20 ms·

3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

573 points by voisin 4y ago

daniel-cussen 4y ago
neonate 4y ago
http://web.archive.org/web/20221221003434/https://www.reuters.com/business/3m-stop-making-forever-chemicals-take-up-23-bln-charge-2022-12-20/ http://web.archive.org/web/20221221003434/https://www.reuter... https://archive.ph/s50uH https://archive.ph/s50uH
MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
Ideally, before mass producing alternatives, they "close the loop" on replacements life cycles. Otherwise we'll just be reading a new variant of this article in 20 years.
- starkd 4y ago
  Corp.'s make good money by engineering replacements. For established profits, revenue increases are only marginal improvements. If they can get governments to go a long with a mandate to replace something with an alternative, the profit increases are much greater. It's like a substitute for coming up with a new product. Not saying it's not beneficial, but I've seen this corporate grift too many times. They did this in the late 1980s with the need to replace CFC's with HCFC's to protect the hole in the ozone layer. Then they discovered HCFC emitted thousands of times more carbon. The cycle just keeps repeating. Again, I'm not saying these aren't necessary, but there's little in the way of cost/benefit analysis. Harmful effects are in some sense inevitable, but they should be weighed relative to the benefits added. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerant#Phasing_out_of_CFCs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerant#Phasing_out_of_CFC...
ngoilapites 4y ago
I understood leach also cannot be transformed when I reaches the environment, and that water treatment plants --- when effective --- are in constant trouble because of it. Can someone clarify?
themerone 4y ago
I'm not sure this is a win for the environment or human health. 3M is gifting sales to it's competition to avoid future liabilities. Chinese companies are ready to pick up the slack. 3M is certainly developing safer alternatives, but until they are as good and as cheap, companies will buy their toxins elsewhere.
- irjustin 4y ago
  > companies will buy their toxins elsewhere This is where legislation needs to come in.
- xvilka 4y ago
  As a chemist I am not sure it's even possible to create matching alternatives. The stronger links inside molecules and outside, the more they are "alien" to life and environment. While reducing their usage is a good strategy, an outright ban strips technology of useful materials.
  - glasss 4y ago
    I have no experience or advanced education in chemistry or material sciences. Do you think it's possible that a ban would spur innovation? I imagine our modern world has use cases that can't just disappear or settle for something not as effective.
    - thereisnospork 4y ago
      Unfortunately probably not much - the relevant properties come from the element itself (fluorine) where there literally doesn't exist an alternative. It is possible that some alternatives will come to light, but there is a limited design space and it's not as if people haven't been looking for cheaper[0] and better solutions. I'm curious as to the scope of this, and what end products are effected. A lot of the best-in-class greases (krytox) and orings (FFKM aka kalrez) rely heavily on fluoro-components. FFKM orings in particular are head and shoulders above everything else by ~100C worth of working temperature range. FKM 'Viton' orings are also incredibly popular and are widely used in automotive applications for temperature and oil resistance in addition to having major industrial uses. [0]Fluorine is a real PITA to produce and make derivatives from - environmental issues aside functionally equivalent non-fluorine compounds would almost always be cheaper.
photochemsyn 4y ago
For a deep dive into the world of fluoropolymers (Teflon etc.) and their breakdown products: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.0c03244 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.0c03244 > "We here distinguish between fluoropolymer substances, fluoropolymer products, and fluoropolymers in finished articles. A fluoropolymer substance such as PTFE, FEP, and PFA is a material of known chemical structure. A fluoropolymer product is the actual material produced and sold by a chemical manufacturer (e.g., Chemours, Solvay, Daikin, Asahi Glass, etc.), it comes in different grades (e.g., Teflon-granulate, Teflon-fine powder, etc.), and may contain impurities from the production process. These fluoropolymer products are sold to manufacturers of finished articles (e.g., PTFE tape, waterproof clothing with a PTFE membrane, PTFE-coated cookware, etc.) who incorporate the fluoropolymer products in their finished articles. The distinction is important, as there are many different processes of making fluoropolymer products..." TLDR: The authors generally conclude consumer products made with fluoropolymers are going to leach PFAS & similar eventually via waste disposal, and suggest restricting use to closed-loop industrial processes (where fluoropolymer plastics are often used to contain highly corrosive substances in chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing processes).
RyanShook 4y ago
There are nine thousand known PFAS. They are essential to many products and processes. Many don't have a clear alternative. Other countries will continue to produce them. But 3M is going to ban them all without any discernment. Am I missing something?
