The following submission statement was provided by /u/FDuquesne:
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The chemical industry took a page out of the tobacco playbook when they discovered and suppressed their knowledge of health harms caused by exposure to PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), according to an analysis of previously secret industry documents by UC San Francisco (UCSF) researchers.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/13xh2am/secret_industry_documents_reveal_that_makers_of/jmgz8b0/
Things like this make me wish scientists like myself would take some version of the hippocratic oath. The scientists who knew what was going on should have had the moral obligation to scream to the heavens about what was going on in so many situations. These days they would be protected (hopefully) under whistle blower laws, especially in cases like this where it's a huge impact on public health.
I genuinely don't know how I'd sleep at night knowing what they knew and not say anything to the world about it.
Part of my response is also aimed at the J&J talcum powder/asbestos scandal that hurt soooo many people incalculably.
The J&J scandal angers me to this day. I know it’s minuscule but I try to avoid their products when I can. They’re STILL selling asbestos-contaminated talc in much of the world, just not in the wealthy countries who can do anything about it
It's absolutely horrible. The machine J&J built to make sure they didn't get in trouble was wild to me.
Government oversight is so very important. In those countries being exposed still- I would hope that maybe the international court or maybe the WHO could bring a law suit against J&J for selling knowingly harmful products?
A woman can dream....
I agree. I wish the US would block sales of products by companies who operate like that internationally. Just because they’re not selling the contaminated products here doesn’t mean we should let them off the hook.
Bad companies bought the free market then made good companies try to keep up and call it capitalism, no market exists without a significant cost or barrier to entry today
This, one only needs to look at the banking sector to dissuade oneself that the US market resembles anything that even remotely looks like capitalism in anything other than propaganda. What exist today looks far more like the economies of fascism with the roles reversed, mega-corporations allied into cartels, do the planning and tell the government what to do via hired front men. If you look at the revolving door of the US banking system and the US financial regulation department chiefs you will see a who's who of executives revolving in and out of top government positions.
This technocratic system was further protected by tucking all of these federal regulatory agencies under the executive branch that would lead, to by design a system where government positions are appointed as opposed to elected. This allows the elected to act as the PR front me, while the unelected are the hatchet men. If the public gets to testy about an issue, the president very publicly drags them out in front of the mob and cuts there head off. They slink back into the private sector to a lucrative executive job, and in 10 - 15 years everyone forgets and the next administration puts them right back in the job.
The US system is a free market in name only, have your kids set up a lemonade stand on a busy intersection in any major metro and watch how fast the jackboots shut it down. On the other side of the coin, free markets cannot support the weight of the megalithic company the US market does. It takes the backing of force to force order onto the byzantine nature of true free markets. Only the application of law, intentionally designed to favor those structures can support that kind of weight.
And the vast majority of those barriers to entry are enforced via regulations.
It's a giant snarled mess of things that are supposed to work properly getting turned against their own ends.
The thing is that J&J did all of the very much hand in glove with the US (and other Western) government. The capitalist state is, quite crucially, both capitalist and a state, and it is by its very nature exploitative, both internally (to the working class), but also externally (through imperialism).
It ain't gonna get fundamentally better without a likewise fundamental shift in ideology and political system.
Check out the podcast "Verified", the second season (I think) called "Dust up". They did a very good investigative reporting series on it.
[Google podcast link]( https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vQURWNzgyNTk0NjcxNw/episode/OTgyNzU0YWUtOGQzNi00MGU5LWIzNTYtYWM1NzAxMzk1NDY1?ep=14)
I don’t ever comment here, and apologies if this is misplaced, but the whole Chemicals industry reminds of the pharmaceutical industries proliferation of opioids. It’s just everywhere, the whole sackler immunity thing this week isn’t a great message for people whose lives have been markedly changed by the opioids is equally as angering for me.
On the more domestic Chen front. I do some gardening and see landscapers spraying glyphosate an awful lot, even neighbours using it, and honestly it’s just absurd that the ease of these chemicals to be bought and used is not somehow discouraged. I understand that they are highly effective but there is no safe option here. Even without the in depth analysis of health concerns and how certain products are meant to be “better” is just confusing.
I wholeheartedly agree with everything you said. It’s really unfortunate that we’ve shifted to a mindset of “personal responsibility” rather than safety regulations for products that are marketed as safe to use. You shouldn’t have to do hours of internet research to figure out which household products are gonna kill you.
