5 ms·

For context: PFAS are known as "forever chemicals" because they do not break down in nature. They are also quite bad for most animals, including of course huma

by crote 5y ago

For context: PFAS are known as "forever chemicals" because they do not break down in nature. They are also quite bad for most animals, including of course humans. The 3M plant has been illegally dumping significant amounts of PFAS in the environment, both in the air and by dumping it in a river. During a test, over 90% of the 800ish people living within a 2-mile radius of the plant had amounts of PFAS in their body exceeding safe limits, with 60% reaching levels which could have health effects. An area of about 3 square mile around the plant is contaminated significantly enough that 3M has been made liable for sanitation. The government has of course ordered 3M to cease dumping PFAS, which I guess is the reason they are now cutting output. The story is made even more complicated because it's happening a few miles upstream from the Belgium - The Netherlands border so it is cross-border pollution - and The Netherlands is currently working to turn some land near the border into a wetlands nature reserve.

aardvarkr 5y ago
That additional context was really helpful, thank!
hyperman1 5y ago
It's been in local news for a long time now - at least august last year - Most of the coverage is in Dutch, not English. Here is one of the few English local news items I know about: https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2022/03/28/pfos-pfas-inquiry-committee-points-the-finger-at-3m/ https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2022/03/28/pfos-pfas-inquiry-co...
mensetmanusman 5y ago
Additional context that I find interesting: PFAS is the broadest subset of materials that contain a F-C bond and this includes teflon pan coatings, high-temperature o-rings (all vehicles/industrial equipment), fire-fighting materials for explosive environments (fertilizer, pyro, weapons, storage, etc.), and in this example, solvents that allow the semiconductor industry to function (because the periodic table has no replacement for the properties of a F-C bond). There is a smaller subset PFAS materials that bioaccumulate: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19759456/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19759456/ We know about the bioaccumulation effects because of new sensor technologies, and we are also only now learning how to break the F-C bond effectively for remediation (i.e. nothing is truly ‘forever’): https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181002082417.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181002082417.h... (I.e. “PFAS are known as "forever chemicals" because they do not break down in nature.” might better be stated that they do not break down quickly in nature; forever chemicals is technically a misnomer). tl;dr humanity is in the slow learning process of how to best deal with new materials technology. I find this topic analogous to the topic of ‘nuclear’ which has oscillated between ‘this will solve everything’ to ‘it’s all bad’ in the last century (and is now slowly changing as society is educated and can understand a bit more nuance).
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- blablabla123 5y ago
  No, PFAS is not like Nuclear. The biggest problem with Nuclear are explosions with extreme risks. PFAS had lead in the past to birth defects - even during "normal" plant operation That said, until shit had been hitting the fan a lot of facts about PFAS had been kept in secrecy with active manipulation going on. Even today there isn't much authorative and practical information available. Also the practical benefit of Teflon pans over say Emaille or iron pans is more than questionable. Are professional cooks really using Teflon pans?
- bsder 5y ago
  > solvents that allow the semiconductor industry to function (because the periodic table has no replacement for the properties of a F-C bond). A lot (most?) of the usage of these in semiconductors is not as solvents--they are thermal transfer fluids being used like refrigerants. This usage of them is for keeping equipment at exactly some specific temperature. As such, the usage is mostly closed-cycle. One of the reasons for using these is that they replaced earlier chemicals that were chlorofluorocarbons--a Cl-C bond destroys ozone when it gets loose while an F-C bond simply doesn't come apart. While the end chemicals tend to be incredibly stable, the byproducts of manufacturing--not so much.
bin_bash 5y ago
There is a great Mark Ruffalo film based on the true story of DuPont dumping these chemicals in West Virginia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Waters_(2019_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Waters_(2019_film)
- uhhyeahdude 5y ago
  There is a solid BBC documentary covering the same, currently available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/6veeTrdEyek https://youtu.be/6veeTrdEyek
superkuh 5y ago
3M did the same thing with PFOS (a related forever chemical) on the St. Croix and Mississippi rivers by Minneapolis/St. Paul in Minnesota. Just as the mercury levels were finally low enough to eat the fish the 3M PFOS started piling up and we're back to no fish meals. https://www.mprnews.org/story/2021/11/08/minn-lakes-with-forever-chemicals-added-to-states-list-of-troubled-waters https://www.mprnews.org/story/2021/11/08/minn-lakes-with-for...
