5 ms·
America's carpet capital: an empire and its toxic legacy
- xnx 5mo agoDoesn't even mention microplastics. Clothing, car tires, and carpet have to be right up there with the top sources.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- Olivia2costner 5mo ago[flagged]
- expedition32 5mo agoWhen people talk about how they want manufacturing back they conveniently forget the pollution.
- markovs_gun 5mo agoStuff has to be made somewhere. This argument is essentially predicated on the idea that it's okay for some places to be polluted and for some people to have to deal with it but not for other places and people. What you're really saying is "When people talk about how they want manufacturing back, they conveniently forget the pollution impacts people who live here instead of China and India, where it's totally okay." Domestic manufacturing has a lot of advantages from the standpoint of total pollution. I guarantee you that even with lax American environmental rules, the pollution caused by a factory in Georgia is still lower and less hazardous to workers and the surrounding community than if the same factory were in India. Furthermore, our government is at least theoretically capable of adding better protections for workers and communities, while our government is going to have a hard time enforcing pollution rules overseas. I don't think you are racist or xenophobic. I just think that when people make this argument they don't think about the fact that this stuff is still getting manufactured somewhere if it's not made here, and basically the complaint is that Americans are having to deal with the consequences rather than people in other countries.
- collabs 5mo agoIt is supposed to get better over time though. I mean at least that's the sales pitch. Globalization was supposed to lift all boats. If you remember the air quality in Beijing used to be the absolute worst but it has allegedly improved a lot recently. I don't know where the flaw in the logic was but I think the idea was first you have to become wealthier and with more money comes a better quality of life.
- pocksuppet 5mo agoGlobalization does lift all boats. We get cheap stuff without having to make it, and they get jobs and pollution.
- breezybottom 5mo agoIt got better in Beijing because they moved factories to more rural areas, not because manufacturing is any less dirty.
- derriz 5mo agoWhen people extol the virtues of manufacturing, I’m always reminded of the poll where 80% of Americans say that the country would benefit from a bigger manufacturing base but only 25% are interested in actually working in manufacturing. This isn’t an American thing btw - I’ve had arguments with brits and others who argue passionately that the country has been destroyed by the relative decline in manufacturing but when I ask “so you’d prefer to work in a factory?” it provokes fairly confused responses like “no but other people would”…. https://fortune.com/2025/04/15/americans-want-factory-jobs-reshored-dont-want-work-them/ https://fortune.com/2025/04/15/americans-want-factory-jobs-r...
- Zigurd 5mo agoAmerica is pretty good at creating an underclass they can force into less desirable jobs using the prison industrial complex.
- 5mo ago
- nkrisc 5mo agoMany things could be manufactured more cleanly, but then we’d have to pay what they really cost instead of the subsidized prices we pay now.
- miltonlost 5mo agoMany things could be manufactured more cleanly, but then the capitalist class will have slightly less obscene wealth by their stealing of profits and pushing of the cost onto society. The problem is with the manufacturers being evil, selfish environmental nightmares.
- echelon 5mo agoDalton has been the world's top carpet manufacturer since the 1950s. It's not "back". It never left.
- ahartmetz 5mo agoIt's pretty much a solved problem. All highly developed countries still have some manufacturing - some more, some less - and they comply with today's strict environmental regulations.
- jujube3 5mo agoThe solution turned out to be to send it all to China.
- c0balt 5mo agoI feel for the people living there and being affected by the pollution. The long term effects of chemical pollution are ugly. But the CEO in the intro just seems like an odd choice. PFAS were known to cause issues for a long time, if you continued to use them for years then it is in your back too. Being "surprised" this might eventually affect your own product line just seems naive. You might have trusted 3M but just blindly trusting a supplier is not an excuse at some point.
- pfdietz 5mo ago> PFAS were known to cause issues for a long time Has this actually been confirmed, or is this just the precautionary principle in action?
- b40d-48b2-979e 5mo ago[flagged]
- SapporoChris 5mo agohttps://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10237242/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10237242/ Our review of industry documents shows that companies knew PFAS was “highly toxic when inhaled and moderately toxic when ingested” by 1970, forty years before the public health community.
- pfdietz 5mo agoI don't see any mention there of the dosage at which these toxic effects occur. That would be necessary to determine if the amount found in the environment is a concern or not.
- pessimizer 5mo agoThat's silly. The fact that it is toxic makes it a concern, and the fact that it is a concern means that if you're selling it you should find out yourself about the specifics. It's like saying that you're not responsible for stealing a wallet because you didn't know exactly how much was in it.
- b40d-48b2-979e 5mo agoIt's so convenient that all these people waited until retirement to speak out, but they also said they weren't doing anything wrong? Zero morals by anyone in this story.
- kibwen 5mo agoWe built our modern society on the principle that profit must be prioritized over morality, they're just conforming to systematic incentives. Those who sell their souls to the devil don't get to act shocked when they wind up in hell.
- joe_mamba 5mo ago> Those who sell their souls to the devil don't get to act shocked when they wind up in hell. Which is everyone, since everyone has their pension invested in a giant pool made of of unethical companies that we can't fine, ban or let fail because it would destroy people's retirements who will then vote in an angry way to reverse this, or it will destroy some upstream national important industries that are very well regulated, or lobby very well, like Purdue pharma. It's a collective fault, not that of only a handful of people.
