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3M May Escape Toxic Chemical, PFAS Manufacturing Legacy

bloomberg.com

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

#31

Post by Zigurd »

khaki54 wrote: post #11
calvinmorrison wrote: post #7

limited liability corporations are the root of all evil.

without Limited Liability Companies, a civil matter as simple as a copyright lawsuit could permenently bankrupt a small business and take the owners house and all their assets. I don't agree with companies wantonly externalizing their costs onto the environment or the populace such as Dow or 3M poisoning the entire planet. Criminal liability never goes away for serious crimes, whether sole-proprietership, LLC, or Cor…

If you are a part owner of a restaurant that's an LLC, and the restaurant engages in wage theft, which is rampant in that business, in many states the corporate veil can be pierced to recover stolen wages. "Limited" doesn't mean "none."

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

#32

Post by throwhuppla »

ck2 wrote: post #19
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

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

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

#33

Post by pengaru »

Zigurd wrote: post #29
pengaru wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all the shit you dump/burn ends up in your food or water eventually but most that shit doesn't survive the journey intact, being out in the elements and bombarded by the sun isn't kind to most things hence the focus on "forever chemicals"

Future archaeologists will wonder that we first fouled our nest from edge to edge with lead in gasoline, and then there's that radioactive layer, and following immediately after the forever chemicals layer.

The anthropocene, aka the petroradiata layer

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

#34

Post by myrmidon »

im3w1l wrote: post #21
myrmidon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is incorrect to blame this on a currently corrupt president. Counter-hypothesis: This is a systemic issue. Decisionmakers and shareholders that cause harm face very little consequences if their behavior does not violate the letter of the law. Compare the leaded gas debacle: US lead industry suppressed knowledge about harmful effects, and even directly targeted researchers with smear-campaigns and lawfare f…

I think it's even more systemic. The public knows about the harm and they are ok with it. They think the benefits outweigh the risks.

This sounds bleak, but I'm pretty sure that any improvement (more justice/corporate responsibility) would at least not be free: It would also have chilling effects on research/innovation from perceived legal risk and higher costs (because the customer always pays in the end, which also applies to indirectly legally prescribed risk mitigation).

It is plausible to me that the public is "close to correct" in its current stance, and I would at least not dismiss that notion out of hand!

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

#35

Post by lm28469 »

pengaru wrote: post #24
lm28469 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot rain. Maybe one day people will remember we're just sharing one small planet, the air, the water, the food supplies, ... all the shit you dump/burn ends up in your food or water eventually

> all the shit you dump/burn ends up in your food or water eventually but most that shit doesn't survive the journey intact, being out in the elements and bombarded by the sun isn't kind to most things hence the focus on "forever chemicals"

But still a lot of things do, pesticides following the rain cycles is a good example. We're killing the biodiversity and ourselves with it. We already almost entirely rely on synthetically amending fields with petrol byproducts to feed ourselves, tomorrow we might have to manually pollinate crops when insects won't be enough to do the job.

PFAS are a problem, co2 is a problem, but we have dozens of other very big problems that are partially, if not entirely, obscured

https://usrtk.org/healthwire/banned-pesticides-found-in-clou...

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

#36

Post by calvinmorrison »

Zigurd wrote: post #31
khaki54 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

without Limited Liability Companies, a civil matter as simple as a copyright lawsuit could permenently bankrupt a small business and take the owners house and all their assets. I don't agree with companies wantonly externalizing their costs onto the environment or the populace such as Dow or 3M poisoning the entire planet. Criminal liability never goes away for serious crimes, whether sole-proprietership, LLC, or Cor…

If you are a part owner of a restaurant that's an LLC, and the restaurant engages in wage theft, which is rampant in that business, in many states the corporate veil can be pierced to recover stolen wages. "Limited" doesn't mean "none."

no reason to have a veil at all. Delete!

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

#37

Post by gruez »

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 instead because the evidentiary standards are lower.

> which essentially amounted to interest off their ill-gotten gains.

They offered to pay $6B of $11B gains. Maybe you think they should have been fined $100 trillion or whatever for all the harm they caused, but that money doesn't exist, and moreover it's unclear whether a long drawn out legal battle would result in more money than the settlement they offered.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-06-27/purdue...

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

#39

Post by lm28469 »

coryrc wrote: post #8
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…

> Let them burn Who is "them"? The scientists at the time? The managers at the time? The managers now? The stockholders who have already sold and made their profits?

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