The problem is 3M scientists have know toxicity to human and have withheld the information to the public and regulators. Since 1970s.
* We use silk dental floss (we use Radius)
* We use glass storage containers instead of Tupperware
* For cooking, we use All-Clad.
* If a recipe calls for non-stick (e.g., pancakes) I use a braiser from Le Creuset, which works reasonably well.
(Edited: formatting)
https://www.scanpan.com/haptiq-8-inch-fry-pan-40141-configur...
Plastic has a bad reputation because of its longevity, but that also makes it a good material for containers. That - in turn - makes it bad for throwaway packaging of course. I might have missed something, that's why I ask.
My dad has made pancakes for my entire life without ever using, or owning, a non-stick pan.
1: https://www.mamavation.com/beauty/toxic-pfas-dental-floss-to...
A few examples:
- food containers coated with PFAS (usually single use, often cardboard) - water-repellent PFAS spray for clothes, shoes, cars/whatever - surface PFAS treatment of clothes/shoes/whatever (better but still rubs off) - PFAS bike-chain lube
Why are any of these things legal? They cause much more exposure, by design cannot be contained and spread PFAS everywhere you go. They are the reason there are PFAS in snow on Mt. Everest.
Pans, medical tubes and maybe even inner layers in clothes can at least theoretically be responsibly disposed of, e.g. by reasonably contained incineration. I don't want to support unneeded PFAS, but pans seem a whole different category than spray-on PFAS for "weather-proofing" that people use because shrug "it helps I get less wet".
As a non-chemist I don't claim to have a comprehensive understanding, but as far as I can tell: PTFE (Teflon) is found in consumer products today, and has not been directly linked to cancer yet, i.e if you eat teflon (and you have) it will supposedly just pass through your gut in an inert fashion. PFOA and more generally PFAS are used to manufacture PTFE, these are known carcinogens according to independent studies and (allegedly) internally by 3Ms own research, unfortunately PFOA is also in your blood and my blood, not because you ate teflon from a frying pan, but because once it's in the environment it doesn't get broken down, and so inevitably we end up ingesting it.
The reason we have to generalise to the group of chemicals "PFAS", is because once PFOA specifically was found to be problematic companies looked for similar alternatives, but these have also found to cause similar issues.
To complicate matters the PTFE in your non-stick frying pan can also releases PFOA if heated high enough, supposedly the threshold is around 300 degrees C, however it has been found that this threshold varies between products and can be realistically reached under in "normal" cooking scenarios, but usually when someone accidentally dry heated a frying pan too much, or is just plain cooking on too high a temperature. The side effects of being exposed to PFOA in this way are supposed to feel similar to catching a cold that disappears fairly quickly, and is often mistaken as such, I presume this is because it's vaporised.
Even knowing all this (that provided you don't nuke your cookware it likely makes no personal difference) I've still decided to personally go down the stainless steel route, it's not very scientific, but the relationship between PTFE and PFOAs is close enough, and it flakes off my frying pans frequently enough that I've decided I don't want to keep on ingesting it only to find out later that it's also a problem. Although stainless is not hazard free, because you can get problems with metals leaching into the food and have to be careful with acidity, and also make sure you buy high quality pans. They also require more skill to cook with without destroying them, but ultimately last indefinitely if you can take care of them.
The main problem with continuing to use PTFE in products is the indirect cost to the environment and human health through the "externalities" of manufacturing.
Basically, teflon consists just of long chains of carbon atoms saturated with fluorine. They are extremely chemically resistant, and they appear to be biologically inert. Even if you heat the teflon past its decomposition temperature, you simply get pieces of the hydrocarbon chain as a result. They are nasty, but they are not persistent pollutants.
PFAS are different. They also consist of a chain of carbons with fluorine atoms attached to them. But they also have a hydrophilic "head" attached to them at the beginning of the chain. This hydrophilic head allows PFAS to function as surfactants, and it also makes them biologically active. The body can't do anything with the hydrocarbons saturated with fluorine, but the head provides a "handle" that can be used to absorb the PFAS into cell membranes where it can stay and cause all kinds of issues.
You can get it on Amazon too - price is the same as Glide, Reach, etc.
>They [PFAS] are used in all kinds of products that I personaly use everyday from pans to dental floss.
Perfluorooctanoic acid enhances colorectal cancer DLD-1 cells invasiveness through activating NF-κB mediated matrix metalloproteinase-2/-9 expression
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4637576/
I just do not understand how people can be so "whatever" about this stuff. It is sad and infuriating.
Companies don't need to prove the safety of things like this.
Look at bpa free. Most people don't even know that bpa free plastic tends to be just as bad, or potentially worse than bpa. The press doesn't give a shit I guess. Society went through its giant bpa panic and now it's tired of dealing with this so let's just ignore it and move onto the next thing. Ignorance is bliss.
I doubt very much that they're the only ones able to manufacture this stuff
Instead, government should require disclosure of new chemicals, tax the chemical industry (or use general fund), and perform its own studies on new chemicals.
