14 ms·

3M Knew About the Dangers of PFOA and PFOS Decades Ago, Internal Documents Show

272 points by adrian_mrd 8y ago

legitster 8y ago
Without knowing too much about PFOA specifically, I would hazard a guess that the chemical itself is not necessarily dangerous - it's the delivery via aeresol that would worry me. Namely, spraying down pans to apply Teflon and spraying it as Scotchguard. There are plenty of chemicals that are perfectly fine inert, but when you push them into the air haphazardly they get into really bad places and create negative environmental effects.
- LeifCarrotson 8y ago
  Knowing a lot about PFOA (Wolverine World Wide operated a tannery in my home town and dumped Scotchguard-treated leather scraps in the swamp, now I have 100 ppt PFOA in my well water), it is incredibly dangerous. They were incredibly careful to wear the full gamut of protective gear when handling it, but assumed the infinite sink of nature would dilute it to safety. A few decades later, it's still not diluted to safe levels. The article is newsworthy because WWW are claiming 3M assured them it was safe until 2003 when they stopped using it because the FDA told them to. And 3M is claiming that there wasn't sufficient evidence to say it could be bad until they finally did. And rational people are looking at the whole thing knowing that everyone knew it was bad but they kept using it because it made them money. To be fair, I and thousands of my neighbors now have a whole-house carbon filter that costs thousands in my home - bought, installed, and maintained on WWW's dime - that takes that 100 ppt down to nondetectable levels. That keeps my toddler safe. But I have been drinking it for 30 years...
fhood 8y ago
Sad, but hardly surprising. It sometimes seems like every company in this position did similar things. Tobacco, Oil, CFCs, Leaded gasoline etc... I'm sure I could come up with others if I looked. This is why I don't understand many of the arguments against federal regulation. I know regulation hurts the economy and makes doing business harder. I understand. But most corporations will not self-regulate even when people's lives are at stake.
- neffy 8y ago
  Cui bono. Regulations can legitimately protect the public, or they can originate from well organised companies and other groups wanting anti-competitive practices to protect their own position. So somewhat problematically arguments against regulation either tend to originate from people and companies who want to benefit from its absence, and typically don't care, or don't want to care, about the larger cost of their actions; or from people and companies trying to compete against the former. Aiding and abetting all this, are theoretical (and incorrect) arguments from economics about self-regulating systems, which in the case of economics, and apparently only in economics, are devoid of features such as positive and negative feedback loops.
- kungtotte 8y ago
  I don't think it's a given that it hurts the economy. Someone has to research, develop, and manufacture the non-toxic alternatives. How is that money not part of the economy? Also, it doesn't make business that much harder unless you built your business on being shady. See: the recent GDPR kerfuffle. For some it was just business as usual on May 26th.
  - sbjs 8y ago
    The more established, bigger, unethical companies will crush the "our products don't poison you!" competitors out of existence before they even get started. They will maintain their poison-happy monopolies. So without regulation protecting anti-poison competition, there will be no money in these alternatives, and the economy will remain unbalanced and literally deadly.
    - rootlocus 8y ago
      > They will maintain their poison-happy monopolies. They will because people will still buy their crap. There are plenty of lazy, misinformed, ignorant people who would do anything to keep happy-poisoning themselves, including fighting legislation meant to protect them.
      - 8y ago
Retric 8y ago
I wonder what articles in 2050's are going to say about such things in the 2010's.
- thatjsguy 8y ago
  “Food and drink companies knew all along that sugar was making you obese and diabetic.”
  - ncw33 8y ago
    The difference is that most/all sugars are not inherently harmful, and we believe that they can be consumed safely at reasonable doses. A bit of glucose or fructose won't kill you, and is a (small) natural component of your diet. So banning sugar would be rather hard, compared to complex toxic chemicals which can't be processed by our bodies, decay slowly, and where we really have fairly limited reason to put in products.
    - pygy_ 8y ago
      The problem is at least twofold: - some foodstuff is optimized for addictiveness, with far too much sugar, starting at the craddle. - nutrition science has been purposefully sent in the wrong direction for decades.
  - tarwater11 8y ago
    Fat (edit: typically) causes type 2 diabetes, not sugar.
    - oxide 8y ago
      I would like to read more about this if you wouldn't mind sourcing your facts.
    - driverdan 8y ago
      I believe you mean obesity, not dietary fat.
    - 8y ago
jccc 8y ago
https://theintercept.com/2018/07/31/3m-pfas-minnesota-pfoa-pfos/ https://theintercept.com/2018/07/31/3m-pfas-minnesota-pfoa-p... This is a Fast Company post about The Intercept’s report. Might we prefer to link to it instead?
