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.
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
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/d...
Frankly the carpet factories will do more business as people will want to replace their carpets more frequently.
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! :-) )
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.
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.