Sometimes I send them back and ask for another; always I remove the straw quickly.
And why don't you just ask for a drink without a straw instead of removing it later?
In short, industrials chemicals are innocent until proven guilty. That's great for the justice system. It's a complete clusterfuck for Mother Nature and all her creatures, including humans.
There are so many guns in the US, and we hear about rogue snipers and school shooters, but never about one guy that decided a CEO should pay for his bad deeds in blood.
Maybe it shows that the average human being is quite stable and peaceful?
We are also very far removed from nature and death. Most of us fear death and do everything to avoid it. Few of us have any experience in killing.
It's easy to get a gun and kill someone in broad daylight. But you have to be really motivated to overcome all that I mentioned and accept the consequences.
It is strange that intersection of 'I'm angry at stuff and want to make people pay', and 'I own guns and I'm going to use them' seems to consistently result in rage and violence against society at large, rather than bad actors in particular.
It's almost as if there's a kind of slant to the propaganda that pushes people into those buckets. Not a lot of unhinged, violent anti-3M/Purdue/Kaiser/DuPont rhetoric on the *chans and in the Q-sphere...
The chemicals in question have stopped being made for decades by 3M.
3M manufactured a non-stick coating used by thousands of companies on thousands of different products. What is the end game here? They never produce teflon again and industries like biomedical suffer?
For new inventions (not well-known issues), it would be far better to be fast-reacting and no-fault rather than slow-reacting with vengeance.
Run studies as the use of the chemicals scales up and start raising warnings early so the company has time to collect more information and adapt formulas or applications. As the costs become apparent, start placing those costs on the companies ahead of time rather than 50 years later. That will sort out who really needs the new chemical, versus who just wants to spray it everywhere.
Part of the issue, and why this is 'existential', is that 3M appears to have known about the issues and deliberately hid the studies from the government or downplayed them. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_subst... citing https://theintercept.com/2018/07/31/3m-pfas-minnesota-pfoa-p... where you can read:
] A lawsuit filed by Minnesota against 3M, the company that first developed and sold PFOS and PFOA, the two best-known PFAS compounds, has revealed that the company knew that these chemicals were accumulating in people’s blood for more than 40 years. 3M researchers documented the chemicals in fish, just as the Michigan scientist did, but they did so back in the 1970s. That same decade, 3M scientists realized that the compounds they produced were toxic. The company even had evidence back then of the compounds’ effects on the immune system, studies of which are just now driving the lower levels put forward by the ATSDR, as well as several states and the European Union.
For a large company like 3M, the goal isn't to figure out who really needs the new chemical, it's to figure out how to profit the most from that chemical. And who will fund all the testing required? I can just hear the cry of "too much government paperwork" and "bureaucratic obstacles in the way of the innovation and the free market."
The blame game gives the politicians and bureaucrats a nice excuse for inaction, and not much else. And 50 years later it just looks ridiculous.
Sure, if someone does something bad, blame may be a part of the response. But you need good outcomes first and foremost, not bad outcomes and blaming.
Certainly. Clearly so.
As to my point, how do we change things? How do we put that into place?
> The blame game gives the politicians and bureaucrats a nice excuse for inaction, and not much else.
I didn't make my point clear enough.
The blame game results in "much else" - corporate profit. Enough profit they can fund efforts to tilt the system in their favor.
It's not just inaction. The Supreme Court is actively weakening, for example, EPA power to enforce Clean Water Act. Even something like Ryan Zinke's order to lift the ban on lead bullets in national wildlife refuges was an active action which increased lead pollution in the environment, to favor of cheaper bullets.
What does this actually mean? It's just showing off a big number without giving any real context. 3M is the only manufacturer of tons of important materials as I understand it, so it's not like they can just get erased from the market. But what does accountability actually mean in this context?
1. The US government 2. Bondholders 3. Equity shareholders
3M has plenty of assets to be distributed to the creditors - the manufacturing capabilities that you mention, intellectual property, relationships with purchasers. These assets might be sold directly on the market (this is easier with physical assets like manufacturing labs). A new corporation with new management might be established to handle liquidating the assets, or even running the business (this is what happened with FTX). Either way, it seems like bondholders and shareholders alike would get zero'd out and the US government could do what it want with 3M's assets.
To answer your question succintly: > 3M is the only manufacturer of tons of important materials as I understand it, so it's not like they can just get erased from the market
3M is a corporation and one of their assets is their ability to manufacture tons of important materials. 3M the corporation would be obliterated but their ability to manufacture tons of important material would likely be sold off.
Consider J&J's (failed) attempt to spin out a new company to hold their liability over the talcum powder case. It was attacked and shot down because it was so clearly a post-hoc maneuver. If they had merely spun out that child company earlier, would it have been ok?
What if the new playbook is:
- spin out a new company for every potentially risky product line. A parent company may hold a large stake, but other investors can hold shares too.