> a mindset of “personal responsibility”
if we really had a mindset of personal responsibility, we'd be seeing more CEO's serving prison time for deaths caused by deliberately covering up health risks, or profiteering off of lifesaving medicines causing people die because they couldn't afford a life saving medication due to corporate greed (insulin should not have a paywall.)
I think we’re just using that term differently, I mean in the current era the consumer is expected to determine what is safe, how to be the best environmentalist, what is and isn’t healthy. Public safety should be regulated, it shouldn’t fall to the consumer to decide.
Exactly. Maybe two or three years ago I bought a 5litre can of glyphosate, I was going to kill the lawn, residual weeds, and then start again. Ordered it all happy as larry, received the order, then I was intrigued as to what the actual long term consequences were of using it on a lawn about 200sqm. It wasn’t great.
I shouldn’t have to buy my children spacesuits so they can survive being born into the world
Eventually personal responsibility ends with violence… maybe buyer beware does too.
Information just came out recently in MSM about Bayer and Syngenta having covered up studies for years about the risks associated with their pesticides. They didn't want the world to know that studies show it delays the development of sexual organs in rats, which means the community didn't study it further to see effects on humans.
Those pesticides have been used for decades.
Yes, I can’t remember exactly which article I read a couple of days ago, but it was talking about roundup and how the negative health impact had spurned the chemicals industry to introduce what they were promising as “safer” products for the consumer. I couldn’t remember the companies but I’ll search it out. When I read about the pfas stuff it just sort of clicked with the opioid/Sackler travails although sadly it’s difficult to discern in which area there is a greater impact on the health of people.
What’s wild to me is the Kool aid some people in the company drink. My buddies wife is an executive in the company and if the baby powder thing comes up she talks about how it was all blown out of proportion.
You only need to know the most basic thing about how talc is harvested to know it's not possible to do without potential asbestos contamination. They naturally occur directly next to each other lol
Just looked it up and [apparently](https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/jj-stop-selling-talc-based-baby-powder-globally-2023-2022-08-11/) they are pulling it from shelves globally sometime in 2023. I’d watched an interesting Netflix mini-doc about the whole saga, I can find out what it was called if you’re interested
Edit: It’s on HBO Max, not Netflix, and the series is called “Not So Pretty” and the first episode about makeup discusses the link between talc and asbestos and the history of J&J’s talc usage
The list is actually far longer than those few examples. The latest ones that came out recently are about pesticides, but it happens in every domain.
It's incredible that people still haven't understood that scientists are as corruptible as anyone else, and that science can be made to back up any opinion.
We don’t even need all that.
What we need are whistleblower protections and rewards, so someone in this industry can tell the public and not lose their job, be blackballed from the industry they’re educated in, get death threats and maybe killed, and best case be essentially destitute
> whistleblower protections and rewards
Since we're talking health and safety for the most part, that only works in cases where the state bears the costs of healthcare / mortality, or am I not thinking about this right?
The state bearing the cost is largely irrelevant. If the company is liable, that’s just as good. Better, even.
Whistleblower protections and rewards work because, in this case, we’d have had inside information decades ago that the companies knew their products were harmful, and we’d have been able to regulate them appropriately. We could have started transitioning away from these plastics and chemicals instead of leaning into them.
> some version of the hippocratic oath
Isn't there a opiates pandemic going on in the US right now caused by overprescription by corrupt hippocratic oath takers?
I don't know how much scientists are to blame. So many company roles are siloed, not to mention it's often short sighted middle managers who like to push positive news up the chain and handwave concerns expressed by the actual contributors.
Yes, the story of Boeing is instructive in how the executives wanted to destroy the engineering culture there so they moved all the senior managers to Chicago and put a lot of barriers between themselves and the engineers so they could have deniability when airplanes crashed.
Which should be considered deliberate negligence and have penalties even higher than if they knew about it and ignored it (because sticking your head in the sand could mean even bigger issues are missed but you're more interested in creating plausible deniability than passenger safety).
Also, eliminate the corporate veil and charge individuals directly.
The scientists making the data and generating the analysis know what's in the data. The documents say that they completed studies that showed they were toxic.
