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3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public
- verdverm 3y agoGiven we have a recent law regarding data breaches, notifications, and penalties for not... We ought to mirror this law onto IRL products and companies
- syndicatedjelly 3y agoAre those laws effective at stopping any of those things from happening?
- LanzVonL 3y agoThey would be if the punishment was severe enough. Heck, businesses might even become afraid to collect personal information if there was a risk of serious bodily harm and financial penalties for letting it loose.
- verdverm 3y agoThey might also re-evaluate their risk profile and invest more into securing their systems (for existing tech&laws, an analogy for the IRL product companies). The lawyers and peanut counters are often involved in the decision making around these things.
- monkburger 3y agoThis is what happens when the EPA's rules state chemical companies, can more or less, police themselves. We've detected PFOAs in rainwater/clouds, in the artic, etc (See https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.2c02765 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.2c02765) They are going to lead to further health problems down the road.
- Waterluvian 3y agoThis kind of self regulation can probably work and be cost effective if you ruthlessly destroy any company found in violation rather than some fine and an apology. Reminds me of criminal punishment in medieval times. Incarceration was a complete economic non-start so the penalties were brutal as a deterrent.
- orclev 3y agoCorporate capital punishment, the company gets seized it's patents and copyrights made public domain, and any other assets it has sold to the highest bidder and those profits used to compensate the victims.
- KennyBlanken 3y agoUnless you scale fines with income/wealth, fines are just a way of letting the rich do what they please. On the off chance they're caught - and don't get let off the hook because of how 'respectable' they are - it's so little money to them, it's not a discouragement at all. A fine for dangerous driving that is crushing to a day laborer is unnoticeable to someone wealthy. And whereas that laborer, to challenge a ticket, would need to take time off from work costing them further - the wealthy person may have a standing relationship with a law firm, and that law firm might send a clerk or paralegal to challenge the ticket in court...and do so gratis.
- cromulent 3y agoThat’s why Finland has “day fines” - after a threshold, fines are x days of your last years income. 5 or 6 figure fines are not uncommon.
- Waterluvian 3y agoI wonder if that makes the weight of the consequence less abstract? “I sped and now I’m working for free for a day.”
- surgical_fire 3y ago
- acdha 3y agoI increasingly think we need personal criminal liability for everyone in the management chain before this will end. As long as you can cash out your options before the reckoning, maybe even spin a division out to go bankrupt, there are just too many people who’ll chase the larger number. You need the guy who gets that internal memo to think that if he doesn’t report it to the EPA, he’ll spend the rest of his life wondering whether the knock on the door is the FBI.
- forgetfreeman 3y agoInvestors as well.
- jmaygarden 3y agoHow would investors know if something is kept secret?
- Teever 3y agoWhat about the situation with 3M now? We know that they kept this is a secret, so shareholders should either sell or be criminally liable.
- jmaygarden 3y agoThat’s a very good point. At the least, the stock price should go to zero. I guess your point is that they are artificially keeping the company out of bankruptcy/receivership.
- Teever 3y agoNo the argument I'm making is that the shareholders are funding a criminal enterprise and therefore should face RICO charges.
- Nasrudith 3y agoThat depends upon someone willing to buy when it comes with criminal liabilities. Lets not recreate sin-eaters.
- KyleBerezin 3y agoEver wonder if things like this lead to companies intentionally avoiding environmental research? We need to find some way to align our interests, this seems like a dead end path. We are unintentionally incentivizing the disruption of environmental research.
- asdff 3y agoManagement is also incentivized to sell research that aligns with their own agenda to the board, rather than research that says maybe what they've been hired to burn money on for the last couple years wasn't the right direction at all.
- grayfaced 3y agoIt's not about the research itself, it's about what happened after the discovery of danger. If their research discovers harm and they discontinue the product promptly, that should be a mitigating factor. If their research discovers harm and they continue, that should be a severely compounding punishment. That promotes research because it mitigates company risk.
- reqo 3y agoI honestly don't think there is any incentive for large corporation to care too much about things like this and, on the contrary, they are incentivized to do more! The fine they get is basically cost of doing business and since our attention is engineered to be short, the negative PR won't last long enough to have a huge impact. Unless we see a "too big to fail" company actually fail because something like this, we won't see any change in their behvaiour!
- anjel 3y agoYou can execute or incarcerate managerial offenders, but I suspect their greatest fear would be the imposition of complete and lasting impoverishment for them and their families.
