits that came from it were not the same as the problems that it caused. If you have any questions for me, feel free to give them to your teacher and she will share them with me and I will make a video with all of your questions. I hope you have a really good day and you enjoy learning about this fascinating chemical that was made right here in West Virginia. Have a good day. Bye.