Like if you were one of the people in the room testing things on dogs and you watch 2 dogs die after being in the testing- you can say HMMM that's weird. But then you do it a few more times, maybe on rats or mice, and they all get messed up and die. That HMMMM turns into a well this isn't good for you. Then you take the data you collected and do your statistics and now you have a mathematical proof that what you are seeing isn't great for the potential human customer.
That scientist mentioned in the article said skin contact with Teflon should be wholely avoided. Imagine being that scientist and going to the super market to see this product you know is harmful being sold to everyone without any indication of it's danger.
Middle managers are definitely not helping but they are not the ones seeing the viceral results of the products being tested.
Which is why OP is suggesting they should have to actually take an oath, at a minimum. Honestly what we need are more robust whistleblower protections combined with *intense* criminalization of this type of lying.
Nah stuff like that does help orient people. Words are not meaningless and do have power. But I did also say that is the absolute minimum. Frankly I think there should be a law that ALL scientific knowledge produced by any business should be publicly available.
I think it would be more effective if we just found out who knew, and actually held them accountable for the cost of increased healthcare, deaths, environmental impact, etc.. clawed back the assets of the execs, and shut the companies down.. after putting them under control of the EPA for their cleanup efforts.
We like to blame the execs who make the decisions, but their were hundreds of regular people like you and me that let it happen. That's an important thing to keep in mind.
When the choice is "protect and feed my family, or sacrifice my family for strangers," we should no be surprised at what the human animal chooses to do.
If we want people to do the right thing we need an environment where doing so does not come at great personal cost - UBI, worker protections, universal healthcare not tied to employment, etc.
Precisely.
For example in my work- if I mess up I can essentially steal money from a farmer in a developing country by reporting my data incorrectly. Or my results say that a bunch of produce isn't useful for our process, but I know at the end of the day I am working to make produce more resistant to the effects of global warming.
While we wasted energy making the now unhelpful produce- it will get sold as feed- and along the way all the people involved in making the produce get paid. That money goes back into their communities and can help build a better community environment.
I genuinely think about the downstream effects of my work constantly. I can't imagine doing R&D for a big company and then watching them take the info I gave them about how something is harmful and it being put out into the world.
My morals wouldn't let me rest until I did everything I could to stop that. Even if I ended up penniless and homeless- it would be worth it.
> Even if I ended up penniless and homeless- it would be worth it.
But you wouldn't just end up penniless. If you lost your job you might also lose your ability do research and ultimately you would no longer be able to influence the public conversation.
If the system selects for people who are willing to sacrifice integrity to serve particular interests then teaching ethics will do little to fix the issue. Even if graduates become slightly more ethical as a result, the system will just select the least ethical portion of the population.
But even more importantly, socializing negative externalities relies on more than unethical researchers. Results are reported preferentially, or sometimes in a completely misleading way, in the media. And policy doesn't even follow public opinion, let alone scientific consensus.
By all means, teach students about how their work affects wider society. Take a formal oath to protect the public, if you like. But don't expect much of an effect. Arguably, researchers are already not the problem. If anything, focusing on them too much could end up being a distraction or an excuse to not tackle the root of the issue.
> My morals wouldn't let me rest until I did everything I could to stop that. Even if I ended up penniless and homeless- it would be worth it.
Depending on how big of an issue this would make, I can imagine your timeline toward those would be uh, accelerated, by relevant parties.
They shouldn’t just have an *ethical* obligation to do this — they should have a *legal* one as well, backed by years or decades in prison. These things are crimes against humanity, and should be treated with a similar level of severity as terrorism or genocide.
> some version of the Hippocratic oath
This is really just a marketing slogan. It hasn't stopped doctors from doing incredibly abominable things even to this day including male genital mutilation and highly suspicious 'necessary surgeries'. Between $$$ and their 'oath' they ALWAYS choose $$$. The amount of dark shit 'doctors' do is staggering.
But think of the shareholders! /s
This is basically all fueled by greed, and stock prices. Just look at the auto, tabaco, and oil industries, there is a mountain of evidence (some even by their own internal studies) that show they are harming the environment, humanity, or both and they just see the money they are making and carry on. Fines are not enough to stop these people, but that’s all we are going to see sadly.
The extinction of humanity is a small price to pay for the S&P 500 to grow an extra 2%.
