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3M reaches $10.3B settlement over PFAS contamination of water systems
- ChatGTP 3y agoThat should cover it ?
- givemeethekeys 3y agoIs $10.3B enough to clean up all the PFAS that 3M contaminated water systems with?
- karim79 3y agoI doubt that amount will help cover removing it from just about all the rainwater on the planet.[0][1] [0] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.2c02765 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.2c02765 [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62391069 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62391069
- rogerkirkness 3y agoPlz fix all rain.
- User23 3y agoI seriously doubt 3M is the only or even dominant contributor to rainwater pollution. Surely there are big Chinese companies, among others, also producing fluorine compounds. The other polluters should also contribute to cleanup rather than just using this as an excuse to further erode the USA’s industrial base. That said if someone can convincingly show that 3M all by themselves managed to pollute the entire global water supply to a dangerous level I’ll accept it.
- karim79 3y agoThat's not what I was implying (agreed, my initial comment was a bit short). But they have played a part in this. It seems that corporate social responsibility these days amounts to having to pay trivial fines, then washing their hands clean. I'm a bit mortified that the consequences to 3M for the amount of damage caused amounts to 10.3BN-12.5BN over the course of thirteen years. They should clean up the mess they made themselves - God only knows what that would cost in the end. Edit: Corrected 1.3BN to 10.3
- seszett 3y agoThat amount is only got the US though. 3M is paying about 500 million euros for the same kind of PFAS pollution here in Antwerp and although I was thinking that is a ridiculous amount compared to the $10 billion, after all it's more per capita, so maybe it's still a "correct" amount. I think the PFAS pollution topic is just starting being discussed in France as well, so although these fines are probably never going to fix everything, I think they do have the potential to give enough incentive to these polluters... writing that though, honestly who am I fooling? It's going to give them incentive to hide things better and lobby harder next time, and nothing will change until executive get actual prison sentences. I truly believe that the only way large companies can be made to behave is to make their executives actually responsible of their actions, and to give them sentences that affect them personally. The whole limited company system is harmful today.
- DueDilligence 3y ago[dead]
- joenathanone 3y agoI’m currently in the process of getting a whole home RO system to clean all this garbage out of my water, but I can’t do anything about the water my purchased fruits and vegetables are grown in nor the water the animals raised drinking.
- 29athrowaway 3y agoThe contamination is already in your organism. Nonstick pans, food packaging, fish, microwave popcorn, waterproof clothes, contact lenses, and so many other products.
- joenathanone 3y agoIm careful when I can be, but it’s hard to always know the source of your food.
- dkqmduems 3y agoFind someone with a LCMS and have your food tested.
- thfuran 3y agoDoesn't that involve passing water through a bunch of plastic filters and then letting it sit in a big plastic holding tank?
- thsksbd 3y agoSure, but it works :) (except that one company that had a low quality membrane that leached ionomers, lol). Once plastics have leached off their manufacturing chemicals they really are very benign. The membranes you mention are permeable, basically, only to water. Salt ions are pretty small - if the membrane blocks salt ions, they're going to block just about any molecule [1]. 1. for the most part. You can have a molecule that dissolves in the polymer membrane and therefore gets through. A great example is polymer self-diffusion itself (fairly slow) and very short chains of the polymer (faster). But, generally, polymers don't like to mix with anything but themselves (see Flory-Huggins and DeGennes).
- passwordoops 3y ago"That's it?" is my immediate reaction. Maybe per year? Paid out by all former executives from the point PFAS were manufactured?... after all, if they claim responsibility and the associated bonuses for the good stuff, they should be held accountable for the bad too, right?
- 29athrowaway 3y agohttps://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/3m-co/summary?id=D000021800 https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/3m-co/summary?id=D000021800
- IG_Semmelweiss 3y agoWhat is the point of this URL exactly ? The company's damage starts in the 1960's and wast most actively protected by states, in the 80s. Your link barely covers only to 2012.
- 29athrowaway 3y agoThe point of this URL: - They lobby the government - Their lobbyists go to work to the government, and then go back to work to the company and so on The government won't touch them.
- gruez 3y ago>The government won't touch them. That's clearly not true, as evidenced by this settlement.
- abenga 3y agoThere are some actions (e.g. killing people, poisoning entire communities, getting thousands addicted to drugs, etc) that if perpetrated by an individual, society generally either puts the perpetrator's lives on pause for decades by imprisonment, or actually ends them altogether. Yet companies do the same things and are fined a few months' worth of revenue (and the shareholders who received profits due to the crimes keep them anyway) due to limited liability.
- sriram_malhar 3y agoLetter of indulgence.