- sell, grow revenue, but keep few assets in the company; pay out dividends aggressively
- drag out or quash or deny any research or evidence suggesting your product is dangerous, or being sold in an irresponsible way
- when you're finally sued and lose, the company has very little money left in it; plaintiffs get relatively little compensation for their harm, but you don't care because you're busy growing your next dangerous company
If that works, it sounds like a broken system. If you're doing something you should expect will cause large liabilities to crop up later, it seems abusive to pay out dividends to shareholders today and become insolvent tomorrow.
If you paid $100 for a share after the damage was done, who should pay? You, or the shareholder who sold to you?
That won't happen, but wouldn't it be nice if it did? Just once.
At a minimum it reduces inflation a tiny bit which helps everyone.
They literally could not cover the interest charges on a $143B judgment, let alone pay it off in 3 years.
The private markets are great, but cannot be trusted to clean up after their own mess - they have proven this time and time and time again. The taxpayers will ultimately be on the hook for this payout, and that's simply unacceptable.
If the public has to bail out this company, at the very least, the board and C-Suite need to be liquidated and be fined substantially for this sort of behavior. They've known about the danger of these chemicals for almost 60 years, and not once did they (AFAIK) go to the government and actively ask for help to replace said chemicals with safer alternatives that don't literally last forever if consumed.
I'm not sure what the solution is to these problems (or this particular problem) but "nationalizing" producers certainly isn't one of them. Destroying 3M isn't one either.
I don't understand the approach to difficult problems that starts with thinking "the government" is effectively a magic wand.
Seems to me that would make them as whole as possible, while retaining 3M's ability to manufacture other crucial products.
Either way it's a transfer of wealth from the current business owners (stockholders) to claimants, just a matter of how that transfer happens.
Scientists, regulators and legislatures should decide what the rules are and then hold companies accountable for actually breaking the rules.
That said, if 3M knew about and covered up known health effects, then take em for all they're worth.
From the perspective of a driver, this fits: i am held responsible for harm i cause even if i was otherwise driving lawfully. But should my car maker be held responsible for the harm their car caused under lawful use?
Toxicity is a wide spectrum so the truth could be somewhere in between. Maybe teflon coated products don't have enough to be toxic, but dumping the chemicals wholesale into the water supply is enough to be toxic. And 3M could have concealed this high-dosage toxicity from regulators. (I'm trying to reconcile "3M scientists have know toxicity to humans" and the fact that these chemicals aren't banned)
They're being sued for selling products they knew to be toxic, without disclosing that information, which is already against the law.
In the J&J case, the subsidiary had the right to draw at least ~$60B in order to pay off future lawsuits if the initial subsidiary's assets ran out, so there was never any real risk that it would leave suitholders unpaid. The switch into bankruptcy court is a way to arbitrate and organize the lawsuits, which was overturned because given the right to draw money from the J&J parent co the subsidiary wasn't actually at risk of bankruptcy.
https://www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/2023/06/08/critics-s...
Additional info: https://www.millerandzois.com/products-liability/3m-combat-a...
I am curious about this because they did to chemistry what (? the nuclear bomb programmes?) did to physics?
This that I have seen happen against computer technology during my short time on earth so far (related: "war on general purpose computers").
...that for the sake of safety (you wouldn't want randos making TNT? then nuclear bomb... now computer malware or 'dangerous' AI tools?) a way is found to make knowledge inaccessible (for safety's sake)
on the level of reasoning i'm seeking, 3M is one of many examples of an older 'deeper' practice around knowledge, accessibility, government, organization-constructing, etc...
We go to war over terror attacks. And for this, we probably won't even bankrupt 3M, nor DuPont.
To my mind, it brings into question what qualifies as terrorism. Is it not terrorism if many people die to push the stock price up when it's terrorism if many people die for some other selfish end?
You may recall Exxon's famous memos from the 60s or 70s when they realized that continued use of fossil fuels was going to incinerate the planet.
I don't see such a big difference in intent. I think it's more that terrorist groups have people that do what they do for selfish reasons very directly. And corporate groups have people that do what they do for selfish reasons in a way where they are acting on behalf of shareholders' greed, and they aren't really directly harming anyone right now. So it's very indirect. But the intent is kind of similar morally - personal gain at the cost of crimes against humanity, right?
We're out own worst enemies and greed is so often the issue.
Blaise Pascal
It'd be better if 3M received a penalty (severe but manageable over time) and mandate to set a higher bar for industry practices (or risk further consequences).
Govt is far too slow to regulate.
Lawyers will win in the end regardless of what happens.
And giving either is a good thing, so if this can mean people will give 2 or 3 times a year, everybody wins.
- it removes only a fraction of it from your body, so it gives only a fraction of it to the recipient.
- if you need a donation, this dose compared to what you get in exchange is usually a very good deal
- some blood don't actually go to people, but is used for manufacturing drugs, science tests or expires
- hopefully people don't get blood transfusions very often and have a blood level of PFAS close to the average and the given blood. Hopefully.