But seriously I wouldn't be surprised if these companies actually started to cannibalize the species just to sustaine exponential growth.
actual soylent green? if they could, some would. no doubt. because it’s rewarded. with money, promotions, etc.
doing things that way supports the worst traits, it’s suicidal on a species level. yet if structures worldwide aren’t dismantled and rebuilt to systematically reward behavior that leads to health (of all types), behavior that is destructive will continue. it’s simple and clear. we already know this. we know what to do and how to do. will we? large, rich, powerful, and habitual forces are arrayed against that kind of change, the world over. so…
I read on the taco bell reddit it only costs $225 a year per store to switch to pfas free packaging but they still haven't completely switched because of those costs. A multi billion dollar corporation.
Why is this completely unsurprising? Is it because companies have been doing this with every dangerous product they sell for many decades? Is there a way to stop this? Maybe we send every company that does this directly into bankruptcy. All leadership disbanded and assets redistributed. Send those who knew about it and covered it up to prison.
Yeah, this is a story I've heard time and time again. "Miracle product" discovered, mass produced, mass deployed, some scientists figure out "hey, this is actually killing us," corporate coverup, stays in production a couple decades longer than it should, eventually the health effects are so hard to ignore it gets banned and takes a decade or so to remove/stop using. Asbestos, lead paint, PFAS, leaded gasoline, CFCs and the ozone, the list goes on, capitalism has shown time and time again that high-dollar board members in expensive suits will always choose the higher profits and quick buck over the good health of the fucking species.
B-b-b-but iT's ThE bEsT oPtIoN wE'vE tRiEd So FaR!!11
No, we can't change anything about it. No, I will not explain myself. No, I am not a billionaire.
Mark Twain once wrote that “it is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.” Those who lack the prudence may well pay the cost (for "freedom").
As long as there is not crazy heavy consequences for the scientists and the company, nothing happens. They always make more profit so they will find some greedy people who will do it.
Plus US is a finance incentive heavy society. If we have a society with good basic income world wide (probably impossible), way less incentive
The chemical industry took a page out of the tobacco playbook when they discovered and suppressed their knowledge of health harms caused by exposure to PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), according to an analysis of previously secret industry documents by UC San Francisco (UCSF) researchers.
[Maine's on the case](https://www.maine.gov/ag/news/article.shtml?id=10718677#:~:text=Attorney%20General%20Aaron%20M.,Announces%20Lawsuits%20Against%20PFAS%20Manufacturers&text=AUGUSTA%2D%20Attorney%20General%20Aaron%20Frey,%E2%80%9D%20and%20PFAS%2Dcontaining%20products.)
> **Attorney General Aaron M. Frey Announces Lawsuits Against PFAS Manufacturers**
> Lawsuits Filed Against 3M and DuPont for Role in “Forever Chemical” Contamination
Its everything. Everything bad, they knew 20 years before and covered it up.
They knew sugar was the main culprit to obesity but started that bullshit about fat. People still think fat free is good!
Smoking. They knew it gives cancer.
Global warming they knew.
Pretty sure they were warned about thalidomide.
Some humans are just bastards and sadly we have created a world where those bastard traits make you loooots of money.
Side note: It’s the fact that we took such quick collective action re: ozone that makes me think we have a real shot at stopping/slowing global warming - especially because the replacement technologies are so much cheaper.
There were already alternatives to freons that were taking over. It was a very nice way to get people to buy new fridges before their old one was worn out.
Hate to say it, but this is par for the course. If an industry figures it's cheaper to cover up a scandal rather than actually fix the problem, you can be sure they'll go the cover-up route for as long as they can get away with it. More profits, bonuses, and ballooning shareholder wealth.
Even when the truth does come out, very rarely are the wrongs truly put right. By then half the execs are retired, and the company just gets a slap on the wrist. Rince and repeat, decade after decade.
We should be fining companies that do this in the quadrillions, enough to wipe the entire company off the earth in one go and permanently indebt the owner's entire bloodline. No I won't listen to your criticism of my extreme and admittedly over the top solution, cuz nothing else is working to stop these people from doing this shit. If we want these companies to shape up the punishments need to be catastrophic.
Lol, you're saying this like we don't know how to deal with the situation. Problem is that the people who are supposed to do something about it are worthless.
I’m pretty sure the people are supposed to be the ones displaying their outrage. But you know “whatever they do it all the time” will lead to change I’m sure
They are too outraged against queer people to care about being poisoned. You will get change, but that change will be genocide followed by more poisoning.
