3M reaches $10.3B settlement over PFAS contamination of water systems

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/22/1183922303/3m-reaches-10-3-billion-settlement-over-contamination-of-water-systems

by Jimmc414 • 3 years ago

367 230 3 years ago

npr.org

ChatGTP• 3 years ago

That should cover it ?

givemeethekeys• 3 years ago

Is $10.3B enough to clean up all the PFAS that 3M contaminated water systems with?

karim792• 3 years ago

I 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

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62391069

rogerkirkness• 3 years ago

Plz fix all rain.

User23• 3 years ago

I 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.

seszett• 3 years ago

That 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.

joenathanone5• 3 years ago

I’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.

29athrowaway4• 3 years ago

The contamination is already in your organism.

Nonstick pans, food packaging, fish, microwave popcorn, waterproof clothes, contact lenses, and so many other products.

joenathanone5• 3 years ago

Im careful when I can be, but it’s hard to always know the source of your food.

dkqmduems• 3 years ago

Find someone with a LCMS and have your food tested.

thfuran• 3 years ago

Doesn't that involve passing water through a bunch of plastic filters and then letting it sit in a big plastic holding tank?

thsksbd4• 3 years ago

Sure, 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).

steve_adams_86• 3 years ago

These plastic components are made from relatively stable polymers which don’t contain PFAS.

onlyrealcuzzo• 3 years ago

It also involves taking all the minerals out of water.

alliao• 3 years ago

check containers too.. but good idea regardless as it's bioaccumulative so less exposure is better

Foreignborn• 3 years ago

For anyone wondering if this works, the EPA seems to think it does:

>> High-pressure membranes, such as nanofiltration or reverse osmosis, have been extremely effective at removing PFAS. Reverse osmosis membranes are tighter than nanofiltration membranes. This technology depends on membrane permeability. A standard difference between the two is that a nanofiltration membrane will reject hardness to a high degree, but pass sodium chloride; whereas reverse osmosis membrane will reject all salts to a high degree. This also allows nanofiltration to remove particles while retaining minerals that reverse osmosis would likely remove.
>> Research shows that these types of membranes are typically more than 90 percent effective at removing a wide range of PFAS, including shorter chain PFAS.

https://www.epa.gov/sciencematters/reducing-pfas-drinking-wa...

axus• 3 years ago

Was curious, where does all the stuff that's filtered out go? And then industry sites like https://americanhomewater.com/the-truth-about-reverse-osmosi... raise more questions which probably have better answers.

SteveNuts• 3 years ago

Which one did you go with

joenathanone5• 3 years ago

In the process of getting one of these units https://hanspremiumwater.com/reverse-osmosis/

Key features

High efficiency

No need for water storage tank, but optional pressurized tank available

Real-time TDS monitoring via screen on RO unit and free Android/iOS apps.

harrydehal• 3 years ago

You can search the NSF.org certifications here, specifically NSF/ANSI 53 and NSF/ANSI 58:

https://info.nsf.org/Certified/DWTU/Listings.asp?ProductFunc...

https://www.nsf.org/news/pfoa-pfos-reduction-claims-requirem...

P.S. Note the "facility" where these products are manufactured are also listed. One might also want to note that [replacement] filters may also have different country origins.

passwordoops• 3 years 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?

29athrowaway4• 3 years ago

https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/3m-co/summary?id=D000021800

IG_Semmelweiss3• 3 years ago

What 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.

basch• 3 years ago

Their net income per year is $5b. This plus the ear plugs settlement is a disaster for them.

katbyte• 3 years ago

for those wondering: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/legal/product-liability/3m-ea...

gruez7• 3 years ago

Not to mention that 3M in a conglomerate and doesn't only make PFAS. This likely wiped out all of their PFAS related profits decades back.

bigtones• 3 years ago

They have liability insurance that covers a portion of this.

chiefalchemist4• 3 years ago

Them? The employees? The executives have *nothing* to worry about.

Or them, meaning us? These fines will find their way to the market and we will be the ones paying.

This is simply the pseudo cost of doing business for these multi-nationals.

etothepii2• 3 years ago

There are no insurance towers with over $2b of limit. As a consequence this is going to seriously hurt 3M. In addition this will drastically increase the cost of their (and their peer's) insurance policies over the next 10 years.

occamrazor2• 3 years ago

PG&E had a 26b$ insurance tower IIRC. It was completely blown by the wildfires.

hedora4• 3 years ago

A charitable reading suggests this is paid out to just one city, which would seem to be about right (If you value a house at $100K, then $1B would cover ruining the water supply of 10,000 houses. A city could easily contain 100,000 such buildings.

