3 ms·

> Dupont/3M did (and continue to do) a level of harm 3M is on The Economist today with relevance to this matter: > 3M, an American conglomerate, agreed to pay

by mdp2021 3y ago

> Dupont/3M did (and continue to do) a level of harm 3M is on The Economist today with relevance to this matter: > 3M, an American conglomerate, agreed to pay cities and utilities $12.5bn to settle thousands of lawsuits that had alleged chemicals emitted by the firm's products had polluted drinking-water supplies

MrBodangles 3y ago
Nice. I’m guessing that’ll barely cover a years worth of filtration (which they won’t ever spend it on anyway). What about the next 100 years? Let them profit because oligarchy?
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
What about all the other cities in the world? If the true cost of this damage were paid, 3M would be driven to bancrupsy. Maybe then the next conpany would not be so gun-ho about dumping strange chemicals. This is your regular reminder that many of the wealthy are only so, because they never pay for the consequences of their actions.
- DriverDaily 3y ago
  It’s hard to blame it all on one class. Littering was a social norm when these chemicals were invented. Even today, most Americans eat meat from factory farms, drive gas powered cars, and throw most trash in a landfill. Problems that will have to eventually be fixed. If you’re born into this kind of society are you going to handicap yourself by holding yourself to a stricter set of rules than everyone else? The ‘yes’ and ‘no’s to that question don’t fall neatly into class lines.
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    > throw most trash in a landfill. Is this some stranhe double-hypocracy? If 3M put their crap is a properly contained landfill, millions of people wouldn't be poisoned! 'Sins of the consumer' is a toxic ideology!
    - DriverDaily 3y ago
      If you want to be proactive about problems you need the political will to create and enforce rules. But nobody votes for rules that make people’s lives worse now, but future generations lives better. You can’t just blame rich people for that. The political will didn’t exist for pfas back then, and it doesn’t exist for things like water scarcity, or antibiotic resistance, or e-waste today.
      - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
        Knowingly poisoning people is a criminal offence, and always was. They knew their workers were dying from it, they had done studies that show it’s toxic. No new laws are needed. This is not the case of finding loopholes in laws or pushing a problem off to the next generation, like climate change. This is a corporation profiting off someone’s death and getting away with it.
        DriverDaily 3y ago
        > No new laws are needed. So the laws worked just fine, they just need to be enforced better? That’s exactly what a lack of political will looks like.
DoingIsLearning 3y ago
It would be billions more to: 1. Clean up PFAS from riverbeds and groundwater sediment. 2. Add PFAS cleaning stages in all water treatment systems across the globe. At 12.5B, they are just paying up the people that can prove they now have cancer because of ridiculous exposure levels. At 12.5B this is just the cost of doing business for Chem industry.
- thfuran 3y ago
  >At 12.5B, they are just paying up the people that can prove they now have cancer because of ridiculous exposure levels. Probably not even that.
myshpa 3y ago
PFAS 'forever chemicals' cost society €16 trillion a year https://euobserver.com/green-economy/157075 https://euobserver.com/green-economy/157075
- tornato7 3y ago
  This is absurd. The GDP of the entire world is on the order of ~$100T. How can this article claim that 15% of all GDP is spent/lost due to PFAS without going through absurd calculations like how long it would take to remove every bit of it from water supplies using current inefficient methods? (Obv I'm not paying for a euobserver subscription)
  - myshpa 3y ago
    This page contains the figures / calculations (first link in the euobserver's article). https://chemsec.org/reports/the-top-12-pfas-producers-in-the-world-and-the-staggering-societal-costs-of-pfas-pollution/ https://chemsec.org/reports/the-top-12-pfas-producers-in-the... The top 12 PFAS producers in the world and the staggering societal costs of PFAS pollution Only twelve companies account for a majority of the PFAS production in the world. PFAS production is hardly profitable, but the cost for society is massive.

MrBodangles 3y ago

Nice. I’m guessing that’ll barely cover a years worth of filtration (which they won’t ever spend it on anyway). What about the next 100 years? Let them profit because oligarchy?

ClumsyPilot 3y ago

What about all the other cities in the world? If the true cost of this damage were paid, 3M would be driven to bancrupsy. Maybe then the next conpany would not be so gun-ho about dumping strange chemicals. This is your regular reminder that many of the wealthy are only so, because they never pay for the consequences of their actions.

DriverDaily 3y ago
It’s hard to blame it all on one class. Littering was a social norm when these chemicals were invented. Even today, most Americans eat meat from factory farms, drive gas powered cars, and throw most trash in a landfill. Problems that will have to eventually be fixed. If you’re born into this kind of society are you going to handicap yourself by holding yourself to a stricter set of rules than everyone else? The ‘yes’ and ‘no’s to that question don’t fall neatly into class lines.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  > throw most trash in a landfill. Is this some stranhe double-hypocracy? If 3M put their crap is a properly contained landfill, millions of people wouldn't be poisoned! 'Sins of the consumer' is a toxic ideology!
  - DriverDaily 3y ago
    If you want to be proactive about problems you need the political will to create and enforce rules. But nobody votes for rules that make people’s lives worse now, but future generations lives better. You can’t just blame rich people for that. The political will didn’t exist for pfas back then, and it doesn’t exist for things like water scarcity, or antibiotic resistance, or e-waste today.
    - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
      Knowingly poisoning people is a criminal offence, and always was. They knew their workers were dying from it, they had done studies that show it’s toxic. No new laws are needed. This is not the case of finding loopholes in laws or pushing a problem off to the next generation, like climate change. This is a corporation profiting off someone’s death and getting away with it.
      - DriverDaily 3y ago
        > No new laws are needed. So the laws worked just fine, they just need to be enforced better? That’s exactly what a lack of political will looks like.

DoingIsLearning 3y ago

It would be billions more to: 1. Clean up PFAS from riverbeds and groundwater sediment. 2. Add PFAS cleaning stages in all water treatment systems across the globe. At 12.5B, they are just paying up the people that can prove they now have cancer because of ridiculous exposure levels. At 12.5B this is just the cost of doing business for Chem industry.

thfuran 3y ago
>At 12.5B, they are just paying up the people that can prove they now have cancer because of ridiculous exposure levels. Probably not even that.

myshpa 3y ago

PFAS 'forever chemicals' cost society €16 trillion a year https://euobserver.com/green-economy/157075 https://euobserver.com/green-economy/157075

tornato7 3y ago
This is absurd. The GDP of the entire world is on the order of ~$100T. How can this article claim that 15% of all GDP is spent/lost due to PFAS without going through absurd calculations like how long it would take to remove every bit of it from water supplies using current inefficient methods? (Obv I'm not paying for a euobserver subscription)
- myshpa 3y ago
  This page contains the figures / calculations (first link in the euobserver's article). https://chemsec.org/reports/the-top-12-pfas-producers-in-the-world-and-the-staggering-societal-costs-of-pfas-pollution/ https://chemsec.org/reports/the-top-12-pfas-producers-in-the... The top 12 PFAS producers in the world and the staggering societal costs of PFAS pollution Only twelve companies account for a majority of the PFAS production in the world. PFAS production is hardly profitable, but the cost for society is massive.