- zdragnar 4y ago
  A few years back, 3M entered a near-$1 billion settlement with Minnesota for PFAS groundwater contamination. I suspect they have been working on a replacement since 2010 or not long after (when the legal action first started up) and, given the two year timeline to phase them out, I'm thinking they've got the replacement already and just need to get it to market.
- runnerup 4y ago
  3M isn't banning them, they're discontinuing production. Other companies can pick up the slack still.
- Jolter 4y ago
  Can you one product or process where it’s indispensable? I’m not being argumentative, just curious, as I’m not a chemist. I know it’s already being replaced in ski waxes and I’m pretty sure they have alternatives for firefighting foams?
  - adrian_b 4y ago
    In a typical consumer home, there are very few, if any, uses where fluoropolymers are indispensable. On the other hand, for most kinds of chemical manufacturing and of chemical analyses fluoropolymers are truly indispensable. Before the invention of the fluoropolymers, some of the chemical reactions that are done now in vessels made of fluoropolymers could not be done at all, while the others were done in platinum vessels. Even the platinum was slowly dissolved, so the cost of the equipment was huge and such chemical reactions could not be used in mass manufacturing. Even the simplest transistor or integrated circuit cannot be made without fluoropolymers. Without them there cannot be any semiconductor industry. Besides the containment of corrosive substances, other applications for which there are no good alternatives to fluoropolymers are in vacuum equipment (also indispensable for the semiconductor industry) and in insulators with low dielectric constant and with low losses at high frequencies. None of the industrial uses of fluoropolymers can cause significant pollution. However using them in things like kitchenware, or worse, in packaging, makes no sense.
aaron695 4y ago
DoreenMichele 4y ago
3M has been facing a raft of litigation that has prompted the move Generally speaking, toxic substances are only "cheap" due to externalizing many of the costs involved, like increased healthcare costs and lost productivity. If you do a thorough analysis of the costs of using such chemicals, they aren't cheap at all. Maybe someday humans will get that.
- throwawaylinux 4y ago
  > 3M has been facing a raft of litigation that has prompted the move Seems like yet again corrupt and incompetent regulators and oversight fails, and real action only really happens when the courts are used to hold them to account for damages. EDIT: Maybe those libertarians do have a good idea now and again...
  - wahnfrieden 4y ago
    Rather than “ancaps” you might rather look toward actual anarchism
- runnerup 4y ago
  I always thought that if our universe is actually a simulation, it's one of countless simulations trying to determine a solution to the Tragedy of the Commons. I suspect it's one of the hardest problems to solve in any universe.
  - jraby3 4y ago
    I try really hard not to use single use plastic. Especially plastic bags, plastic bottles, etc. This frequently means I’ll be extremely thirst throughout some days but will wait till I get home or to work to drink filtered water out of the tap. I went to Las Vegas about a year ago on a work trip and realized that the hotel I stayed at uses more plastic bottles in an hour than I would use in my lifetime with no thought to conserving them. All this to say that tragedy of the commons is an extremely hard problem to solve, even when you know about it and care. I constantly repeat to myself “no single drop of rain thinks it’s responsible for the flood” and try not to think of that Vegas hotel.
legitster 4y ago
"Forever chemicals" is clearly a scary term devoid of context. Please help me ground it. Is this a health or environmental risk? Is it potential or realized? What's the nearest comparison?
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  Dec 20 (Reuters) - U.S. industrial conglomerate 3M Co (MMM.N) on Tuesday set a 2025 deadline to stop producing PFAS, the "forever chemicals" used in anything from cell phones to semiconductors that have been linked to cancers, heart problems and low birth weights. Perfluoralkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) do not break down quickly and have in recent years been found in dangerous concentrations in drinking water, soils and foods.
  - thereisnospork 4y ago
    >dangerous concentrations Those words need context, otherwise this reads a lot like scaremongering. Dangerous as in close to an LD50? A minimum measured effect? Or in layman: how much worse/better are exposure to those concentrations than say time-equivalent exposure to second-hand cigarette smoke? Or first-hand. >in drinking water, soils and foods. Routes of introduction to people and environment are also important to understand to eliminate hazards while minimizing damage. Is the contamination a production 'sloppiness' issue? Resulting from correct or incorrect application of non-durable goods (e.g. lubricants, firefighting foam). A wear of durable goods issue (rubbers, PTFE, etc.)?
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      If you want really specific details then google is the answer. The article gives a perfectly good overview for people that don't know the term.
- peebeebee 4y ago