- jvans 3y agoNext step: tweak enough chemical bonds to give it a different acronym and dodge litigation for another 20 years
- cgb223 3y agoOkay but are they gonna do anything to clean it from the water…? Is that _money_ going to be used to clean it from the water? It concerns me we’re not trying to fix the actual health danger to us
- IG_Semmelweiss 3y agoThe article says a lot of the money is going to be used for monitoring, and then that monitoring, if it found pollution, would be allocated to better fitlering systems.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- wskinner 3y agoHas anyone made an attempt at accounting for all the harms and benefits of PFAS? Something I feel is often missed in reporting about similar issues is that the products in question have tremendous benefits. Yes, they have caused significant harm. But so have fire, the wheel, and the automobile. With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to forget that we used these things in so many places for good reasons.
- mcmoor 3y agoSame with microplastics. With all the inconclusive studies it compels me to believe that even if it's harmful, it's no so harmful.
- Affric 3y agoWhich studies are you reading? Every PFAS study I read seems to be pointing to ever increasing accumulation and harm. It's not hard to imagine a phase shift to a PFAS effect pandemic if we don't seriously consider PFAS curtailment as a regulatory priority.
- hedora 3y agoThere is abundant evidence that microplastics are destroying marine ecosystems.
- refurb 3y agoPlease provide some links to the studies.
- latexr 3y agoIt’s a good thing that claims be sourced, but we should put in a minimum of effort to a conversation. Especially one with a large body of evidence. If person A claims “the earth is round”, person B can find sources to prove it faster than it takes to write a comment. If person B did search and found the studies lacking, they should open with that and ask for clarification. Otherwise it looks like they’re waiting for person A to do all the work so they can nitpick every source and derail the conversation away from the broader, productive, important points. I searched for “microplastics marine ecosystems” (taken directly from your parent post) and my engine returned more studies than I know what to do with. The first five links: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7927104/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7927104/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21742351/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21742351/ https://journals.openedition.org/factsreports/5257 https://journals.openedition.org/factsreports/5257 https://progearthplanetsci.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40645-020-00405-4 https://progearthplanetsci.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186... https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-021-01961-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-021-01961-1
- jongjong 3y agoA big slap on the wrist. Still, the same people stay in charge with the same incentives in place. Instead of paying engineers to solve the problems, they can simply hire better lawyers and focus on fine minimisation in the future. And once that 10 billion is divided up between all the victims, it will hardly be worth anything at all to them either. So many victims, so much harm, it's barely a drop in the bucket.
- highwayman47 3y agoIs this going to be used to solve this problem?
- michelb 3y agoNot sure, it's not nearly enough money for that.
- shubhamjain 3y agoSurely, lot of words about how these chemicals don't degrade naturally, but none about the actual impact. Same like microplastics. Not denying that PFAS can't be harmful, but how can we prosecute just on the basis of the fact that these chemicals exist, when the evidence of harm is inconclusive? Stuart Ritchie is my favorite health journalist to refer to whenever it comes to things like these [1]: > Some of the evidence comes from animal studies: studies have claimed that exposing rats and mice to the chemicals has negative effects on their ability to reproduce. The problem—aside from the inherent problem with comparing non-human animals to human ones—is that the concentrations of the chemicals are normally far, far higher in the animal studies than they are for humans in everyday life. As with all “toxins”, the dose makes the poison: something that is harmful to health at high levels could be entirely safe if the average person never has very much of it in their system. > The Guardian – which has published dozens of articles about these “dangerous”, “potentially toxic” chemicals in the last few years – called the new research “the first known study on the effects of PFAS on female fertility”. That’s a little odd, since earlier this year a review study put together 13 previous such studies, drawing the conclusion that “increased levels of PFAS exposure are associated with reduced fertility in women”. > As with all such reviews, that conclusion is dependent on the quality and consistency of the underlying 13 studies. Unfortunately, the studies we have are all over the place: even though on average they point to an association of PFAS with lower fertility, the estimate of the size of the association varies a great deal from study to study. [1]: https://inews.co.uk/news/forever-chemicals-fertility-study-linking-flawed-2267026 https://inews.co.uk/news/forever-chemicals-fertility-study-l...