A less charitable reading is that it covers 300 cities. Maybe they can filter the municipal water supply of that many cities in perpetuity with currently unavailable commercial filter technology?

If it is nationwide, then $10b is a bad punchline.

fshbbdssbbgdd• 3 years ago

Are you claiming that value of any home in one of these towns with PFAS in the water is now $0? This seems straightforwardly untrue, people are happily buying those homes. Whatever penalty 3M should pay ought to be based on actual damages PFAS causes.

lumost3• 3 years ago

We need to have something on the order of a fiduciary responsibility of executives for externalities. It’s tough to find a basis for harm in these cases, as so many people were responsible over so long of a time.

neximo64• 3 years ago

Lets dig those people out of their graves and punish them, considering how old the decisions are

chiefalchemist4• 3 years ago

Fines? We've been issuing such fines for decades and the behaviour persists. Why? Because ultimately the companies and insurance companies don't pay those fines...we do. Sooner or later. One way or another. Those costs find their way to us. Simply put, we - the market - pays those fines.

Unless executives lose freedoms (i.e., go to jail) nothing is going to change. The problem is, that wealthy ruling class can buy freedom when they need to. Those that miraculously lose freedom go to country clubs. On the other hand, if you or I rob the local convenience store (using a fire arm?) we will likely go to jail.

When they endanger the health and welfare of a child...millions of them...we pay the fine. Anyone who calls that justice is a fool.

thumbuddy• 3 years ago

Even without a firearm if you rob anyone you go to jail buddy. Also if you or I dumped forever chemicals into public water supply, knowingly doing so, we'd be called terrorists. Probably rightfully so.

Medh_Suk• 3 years ago

Consider watching Dark Water movie.

Real life story of lawyer who goes after Duport.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Waters_(2019_film)?useski...

sriram_malhar• 3 years ago

Letter of indulgence.

jvans• 3 years ago

Next step: tweak enough chemical bonds to give it a different acronym and dodge litigation for another 20 years

cgb223• 3 years ago

Okay 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_Semmelweiss3• 3 years ago

The 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.

wskinner• 3 years ago

Has 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• 3 years ago

Same with microplastics. With all the inconclusive studies it compels me to believe that even if it's harmful, it's no so harmful.

Affric• 3 years ago

Which 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.

hedora4• 3 years ago

There is abundant evidence that microplastics are destroying marine ecosystems.

ethanbond5• 3 years ago

Depends on which compounds you're talking about, but yeah they might just cause reproductive collapse of our species...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reproductive-prob...

Probably not a huge problem based on the fact that I don't like thinking about it.

Ygg2• 3 years ago

Pfas are non-stick coatings? I'm going to say it's not on same level of utility as fire, wheel or internal combustion engines.

profile53• 3 years ago

They’re used for:

- lab equipment since they’re extremely non reactive

- semiconductor manufacturing for the same reason as above

- coatings inside engines/hot, high wear areas, far prolonging their lives

- rubber seals preventing chemical leaks (oil, gas, antifreeze, etc)

… the list goes on. Yeah they’re a non stick coating for pans but they’re also used in an incredible number of other places.

hwillis2• 3 years ago

Not even- Teflon breakdown is a much smaller source, you just happen to maybe eat it. PFAS have been phased out of use already.

These chemicals were put into basically everything, like asbestos was. Cleaning products, spray grease, fabrics, paper, shampoo and cosmetics, stain-resistant coatings.

https://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/chemical/pfas.htm

Aunche• 3 years ago

According to the article, the source of the PFAS in most of these lawsuits is firefighting foam.

thsksbd4• 3 years ago

Perfluorinated chemistry is very nasty and not benign at all.

The issue is not teflon, or similar plastics, but byproducts and precursors of their manufacture. They're chemically super-stable (since, like teflon, they are perflorinated) and super unreactive. That means that they persist for a very long time (until enough UV deteriorates them).

However unreactive doesnt mean harmless. Sure, they have very low acute toxicity, but they still take up volume. Therefore, they interfere with the chemical reaction rates and pathways in your body.

Its called steric interference, which is a fancy way of saying "something is in the way". Think of a very busy line kitchen and some guy is randomly and blindly walking into things and people.

ysavir2• 3 years ago

But so have fire, the wheel, and the automobile

Not sure what harm you attribute to the wheel, but the harms of fire and combustion engines are currently world-class problems, such as the climate. Very much "if we knew then what we know now" situations, and with PFAS and the like, we have the opportunity to act before it becomes an issue.

scotty792• 3 years ago

Not sure what harm you attribute to the wheel

Many people in history has been crushed, sometimes lethally, under various wheels.

t0bia_s• 3 years ago

Problem here is not a product, but ammount of it. Corporate greed and obsession of maximalisation of income, driven by whole ad industry needs to be addressed.