  Even very very small amounts of these pose a risk to our health. And because they never break down, they keep building up in the environment. They are everywhere, in your drinking water, in the soil where you plant your vegetables, …
ToJans 4y ago
In Belgium there is a huge issue with pfas caused by 3M [1], having contaminated things like drinking water etc, so it's not even safe to eat vegetables from your garden or eggs from your chickens. It's a massacre TBH, mostly exposing the head-in-the-sand, umbrella using fingerpointing mentality of Belgian politics. I can imagine 3M has sites like these all over the world, so I would assume this only scratches the surface... Edit: typos, it's early in the morning here ... [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-3m-pfas-toxic-forever-chemicals-europe/?leadSource=uverify%20wall https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-3m-pfas-toxic-foreve...
- Wronnay 4y ago
  There is a similar Issue caused by 3M in Gendorf, Germany - so this is really a problem all over the world - and 3M isn't the only producer of PFAS...
  - guerrilla 4y ago
    Multiple big cases here in Sweden, it's on the news almost weekly with a new one.
  - hungrigekatze 4y ago
    There's a pretty informative video on PFAS in Germany; at the end of the video there's a guy in the US (southeast I think) who is located about five miles away from a PFAS plant whose pets keep dying and who is underwater on his mortgage because no one will buy a house near a literal toxic-waste-producing plant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovCvW22ol3Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovCvW22ol3Y
fomine3 4y ago
What will be affected?
4ad 4y ago
I'm calling it, if you want GoreTex or similar clothing, get it now, in five years it will start to get banned, and in 10 years you won't find it anywhere.
- Tepix 4y ago
  The more gore-tex is bought, the more PFAS will be released into the environment. No thanks.
  - Sugimot0 4y ago
    Tbh unless you seriously need your duds to be totally closed breathable and waterproof, silpoly with pit zips etc is a cheaper / more eco alternative that is lighter / stronger and does the same job in most scenarios.
TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
Could such chemicals be subjected to a special type of regulation where they can still be made, but only for very specialised uses that seem worth the risk somehow? Is there a precedent for that?
- Jolter 4y ago
  There is: plutonium etc. You’re on to something here.
101010101010101 4y ago
someonewhocar3s 4y ago
BoardsOfCanada 4y ago
> ...sued by California's attorney general to recover clean-up costs. So what are the clean-up costs? Is it even possible or do they just clean up the most urgent parts?
- awestroke 4y ago
  The cost of processing all of earth's oceans, freshwater and groundwater to remove these chemicals. Quite the cost.
  - zug_zug 4y ago
    Why is this downvoted? Literally the next breath of air you breathe will be contaminated with PFAs. Every fetus will have measurable PFA in its bloodstream before it's even born. https://www.epa.gov/pfas/pfas-explained https://www.epa.gov/pfas/pfas-explained
kazinator 4y ago
H₂O: forever chemical or not?
- awestroke 4y ago
  Forever chemicals is an informal term that collectively refers to the class of synthetic chemicals known as perfluoroalkyl substances and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. So, no.
rkagerer 4y ago
In other words: Competition is shrinking our margins on these, liability exposure is increasing, market growth is forecast to stagnate as customers move to alternatives, and the PR is bad. Good time to make a strategic withdrawal and spin it as environmental stewardship. (Not to say that wasn't a legit factor).
donatj 4y ago
We should really come up with a better less chemical fear based name than “forever chemicals”. Even “forever contaminants” would be a major improvement. Just being a chemical that hangs around isn’t a bad thing. By that definition water is a “forever chemical”. I am well aware this isn’t what’s meant by forever chemical but the naming should involve something implying the negativity other than the ignorant use of chemical as a negative.
- mensetmanusman 4y ago
  “Forever chemicals“ have half-lives that range from a millisecond to 10,000 years, but this level of communication accuracy is expected from our media.
jquast 4y ago
I hope this means my dentist will stop giving me free samples of Oral-B dental floss that contains forever chemicals, as recently as last month, I wanted to say something about what kind of doctor suggests putting PFAS products in our mouths but I didn’t want to be a Wikipedia patient https://www.classaction.org/news/oral-b-glide-dental-floss-likely-contains-forever-chemicals-class-action-claims https://www.classaction.org/news/oral-b-glide-dental-floss-l...
mensetmanusman 4y ago
About a quarter of new pharmaceuticals are PFAS, and we can’t make modern chips, autos, or airplanes without them. Once politicians learn that the half life for “forever” chemicals varies by 7 orders of magnitude, we will have more nuance about the issue.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  >Once politicians learn that the half life for “forever” chemicals varies by 7 orders of magnitude, we will have more nuance about the issue. So long as they can use an issue to lead the line of lemmings into the polling place you will never see nuanced opinion from politicians on an issue. Politicians in Texas know full well how rare and irrelevant late term abortions that aren't medically necessary are. Politicians in California know full well how rare and irrelevant murders by people wielding military style arms are. But they still spew falsehoods because that is what is politically useful.
