ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Competing Biologies: Testing Teflon's Toxicities

• In Event: Second Nature: Synthetic Materials and the (Re)making of Biological Knowledge in the Twentieth Century

English Abstract

In early toxicological research on PTFE (Teflon) at DuPont’s Haskell Laboratory, mid-twentieth-century scientists relied on, and increasingly questioned, the assumption that mice could serve as biological stand-ins for humans. As DuPont expanded Teflon’s applications in building materials—for carpets, coatings, and paint additives—researchers developed evolving bioassay techniques to quantify the compound’s biological effects. However, these methods remained unstable and subject to internal debate. Scientists debated the epistemological and ethical merits of competing biologies: Was the mouse an adequate stand-in for the human? What bodily differences should matter in establishing toxic thresholds? And how should uncertainty be managed in dangerous toxicities? By examining how corporate scientists navigated uncertainty, negotiated conflicting interpretations of toxicity, defined competing biologies, and stabilized claims about safety, the paper explores how determining Teflon’s safety was not a straightforward laboratory procedure, but a contested process at the limits of cross-species comparison.

Author

• Jessica Varner, University of Pennsylvania