- driverdan 8y ago
  Yes, please. The Fast Company post is blogspam.
  - wwhitlow 8y ago
    I agree as well the Intercept post has way more content.
- sctb 8y ago
  Thanks! Yes, we've updated the link from https://www.fastcompany.com/90212342/3m-knew-your-non-stick-pan-was-poisoning-you-in-the-70s https://www.fastcompany.com/90212342/3m-knew-your-non-stick-....
al_ramich 8y ago
Assuming the article is valid and the facts check out, this is pretty astonishing and incredibly troubling. How can profit at any cost be justified?
- godzilla82 8y ago
  Either you are incredibly naive or you were born yesterday!
  - al_ramich 8y ago
    well, thank you for that grown-up comment. Many organizations will have questionable implications of the products they sell but in most cases, this comes down to things that are less obvious than selling something that has a substance that has been proven to contribute to cancer.
microcolonel 8y ago
I wonder if BAM[1] coatings suffer from any of these ills (or anything else which would prevent them from being used in cookware), seems like they would be a decent way to go if the cost could be improved. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_magnesium_boride https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_magnesium_boride
Mediterraneo10 8y ago
"Right now it’s hard to find a pan that uses Teflon in the old continent." The French company Tefal sells its frying pans across Europe. It is one of the most popular kitchen product around. As the name suggests, these used Teflon as some point. Is Teflon really not used any more in making these pans, and if not, then what is? EDIT: I suspect that in the quotation above, the author really meant "PFOA" not Teflon.
- conradfr 8y ago
  Yes according to their faq they use PTFE and not PFOA, but not sure since when. > Tefal/T-fal non-stick coating is a technical coating made from a polymer name polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE). It is PTFE which gives the cookware the non-stick properties. Public health authorities in Europe and in the USA demonstrated that PTFE is an inert substance which does not chemically react with food, water or domestic cleaning products. It is totally harmless in case of ingestion. These Public health authorities confirmed the harmlessness of PTFE non-stick coatings in cookware. In fact, PTFE is so safe that it is frequently used in the medical profession to coat pacemakers and the tiny tubes made to replace arteries. It is also used for surgical procedures for the benefit of patients with severe kidney disease, and some joint prostheses are also partly coated with PTFE. > PFOA is the standard English abbreviation of perfluorooctanoic acid. PFOA is used in the manufacturing process of many products such as non-stick coatings, compatible microwave packaging, some textiles, stain resistant carpet, pizza boxes which do not absorb fat, etc. On its finished products, Tefal/T-fal's commitment is to guarantee the absence of PFOA, lead and cadmium and to guarantee that its products with Tefal/T-fal non-stick coating are harmless for the environment and the consumer.
  - hammock 8y ago
    PTFE is not harmless in the body - the body cannot break it down - and there is no independent study showing it as such. "PTFE is so safe that it is frequently used in the medical profession to coat pacemakers and the tiny tubes made to replace arteries" was written by a 3M corp comms flunky.
    - 8y ago
UnderProtest 8y ago
This headline isn't exactly accurate and the article is misleading. PFOA was used in the process of affixing Teflon to surfaces but is not present in the pan itself. PFOA has built up in the environment as a result of the manufacturing processes that use it. It would be more accurate to say "3M knew that manufacturing non-stick pans, and a number of other products, was poisoning all of us in the '70s". You didn't have to have a Teflon pan to be exposed and having a Teflon pan didn't increase your exposure significantly. Microwave popcorn bags and other food wrappers were hundreds of times worse. Teflon pans remain safe to use. All these other non-stick products are potential problems but it's impractical to try to identify which ones have PFOA or PFOS... so it's a good thing it's being phased out.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  > Microwave popcorn bags (...) were hundreds of times worse. Wait. Is it still true today?
  - AckSyn 8y ago
    I’m also interested in knowing why they were worse, and harmful at all.
  - tfehring 8y ago
    Looks like microwave popcorn bags still contained high levels of PFOA as of 2006, though I wasn't able to find a more recent reliable source. "Consumption of just 10 bags of microwave popcorn a year could contribute about 20% of the average blood PFOA levels, say the scientists interviewed anonymously for this article." PDF: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/es062599u https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/es062599u
    - black_puppydog 8y ago
      For some of my friends that sounds like perfectly normal thing to do, so... where does that leave us? :P
      - 8y ago
weavie 8y ago
My cast iron pan is something I will keep until the day I die. Then it will be passed down to my daughter..