- TJSomething 5mo agoI feel like this supposes a better world where most people are educated, rational, and calm investors with the time, money, and energy to actively manage a diversified portfolio. Or I guess you could get there by abolishing the stock market as it exists, which seems more likely.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- joe_mamba 5mo ago[flagged]
- echelon 5mo agoI drive through Dalton anytime I visit Chattanooga (a cool hipster city on the border of Georgia and Tennessee). The scale of manufacturing there is wild. There are so many factories. Dalton makes something like 70-80% of the carpet in the world. They've had carpet factories there since I was a kid, but they're starting to expand into lots of other industries. They've begun massively ramping up on solar panel production, for instance. It used to be the only city between Chattanooga and Cobb County (in the Atlanta metro), but now factories have sprung up throughout the I-75 corridor from Acworth to Calhoun. And they're putting them up at breakneck pace. You can easily see all the factories on a satellite view. Just look at the I-75 corridor [1]. The folks working in these factories are making good money. They're able to afford 2,000 square foot homes in the rural towns they live in. This little city is doing $10B in GDP. It's impressive if you've ever driven through there. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@34.6185909,-84.9776839,50698m/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e4 https://www.google.com/maps/@34.6185909,-84.9776839,50698m/d...
- p_j_w 5mo ago> This little city is doing $10B in GDP. It's impressive if you've ever driven through there. And all they had to do to accomplish this, apparently, was make their environment toxic. What a bargain.
- shimman 5mo agoAin't American capitalism grand? Truly a way to organize a species.
- slowgramming 5mo agoI forgot about Dalton. Used to pass it occasionally growing up if we were heading up north to visit family. I knew they were big on carpet, but I did not know they produced such high volumes of carpet there
- hope2 5mo ago[dead]
- sixie6e 5mo agoIn this society, appearance, convenience, and justifying one's existence with unnecessary, destructive labor are more important than the ecosystems which support them. Humans are the invasive, destructive species. Also(I'm absolutely not taking corporate side here), she says, "I feel like, I don’t know, almost like there’s a blanket over me, smothering me that I can’t get out from under." because of PFAS levels but then look at the corporate products/chemicals she covers her body in daily, and accepts money from others to do the same. If you are going to be outraged, at least be consistent about it.
- Avicebron 5mo agoUltimately it's because we've (as people) let corporations have too much of influence in politics and daily life. As such they will continue to sociopathically enshittify everything around them without compunction because the only guiding axis is "line must go up". Everyone can be absolve themselves from any wrong doing with the banal "I was just following orders" when the orders were to make the line increase at any cost. We need a corporate death penalty. Probably combined with something that will put the fear of God in anyone who thinks only along the axis of profit. EDIT: grammer
- somewhatgoated 5mo agoIf by we you mean the US this would require a dramatic change in the culture. Just look how USAmericans view the regulations and rules that are imposed on businesses in the EU - what you propose would require a much harsher regulation than in the EU currently and even the current regulations seem extreme to Americans and proposing regulations like that would probably be political suicide
- therealpygon 5mo agoYou mean that because people take issue with the fact that the EU implements everything in almost the worst and most intrusive way possible? Sorry, you forgot to accept my view conversation cookie and I don’t want to be personally liable because you didn’t, so this response will be cut off in order to
- threecheese 5mo ago[flagged]
- losvedir 5mo agoToday!
- AvAn12 5mo agoCarpet has been made for millennia. Scotchguard is new and toxic. So just make the carpets without the stain protection junk. Frankly the carpet factories will do more business as people will want to replace their carpets more frequently.
- Olivia2costner 5mo ago[flagged]
- jmclnx 5mo agoWith the on-going elimination of the EPA at the US federal level, this could be the future for many States. And States with a strong State level "EPA" will be at the mercy of up-river states that pollute their own waterways.
- xp84 5mo agoI had a question which most of the article just barely touched on: a lot of attention goes to how much PFAS is detected in people’s blood, but I wanted to know (A) what the harms are, and (B) how strong the evidence is for each one, since afaik they aren’t and probably can’t do randomized trials where they just spray a bunch of Scotchgard in the mouths of half the test subjects. Using an AI answer as a jumping off point, it looks like the possible harms are: • Higher cholesterol — (Strong) • Reduced vaccine antibody response — (Strong) • Pregnancy‑induced hypertension / preeclampsia — (Strong) • Lower birth weight / impaired fetal growth — (Strong) • Kidney cancer (PFOA) — (Contested) • Testicular cancer (PFOA) — (Limited) • Thyroid disease — (Limited) • Liver enzyme changes / fatty liver risk — (Limited) • Immune issues beyond vaccines (asthma, infections) — (Emerging) • Diabetes / metabolic effects — (Emerging) • Neurodevelopmental / behavioral effects — (Emerging) • Other cancers (breast, prostate, etc.) — (Inconclusive) Obviously, this isn’t verified research, but I wanted to know what the concrete risks actually were since at this moment, it seems like most of us are probably stuck with the PFAS already in our environment and bodies.