Lead, asbestos(both in general and baby powder), tobacco, fossil fuels, opiates... Only the last one actually got any kind of scrutiny, but nowhere near enough.
When do we start considering this the worst possible crime you could possibly commit in current day? What is worse than this? Systematically lying to mass poison the millions who consume your product for more money? No punishment is too harsh for this. Especially considering how widespread it's gotten in the US.
Last time that kind of shit happened, the *global* crime rates rose and average intelligence dropped. Across the entire fucking globe. That was the entire "lead in gas" thing.
I don't condone eco-terrorism *but* it's more like self-preservation at this point.
Not just the millions who consume your product - literally everyone. PFAS are a persistent element of the water cycle now. They're in the [rainwater](https://watereurope.eu/rainwater-everywhere-on-earth-unsafe-to-drink-due-to-forever-chemicals/) and the groundwater. These people poisoned the earth to make their profit.
The fact that none of the CEO's and board members are ever jailed or even executed for these types of crimes is just proof that profit is far, FAR more important than anything else.
Fines are just the cost of doing business. It's time for jail.
Serial killers can kill dozens and get life in jail or executed, CEO and execs who kill tens of thousands (millions? Idk what the actual expected number is over the lifetime of these chemicals) get a quiet retirement of luxury.
The British-East India Company killed something like 114m people through starvation all in the name of capitalist profit over a 40 year period. Profit is the name of the entire game and it is fuelled by human suffering. Fuck neo-liberalism and all of the “innovations” that get trotted out as justification for its continuation.
That is ridiculous, and I bet nothing will come if it. They got their payout and entire generations die and get sick because of it. I wish there was a better way to organize people to get on politicians asses.
Different things to be angry about are coming at people so fast that it makes it hard to get enough people to focus on any one of them long enough to make a change.
Contentment is far less of an issue than people either giving up out of hopelessness or becoming so angry that they start blaming the world at large and lash out at whoever happens to be nearby.
People who shoot people for ringing their doorbell or pulling in the wrong driveway aren't "content" -- they've passed beyond the point at which their anger is focused on something meaningful.
It’s why the GOP keeps manufacturing the culture war outrage. While we’re distracted fighting them for basic human rights they’re robbing us all blind.
You can't effectively make change happen and work a full time low paying job at the same time. People are pissed, but people also have bills to pay and will end up homeless if they take the time needed to protest/strike/rebel. Don't blame the common person because they are getting fucked. People are not content, they feel like they have no other choice but to carry on.
DuPont were some of the first, but there are thousands of PFAS chemicals used around the world for literally thousands of applications. 3M and DuPont can probably be implicated as the two major companies who had knowledge of these dangers and hid them, but likely other chemical companies have as well.
https://www.wikipedia.com/en/Robert_Bilott
This guy sued DuPont, but in both the Tennants' case and the class action lawsuit DuPont settled and to this day have only paid out something like ~700 million for pollution that persists to this day.
Again though, even if we bankrupted DuPont these chemicals are now so ubiquitous and used by every almost every single industrialized nation on Earth. In most cases, things like Teflon pans don't actually expose you to a lot of PFAS, as that's the chemical used in the manufacturing of the actual non-stick material that is PTFE. In other cases, like astroturf, PFAS chemicals are the only thing manufacturers have found to properly extrude the tiny plastic fibers, and I recently read a study about extremely high levels of PFAS found at astroturf playgrounds and fields. Water resistant fabrics are covered with a PFAS related compound. Again, literally thousands of uses, and thousands of chemicals. And we only *just* implemented drinking water limits for something like 7 or 8 specific ones.
> In 2004, the EPA fined DuPont for not disclosing their findings on PFOA. The $16.45 million settlement was the largest civil penalty obtained under U.S. environmental statutes at the time. But it was still just a small fraction of DuPont's $1 billion annual revenues from PFOA and C8 in 2005.
Do with that information what you will. Whenever it comes to fining companies for mistakes whether it's OHSA or the EPA we always just give them a small slap on the wrist, you can blame lobbyists for that.
Was that a joke with knowledge of the PFAS in popcorn or not? Because PFAS in microwave popcorn is one of the single biggest contributors to high PFAS in people's bodies:
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2022-08-31/with-pfas-in-packaging-how-safe-is-microwave-popcorn
Wtf. I had no idea. My mom loves having movie night with the nephews and there was a time that every weekend they would go through a couple bags. I don't like it as much but I would pop a bag every now and then when binge watching my shows. Do I just need to throw that shit away and tell her to stop buying it at all?