- peatmoss 8y ago
  You have just one? ;-) High fives for iron. I bought an old cast iron pan from a second hand store that had been machined to a very smooth finish. After cooking eggs in it, I immediately stripped and sanded my modern Lodge cast iron. The difference is pretty big. It may not be as non-stick as Teflon, but it’s pretty darned non-stick. I assume my cast iron is also putting less cancer in my body.
  - sigstoat 8y ago
    > I immediately stripped and sanded my modern Lodge cast iron. > I assume my cast iron is also putting less cancer in my body. what were your abrasives bonded together with, and how much of it ended up stuck in the surface of the cast iron?
    - peatmoss 8y ago
      Good question! I did a final buff with the steel cone brush and a drill, so I’m hoping any sandpaper cancer glue was stripped away.
  - nielsbot 8y ago
    Guess we're going to need a multiyear longitudinal study on the health risks of iron pans!
    - Gibbon1 8y ago
      Mine are ancient, one wonders what the chromium content of modern ones are though. Due to recycled scrap.
  - buckminster 8y ago
    I'd like to try that with my Lodge. Did you sand it by hand? How long did it take? I'm not very handy!
shriphani 8y ago
A point that I've read in N.N. Taleb's incerto series is that it is a matter of scale. A small artisan who puts their name on their product is less likely to poison you and fuck your life up. Megacorps though operate with a very different risk profile and can take pretty antisocial decisions. Regulation must keep a watchful eye on the megacorp - a small fishing operation is a net positive for society but a fisheries giant can drive entire species to extinction and threaten food supplies.
ars 8y ago
This title is incorrect. This article is about chemicals used to make a non-stick pan. The pan itself, once made, is not poisoning anyone.
mnm1 8y ago
This is merely an example of many of living in a poorly regulated market where profits are constantly put ahead of people's lives and profits. If el chapo or Pablo Escobar sold nonstick pans or the chemicals to make them you think they would have continued this study and ruined their profits? No? Then why get mad at 3M? This is the system we as Americans have agreed to put in place. Most people would do the same thing in their position. Profit and ignore the negative consequences while lobbying to keep regulators away. After all, it's not their lives being put at risk...
throw2016 8y ago
This is why its naive to think consumer choice can replace regulations because in most cases consumers are in the dark like in this case, or are not a collective to effect change and that then destroys the commons. The feedback loop is too long. On the other side anti-regulatory proponents fund hundreds of think tanks and keep on aggressively pushing their agenda in the media and then when the environmental damage or fraud is revealed they make themselves scarce or evade responsibility. This is not a good model to run a society. It puts individual greed over the common good and destroys the commons. Civilized society has never worked without laws which is what regulations are and and its high time basic tested principles are not allowed to be muddied by self interested parties with PR budgets. Depending on 'goodwill', 'self-regulation' and 'ethics' is a fairy tale version of reality.
pwned1 8y ago
PFAS are suddenly a HUGE issue here in Michigan. Paper mills and tanneries were using and dumping it wholesale in the 60s. Now it's come back to bite us and PFAS is showing up in pretty much every municipality's water supply: http://search.mlive.com/?q=pfos http://search.mlive.com/?q=pfos
tomohawk 8y ago
From the article, the EPA sat on this information for quite a long time. While 3M was heavily fined - were any EPA employees held responsible? MTBE is another example of a colossal screw up on the part of the EPA. EPA required an oxygenate to be added to gas (even though car technology had long since moved on - so no actual benefit). Then, when MTBE was used and became known as problematic, they stalled efforts for several years to stop its use. The result is that MTBE polluted much of our ground water. Anyone at the EPA get held accountable? Today, we have gas that is more expensive, less effective, and likely more polluting due to these regulations. We also cannot buy gas cans without those crazy spouts because the ethanol in today's gas evaporates so easily, causing smog, that they had to add more regulations on spouts to try to prevent that. Anyone ever used one of those spouts without spilling gas? https://fee.org/articles/government-reformulated-gas-bad-in-more-ways-than-one/ https://fee.org/articles/government-reformulated-gas-bad-in-...
- gwbas1c 8y ago
  I use the "No Spill" brand: No-Spill 1405 2-1/2-Gallon Poly Gas Can https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000W72GBC/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_ljzzBb4F14594 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000W72GBC/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_ljzz... It's great for my lawn tractor and snow blower, but it won't fill a car. If you need to fill a car, look for one of the automotive racing gas cans with a very long spout. I don't remember the brand name, but my John Deere dealer sells them.