We certainty all do not need teflon pans. Or cars. Without massive production, such problems would be "just" local anomaly.

Gareth321• 3 years ago

History is full of examples of acting without evidence, with disastrous results. Thankfully, in this case, we can have high confidence that the absence of PFAS is not a health risk. So the cost of action without evidence is purely financial. It’s not clear to me the global economic impact of banning these chemicals, but I’m struggling to forecast anything large enough to care. For this reason, I support banning these chemicals. The case for historical claims is murkier without evidence.

hwillis2• 3 years ago

That's not the issue. These chemicals -they're not just teflon- were put into basically everything, like asbestos was. Cleaning products, spray grease, fabrics, paper, shampoo and cosmetics, stain-resistant coatings. They've already been phased out but the damage is done.

https://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/chemical/pfas.htm

someplaceguy• 3 years ago

They've already been phased out but the damage is done.

Have they really been phased out in food packaging (say, in Europe)?

I thought PFAS is what is used to give grease and water resistance to food packaging (boxes, wrappers, bags, cups, etc).

If so, what have they been replaced with?

mihaaly• 3 years ago

Fire and wheel has a 'little' more benefit than an artificial, proprietary, lied to be unharmful, avoidable substence manufactured for huge profit and not for an overwhelming benefit and demand from the society. It could have been substituted with something else perhaps, with clearly know risks like fire or automobiles, in all or in almost all use cases, and in many many cases in marginally important use cases (cookware, packaging, water repellence, etc.).

Not the same. Really not the same, overwhelmingly not the same.

jongjong• 3 years ago

A 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• 3 years ago

Is this going to be used to solve this problem?

michelb• 3 years ago

Not sure, it's not nearly enough money for that.

shubhamjain2• 3 years ago

Surely, 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-l...

lettergram• 3 years ago

The 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

CraftingLinks4• 3 years ago

These chemicals accumulate over long periods of time in you body, reaching ever higher levels. They are silent killers. But, isn't a large part of the scandal that these companies knew for decades from their own studies there was a huge concern about health safety for employees and the environment? They never shared the alarming results to any authorities. So, they themselves knew very well about detrimental effects decades before they were discovered independently by academic research leading to revised standards and law.

seizethecheese• 3 years ago

They are silent killers.

Extraordinarily claims require extraordinary evidence.

chaorace• 3 years ago

Surprisingly, some of the most convincing studies indicating the dangers of PFAS come from 3M themselves[1][2]. These studies were of course never intended for public release:

In 1961, company lab tests linked C8 exposure to enlarged livers in rats and rabbits. DuPont scientists then conducted tests on humans, asking a group of volunteers to smoke cigarettes laced with C8. “Nine out of 10 people in the highest-dosed group were noticeably ill for an average of nine hours with flu-like symptoms that included chills, backache, fever and coughing,” the researchers noted. “Concerns about the potential toxicity of C8 had been raised internally within DuPont by at least 1954, leading DuPont’s own researchers to conclude by at least 1961 that C8 was toxic and, according to DuPont’s own Toxicology Section Chief, should be ‘handled with extreme care,'” Bartlett’s February 2013 suit against DuPont alleged.
In one study, for instance, Olsen looked at blood tests of 3M employees at the company’s plants in Antwerp, Belgium, and Decatur, Alabama, both of which made PFOA and PFOS, among other products. By the late 1990s when Olsen was embarking on this research, these chemicals were known within the company to accumulate in humans and alter cholesterol levels in lab animals. Because the workers had undergone three separate rounds of blood tests, Olsen was able to trace the levels of the chemicals in workers’ blood over time. And by combining his results with various clinical measures the company had been tracking in its workers, he was able to see whether there was a relationship between the chemical and these health outcomes. Olsen’s findings, written up in an draft report in October 2001, were clear. There was a positive association between the amount of PFOA in workers’ blood and their levels of cholesterol and triglycerides, states the report, on which Olsen is listed as the principal investigator.

They've also taken some... drastic measures regarding which factory workers are allowed to be exposed to certain PFAS despite publicly denying any connection with birth defects[3]:

In a November 1982 memo, DuPont's chief medical director, Dr. Bruce Karrh, expressed concern over employee exposure to C8. The company then barred women of child-bearing age from working around C8.

