America's carpet capital: an empire and its toxic legacy

https://apnews.com/projects/pfas-forever-stained/

by rawgabbit • 3 months ago

185 106 3 months ago

apnews.com

xnx• 2 months ago

Doesn't even mention microplastics. Clothing, car tires, and carpet have to be right up there with the top sources.

expedition323• 2 months ago

When people talk about how they want manufacturing back they conveniently forget the pollution.

markovs_gun• 2 months ago

Stuff 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• 2 months ago

It 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.

derriz3• 2 months ago

When 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-r...

Zigurd2• 2 months ago

Stuff is made in response to demand. That can feel like an inevitability especially if you look at the failure of interdiction of drug trafficking. But that's no excuse to give up on harm reduction and demand shaping. Cigarette smoking hasn't disappeared, but the costs it imposes on healthcare has been reduced successfully. The same can be done to reduce the freeriding on ecological damage.

nkrisc• 2 months ago

Many 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• 2 months ago

Many 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.

echelon3• 2 months ago

Dalton has been the world's top carpet manufacturer since the 1950s. It's not "back". It never left.

ahartmetz• 2 months ago

It'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• 2 months ago

The solution turned out to be to send it all to China.

c0balt• 2 months ago

I 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.

pfdietz3• 2 months 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?

SapporoChris• 2 months ago

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.

JKCalhoun6• 2 months ago

"I feel for the people living there and being affected by the pollution."

Isn't it all of us with carpets in our homes that are affected? (Albeit to a lesser degree—but also we are at the least partners in this if our buying carpets are destroying these other people's communities.)

throwup2383• 2 months ago

I think “to a lesser degree” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. The degrees of exposure are many orders of magnitude wide. Occupational exposure in a factory is far greater than living downstream from a polluter which is far greater still than being a far away consumer of the polluter’s products.

Your carpet doesn’t contain enough PFAS to create dangerous runoff and contaminate groundwater or entire rivers, but a town that manufactures most of the world’s mass produced carpeting is going to generate industrial amounts of pollution in a concentrated area.

yojo• 2 months ago

You should probably be more worried about the flame retardants in the rebond carpet pad. Better these days, but older installed stuff had non-trivial PPM.

b40d-48b2-979e2• 2 months ago

It'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• 2 months ago

We 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_mamba4• 2 months 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.

akudha• 2 months ago

It is easy to be ethically and morally responsible, after one becomes rich, after one is retired. Until then, it is enough to follow the law just enough to not get fined. Actually, even that is a tall ask these days - fines are just cost of doing business.

It sucks that it is this way, but society seems to have largely accepted it

mystraline4• 2 months ago

Fine are the cost of doing business... FOR COMPANIES.

For individuals: arrest, jail, prison, and horrifically crippling fines are normal.

An individual kills 1 person, and its 15y to life. But if youre an 'insurance company' and make policies in abeyance of insurance and arbitrarily deny 30% of claims getting many killed (Luigi says hi), thats perfectly fine. Youre a business leader making lots of money.

You steal $100 from the till at $shitretailjob and company calls cops and has you arrested. BUT if they fraudulently change timesheets and steal $100 from you, wellllll thats a civil matter.

Or, a company made 1B dollars but spent $990M, they only owe taxes on 10M$. But if I make $100k and spent $90k, I still pay taxes on 100k, not 10K.

This country should be called the Corporate States of America. That fiction has more rights than I or any other non-billionaire average human will ever have.

embedding-shape• 2 months ago

But also, what if you have those ideas and thoughts from the beginning and during the entire time, yet also build your life on those systems you despise, then you use your "won" resources to fight against them, isn't that at least better than the alternatives?

alphabeta3r56• 2 months ago

“That’s not a logo,” fumed Shaw, CEO of the world’s largest carpet company, one attendee later recalled. “That’s a target.”

Do people really speak like that?

boondongle• 2 months ago

It's actually not convenient at all. Consider this: animal study to human study fail all the time.

In another world, there could have been NO impact at all to human beings and PFAS could be just another random chemical the body doesn't clear but doesn't actually do anything and sits there inert.

I know everyone's pissed about this but the thyroid/other connections stuff happens 10 years later as a result and these are idiot business people playing in waters they don't understand (and neither did medicine at that time). You could say, "you can't take the risk." For me these questions are maybe we need to take a deeper/closer look at what are permissible risks and at what point.

But you could use the same logic to not make any advancement ever. No antibiotics because it will cause resistence. No chemo because it will cause damage and death. People want there to be a Dr. Eggman or Hitler in this story because it's turned out to be so impactful. Like Aesbestos which solved for fire, just poorly - carpet was solving for comfort, sound deadening, and emotional well being. We just can't necessarily quantify that as easily.