272 points by adrian_mrd 8y ago

Without knowing too much about PFOA specifically, I would hazard a guess that the chemical itself is not necessarily dangerous - it's the delivery via aeresol that would worry me. Namely, spraying down pans to apply Teflon and spraying it as Scotchguard. There are plenty of chemicals that are perfectly fine inert, but when you push them into the air haphazardly they get into really bad places and create negative environmental effects.

LeifCarrotson 8y ago
Knowing a lot about PFOA (Wolverine World Wide operated a tannery in my home town and dumped Scotchguard-treated leather scraps in the swamp, now I have 100 ppt PFOA in my well water), it is incredibly dangerous. They were incredibly careful to wear the full gamut of protective gear when handling it, but assumed the infinite sink of nature would dilute it to safety. A few decades later, it's still not diluted to safe levels. The article is newsworthy because WWW are claiming 3M assured them it was safe until 2003 when they stopped using it because the FDA told them to. And 3M is claiming that there wasn't sufficient evidence to say it could be bad until they finally did. And rational people are looking at the whole thing knowing that everyone knew it was bad but they kept using it because it made them money. To be fair, I and thousands of my neighbors now have a whole-house carbon filter that costs thousands in my home - bought, installed, and maintained on WWW's dime - that takes that 100 ppt down to nondetectable levels. That keeps my toddler safe. But I have been drinking it for 30 years...

fhood 8y ago

Sad, but hardly surprising. It sometimes seems like every company in this position did similar things. Tobacco, Oil, CFCs, Leaded gasoline etc... I'm sure I could come up with others if I looked. This is why I don't understand many of the arguments against federal regulation. I know regulation hurts the economy and makes doing business harder. I understand. But most corporations will not self-regulate even when people's lives are at stake.

neffy 8y ago
Cui bono. Regulations can legitimately protect the public, or they can originate from well organised companies and other groups wanting anti-competitive practices to protect their own position. So somewhat problematically arguments against regulation either tend to originate from people and companies who want to benefit from its absence, and typically don't care, or don't want to care, about the larger cost of their actions; or from people and companies trying to compete against the former. Aiding and abetting all this, are theoretical (and incorrect) arguments from economics about self-regulating systems, which in the case of economics, and apparently only in economics, are devoid of features such as positive and negative feedback loops.
kungtotte 8y ago
I don't think it's a given that it hurts the economy. Someone has to research, develop, and manufacture the non-toxic alternatives. How is that money not part of the economy? Also, it doesn't make business that much harder unless you built your business on being shady. See: the recent GDPR kerfuffle. For some it was just business as usual on May 26th.
- sbjs 8y ago
  The more established, bigger, unethical companies will crush the "our products don't poison you!" competitors out of existence before they even get started. They will maintain their poison-happy monopolies. So without regulation protecting anti-poison competition, there will be no money in these alternatives, and the economy will remain unbalanced and literally deadly.
  - rootlocus 8y ago
    > They will maintain their poison-happy monopolies. They will because people will still buy their crap. There are plenty of lazy, misinformed, ignorant people who would do anything to keep happy-poisoning themselves, including fighting legislation meant to protect them.
    - 8y ago

Retric 8y ago

I wonder what articles in 2050's are going to say about such things in the 2010's.

thatjsguy 8y ago
“Food and drink companies knew all along that sugar was making you obese and diabetic.”
- ncw33 8y ago
  The difference is that most/all sugars are not inherently harmful, and we believe that they can be consumed safely at reasonable doses. A bit of glucose or fructose won't kill you, and is a (small) natural component of your diet. So banning sugar would be rather hard, compared to complex toxic chemicals which can't be processed by our bodies, decay slowly, and where we really have fairly limited reason to put in products.
  - pygy_ 8y ago
    The problem is at least twofold: - some foodstuff is optimized for addictiveness, with far too much sugar, starting at the craddle. - nutrition science has been purposefully sent in the wrong direction for decades.
- tarwater11 8y ago
  Fat (edit: typically) causes type 2 diabetes, not sugar.
  - oxide 8y ago
    I would like to read more about this if you wouldn't mind sourcing your facts.
  - driverdan 8y ago
    I believe you mean obesity, not dietary fat.
  - 8y ago

jccc 8y ago

https://theintercept.com/2018/07/31/3m-pfas-minnesota-pfoa-pfos/ https://theintercept.com/2018/07/31/3m-pfas-minnesota-pfoa-p... This is a Fast Company post about The Intercept’s report. Might we prefer to link to it instead?