- lettergram 3y agoThe issue with this topic largely has to do with political & financial interest. (1) who benefits financially? (2) who benefits politically from the finances & who’s potentially at legal risk? (3) who’s career is advanced / harmed? Ultimately, with this topic (as with many others), there are no neutral observers. There are multiple camps competing for influence - which these studies benefit. Recall doctors and studies were supporting tobacco and cocaine as good for you. They even had doctors / PhDs advertising and publishing it as such. Many argue the same with climate change (lots of political & financial interest), Covid, etc. Study of PFAs have a similar challenge because it was heavily & widely used. Similar to DDT, it takes time for these things to roll through and change. PFAs are generally understood to be toxic & lead to endocrine disruption. Most of the papers I’ve read conclude as much
- PlunderBunny 3y ago>"The result is that millions of Americans will have healthier lives without PFAS in their drinking water" "If I stop punching you in the face, you'll have much less facial trauma - that's a win for you"
- spaceman_2020 3y agoAmazing how you can just pay some money and get away with destroying countless lives. The Soviets at least had the decency to send some people to the gulag.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hackernewds 3y agoNot to mention a fine that is not an existential threat. 3M has grown massively in comparison to $10B. Recently 50% of the US tap water supply was found to be tainted with PFAs <link pending>
- vlovich123 3y agoNot sure what you’re romanticizing here, but Soviets were not sending the people who would be at fault here to the gulags. It was political prisoners, counterculture agitators (artists, satirists, etc), criminals, rich people who wouldn’t go along, etc. Politically connected people wouldn’t end up there.
- spaceman_2020 3y agoIt’s a joke about the upside down interpretation of law in either of the systems. In Soviet Russia, you sent your underlings to the gulag. In America, you just pay a fine. Neither of which is proper justice.
- scotty79 3y ago> The Soviets at least had the decency to send some people to the gulag. First people on the train would be the victims that made the fuss.
- fastball 3y agoWhy is 3M getting all the blame? From TFA, a big reason for the high concentrations in waterways is due to firefighter training exercises. Did 3M have any oversight into how much firefighting foam firefighters dump into the waterways with their training exercises? Seems like culpability is more with the user of the product than the producer of the product.
- lock-the-spock 3y agoThere is a difference in knowledge that a fire department Vs a company producing the material have. First, it's a choice to include these in the product. Second, it's a choice whether to appropriately inform fire departments on how to handle such material. Third, an individual fire department cannot invent removal/capture methodologies, this is again something that would need to be offered by the producer. I'm astonished how easily the narrative is shifted to blaming the little guy. Is a customer expected to re-verify the toxicity of the products they buy and set up their own recycling system? Honestly hard to imagine the many comments here spreading doubt on the well-established dangers of pfas and arguing how innocent 3m is are disinterested comments.
- fastball 3y agoI can buy a giant load of bleach today and dump it into my local river. Is Clorox to blame for any negative impacts that result? No, that is 100% on me. Now I admit this isn't a perfect analogy, but I definitely don't think it's on the other end of the spectrum from this case (where 3M seems to be getting 100% of the blame).
- thorncorona 3y agono because the effects of bleach are well known? what kind of dumb analogy is this. imagine if you sold utensils made of a new material you invested that was 100% compostable. and you tested it and observed it was toxic to rats. but it didn’t seem to kill humans at first glance. so you sold it to restaurants to use as a better alternative to plastic utensils. but over time they are toxic. now replace utensils with pots, and the material with teflon/teflon precursors (ptfe/pfoa) and you now you have reality.
- ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago102 years ago General Motors started poisoning the entire planet with lead [1] (being helped by DuPont, the same DuPont which manufacture PFAS, to manufacture tetraethyllead-TEL, and in collaboration with Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, now known as ExxonMobil, the same ExxonMobil that predicted very accurately climate change 50 years ago, in the 1970s [2]). Today, in 2023, General Motors has a market cap of $55B with $156B revenue in 2022; DuPont, $32B market cap, $13B revenue 2022; ExxonMobil $417B market cap, $413B revenue 2022. These planetary-scale terrorists are killing you, your children, and any possible future for a few trillions, and you have been conditioned to sustain, maintain, defend, extend this criminal system. These world-destroyers thinly masked as "companies" should have been dissolved literally 100 years ago. But in the words of the contemporary ponderer, George W. Bush, after receiving "$1.5 million from the oil industry for his 2000 presidential campaign, at the time, the largest donation from the industry to a single political candidate" [3], and asked by Manmohan Singh, India's Prime Minister, why must ExxonMobil approve India's largest state-owned oil company to buy into the Sakhalin-1 energy project in Russia and "why don't you just tell them [Exxon] what to do?" Bush replied: "Nobody tells those guys what to do." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.#Leaded_gasoline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.#Leaded_gaso... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-64241994 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-64241994 [3] https://www.desmog.com/2015/04/21/george-w-bush-elected-president-2001-floating-oil-money https://www.desmog.com/2015/04/21/george-w-bush-elected-pres...
- BiteCode_dev 3y agoIt's getting better: the settlement are big enough for hurting their bottom line. Now let's get on prison sentencing as well, so that individuals feel concerned.