flyingfences 5y ago
It's been one of the dominant news items in Flanders for the past year, to the extent that I'm surprised I haven't seen it mentioned in the English-speaking media until now. Entire towns have been placed under emergency health orders: don't eat the garden vegetables or chicken eggs, don't even drink the well water. For a long time after the contamination was discovered, 3M was denying responsibility, saying it wasn't coming from their factory, and thus they wouldn't pay for remediation, even when it was totally obvious.
- cwilkes 5y ago
  How were they denying it? That somehow PFAs were magically springing out of the ground that just so happened to be next to a factory of their’s? There can’t be that many factories pumping out these chemicals in that area.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    > How were they denying it? "It's not us", "we have no idea", "our tests show we're clean" works for a shockingly long time in modern Western societies - the government has to prove that it is indeed 3M or whoever else who causes the pollution, and government agencies usually tend to take time until an investigation is complete. And even then, offenders can file a lawsuit... and until that lawsuit is finished and unappealable, it can take many years if not decades. And during that time, everyone claiming that a specific company is an offender is under severe risk of a defamation lawsuit. We definitely need reforms both in staffing of regulatory agencies as well as in defamation lawsuits in cases of environment or labor offenses.
    - smnrchrds 5y ago
      The companies can also try to do creative things through bankruptcy courts to avoid any negative consequences, like Johnson & Johnson is doing right now: > J&J, which also makes products such as Tylenol and Band-Aid, assigned legal liability for the complaints to the spinoff company, which immediately filed for bankruptcy — a maneuver dubbed the "Texas two-step." https://www.npr.org/2022/02/25/1083061992/johnson-johnson-wins-court-battle-bankruptcy-baby-powder https://www.npr.org/2022/02/25/1083061992/johnson-johnson-wi...
hammock 5y ago
There is no safe limit of pfas, only regulated limits (and even those are rare)
bee_rider 5y ago
> The story is made even more complicated because it's happening a few miles upstream from the Belgium - The Netherlands border so it is cross-border pollution - and The Netherlands is currently working to turn some land near the border into a wetlands nature reserve. The EU should start a program to get their nations to put national parks on their borders. This would be generally nice, and also it would improve unity by preventing this sort of thing. Plus, if the EU ever broke up and European countries returned to their combative roots, it would set the stage for some nice woodland battles to break up the monotony (ok the last one might not be a serious reason).
Reason077 5y ago
I recommend the film "Dark Waters" starring Mark Ruffalo. A true-story dramatisation of a similar case in the US involving DuPont and PFOAs used in the manufacture of Teflon: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9071322/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9071322/
- beambot 5y ago
  Or read the expose directly: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-became-duponts-worst-nightmare.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-b...
hadlock 5y ago
Every house in my area has reverse osmosis water treatment, since you can't filter out PFAS. Renters are less lucky and have to install their own system, if they can even afford it. Everyone who uses the river as the primary water source is in the same boat, and the company upstream keeps dumping it in the river.
- londons_explore 5y ago
  You can filter it from food... But you can't filter PFAS from potatoes, orange juice, and other foodstuffs. For most people, that makes filtering only marginally effective. There will always be parts of your diet from a farm within a few miles of a building where they tested a PFAS fire extinguisher.
- LinuxBender 5y ago
  Same here in my area. For what its worth one can buy a portable RO system. I found one on Amazon that is decent. I first run my well water through a Britta filter to take most of the sediment and calcium out or the SimPure RO plugs up within 15 gallons. The house has no filter yet The Britta filters last for about 20 gallons each on my water. This allows my RO filters to work for about 300 gallons. My long term plan is to rip the giant pressure tank out of the underground well room and put in stainless steel tanks and many fine filters, charcoal, UV, etc... and one drill pump and small pressure tank per house so that I have reserve water when the underground pump fails and a way to fill the reserve tanks from a truck.
coryrc 5y ago
Fast food wrappers are coated in PFAS. No need to go the indirect route when you can just wipe your food with them. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=pfas+in+fast+food+wrappers&t=fpas&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=pfas+in+fast+food+wrappers&t=fpas&...
- potta_coffee 5y ago
  Absolutely outrageous! I wish I could say I don't believe it.