driverdan 8y ago
Yes, please. The Fast Company post is blogspam.
- wwhitlow 8y ago
  I agree as well the Intercept post has way more content.
sctb 8y ago
Thanks! Yes, we've updated the link from https://www.fastcompany.com/90212342/3m-knew-your-non-stick-pan-was-poisoning-you-in-the-70s https://www.fastcompany.com/90212342/3m-knew-your-non-stick-....

al_ramich 8y ago

Assuming the article is valid and the facts check out, this is pretty astonishing and incredibly troubling. How can profit at any cost be justified?

godzilla82 8y ago
Either you are incredibly naive or you were born yesterday!
- al_ramich 8y ago
  well, thank you for that grown-up comment. Many organizations will have questionable implications of the products they sell but in most cases, this comes down to things that are less obvious than selling something that has a substance that has been proven to contribute to cancer.

microcolonel 8y ago

I wonder if BAM[1] coatings suffer from any of these ills (or anything else which would prevent them from being used in cookware), seems like they would be a decent way to go if the cost could be improved. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_magnesium_boride https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_magnesium_boride

Mediterraneo10 8y ago

"Right now it’s hard to find a pan that uses Teflon in the old continent." The French company Tefal sells its frying pans across Europe. It is one of the most popular kitchen product around. As the name suggests, these used Teflon as some point. Is Teflon really not used any more in making these pans, and if not, then what is? EDIT: I suspect that in the quotation above, the author really meant "PFOA" not Teflon.

conradfr 8y ago
Yes according to their faq they use PTFE and not PFOA, but not sure since when. > Tefal/T-fal non-stick coating is a technical coating made from a polymer name polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE). It is PTFE which gives the cookware the non-stick properties. Public health authorities in Europe and in the USA demonstrated that PTFE is an inert substance which does not chemically react with food, water or domestic cleaning products. It is totally harmless in case of ingestion. These Public health authorities confirmed the harmlessness of PTFE non-stick coatings in cookware. In fact, PTFE is so safe that it is frequently used in the medical profession to coat pacemakers and the tiny tubes made to replace arteries. It is also used for surgical procedures for the benefit of patients with severe kidney disease, and some joint prostheses are also partly coated with PTFE. > PFOA is the standard English abbreviation of perfluorooctanoic acid. PFOA is used in the manufacturing process of many products such as non-stick coatings, compatible microwave packaging, some textiles, stain resistant carpet, pizza boxes which do not absorb fat, etc. On its finished products, Tefal/T-fal's commitment is to guarantee the absence of PFOA, lead and cadmium and to guarantee that its products with Tefal/T-fal non-stick coating are harmless for the environment and the consumer.
- hammock 8y ago
  PTFE is not harmless in the body - the body cannot break it down - and there is no independent study showing it as such. "PTFE is so safe that it is frequently used in the medical profession to coat pacemakers and the tiny tubes made to replace arteries" was written by a 3M corp comms flunky.
  - 8y ago

UnderProtest 8y ago

This headline isn't exactly accurate and the article is misleading. PFOA was used in the process of affixing Teflon to surfaces but is not present in the pan itself. PFOA has built up in the environment as a result of the manufacturing processes that use it. It would be more accurate to say "3M knew that manufacturing non-stick pans, and a number of other products, was poisoning all of us in the '70s". You didn't have to have a Teflon pan to be exposed and having a Teflon pan didn't increase your exposure significantly. Microwave popcorn bags and other food wrappers were hundreds of times worse. Teflon pans remain safe to use. All these other non-stick products are potential problems but it's impractical to try to identify which ones have PFOA or PFOS... so it's a good thing it's being phased out.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
> Microwave popcorn bags (...) were hundreds of times worse. Wait. Is it still true today?
- AckSyn 8y ago
  I’m also interested in knowing why they were worse, and harmful at all.
- tfehring 8y ago
  Looks like microwave popcorn bags still contained high levels of PFOA as of 2006, though I wasn't able to find a more recent reliable source. "Consumption of just 10 bags of microwave popcorn a year could contribute about 20% of the average blood PFOA levels, say the scientists interviewed anonymously for this article." PDF: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/es062599u https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/es062599u
  - black_puppydog 8y ago
    For some of my friends that sounds like perfectly normal thing to do, so... where does that leave us? :P
    - 8y ago

weavie 8y ago

My cast iron pan is something I will keep until the day I die. Then it will be passed down to my daughter..