- haltist 3y ago[flagged]
- hulitu 3y ago> 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public It does not matter. Du Pont was doing it decades ago but they showed that they can go forward with a slap on the wrist.
- eximius 3y agoPut them in jail. Make the company pay for externalities. If it bankrupts them, they deserve it.
- tamaharbor 3y agoSell your MMM stock.
- userbinator 3y agoI'm going to be the controversial one here and point out that despite saying they're "harmful", they've been everywhere for all these decades that a lot of other measures of quality of life have been increasing? From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluorooctanoic_acid#Global_occurrence_and_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluorooctanoic_acid#Global_... there is this interesting quote: Most industrialized nations have average PFOA blood serum levels ranging from 2 to 8 parts per billion;[57] the highest consumer sub-population identified was in Korea—with about 60 parts per billion.[52] In Peru,[58] Vietnam,[59] and Afghanistan[60] blood serum levels have been recorded to be below one part per billion.
- hh3k0 3y ago> despite saying they're "harmful", they've been everywhere for all these decades that a lot of other measures of quality of life have been increasing? Might be unrelated (or not), but cancer rates have been exploding the last decades. Example via Google-Fu: > Cancer cases in under-50s worldwide up nearly 80% in three decades, study finds https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/sep/05/cancer-cases-in-under-50s-worldwide-up-nearly-80-in-three-decades-study-finds https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/sep/05/cancer-cases...
- pid-1 3y agoControlled by age?
- TeMPOraL 3y agoAnd just as importantly, is it controlled for changes in diagnostic criteria, improvements in testing and pre-screening? In the past decades, we got better at classifying and discriminating between cancers and other illnesses and causes of death.
- jdietrich 3y ago>cancer rates have been exploding the last decades For reasons that are really quite well-understood. PFASs are not known to be significantly carcinogenic, particularly not at the miniscule levels most people are exposed to. We willingly fill ourselves with things that are definitely very carcinogenic - processed meat, alcohol, tobacco smoke, diesel fumes, etc etc ad nauseum. Exposure to some of these carcinogens has been static or declining in some western countries, which has led to static or declining age-adjusted cancer incidence rates. They have vastly increased in the middle-income countries that are home to most of the world's population. The life of the average Chinese or Indian person has been transformed beyond all recognition in recent decades (for better and for worse) by urbanisation and industrialisation. There isn't some unseen and unrecognised carcinogen that is sweeping the world and wreaking havoc; the global poor are just getting rich enough to develop the kind of lifestyle-related cancers that we're accustomed to in the west, while also getting rich enough to be diagnosed rather than just getting sick and dying. Look at the source cited by that article - the growth in cancer rates is completely dominated by rapidly-growing economies in the global south. https://bmjoncology.bmj.com/content/2/1/e000049 https://bmjoncology.bmj.com/content/2/1/e000049
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y agoMinnesota Reformer is the best local news source I've seen.
- bryan_w 3y ago>To donate via check, please make it out to “States Newsroom,” our parent organization, and write "Minnesota Reformer" on the check's memo line. Mail to: States Newsroom, 50 F St NW, Ste 460, Washington, DC
- ThomPete 3y agoThis is a completely disingenuous take on the case. There isn't a single explanation of how its dangerous only thats its found in many different species and claims its toxic. If this shallow type of analysis is enough for otherwise technical people on this forum then we have a much bigger problem than 3M.
- hcurtiss 3y agoPeople really want to believe these companies are Disney super villains. No evidence required. And no accounting for all the benefits that derive from these chemicals. Americans are really bad at risk assessment and toxicology. I suspect it will be our ultimate undoing when the Chinese come along with superior weapons that withstand higher heat thresholds or less corrosion.
- cbmuser 3y agoEuropeans, especially Germans suffer from the same problem. Chemical companies like Hoechst gave up on Germany due to its anti-scientific, emotional stance on chemistry. Yet the same people in Germany complains nowadays that the country is having issues supplying itself with pharmaceuticals.
- cyberax 3y ago> A 1970 study of fish had to be abandoned “to avoid severe stream pollution” and because all the fish died. After being exposed to a chemical, the fish couldn’t stay upright and kept crashing into the fish tank and dying. "We tested it on animals, and none of them survived. But that's OK! 'cause when we wrote the report up, we lied!"