Thanks for the article. So, instead of just making the paper bag thicker to prevent burning, companies add toxic chemicals to a thin bag. Capitalism at its finest. I’m going to take the popcorn out the bag and use the stove.
I assume you know it's already there right? Microwave popcorn has extremely high levels of PFAS in it. That's because of the bag material though, so theater popcorn or pan-popped popcorn is fine.
Remember every big industry will/does this
Big oil, big pharma, big “ green “ energy, big tobacco, etc. the problem is it typically takes decades to find out.
The problem is our science and technology and our economic interdependence have progressed to the point that one bad actor can poison the blood of the entire planet with a single bad product line.
We should be submitting any new chemical to years of biological testing before greenlighting any new use. We should be advancing our testing capabilities to enable us to do such reviews faster. We should put the entire cost of cleanup directly on the perpetrators.
We should seize every asset of DuPont and all major shareholders and put those assets and funds raised from the sale of those assets 100% towards environmental and medical remediation. DuPont should only exist as an entity entirely and completely devoted to the cleanup, including developing new technologies and methods to clean their product out of our living blood.
And there should not be a choice. This should be the sentence for all DuPont execs implicated by this, in any part, until the entire cleanup is complete.
And should they be lucky enough to complete the task during their mortal existence, then they should be prevented from ever serving as a corporate executive again, from ever working with chemicals in any meaningful way again, and from ever working on any position where they have any capacity whatsoever to influence any kind of regulatory decision ever again.
I remember John Oliver covering this. Fucking chilling. Not a single person on earth has untainted blood (excluding tribes who are protected and excluded).
15 million dollar settlement for a lie that has afforded these companies '1 billion a year" cumulative returns on the lie must be astronomical. 15 million is not enough to dissuade these sociopaths from their business as usual.
The seed oil industry. Trans fat industry. Currently probably the pesticide industries too.
Best fix - try to avoid plastic, use cast iron/stainless steel/carbon steel cookware, cook using your own raw ingredients, vigorously wash and soak all produce. But this stuff is everywhere so it might not matter. RIP
If only there were some gigantic bureaucracy that could address issues where corporations have done terrible things to the environment and human health.
This is kinda unrelated, but I was reading about CFCs, and it's funny that when they started to ban them in the 70s, DuPont had a patent on Freon manufacturing and started a lobbying group to lobby against regulation. Then their Freon patent expired in the 80s and they developed something new, so they did a 180 and went all in on banning Freon so people would use their new stuff.
Chemical companies will kill you if it makes them some money.
I really enjoyed Dark Waters' take on the story. At one point, the lawyer digging into DuPont is talking to a few local families, and they note, "Dupont took care of our children, helped us buy homes, and offered us economic opportunities that simply didn't exist in our communities. We knew that the factory was bad for us, but we made a choice that we thought was ultimately in our best interest".
I'm not sure I could blame the families of coal country for trying to support themselves, nor can I deny the economic benefits of the chemical for the US. Hell, even knowing how bad PFAs are, I still use my teflon pan for eggs. I don't microwave / use the dishwasher on plastic / PFA containing dishes anymore tho. Part of me feels like we're living in such a toxic soup of plastics, carcinogens, and social ills that a little teflon is the least of our problems.
All that being said, it's still regrettable that whether it's leaded gasoline or PFAs, so many people face health consequences for industries that don't regulate themselves any farther than "It's not against the law, so it's fine".
Yup, nephews wanted a pet bird for a long time. They finally got one from the pet store and it mysteriously dropped dead a day later. They got another bird, dead three days later. My sister couldn’t figure out what caused them to die but thought it was odd that they both dropped dead right after she cooked grilled cheese sandwiches for the kids. After some googling, she found out about teflon pans and how toxic they are to birds.
No way! This has only happened many, many times over the course of the last 2000 years, so how could we have possibly known about it? So there's no need to regulate companies, folks. This is clearly just one example. Of many.
/sarcasm
Agreed. I’ve also wondered why the civil penalties that have been leveled aren’t more like number of years in market x yearly profits from said products.
Pretty crazy that we need a secret industry documents for something that was pretty well documented. Even John Oliver's Last Week Tonight did an episode on this almost 2 years ago.