peatmoss 8y ago
You have just one? ;-) High fives for iron. I bought an old cast iron pan from a second hand store that had been machined to a very smooth finish. After cooking eggs in it, I immediately stripped and sanded my modern Lodge cast iron. The difference is pretty big. It may not be as non-stick as Teflon, but it’s pretty darned non-stick. I assume my cast iron is also putting less cancer in my body.
- sigstoat 8y ago
  > I immediately stripped and sanded my modern Lodge cast iron. > I assume my cast iron is also putting less cancer in my body. what were your abrasives bonded together with, and how much of it ended up stuck in the surface of the cast iron?
  - peatmoss 8y ago
    Good question! I did a final buff with the steel cone brush and a drill, so I’m hoping any sandpaper cancer glue was stripped away.
- nielsbot 8y ago
  Guess we're going to need a multiyear longitudinal study on the health risks of iron pans!
  - Gibbon1 8y ago
    Mine are ancient, one wonders what the chromium content of modern ones are though. Due to recycled scrap.
- buckminster 8y ago
  I'd like to try that with my Lodge. Did you sand it by hand? How long did it take? I'm not very handy!

shriphani 8y ago

A point that I've read in N.N. Taleb's incerto series is that it is a matter of scale. A small artisan who puts their name on their product is less likely to poison you and fuck your life up. Megacorps though operate with a very different risk profile and can take pretty antisocial decisions. Regulation must keep a watchful eye on the megacorp - a small fishing operation is a net positive for society but a fisheries giant can drive entire species to extinction and threaten food supplies.

ars 8y ago

This title is incorrect. This article is about chemicals used to make a non-stick pan. The pan itself, once made, is not poisoning anyone.

mnm1 8y ago

This is merely an example of many of living in a poorly regulated market where profits are constantly put ahead of people's lives and profits. If el chapo or Pablo Escobar sold nonstick pans or the chemicals to make them you think they would have continued this study and ruined their profits? No? Then why get mad at 3M? This is the system we as Americans have agreed to put in place. Most people would do the same thing in their position. Profit and ignore the negative consequences while lobbying to keep regulators away. After all, it's not their lives being put at risk...

throw2016 8y ago

This is why its naive to think consumer choice can replace regulations because in most cases consumers are in the dark like in this case, or are not a collective to effect change and that then destroys the commons. The feedback loop is too long. On the other side anti-regulatory proponents fund hundreds of think tanks and keep on aggressively pushing their agenda in the media and then when the environmental damage or fraud is revealed they make themselves scarce or evade responsibility. This is not a good model to run a society. It puts individual greed over the common good and destroys the commons. Civilized society has never worked without laws which is what regulations are and and its high time basic tested principles are not allowed to be muddied by self interested parties with PR budgets. Depending on 'goodwill', 'self-regulation' and 'ethics' is a fairy tale version of reality.

pwned1 8y ago

PFAS are suddenly a HUGE issue here in Michigan. Paper mills and tanneries were using and dumping it wholesale in the 60s. Now it's come back to bite us and PFAS is showing up in pretty much every municipality's water supply: http://search.mlive.com/?q=pfos http://search.mlive.com/?q=pfos

tomohawk 8y ago

From the article, the EPA sat on this information for quite a long time. While 3M was heavily fined - were any EPA employees held responsible? MTBE is another example of a colossal screw up on the part of the EPA. EPA required an oxygenate to be added to gas (even though car technology had long since moved on - so no actual benefit). Then, when MTBE was used and became known as problematic, they stalled efforts for several years to stop its use. The result is that MTBE polluted much of our ground water. Anyone at the EPA get held accountable? Today, we have gas that is more expensive, less effective, and likely more polluting due to these regulations. We also cannot buy gas cans without those crazy spouts because the ethanol in today's gas evaporates so easily, causing smog, that they had to add more regulations on spouts to try to prevent that. Anyone ever used one of those spouts without spilling gas? https://fee.org/articles/government-reformulated-gas-bad-in-more-ways-than-one/ https://fee.org/articles/government-reformulated-gas-bad-in-...

gwbas1c 8y ago
I use the "No Spill" brand: No-Spill 1405 2-1/2-Gallon Poly Gas Can https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000W72GBC/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_ljzzBb4F14594 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000W72GBC/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_ljzz... It's great for my lawn tractor and snow blower, but it won't fill a car. If you need to fill a car, look for one of the automotive racing gas cans with a very long spout. I don't remember the brand name, but my John Deere dealer sells them.