- andybak 3y agoI do wonder exactly what level of corporate malignancy is needed to result in jail sentences. Outside of financial misconduct I can't think of more than a couple (and I'd have to check they actually resulted in custodial sentences). Union Carbide did I think? I'm off to google it later. And that Korean Shopping Center that collapsed.
- GrumpyNl 3y agoWhen its only a financial fine, nothing will change. Things will change when criminal charges would apply to the ceo's.
- switch007 3y agoIs that the real amount or the headline grabbing amount before they spend years fighting it?
- Kaotique 3y agoDoes it also stop them from polluting with the PFAS alternatives like GenX?
- tjpnz 3y agoThe settlement will be paid over a decade and 3M don't admit liability. Feels like another slap on the wrist for Corporate America. Mike Roman should at least be serving prison time as a warning to others.
- NickC25 3y agoIt's not even a slap on the wrist. 3M will just past the costs of this onto end-users (consumers). Their board and C-Suite won't face and personal liability claims or pay a cent towards the settlement costs, nor will they ever see the inside of a jail cell. Corporations MUST admit liability if they actually are liable. I get that they could face a barrage of legitimate and fiscally damaging claims if they admit liability...but that's the name of the game. I'm tired of the "we're not technically liable" bullshit. You, the corporation, knowingly created a product that you know contained harmful chemicals, and didn't disclose it. Now that it's been proven that 1. you knew they were harmful, and 2. you sold it anyway, you give up all claims to limited liability. It's just mind-bogglingly dumb to claim that you're not liable. Of course you are. I run a small business that serves an edible product. If a consumer gets sick and my product is 100% provably the culprit, I don't get to say "we're not liable" in court and dictate the terms of the settlement. If the settlement is too high, I'm out of business and ethically speaking, I'm still on the hook for damages. Why do corporations not get the same treatment?
- AidenVennis 3y agoLast week a Dutch research channel made an episode out of the PFAS coverup by a former Dupont factory in The Netherlands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3kzHc-eV88 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3kzHc-eV88 It's a good video in English with some subtitled Dutch interviews containing a lot of official memo's and internal documents from Dupont and 3M. Funny thing is that they already started installing ground water cleaning installations in the 90's because they measured very high levels of PFAS in the ground, even larger than their factories in the US.
- seltzered_ 3y agoOn a similar tack, there was a recent documentary by Vice on PFAS in Michigan and how it's shutting down farms, while the source emitters in the industrial space continue operating. https://youtu.be/X9GTa3a-tFo https://youtu.be/X9GTa3a-tFo The thing speculated in the video is the industrial emitter focused on in the video (Tribar) is depended on by the automotive industry (Ford, Chrysler) which would cause factories to pause (job loss, etc.) and such if immediately shut down.
- ChoGGi 3y agoI think that's missing a 0.
- RankingMember 3y ago> 3M said its participation in the settlement "is not an admission of liability" These kind of statements always crack me up, like "oh, really, so you just decided to give away X millions/billions of dollars out of the goodness of your hearts?". Would love to see some kind of policy that ends this kind of absurd post-settlement spinning.
- ethbr0 3y agoIt's not spinning: it's a legal message. It's almost always part of the settlement, because it limits future liability on the matter. Yet news sources always report it as though it's something the company voluntarily says.
- MetaWhirledPeas 3y agoThat doesn't make it any less absurd. Legal hoop-jumping is not so different from spin. The law itself is often silly.
- ethbr0 3y agoThe law is the law. Saying it's silly is like an architect saying that gravity is silly. Yes, but... it's the system you're operating in.
- RankingMember 3y agoThe difference is that law is a human construct
- WeylandYutani 3y agoWe recently celebrated the end of slavery in my country. Laws can be silly.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoIf they admitted liability, people could sue for individual damages on top of the settlement. It's a buy-out, water under the bridge kinda thing, because individual lawsuits would cost years, would cost each individual thousands, and could cost 3M even more once all added up. It's a legal logistical nightmare. Instead, people are offered a one time payment to basically drop the case. I think a lot are happy to take it because it means they don't have to fight a tedious legal battle.
- jononomo 3y agoSheesh, these kind of environmental pollution problems can have a detrimental effect on entire populations of hundreds of millions of people. It doesn't seem like a fine is the correct category of punishment here. Doesn't it seem like prosecutors should be considering life in prison, or something more severe, for the 3M executives and lawyers involved?
- cyounkins 3y agoI was surprised to learn that PFAS are in dental floss, used to help in glide between teeth easily. This study linked using such floss and higher blood concentrations of PFAS: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41370-018-0109-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41370-018-0109-y It's not strong enough evidence to suggest we should stop flossing, but they do make plain floss without PFAS, ex: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005IHMXEQ/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005IHMXEQ/