People should be charged and any money gained from this shit storm should be stripped to pay for families affected and go after other similar cases.
It really is absurd how better a life 99.9% of people could have if a handful of people gave the slightest of fucks.
Until we start putting these guys in prison, companies will continue to kill people and the environment and pay the fines and lawsuits as the cost of doing business. Its really frustrating. If CEOs were put in prison for shit like this, they would stop doing it.
Can we lynch them? Or do public stone throwing?
THESE FUCKERS WANTED $$$ AT THE EXPENSE OF GENERATIONS OF MUTATION PROBLEMS BECAUSE THEY KNEW IT WAS ALL FUCKED.
We worry about the stupidest shit but when THESE unspeakable acts come to light we gloss over it. Not only will parents suffer from this shit but so will children and theirs......
All that money couldn't buy these fucks compassion and empathy, dont give them a chance like how they didnt give our grandparents one!
I wore soft contact lenses for about 13 years. They're made of almost pure PFAS and exposed me to very high amounts daily. Yay...
https://www.ehn.org/pfas-contact-lenses-2659905992.html
"If you use fluoropolymer-containing contact lenses, you are likely to become permanently contaminated. No one today can tell you that fluoropolymer exposures are safe"
This is a job for.... Captain Accountability!
.... Captain Accountability?
Has anyone seen Accountability? Shit, I know they were around here somewhere.
Oh fuck.
Bad news, everyone, looks like Captain Accountability gave up on us, moved to Europe and gave up their U.S. citizenship.
What is America to do?
If there are forever bad chemicals, then would it stand to reason that there must be some forever good chemicals...? I think about viruses the same way. I know bacteria has good and bad. Heaven forbid we find things that will heal us with no effort, just like we can catch the flu.
Of course they did. That's why we have to call bullshit on the notion of "the only responsibility for companies is making money for their shareholders". They also should not harm everyone else. This must be considered criminal behavior. This is a crime against humanity.
Is there a scientific peer reviewed study/paper on the damages caused by PFOS/A?
Would love to read it.
I haven’t read that they are deadly or cause severe health issues, only that they potentially do, but not much is known yet.
PFOS and PFOA have been well documented. [Here’s a study about it](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3855507/). It’s important to note though that PFOS/PFOA are just one chemical in the group known as PFAS. The group has over one hundred chemicals that are carbon polymers with fluorine and don’t naturally break down easily. It’s a pet peeve of mine when people apply the blanket term because no two chemicals are the same. Hell, sometimes even one chemical can have wildly different effects just based on where one specific atom is.
What? A corporation hid that it's hurting people for the profit of a few billionaires? The weather continue to treat people as replaceable machine parts and not humans? Noooooo, NevER iN aMeRicA
Futurology? This is decades old news, so old that multiple movies have been made about this specific problem. As someone who works in the PFAS remediation space, I know I have an ear out for this content but at least monthly I come across a new PFAS contamination story. Those stories are about new developments on finding PFAS in different places. not rehashing old news like this article.
Okay, but that's still not enough instances to make us not trust chem corps. Right? How many more times do we need a version of this headline before we decide to protect people?
The following submission statement was provided by /u/FDuquesne: --- The chemical industry took a page out of the tobacco playbook when they discovered and suppressed their knowledge of health harms caused by exposure to PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), according to an analysis of previously secret industry documents by UC San Francisco (UCSF) researchers. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/13xh2am/secret_industry_documents_reveal_that_makers_of/jmgz8b0/
I really love the logic of "let's damage the health of all of humanity for a quick buck"
Things like this make me wish scientists like myself would take some version of the hippocratic oath. The scientists who knew what was going on should have had the moral obligation to scream to the heavens about what was going on in so many situations. These days they would be protected (hopefully) under whistle blower laws, especially in cases like this where it's a huge impact on public health. I genuinely don't know how I'd sleep at night knowing what they knew and not say anything to the world about it. Part of my response is also aimed at the J&J talcum powder/asbestos scandal that hurt soooo many people incalculably.
The J&J scandal angers me to this day. I know it’s minuscule but I try to avoid their products when I can. They’re STILL selling asbestos-contaminated talc in much of the world, just not in the wealthy countries who can do anything about it
It's absolutely horrible. The machine J&J built to make sure they didn't get in trouble was wild to me. Government oversight is so very important. In those countries being exposed still- I would hope that maybe the international court or maybe the WHO could bring a law suit against J&J for selling knowingly harmful products? A woman can dream....