Far be it from me to condemn an abundance of caution, but the timing seems odd when you consider what happened a year prior[3]:

When Bailey returned to work in 1981, she discovered a memo on a bench in the women's locker room. It detailed a study by 3M, which sold C8 to DuPont, that detailed eye deformities in lab animals whose mothers were fed C8 during pregnancy. Bailey went to the plant's medical doctor and asked if this is what happened to [her child born with an eye deformity]. The doctor denied a connection, according to Bailey, but arranged an appointment at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore.

[1] https://theintercept.com/2018/07/31/3m-pfas-minnesota-pfoa-p... [2]: https://www.ecowatch.com/teflons-toxic-legacy-dupont-knew-fo... [3]: https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/2016/04/02/c8-susp...

abeppu2• 3 years ago

DuPont scientists then conducted tests on humans, asking a group of volunteers to smoke cigarettes laced with C8.

This is definitely not my area, but ... was this a good experiment to do? I don't just mean from an ethical standpoint (though that seems super sketch), but purely as an experiment to understand how this chemical impacts the human body, this seems not great?

(a) if you smoke a cigarette, isn't the actual dose of C8 taken in by each subject likely to be both variable and hard to measure? Different subject would have just exhaled vs absorbed different amounts of C8, right? So it seems like you get a less precise dosing than most other means of getting it into the body?

(b) couldn't this have been toxic in the lungs in a way which wouldn't have been relevant to other/more typical means of exposure? Does reacting badly to something inhaled as smoke really imply anything about the impact of touching or ingesting it? I'm pretty sure e.g. that cayenne smoke would cause you problems that touching or eating that same substance would not cause.

abeppu2• 3 years ago

I cannot claim to understand the state of research ... But I think we _can't_ wait for the harms to be fully measured if we're to compensate those impacted. Suppose that drinking PFAS contaminated water decreased your life expectancy -- but to measure that effect with certainty, a meaningful number of people who were impacted would necessarily already be dead and therefore unable to be compensated for the harm done to them. Suppose a fetus whose mother drinks contaminated water has a higher risk of some form of dementia late in life -- only many decades later would the harm be fully understood and the company might no longer even exist (and IANAL but perhaps there are also statutes of limitation?) Waiting to _fully_ characterize the harm seems like a recipe for injustice.

In the mean time, "the water in my district has an extra chemical in it, which doesn't need to exist in any amount, and no one's sure whether or not it's dangerous at this concentration" seems like it's already a form of damage. No one wants to drink it, the land is less valuable, etc etc. Similarly, if sewage contaminated your water, you'd be rightly upset even if that particular sewage doesn't cause a cholera outbreak.

ImaCake• 3 years ago

I would go further and argue the parent comment is being deliberately disingenuous. Medical statistics are always circumstantial and clouded by uncertainty. That’s why we have rigorous study designs in people and a shit load of mice studies.

There is a lot of money that is interested in making PFAS look not bad (for very obvious reasons if someone gets sued $10B) so its not unreasonable to assume they would pay people to post disinformation on hacker news.

PlunderBunny• 3 years 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_20202• 3 years ago

Amazing 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.

hackernewds• 3 years ago

Not 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• 3 years ago

Not 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_20202• 3 years ago

It’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.

scotty792• 3 years 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.

fastball3• 3 years ago

Why 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• 3 years ago

There 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.

fastball3• 3 years ago

I 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).

cute_boi• 3 years ago

both should be punished.

ly3xqhl8g9• 3 years ago

102 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_gaso...

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-64241994

[3] https://www.desmog.com/2015/04/21/george-w-bush-elected-pres...

BiteCode_dev• 3 years ago

It'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• 3 years ago

I 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• 3 years ago

When its only a financial fine, nothing will change. Things will change when criminal charges would apply to the ceo's.

switch007• 3 years ago

Is that the real amount or the headline grabbing amount before they spend years fighting it?

Kaotique• 3 years ago

Does it also stop them from polluting with the PFAS alternatives like GenX?

tjpnz• 3 years ago

The 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.

NickC253• 3 years ago

It'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• 3 years ago

Last 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 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_• 3 years ago

On 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

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• 3 years ago

I think that's missing a 0.

RankingMember2• 3 years 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.

ethbr02• 3 years ago

It'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• 3 years ago

That doesn't make it any less absurd. Legal hoop-jumping is not so different from spin. The law itself is often silly.

Cthulhu_• 3 years ago

If 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• 3 years ago

Sheesh, 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• 3 years ago

I 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 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/

3M reaches $10.3B settlement over PFAS contamination of water systems

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