- hcurtiss 3y agoPurdy was improperly conflating their ability to detect the substance with "harm," and the environmental propagandists have been running with it for a long time. What "harm" precisely did he identify? The article doesn't say. Maybe a carcinogen? Maybe not? There's been a concerted effort to make PFOS/PFAS an environmental super-villain, but it's hard to substantiate when we volitionally ingest many flourinated pharmaceuticals daily (e.g., Cipro, Prozac, Flonaze, Pavloxid, etc.). It's been amusing watching the alarmist "science" press floundering with the "right" definition of PFAS that lets you hang 3M but still keep the life-changing drugs that require them. https://www.bu.edu/sph/news/articles/2022/is-there-a-right-definition-of-pfas/ https://www.bu.edu/sph/news/articles/2022/is-there-a-right-d...
- leobg 3y agoDid you read this? 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...
- cnick 3y agoThere's even a movie about it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvAOuhyunhY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvAOuhyunhY
- paiute 3y agoLink from article on what purdy talks about bioaccumulation, but not at toxic levels, with some concerns that it could biomagnify in the food chain. The article blows this up and claims they knew all the harms then. Just bullshit. https://www.ag.state.mn.us/Office/Cases/3M/docs/PTX/PTX1533.pdf https://www.ag.state.mn.us/Office/Cases/3M/docs/PTX/PTX1533....
- ta988 3y agoThe fact that there is a specific atom in a product doesn't have anything to do with its dangers. Chlorine gas or Phosgene are deadly, your stomach is full of HCl. VX has phosphorus yet your body is full of it and that's part of the basis of how it handles energy and genes. There are perfectly safe compounds that contain F. The problem here is that we have report over report on the effects of those molecules, some coming from the companies making them. And yet somehow the people trying to raise awareness to those facts would be the propagandists? The propagandists are more the ones spreading misinformation, misleading others or hiding information. PFAS are per/poly fluoro alkyl compounds meaning that they have many fluorine atoms on an alkyl chain. None of the compounds you listed have that which makes me wonder what you are trying to achieve commenting on something you know so little about. ciprofloxacin has one fluorine, on an aromatic ring Prozac has three on a single carbon Flonaze has a single fluorine on a methyl Paxlovid has a CF3 like Prozac
- aftbit 3y agoHow much of the rise in cancer cases over the past 100 years can be traced back specifically to PFCs? What other harms can chronic low-dose exposure cause? We need some proper unbiased studies of the long term chronic effects of PFCs, paid for by the EPA or some other branch of the US federal government, without any influence from environmental groups or chemical manufacturing companies.
- mianos 3y agoYou have proper studies of cancer increases. No mention of PFCs. This one is particularly readable and as credible as they get: https://bmjoncology.bmj.com/content/2/1/e000049 https://bmjoncology.bmj.com/content/2/1/e000049
- artursapek 3y agoRelated, recommended documentary: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7689910/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7689910/
- collyw 3y agoSounds like Pfizer and mRNA shots. Seems to b a pattern.
- speedylight 3y agoI agree with other the comments that executives should be criminally liable for negligence like this, and anyone else who doesn’t relay the message to the decision makers. Knowingly committing crimes against humanity on a grand scale should be prosecuted and their fortunes seized.
- frozenport 3y agoWe have the laws and mechanism to "piercing the corporate veil" and lock these guys up. Somehow we seem to be unwilling to do it.
- davvid 3y agoWhen I was in university around 2001/2002 my partner's close friend was an intern in 3M's legal department. At the time she noted that she was helping to ensure that 3M was never legally liable for teflon and related products.
- elromulous 3y agoI'm shocked. /s I've preached about this in other comments (e.g. boeing 737 max), and looks like many folks here agree - we need personal liability in order to stop these kinds of things.
- werrett 3y agoIt’s crazy that 3M is still selling “fabric protectors” today [1] that rely on PFAS. Not that you can tell based on the product listing or packaging, but they do publish a handy data sheet [2] that lists “< 3% fluorochemical urethane”. Unfortunately it doesn’t list any personal protection or toxicology advice for that ingredient as “ingredient may be below threshold for labelling”. [1] Scotchgard Fabric Water Shield https://a.co/d/0E2DGjL https://a.co/d/0E2DGjL [2] https://multimedia.3m.com/mws/mediawebserver?mwsId=SSSSSuUn_zu8l00xMx_14x2GOv70k17zHvu9lxtD7SSSSSS-- https://multimedia.3m.com/mws/mediawebserver?mwsId=SSSSSuUn_...
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y agoIsn't everything harmful, even distilled water?
- 28304283409234 3y agoAnd then the governments wonder why people stop vaccinating or have crazy conspiracies.