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3M May Escape Toxic Chemical, PFAS Manufacturing Legacy

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Re: 3M May Escape Toxic Chemical, PFAS Manufacturing Legacy

#91

Post by SpicyUme »

tristor wrote: post #90
SpicyUme wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you deal with running electricity through the house? This is not meant to be a fully serious question, but I'm replacing old wires in my home currently and it doesn't escape my attention that PFAS added to the insulation makes the new wiring easier to use and possibly safer from a fire perspective. I'm not certain about this but pulling cloth wrapper wires out of the ceiling makes me think where such chemicals…

I've never owned a house old enough to be rewired, my previous house was built in 1992, the current house was built in 2017. That said, as far as I am aware, SIMpull does not contain PFAS, which is the slippery coating on Romex wiring. I don't know what the off-brand companies do, though. For data cabling, which I did install myself in both houses, I looked up material safety data sheets (MSDS) for any products I pur…

Interesting, I haven't looked at the datasheets but I assumed there were some PFAS used in the coatings. That is good to know. The problem I see is that the material properties of PFAS are so useful and desireable, so they are used in so many different contexts.

Re: 3M May Escape Toxic Chemical, PFAS Manufacturing Legacy

#92

Post by steve_adams_86 »

stronglikedan wrote: post #84
ninininino wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been struggling to understand why people care more about Gaza, Ukraine, BLM, or trans bathrooms than issues like PFAS proliferation and ultimately came to the conclusion that people really just don't care about hypothetical future generations as much as the present. You can point and say "look, this action doesn't affect you much and just makes a 0.01% difference, but it will effect 100,000 future generations of…

It's possible to care about more than one thing at a time.

I could be wrong but I think the parent comment's point isn't that no one cares, but that the scale of the issue—today and spanning far into the future—isn't presently regarded by people in a proportional manner.

So, people care, but not as much as it seems like they should.

The parent also used the phrase "care more"; they aren't saying people don't care at all, so they acknowledge that people can care about more than one thing at a time.

Re: 3M May Escape Toxic Chemical, PFAS Manufacturing Legacy

#93

Post by dimal »

Nasrudith wrote: post #17
calvinmorrison wrote: post #7

limited liability corporations are the root of all evil.

Why do you want to arrest grandma for owning Enron stock?

Large shareholders are very different than grandma owning a few shares or even a few hundred shares. If criminal risk was priced into the stock, our society would look very different.

Re: 3M May Escape Toxic Chemical, PFAS Manufacturing Legacy

#94

Post by Citizen8396 »

starwatch wrote: post #13

If you want more context on PFAS, I recommend this Veritasium video [0]. It expanded on my usual thought of "PFAS = bad," explaining why non-stick cookware is probably fine while other forms of PFAS are problematic. The video also covers the environmental damage caused by PFAS manufacturing. [0]: https://youtu.be/SC2eSujzrUY

The extremely toxic PFOA and PFOS are byproducts of manufacturing Teflon. After decades, we have managed to just barely regulate it. We don't know if these newer compounds will ultimately have similar effects. DuPont had reason to believe these original compounds were harmful, but they suppressed that fact in favor of profit. "Probably fine" is not acceptable, considering we can't meaningfully clean the stuff up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_events_related_to_...

Re: 3M May Escape Toxic Chemical, PFAS Manufacturing Legacy

#95

Post by jmyeet »

gruez wrote: post #37
jmyeet wrote: post #6

Let's compare to Purdue and the Sacklers, shall we? Purdue owns a huge piece of the responsibility for the opioid epidemic. They created OxyContin and lied about it's addictiveness. They are probably responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people at this point. The Sacklers were heavily involved in all aspects of this and became billionaires because of it. Nobody has been criminally charged. The govern…

>Nobody has been criminally charged. The government tried to give them a Jeffrey Epstein level pass by essentially allowing them to pay a few billion dollars over 20 years Doesn't that settlement only cover civil claims? It doesn't grant them immunity over any criminal claims. It's more correct to say that they didn't bother prosecuting them criminally (possibly because it's hard to do so), and got a civil settlement…

> Doesn't that settlement only cover civil claims?

Yes, but criminal actions over the Sacklers personally while (IMHO) completely justified are incredibly unlikely. Forme, every Sackler involved in Purdue should die penniless in a prison cell.

The big gift of the settlement (which is why I called it an Epstein like deal) was that the bankruptcy court discharged any personal liability from the Sacklers despite it being Purdue in bankruptcy. This was so egregious that even this Supreme Court said "no" (and, weirdly, the 3 liberal Justices were completely fine with it, which is bonkers).

Companies routinely try this thing where, when they're facing significant liability, try to restructure the company such that the assets are in one company and the liabilities are in the other and there are rents or payments or royalties paid from the liabilit company to the asset company. This has, as far as I know, never worked, meaning bankruptcy courts have rejected this as a liability shield. Yet they keep trying and they will probably succeed at some point. The sacklers did this with Purdue too.

It's interesting that bankruptcy courts have rejected this restructuring to avoid liabilities (correctly) yet it's completely fine to avoid tax liabilities. Yes, I'm looking at your, tech companies with Irish subsidiaries who own the IP.