by crote 5y ago

aardvarkr 5y ago

That additional context was really helpful, thank!

hyperman1 5y ago

It's been in local news for a long time now - at least august last year - Most of the coverage is in Dutch, not English. Here is one of the few English local news items I know about: https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2022/03/28/pfos-pfas-inquiry-committee-points-the-finger-at-3m/ https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2022/03/28/pfos-pfas-inquiry-co...

mensetmanusman 5y ago

Additional context that I find interesting: PFAS is the broadest subset of materials that contain a F-C bond and this includes teflon pan coatings, high-temperature o-rings (all vehicles/industrial equipment), fire-fighting materials for explosive environments (fertilizer, pyro, weapons, storage, etc.), and in this example, solvents that allow the semiconductor industry to function (because the periodic table has no replacement for the properties of a F-C bond). There is a smaller subset PFAS materials that bioaccumulate: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19759456/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19759456/ We know about the bioaccumulation effects because of new sensor technologies, and we are also only now learning how to break the F-C bond effectively for remediation (i.e. nothing is truly ‘forever’): https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181002082417.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181002082417.h... (I.e. “PFAS are known as "forever chemicals" because they do not break down in nature.” might better be stated that they do not break down quickly in nature; forever chemicals is technically a misnomer). tl;dr humanity is in the slow learning process of how to best deal with new materials technology. I find this topic analogous to the topic of ‘nuclear’ which has oscillated between ‘this will solve everything’ to ‘it’s all bad’ in the last century (and is now slowly changing as society is educated and can understand a bit more nuance).

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
blablabla123 5y ago
No, PFAS is not like Nuclear. The biggest problem with Nuclear are explosions with extreme risks. PFAS had lead in the past to birth defects - even during "normal" plant operation That said, until shit had been hitting the fan a lot of facts about PFAS had been kept in secrecy with active manipulation going on. Even today there isn't much authorative and practical information available. Also the practical benefit of Teflon pans over say Emaille or iron pans is more than questionable. Are professional cooks really using Teflon pans?
bsder 5y ago
> solvents that allow the semiconductor industry to function (because the periodic table has no replacement for the properties of a F-C bond). A lot (most?) of the usage of these in semiconductors is not as solvents--they are thermal transfer fluids being used like refrigerants. This usage of them is for keeping equipment at exactly some specific temperature. As such, the usage is mostly closed-cycle. One of the reasons for using these is that they replaced earlier chemicals that were chlorofluorocarbons--a Cl-C bond destroys ozone when it gets loose while an F-C bond simply doesn't come apart. While the end chemicals tend to be incredibly stable, the byproducts of manufacturing--not so much.

bin_bash 5y ago

There is a great Mark Ruffalo film based on the true story of DuPont dumping these chemicals in West Virginia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Waters_(2019_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Waters_(2019_film)

uhhyeahdude 5y ago
There is a solid BBC documentary covering the same, currently available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/6veeTrdEyek https://youtu.be/6veeTrdEyek

superkuh 5y ago

3M did the same thing with PFOS (a related forever chemical) on the St. Croix and Mississippi rivers by Minneapolis/St. Paul in Minnesota. Just as the mercury levels were finally low enough to eat the fish the 3M PFOS started piling up and we're back to no fish meals. https://www.mprnews.org/story/2021/11/08/minn-lakes-with-forever-chemicals-added-to-states-list-of-troubled-waters https://www.mprnews.org/story/2021/11/08/minn-lakes-with-for...

