Makers of ‘forever chemicals’ hid the dangers from public, says new report

DuPont and 3M knew the dangers of the ‘forever chemicals’ decades before health concerns became public, according to a new study of previously secret documents.

‘Forever chemicals’ is the nickname given to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAs), which are commonly used in a wide array of modern goods due to their resilience and resistance to breaking down. Products that contain PFAS today include water-resistant clothing, non-stick cookware, shampoos, cleaning products and paints.

Due to their durability, PFAS are now found throughout the environment – and in people.

However, a new paper published in the Annals Of Global Health reveals DuPont and 3M, the largest manufacturers of PFAS, used deliberate tactics to hide the harmful effects of the chemicals – a move also seen in the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries.

Concerns were raised publicly in 1998 by attorney Robert Bilott, whose story was the basis for the film Dark Waters.

After a long legal battle, he was the first person to successfully sue DuPont after contamination of local water supplies led to myriad health issues in humans and livestock who lived near its factory in West Virginia. Mr Bilott was alerted to the concerns by farmer Wilbur Tennant, but later lodged a class action lawsuit representing around 70,000 local residents.

Papers discovered during his work were subsequently donated to the UCSF Chemical Industry Documents Library. Analysis by the University of California, San Francisco, revealed the extent to which DuPont and 3M, the makers of Teflon, covered up their knowledge of the health risks.

According to the documents, Teflon was aware of health risks related to its flagship product as early as 1961, and a 1970 memo reported the PFAS C8 to be ‘highly toxic when inhaled and moderately toxic when ingested’.

In 1980, eight DuPont and 3M employees who gave birth after working with C8 delivered babies with birth defects. An internal memo the following year wrote ‘We know of no evidence of birth defects caused by C8 at DuPont’, and it later told employees the toxicity of the chemical was akin to table salt.

‘These documents reveal clear evidence that the chemical industry knew about the dangers of PFAS and failed to let the public, regulators, and even their own employees know the risks,’ said senior author Dr Tracey J Woodruff, professor and director of the UCSF program on reproductive health and the environment and a former policy advisor at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

In a 2019 statement, DuPont said: ‘We are leading the industry by supporting federal legislation and science-based regulatory efforts to address these chemicals. We also have announced a series of commitments around our limited use of PFAS, including eliminating the use of all PFAS-based firefighting foams from our facilities and granting royalty-free licences to those seeking to use innovative PFAS remediation technologies.’

However, opponents argue regulation over the use of PFAS could have been put in place decades earlier if the industry had been transparent. 

Only in 2002 did the US begin to regulate PFAS, followed by the EU in 2009. 

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