Re: 3M May Escape Toxic Chemical, PFAS Manufacturing Legacy

#96

Post by tpmoney »

ninininino wrote: post #62
siliconc0w wrote: post #41

I don't think most people understand that the damage from PFAS is generational and cumulative. You can isolate zebrafish, expose the first generation, and you'll see abnormalities generations later even those those fish were never exposed. That is their legacy - it's civilization-level harm.

I've been struggling to understand why people care more about Gaza, Ukraine, BLM, or trans bathrooms than issues like PFAS proliferation and ultimately came to the conclusion that people really just don't care about hypothetical future generations as much as the present. You can point and say "look, this action doesn't affect you much and just makes a 0.01% difference, but it will effect 100,000 future generations of…

If we’re taking about hypothetical effects on hypothetical generations of life that can never be reversed, anything you can worry about probably meets that threshold and so picking any given thing is arbitrary. Gaza and the Ukraine conflicts are the results of choices made by the generation before, which are in turn the result of choices made by the generation before that, which in turn are… and so on. Consider Gaza on its own. You could probably trace a pretty clear line from this conflict back to decisions made in the earliest records we have of Judaism. How many generations and people has that impacted? How many of these chemicals you’re specifically worried about are the consequences of actions taken in this and the prior conflicts? The total global impact of the decision of one Jewish sect to crucify the leader of another sect is probably conceivably larger than anything PFAS have done or even will do for quite a long while considering we’re still dealing with the consequences of that decision even now.

Re: 3M May Escape Toxic Chemical, PFAS Manufacturing Legacy

#97

Post by kjreact »

j4coh wrote: post #82
usefulcat wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the linked Veritasium video, Teflon is not directly problematic, it’s the chemicals used to manufacture Teflon that are the problem.

Veritasium seems to be frequently wrong or at least incomplete. I empathise, it’s hard to make definitive statements like that, but maybe at some point it’s better not to if you’re not sure and more about entertainment than anything else.

That’s a bold statement to make that “Veritasium seems to be frequently wrong”. Can you list some of these many wrong statements that they make?

Re: 3M May Escape Toxic Chemical, PFAS Manufacturing Legacy

#98

Post by filoeleven »

jmyeet wrote: post #95
gruez wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Nobody has been criminally charged. The government tried to give them a Jeffrey Epstein level pass by essentially allowing them to pay a few billion dollars over 20 years Doesn't that settlement only cover civil claims? It doesn't grant them immunity over any criminal claims. It's more correct to say that they didn't bother prosecuting them criminally (possibly because it's hard to do so), and got a civil settlement…

> Doesn't that settlement only cover civil claims? Yes, but criminal actions over the Sacklers personally while (IMHO) completely justified are incredibly unlikely. Forme, every Sackler involved in Purdue should die penniless in a prison cell. The big gift of the settlement (which is why I called it an Epstein like deal) was that the bankruptcy court discharged any personal liability from the Sacklers despite it bein…

> try to restructure the company such that the assets are in one company and the liabilities are in the other and there are rents or payments or royalties paid from the liabilit company to the asset company.

Is DuPont spinning off Chemours an example of this?

Re: 3M May Escape Toxic Chemical, PFAS Manufacturing Legacy

#99

Post by trainsarebetter »

SirMaster wrote: post #73
ck2 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

skiers have been putting teflon wax on their skis for decades now it's in the snow, ground, and water-supply forever

But you can filter out PFAS from water...

Okay so how are you going to filter all the water in every water shed, pond, lake, estuary, etc?

Re: 3M May Escape Toxic Chemical, PFAS Manufacturing Legacy

#100

Post by filoeleven »

doug_durham wrote: post #47
more_corn wrote: post #5

3M knowingly poisoned every single person in the world for decades. Let them burn, and salt the earth where they fall. These fuckers don’t deserve a second chance. How could they have done it better? Acknowledge the science when the problem was discovered in the 70s, publish the findings, let the scientific community study the problem and let people make informed decisions about the dangers. Had they done that PFAs m…

[flagged]

They are endocrine disruptors. The levels are not subclinical.

> Hormones work at very small doses (part per billion ranges). Endocrine disruption can thereby also occur from low-dose exposure to exogenous hormones or hormonally active chemicals such as bisphenol A. [...] Furthermore, since endogenous hormones are already present in the body in biologically active concentrations, additional exposure to relatively small amounts of exogenous hormonally active substances can disrupt the proper functioning of the body's endocrine system. Thus, an endocrine disruptor can elicit adverse effects at much lower doses than a toxicity, acting through a different mechanism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_disruptor

> Between 2016 and 2022, the agency worked off an advisory health limit of 70 parts per trillion (ppt) for PFOS and PFOA, two compounds commonly produced and used for decades. Last year, after science showed virtually no level of exposure to drinking water is safe, the EPA set non-enforceable “advisory health limits” of 0.02 ppt and 0.004 ppt for PFOA and PFOS, respectively.

> The new legal limits for PFOS and PFOA is 4 ppt each, levels that science shows are still dangerous to drink. Public health advocates say the discrepancy is likely the result of industry pressure on the EPA and an inability of PFAS tests that regulators use to check water for the chemicals at levels as low as 0.02 ppt. https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/articles/entry...

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