- kjkjadksj 5mo agoPlease don’t dump ai slop here.
- xp84 5mo agoI fail to see the harm done, I explicitly called it out as not verified. I just thought someone else might want to see the list of what actual harms are somewhat proven - instead of this vague sense of dread we’re told to have about “forever chemicals.”
- bethekidyouwant 5mo agoThe cars you drive every day are much worse for everybody than these dupont chemicals.
- cheesecakegood 5mo agoI guess a little bit of background is helpful, which most people don’t realize, about carpet production. A lot (a LOT) of carpet is some variant of polyester since it’s just a really nice durability + cost + stain resistance mix (although the latter is one of its big weaknesses comparatively, important to note). Thus there is significant demand for stain guard options. Compounded on top of that is because although you can dye the polyester before it is extruded, this is the firm minority of carpet produced. Maybe a quarter or less? Usually you will dye it before spinning it into yarn or before tufting it (weaving it into the backing basically). However, it is often cheaper especially for solid carpet to essentially dunk the whole finished carpet into a vat for dyeing, or run it through a glorified conveyor belt to do much the same. I’d hazard a decent guess that the latter two methods are the worst offenders for pollution for obvious reasons. What’s a bit of a pity then is that it seems to me that this isn’t really inevitable (although if we stop entirely that’s a perfect recipe for some other country to undercut us even if they inherit the long term dangers too). With that said, the CRI (Carpet and Rug Institute) is almost the epitome of what you’d imagine an industry group to be. And 3M/DuPont are, well, you know. So I’m sure the article doesn’t really exaggerate there. Finally I’d say that the upshot for all of us should be that regulation and pressure work. There was a calculation made whether intentionally or not, explicitly or implicitly, that if this came out to be bad then the big chemical companies could be blamed (and could further be reliably counted on to have engaged in outright unethical activity that makes blaming them a somewhat valid strategy too). Source: sold carpet for a few years and was actually curious about the industry unlike many of my peers
- 486sx33 5mo agoNo one dunks finished carpet in dye. The dye house dyes the fiber, pre construction. https://youtu.be/FG2-af0xYOA https://youtu.be/FG2-af0xYOA The treatments like stain master are/were the problem, not the dye. Carpet is a wonderful product, even polys. It’s good we’re having a conversation about it, but vinyl flooring has far out passed carpet , and it is full of awful carcinogens, made in china, not disclosed, secret recipes. But , it can be unstable and release into your home / office / work place
- 5mo ago
- giantg2 5mo agoOut houses are full of plastic and chemicals. The paint is latex, the carpet is polyester, the wood finish is polyurethane, etc.
- peter_d_sherman 5mo agoIt would be tremendously interesting, I think, to learn all of the Chemistry involved in carpet manufacturing, both historical and current-day, both for carpets which are manufactured domestically and those manufactured abroad (different regulatory frameworks = probable different and/or subtly different chemical processes)... Now, that sounds really boring and potentially a waste of time, right? Well, yes, and no, and yes! Well it's complicated! I would speculate (being horrendously undereducated on the subject!) that there probably exist a set of chemical processes which could create Carpets without any harmful environmental waste or residual chemicals which subsequently require disposal. What these would be or could be, I as-of-yet do not know... It's a subject that needs research... a lot of research... lots and lots of research! But, while it might sound like a really boring, uninteresting, "there's nothing to see here" kind of goal, keep in mind this quote from the article: >"Mohawk logged more than $3.4 billion in net sales. Shaw Industries reported $4.2 billion." Yup, the global carpet market is worth... (wait for it!)... "Billion$"! So -- an interesting problem for present and future Scientists/Chemists! Crack it (in whole or in part!) and your solution or partial solution could be worth Billion$! I mean, I'd put that up against a Clay Millennium Prize for solving a complex Math problem, I'd put that against a Nobel Prize or Fields Medal or Dirac Medal or Feynman Prize! Yup, solve The Carpet Chemistry Problem(tm) (let's give it a name!) -- and your share of Billion$ (as Carl Sagan would say!) could be yours! :-) (I now will humbly submit this post for the obligatory yes-I-know-they-are-coming downvotes! :-) )
- herworkplace 5mo agoI grew up in Dalton and went to school with the children of these carpet company leaders (many of whom are now senior members of those same companies). My parents still live there. It doesn’t surprise me that Dalton Utilities operated poorly and appears to have been in cahoots with the carpet companies to cover up the risk. Dalton is a place where education isn’t always valued but relationships are. Plus, carpet is the back bone of the economy there — issues with carpet impact the community heavily, making it difficult for anyone to stand in its way. There’s a real sense of fear and helplessness in the community there as this information comes out. It’s a lesson in the dangers of unregulated capitalism, but it only matters if we’re paying attention. There’s a role for government to support and protect citizens from companies whether it’s PFAs or AI.
- herworkplace 5mo agoIf you really want to get a feel for Dalton in the 90s, you should read this article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1990/02/19/the-hometown-of-the-killer-blondes/296a0137-9d11-43a4-8cbf-696bd6d3ffa2/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1990/02/19/...