- zug_zug 4y ago
  I don't know what you're talking about. I'm like 95% sure we could choose to chemically break down PFEs instead of dumping them into rivers, it might double the cost of some plastic, there must be dozens or hundreds of ways to prevent it.
- kortex 4y ago
  > About a quarter of new pharmaceuticals are PFAS Huh, TIL. I was going to rebut this but I looked into it. I didn't realize simply the presence of a -CF3 group is enough to classify the whole molecule as a PFAS according to new definitions. > More recently (2021) the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) expanded the definition, stating that "PFASs are defined as fluorinated substances that contain at least one fully fluorinated methyl or methylene carbon atom (without any H/Cl/Br/I atom attached to it), i.e. with a few noted exceptions, any chemical with at least a perfluorinated methyl group (–CF3) or a perfluorinated methylene group (–CF2–) is a PFAS."[3][4] That's a super popular moeity in medchem for whatever reason, so yeah, RIP all thing trifluoromethyl. Difluromethylene can be degraded much more quickly as long as the molecule can be "unzipped" (needs a break point where nucleophilic attack can occur), so it's possible we may be able to sub in -CHF2 or -CH2F to "cap" molecules and render them less persistent.
thedougd 4y ago
Great news! Now, can we shut down Chemours too? DuPont spun them off in 2015 to isolate their risk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemours https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemours
starkd 4y ago
Corp.'s make good money by engineering replacements. For established profits, revenue increases are only marginal improvements. If they can get governments to go a long with a mandate to replace something with an alternative, the profit increases are much greater. It's like a substitute for coming up with a new product. Not saying it's not beneficial, but I've seen this corporate grift too many times. They did this in the late 1980s with the need to replace CFC's with HCFC's to protect the hole in the ozone layer. Then they discovered HCFC emitted thousands of times more carbon. The cycle just keeps repeating. Again, I'm not saying these aren't necessary, but there's little in the way of cost/benefit analysis. Harmful effects are in some sense inevitable, but they should be weighed relative to the benefits added. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerant#Phasing_out_of_CFC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerant#Phasing_out_of_CFC...
stevev 4y ago
Like lead was for humans in the last millennia, will PFAS be studied in our classrooms about a time where it was used for almost everything.
Robotbeat 4y ago
It’s probably good to get away from these things for single use consumer items, etc, but I fear we’re undermining our manufacturing base, chasing it away overseas. I also wonder if how bad this stuff is is exaggerated (in part because we don’t KNOW how bad it is). Oh well.
dylan604 4y ago
Why are they waiting until 2025? "We know this stuff is bad, but just give us a couple more years to realize a full ROI before we stop" vs "Holy crap this stuff is bad, we're pulling the plug now" I mean, it's not a ship at sea running at flank speed where the ship keeps moving once power has been cut. Just stop making them. Now.
- itishappy 4y ago
  It kinda is. Not a literal ship, of course, but industry still has immense momentum behind it. If you catch your prop on a rock, the rest of your ship is going to strain to absorb the impact. According to the article, PFAS are used in semiconductor manufacturing process. These are insanely sensitive processes, and replacements will need to be found and qualified. That takes time. (Note: I'd hope they've seen the writing on the wall and have already started this process.)
amluto 4y ago
Inspired by this, I looked up what was in a little anti-fog spray bottle for eyeglasses I have: https://www.zeiss.com/content/dam/Vision/Vision/International/Pdf/en/data-sheet-for-zeiss-anti-fog-spray.pdf https://www.zeiss.com/content/dam/Vision/Vision/Internationa... Yep, it’s water plus various non-polymer perfluoro compounds. I get why fluoropolymers are extremely useful (and probably fairly safe for their end users). I get why PFCs are useful in industrial processes. But why on Earth is it acceptable to intentionally use PFCs as the primary ingredients in a spray bottle intended to be used near people’s faces?
braingenious 4y ago
“3M to invent whole new categories of forever chemicals”
centro 4y ago
"Legal pressure over the damage caused by PFAS has increased. Last month, 3M and DuPont de Nemours Inc (DD.N) were among several companies sued by California's attorney general to recover clean-up costs." This sentence very clearly explains the main problem with late-stage capitalism. It externalizes real costs to humanity unless governments enforce dollar costs for the societal harms of corporate actions. Neither of these companies would've done anything about this issue on their own.
mateo1 4y ago
Did we just fucking ban PTFE? Are government policies getting more and more insane every year?
deafpolygon 4y ago
I keep reading this as 3 million... but no, it's the company, "3M".