flyingfences 5y ago

It's been one of the dominant news items in Flanders for the past year, to the extent that I'm surprised I haven't seen it mentioned in the English-speaking media until now. Entire towns have been placed under emergency health orders: don't eat the garden vegetables or chicken eggs, don't even drink the well water. For a long time after the contamination was discovered, 3M was denying responsibility, saying it wasn't coming from their factory, and thus they wouldn't pay for remediation, even when it was totally obvious.

cwilkes 5y ago
How were they denying it? That somehow PFAs were magically springing out of the ground that just so happened to be next to a factory of their’s? There can’t be that many factories pumping out these chemicals in that area.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  > How were they denying it? "It's not us", "we have no idea", "our tests show we're clean" works for a shockingly long time in modern Western societies - the government has to prove that it is indeed 3M or whoever else who causes the pollution, and government agencies usually tend to take time until an investigation is complete. And even then, offenders can file a lawsuit... and until that lawsuit is finished and unappealable, it can take many years if not decades. And during that time, everyone claiming that a specific company is an offender is under severe risk of a defamation lawsuit. We definitely need reforms both in staffing of regulatory agencies as well as in defamation lawsuits in cases of environment or labor offenses.
  - smnrchrds 5y ago
    The companies can also try to do creative things through bankruptcy courts to avoid any negative consequences, like Johnson & Johnson is doing right now: > J&J, which also makes products such as Tylenol and Band-Aid, assigned legal liability for the complaints to the spinoff company, which immediately filed for bankruptcy — a maneuver dubbed the "Texas two-step." https://www.npr.org/2022/02/25/1083061992/johnson-johnson-wins-court-battle-bankruptcy-baby-powder https://www.npr.org/2022/02/25/1083061992/johnson-johnson-wi...

hammock 5y ago

There is no safe limit of pfas, only regulated limits (and even those are rare)

bee_rider 5y ago

> The story is made even more complicated because it's happening a few miles upstream from the Belgium - The Netherlands border so it is cross-border pollution - and The Netherlands is currently working to turn some land near the border into a wetlands nature reserve. The EU should start a program to get their nations to put national parks on their borders. This would be generally nice, and also it would improve unity by preventing this sort of thing. Plus, if the EU ever broke up and European countries returned to their combative roots, it would set the stage for some nice woodland battles to break up the monotony (ok the last one might not be a serious reason).

Reason077 5y ago

I recommend the film "Dark Waters" starring Mark Ruffalo. A true-story dramatisation of a similar case in the US involving DuPont and PFOAs used in the manufacture of Teflon: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9071322/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9071322/

beambot 5y ago
Or read the expose directly: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-became-duponts-worst-nightmare.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-b...

hadlock 5y ago

Every house in my area has reverse osmosis water treatment, since you can't filter out PFAS. Renters are less lucky and have to install their own system, if they can even afford it. Everyone who uses the river as the primary water source is in the same boat, and the company upstream keeps dumping it in the river.

londons_explore 5y ago
You can filter it from food... But you can't filter PFAS from potatoes, orange juice, and other foodstuffs. For most people, that makes filtering only marginally effective. There will always be parts of your diet from a farm within a few miles of a building where they tested a PFAS fire extinguisher.
LinuxBender 5y ago
Same here in my area. For what its worth one can buy a portable RO system. I found one on Amazon that is decent. I first run my well water through a Britta filter to take most of the sediment and calcium out or the SimPure RO plugs up within 15 gallons. The house has no filter yet The Britta filters last for about 20 gallons each on my water. This allows my RO filters to work for about 300 gallons. My long term plan is to rip the giant pressure tank out of the underground well room and put in stainless steel tanks and many fine filters, charcoal, UV, etc... and one drill pump and small pressure tank per house so that I have reserve water when the underground pump fails and a way to fill the reserve tanks from a truck.

coryrc 5y ago

Fast food wrappers are coated in PFAS. No need to go the indirect route when you can just wipe your food with them. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=pfas+in+fast+food+wrappers&t=fpas&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=pfas+in+fast+food+wrappers&t=fpas&...

potta_coffee 5y ago
Absolutely outrageous! I wish I could say I don't believe it.