It's fantastic that science continually grows in understanding and can attribute once thought "inert" chemicals to problems. "How evil children playing with matches" are though, is asking the wrong question. These people were stupid enough to say - "there's cancer in rats, lets just keep going".

Chris2048• 2 months ago

there could have been NO impact at all

True, but if you contaminate water, and people, with chemicals not supposed to be there; I feel the burden should be on you to prove the chemicals are not harmful.

you could use the same logic to not make any advancement ever

No you couldn't - the measures taken to prevent contamination were inadequate, they could've innovated while also following the rules. And if not, no business is owed a viable business model, certainly a random strangers heath isn't worth the price of profiting from easy-to-clean carpets.

We just can't necessarily quantify that as easily.

Quantify what?

can attribute once thought "inert" chemicals to problems

we (or America) have a whole system of classifying chemicals as safe for human consumption or not. Whatever was thought about PFAS, I don't believe they had been proven safe enough to dump into drinking water?

dennis_jeeves2• 2 months ago

But you could use the same logic to not make any advancement ever. No antibiotics because it will cause resistance. No chemo because it will cause damage and death.

I understand the argument you are making, and I'm no fan of govt/regulations, but you will notice that often basic testing of toxicity/side effects is missing or the system is gamed.

One example I recently came across: antidepressant drugs are tested on people for around 12 weeks and then labeled safe if there are no side effects or reversible side effects. To summarize: profits overrides and safety concerns.

gchamonlive• 2 months ago

Better to not be a hypocrite and continue abusing your hard exploited capital?

It's the banality of evil over and over again. Can't really blame the individual, with some extreme exceptions, otherwise by calling people out as you are doing you are participating in perpetuating the problem without contributing with anything new.

tomhow• 2 months ago

Please don't fulminate on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

echelon3• 2 months ago

I 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/d...

p_j_w• 2 months 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• 2 months ago

Ain't American capitalism grand? Truly a way to organize a species.

slowgramming• 2 months ago

I 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

ProllyInfamous• 2 months ago

I live in Chattanooga; it's wild to me that the City of Dalton maintain$ thousands of acres of public land simply to spray above-surface "treated" [PFS-containing] effluent "water," primarily generated by their carpeters. Why doesn't (e.g.) Shaw Manufacturing do this, directly (they do all the usual tax offsetting to not just answer "they pay taxes!" IMHO).

This "treatment land" is literally adjacent to a river, which flows into Alabama... and becomes multiple other MSA's drinking supply. This interstate conflict is what first brought PFAs to national attention. Thank god it doesn't flow to my watersource, but that's naïve thinking it doesn't carryover in the winds, waters, fauna.

----

The scale of manufacturing there is wild.

It's primarily due to two things: lack of regulations (see: PFAs), subpar compensation (our "right to work" Southern Pride). There are practically no local IT jobs (handful of poorly-compensated churners), and most of the tech-elite around here work from home (25gbps fiber, asynch, to your door).

Volkswagon has silo'd their third-shift as we brace for the inevitable economy we deserve.

sixie6e3• 2 months ago

In 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.

Avicebron2• 2 months ago

Ultimately 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

somewhatgoated2• 2 months ago

If 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

JKCalhoun6• 2 months ago

"If you are going to be outraged, at least be consistent about it."

I (and others) need to be educated about it first. I know, for example, the risks of cigarettes because it is on every pack in the U.S.

sixie6e3• 2 months ago

That's wild to me that that is how you know the risks of cigarettes. I forget just how many people rely on corporate authority to "warn" them of everything. That puts many of my peers in a constant state of fear. I put the word warn in quotes because it is only to insulate themselves against future lawsuits and revenue loss.

AvAn12• 2 months ago

Carpet 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.

jmclnx• 2 months ago

With 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.

xp843• 2 months ago

I 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.

kjkjadksj2• 2 months ago

Please don’t dump ai slop here.

xp843• 2 months ago

I 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.”

stefan_• 2 months ago

It's a bit like asking about the health risks of sodium chloride

bethekidyouwant• 2 months ago

The cars you drive every day are much worse for everybody than these dupont chemicals.

cheesecakegood• 2 months ago

I 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• 2 months ago

No one dunks finished carpet in dye. The dye house dyes the fiber, pre construction. 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

bloppe• 2 months ago

That video is AI-generated

giantg2• 2 months ago

Out houses are full of plastic and chemicals. The paint is latex, the carpet is polyester, the wood finish is polyurethane, etc.

peter_d_sherman• 2 months ago

It 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! :-) )

herworkplace2• 2 months ago

I 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.

herworkplace2• 2 months ago

If 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/...

America's carpet capital: an empire and its toxic legacy

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