573 points by voisin 4y ago

http://web.archive.org/web/20221221003434/https://www.reuters.com/business/3m-stop-making-forever-chemicals-take-up-23-bln-charge-2022-12-20/ http://web.archive.org/web/20221221003434/https://www.reuter... https://archive.ph/s50uH https://archive.ph/s50uH

MonkeyMalarky 4y ago

Ideally, before mass producing alternatives, they "close the loop" on replacements life cycles. Otherwise we'll just be reading a new variant of this article in 20 years.

starkd 4y ago
Corp.'s make good money by engineering replacements. For established profits, revenue increases are only marginal improvements. If they can get governments to go a long with a mandate to replace something with an alternative, the profit increases are much greater. It's like a substitute for coming up with a new product. Not saying it's not beneficial, but I've seen this corporate grift too many times. They did this in the late 1980s with the need to replace CFC's with HCFC's to protect the hole in the ozone layer. Then they discovered HCFC emitted thousands of times more carbon. The cycle just keeps repeating. Again, I'm not saying these aren't necessary, but there's little in the way of cost/benefit analysis. Harmful effects are in some sense inevitable, but they should be weighed relative to the benefits added. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerant#Phasing_out_of_CFCs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerant#Phasing_out_of_CFC...

ngoilapites 4y ago

I understood leach also cannot be transformed when I reaches the environment, and that water treatment plants --- when effective --- are in constant trouble because of it. Can someone clarify?

themerone 4y ago

I'm not sure this is a win for the environment or human health. 3M is gifting sales to it's competition to avoid future liabilities. Chinese companies are ready to pick up the slack. 3M is certainly developing safer alternatives, but until they are as good and as cheap, companies will buy their toxins elsewhere.

irjustin 4y ago
> companies will buy their toxins elsewhere This is where legislation needs to come in.
xvilka 4y ago
As a chemist I am not sure it's even possible to create matching alternatives. The stronger links inside molecules and outside, the more they are "alien" to life and environment. While reducing their usage is a good strategy, an outright ban strips technology of useful materials.
- glasss 4y ago
  I have no experience or advanced education in chemistry or material sciences. Do you think it's possible that a ban would spur innovation? I imagine our modern world has use cases that can't just disappear or settle for something not as effective.
  - thereisnospork 4y ago
    Unfortunately probably not much - the relevant properties come from the element itself (fluorine) where there literally doesn't exist an alternative. It is possible that some alternatives will come to light, but there is a limited design space and it's not as if people haven't been looking for cheaper[0] and better solutions. I'm curious as to the scope of this, and what end products are effected. A lot of the best-in-class greases (krytox) and orings (FFKM aka kalrez) rely heavily on fluoro-components. FFKM orings in particular are head and shoulders above everything else by ~100C worth of working temperature range. FKM 'Viton' orings are also incredibly popular and are widely used in automotive applications for temperature and oil resistance in addition to having major industrial uses. [0]Fluorine is a real PITA to produce and make derivatives from - environmental issues aside functionally equivalent non-fluorine compounds would almost always be cheaper.

photochemsyn 4y ago

For a deep dive into the world of fluoropolymers (Teflon etc.) and their breakdown products: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.0c03244 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.0c03244 > "We here distinguish between fluoropolymer substances, fluoropolymer products, and fluoropolymers in finished articles. A fluoropolymer substance such as PTFE, FEP, and PFA is a material of known chemical structure. A fluoropolymer product is the actual material produced and sold by a chemical manufacturer (e.g., Chemours, Solvay, Daikin, Asahi Glass, etc.), it comes in different grades (e.g., Teflon-granulate, Teflon-fine powder, etc.), and may contain impurities from the production process. These fluoropolymer products are sold to manufacturers of finished articles (e.g., PTFE tape, waterproof clothing with a PTFE membrane, PTFE-coated cookware, etc.) who incorporate the fluoropolymer products in their finished articles. The distinction is important, as there are many different processes of making fluoropolymer products..." TLDR: The authors generally conclude consumer products made with fluoropolymers are going to leach PFAS & similar eventually via waste disposal, and suggest restricting use to closed-loop industrial processes (where fluoropolymer plastics are often used to contain highly corrosive substances in chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing processes).

RyanShook 4y ago

There are nine thousand known PFAS. They are essential to many products and processes. Many don't have a clear alternative. Other countries will continue to produce them. But 3M is going to ban them all without any discernment. Am I missing something?

zdragnar 4y ago
A few years back, 3M entered a near-$1 billion settlement with Minnesota for PFAS groundwater contamination. I suspect they have been working on a replacement since 2010 or not long after (when the legal action first started up) and, given the two year timeline to phase them out, I'm thinking they've got the replacement already and just need to get it to market.
runnerup 4y ago
3M isn't banning them, they're discontinuing production. Other companies can pick up the slack still.
Jolter 4y ago
Can you one product or process where it’s indispensable? I’m not being argumentative, just curious, as I’m not a chemist. I know it’s already being replaced in ski waxes and I’m pretty sure they have alternatives for firefighting foams?
- adrian_b 4y ago
  In a typical consumer home, there are very few, if any, uses where fluoropolymers are indispensable. On the other hand, for most kinds of chemical manufacturing and of chemical analyses fluoropolymers are truly indispensable. Before the invention of the fluoropolymers, some of the chemical reactions that are done now in vessels made of fluoropolymers could not be done at all, while the others were done in platinum vessels. Even the platinum was slowly dissolved, so the cost of the equipment was huge and such chemical reactions could not be used in mass manufacturing. Even the simplest transistor or integrated circuit cannot be made without fluoropolymers. Without them there cannot be any semiconductor industry. Besides the containment of corrosive substances, other applications for which there are no good alternatives to fluoropolymers are in vacuum equipment (also indispensable for the semiconductor industry) and in insulators with low dielectric constant and with low losses at high frequencies. None of the industrial uses of fluoropolymers can cause significant pollution. However using them in things like kitchenware, or worse, in packaging, makes no sense.

aaron695 4y ago

DoreenMichele 4y ago

3M has been facing a raft of litigation that has prompted the move Generally speaking, toxic substances are only "cheap" due to externalizing many of the costs involved, like increased healthcare costs and lost productivity. If you do a thorough analysis of the costs of using such chemicals, they aren't cheap at all. Maybe someday humans will get that.

throwawaylinux 4y ago
> 3M has been facing a raft of litigation that has prompted the move Seems like yet again corrupt and incompetent regulators and oversight fails, and real action only really happens when the courts are used to hold them to account for damages. EDIT: Maybe those libertarians do have a good idea now and again...
- wahnfrieden 4y ago
  Rather than “ancaps” you might rather look toward actual anarchism
runnerup 4y ago
I always thought that if our universe is actually a simulation, it's one of countless simulations trying to determine a solution to the Tragedy of the Commons. I suspect it's one of the hardest problems to solve in any universe.
- jraby3 4y ago
  I try really hard not to use single use plastic. Especially plastic bags, plastic bottles, etc. This frequently means I’ll be extremely thirst throughout some days but will wait till I get home or to work to drink filtered water out of the tap. I went to Las Vegas about a year ago on a work trip and realized that the hotel I stayed at uses more plastic bottles in an hour than I would use in my lifetime with no thought to conserving them. All this to say that tragedy of the commons is an extremely hard problem to solve, even when you know about it and care. I constantly repeat to myself “no single drop of rain thinks it’s responsible for the flood” and try not to think of that Vegas hotel.

legitster 4y ago

"Forever chemicals" is clearly a scary term devoid of context. Please help me ground it. Is this a health or environmental risk? Is it potential or realized? What's the nearest comparison?

Dylan16807 4y ago
Dec 20 (Reuters) - U.S. industrial conglomerate 3M Co (MMM.N) on Tuesday set a 2025 deadline to stop producing PFAS, the "forever chemicals" used in anything from cell phones to semiconductors that have been linked to cancers, heart problems and low birth weights. Perfluoralkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) do not break down quickly and have in recent years been found in dangerous concentrations in drinking water, soils and foods.
- thereisnospork 4y ago
  >dangerous concentrations Those words need context, otherwise this reads a lot like scaremongering. Dangerous as in close to an LD50? A minimum measured effect? Or in layman: how much worse/better are exposure to those concentrations than say time-equivalent exposure to second-hand cigarette smoke? Or first-hand. >in drinking water, soils and foods. Routes of introduction to people and environment are also important to understand to eliminate hazards while minimizing damage. Is the contamination a production 'sloppiness' issue? Resulting from correct or incorrect application of non-durable goods (e.g. lubricants, firefighting foam). A wear of durable goods issue (rubbers, PTFE, etc.)?
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    If you want really specific details then google is the answer. The article gives a perfectly good overview for people that don't know the term.
peebeebee 4y ago
Even very very small amounts of these pose a risk to our health. And because they never break down, they keep building up in the environment. They are everywhere, in your drinking water, in the soil where you plant your vegetables, …

ToJans 4y ago

In Belgium there is a huge issue with pfas caused by 3M [1], having contaminated things like drinking water etc, so it's not even safe to eat vegetables from your garden or eggs from your chickens. It's a massacre TBH, mostly exposing the head-in-the-sand, umbrella using fingerpointing mentality of Belgian politics. I can imagine 3M has sites like these all over the world, so I would assume this only scratches the surface... Edit: typos, it's early in the morning here ... [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-3m-pfas-toxic-forever-chemicals-europe/?leadSource=uverify%20wall https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-3m-pfas-toxic-foreve...

Wronnay 4y ago
There is a similar Issue caused by 3M in Gendorf, Germany - so this is really a problem all over the world - and 3M isn't the only producer of PFAS...
- guerrilla 4y ago
  Multiple big cases here in Sweden, it's on the news almost weekly with a new one.
- hungrigekatze 4y ago
  There's a pretty informative video on PFAS in Germany; at the end of the video there's a guy in the US (southeast I think) who is located about five miles away from a PFAS plant whose pets keep dying and who is underwater on his mortgage because no one will buy a house near a literal toxic-waste-producing plant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovCvW22ol3Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovCvW22ol3Y

fomine3 4y ago

What will be affected?

4ad 4y ago

I'm calling it, if you want GoreTex or similar clothing, get it now, in five years it will start to get banned, and in 10 years you won't find it anywhere.

Tepix 4y ago
The more gore-tex is bought, the more PFAS will be released into the environment. No thanks.
- Sugimot0 4y ago
  Tbh unless you seriously need your duds to be totally closed breathable and waterproof, silpoly with pit zips etc is a cheaper / more eco alternative that is lighter / stronger and does the same job in most scenarios.

TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago

Could such chemicals be subjected to a special type of regulation where they can still be made, but only for very specialised uses that seem worth the risk somehow? Is there a precedent for that?

Jolter 4y ago
There is: plutonium etc. You’re on to something here.

101010101010101 4y ago

someonewhocar3s 4y ago

BoardsOfCanada 4y ago

> ...sued by California's attorney general to recover clean-up costs. So what are the clean-up costs? Is it even possible or do they just clean up the most urgent parts?

awestroke 4y ago
The cost of processing all of earth's oceans, freshwater and groundwater to remove these chemicals. Quite the cost.
- zug_zug 4y ago
  Why is this downvoted? Literally the next breath of air you breathe will be contaminated with PFAs. Every fetus will have measurable PFA in its bloodstream before it's even born. https://www.epa.gov/pfas/pfas-explained https://www.epa.gov/pfas/pfas-explained

kazinator 4y ago

H₂O: forever chemical or not?

awestroke 4y ago
Forever chemicals is an informal term that collectively refers to the class of synthetic chemicals known as perfluoroalkyl substances and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. So, no.

rkagerer 4y ago

In other words: Competition is shrinking our margins on these, liability exposure is increasing, market growth is forecast to stagnate as customers move to alternatives, and the PR is bad. Good time to make a strategic withdrawal and spin it as environmental stewardship. (Not to say that wasn't a legit factor).

donatj 4y ago

We should really come up with a better less chemical fear based name than “forever chemicals”. Even “forever contaminants” would be a major improvement. Just being a chemical that hangs around isn’t a bad thing. By that definition water is a “forever chemical”. I am well aware this isn’t what’s meant by forever chemical but the naming should involve something implying the negativity other than the ignorant use of chemical as a negative.

mensetmanusman 4y ago
“Forever chemicals“ have half-lives that range from a millisecond to 10,000 years, but this level of communication accuracy is expected from our media.

jquast 4y ago

I hope this means my dentist will stop giving me free samples of Oral-B dental floss that contains forever chemicals, as recently as last month, I wanted to say something about what kind of doctor suggests putting PFAS products in our mouths but I didn’t want to be a Wikipedia patient https://www.classaction.org/news/oral-b-glide-dental-floss-likely-contains-forever-chemicals-class-action-claims https://www.classaction.org/news/oral-b-glide-dental-floss-l...

mensetmanusman 4y ago

About a quarter of new pharmaceuticals are PFAS, and we can’t make modern chips, autos, or airplanes without them. Once politicians learn that the half life for “forever” chemicals varies by 7 orders of magnitude, we will have more nuance about the issue.

dsfyu404ed 4y ago
>Once politicians learn that the half life for “forever” chemicals varies by 7 orders of magnitude, we will have more nuance about the issue. So long as they can use an issue to lead the line of lemmings into the polling place you will never see nuanced opinion from politicians on an issue. Politicians in Texas know full well how rare and irrelevant late term abortions that aren't medically necessary are. Politicians in California know full well how rare and irrelevant murders by people wielding military style arms are. But they still spew falsehoods because that is what is politically useful.
zug_zug 4y ago
I don't know what you're talking about. I'm like 95% sure we could choose to chemically break down PFEs instead of dumping them into rivers, it might double the cost of some plastic, there must be dozens or hundreds of ways to prevent it.
kortex 4y ago
> About a quarter of new pharmaceuticals are PFAS Huh, TIL. I was going to rebut this but I looked into it. I didn't realize simply the presence of a -CF3 group is enough to classify the whole molecule as a PFAS according to new definitions. > More recently (2021) the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) expanded the definition, stating that "PFASs are defined as fluorinated substances that contain at least one fully fluorinated methyl or methylene carbon atom (without any H/Cl/Br/I atom attached to it), i.e. with a few noted exceptions, any chemical with at least a perfluorinated methyl group (–CF3) or a perfluorinated methylene group (–CF2–) is a PFAS."[3][4] That's a super popular moeity in medchem for whatever reason, so yeah, RIP all thing trifluoromethyl. Difluromethylene can be degraded much more quickly as long as the molecule can be "unzipped" (needs a break point where nucleophilic attack can occur), so it's possible we may be able to sub in -CHF2 or -CH2F to "cap" molecules and render them less persistent.

thedougd 4y ago

Great news! Now, can we shut down Chemours too? DuPont spun them off in 2015 to isolate their risk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemours https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemours

starkd 4y ago

Corp.'s make good money by engineering replacements. For established profits, revenue increases are only marginal improvements. If they can get governments to go a long with a mandate to replace something with an alternative, the profit increases are much greater. It's like a substitute for coming up with a new product. Not saying it's not beneficial, but I've seen this corporate grift too many times. They did this in the late 1980s with the need to replace CFC's with HCFC's to protect the hole in the ozone layer. Then they discovered HCFC emitted thousands of times more carbon. The cycle just keeps repeating. Again, I'm not saying these aren't necessary, but there's little in the way of cost/benefit analysis. Harmful effects are in some sense inevitable, but they should be weighed relative to the benefits added. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerant#Phasing_out_of_CFC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerant#Phasing_out_of_CFC...

stevev 4y ago

Like lead was for humans in the last millennia, will PFAS be studied in our classrooms about a time where it was used for almost everything.

Robotbeat 4y ago

It’s probably good to get away from these things for single use consumer items, etc, but I fear we’re undermining our manufacturing base, chasing it away overseas. I also wonder if how bad this stuff is is exaggerated (in part because we don’t KNOW how bad it is). Oh well.

dylan604 4y ago

Why are they waiting until 2025? "We know this stuff is bad, but just give us a couple more years to realize a full ROI before we stop" vs "Holy crap this stuff is bad, we're pulling the plug now" I mean, it's not a ship at sea running at flank speed where the ship keeps moving once power has been cut. Just stop making them. Now.

itishappy 4y ago
It kinda is. Not a literal ship, of course, but industry still has immense momentum behind it. If you catch your prop on a rock, the rest of your ship is going to strain to absorb the impact. According to the article, PFAS are used in semiconductor manufacturing process. These are insanely sensitive processes, and replacements will need to be found and qualified. That takes time. (Note: I'd hope they've seen the writing on the wall and have already started this process.)

amluto 4y ago

Inspired by this, I looked up what was in a little anti-fog spray bottle for eyeglasses I have: https://www.zeiss.com/content/dam/Vision/Vision/International/Pdf/en/data-sheet-for-zeiss-anti-fog-spray.pdf https://www.zeiss.com/content/dam/Vision/Vision/Internationa... Yep, it’s water plus various non-polymer perfluoro compounds. I get why fluoropolymers are extremely useful (and probably fairly safe for their end users). I get why PFCs are useful in industrial processes. But why on Earth is it acceptable to intentionally use PFCs as the primary ingredients in a spray bottle intended to be used near people’s faces?

braingenious 4y ago

“3M to invent whole new categories of forever chemicals”

centro 4y ago

"Legal pressure over the damage caused by PFAS has increased. Last month, 3M and DuPont de Nemours Inc (DD.N) were among several companies sued by California's attorney general to recover clean-up costs." This sentence very clearly explains the main problem with late-stage capitalism. It externalizes real costs to humanity unless governments enforce dollar costs for the societal harms of corporate actions. Neither of these companies would've done anything about this issue on their own.

mateo1 4y ago

Did we just fucking ban PTFE? Are government policies getting more and more insane every year?

deafpolygon 4y ago

I keep reading this as 3 million... but no, it's the company, "3M".