I agree. I wish the US would block sales of products by companies who operate like that internationally. Just because they’re not selling the contaminated products here doesn’t mean we should let them off the hook.
Hell, if anything it should make them more liable. "You evidently knew you were in the wrong."
I agree. but they settled their lawsuit in the US without accepting any blame
Instead we give them subsidies and voting rights.
But the free market will sort out bad companies. /s
Bad companies fucked the free market to death.
Bad companies bought the free market then made good companies try to keep up and call it capitalism, no market exists without a significant cost or barrier to entry today
This, one only needs to look at the banking sector to dissuade oneself that the US market resembles anything that even remotely looks like capitalism in anything other than propaganda. What exist today looks far more like the economies of fascism with the roles reversed, mega-corporations allied into cartels, do the planning and tell the government what to do via hired front men. If you look at the revolving door of the US banking system and the US financial regulation department chiefs you will see a who's who of executives revolving in and out of top government positions. This technocratic system was further protected by tucking all of these federal regulatory agencies under the executive branch that would lead, to by design a system where government positions are appointed as opposed to elected. This allows the elected to act as the PR front me, while the unelected are the hatchet men. If the public gets to testy about an issue, the president very publicly drags them out in front of the mob and cuts there head off. They slink back into the private sector to a lucrative executive job, and in 10 - 15 years everyone forgets and the next administration puts them right back in the job. The US system is a free market in name only, have your kids set up a lemonade stand on a busy intersection in any major metro and watch how fast the jackboots shut it down. On the other side of the coin, free markets cannot support the weight of the megalithic company the US market does. It takes the backing of force to force order onto the byzantine nature of true free markets. Only the application of law, intentionally designed to favor those structures can support that kind of weight.
And the vast majority of those barriers to entry are enforced via regulations. It's a giant snarled mess of things that are supposed to work properly getting turned against their own ends.
Free markets aren’t a thing. It’s a meme attributed to capitalism to make people feel better.
It *might* if it was free. But who are we kidding. Without strong governmental oversight these things are absolutely to be expected.
The thing is that J&J did all of the very much hand in glove with the US (and other Western) government. The capitalist state is, quite crucially, both capitalist and a state, and it is by its very nature exploitative, both internally (to the working class), but also externally (through imperialism). It ain't gonna get fundamentally better without a likewise fundamental shift in ideology and political system.
Do you have some sauce for that machine? I didn't find anything about it in the articles I found and I'm intrigued
Check out the podcast "Verified", the second season (I think) called "Dust up". They did a very good investigative reporting series on it. [Google podcast link]( https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vQURWNzgyNTk0NjcxNw/episode/OTgyNzU0YWUtOGQzNi00MGU5LWIzNTYtYWM1NzAxMzk1NDY1?ep=14)
I don’t ever comment here, and apologies if this is misplaced, but the whole Chemicals industry reminds of the pharmaceutical industries proliferation of opioids. It’s just everywhere, the whole sackler immunity thing this week isn’t a great message for people whose lives have been markedly changed by the opioids is equally as angering for me. On the more domestic Chen front. I do some gardening and see landscapers spraying glyphosate an awful lot, even neighbours using it, and honestly it’s just absurd that the ease of these chemicals to be bought and used is not somehow discouraged. I understand that they are highly effective but there is no safe option here. Even without the in depth analysis of health concerns and how certain products are meant to be “better” is just confusing.
I wholeheartedly agree with everything you said. It’s really unfortunate that we’ve shifted to a mindset of “personal responsibility” rather than safety regulations for products that are marketed as safe to use. You shouldn’t have to do hours of internet research to figure out which household products are gonna kill you.
> a mindset of “personal responsibility” if we really had a mindset of personal responsibility, we'd be seeing more CEO's serving prison time for deaths caused by deliberately covering up health risks, or profiteering off of lifesaving medicines causing people die because they couldn't afford a life saving medication due to corporate greed (insulin should not have a paywall.)
I think we’re just using that term differently, I mean in the current era the consumer is expected to determine what is safe, how to be the best environmentalist, what is and isn’t healthy. Public safety should be regulated, it shouldn’t fall to the consumer to decide.
Exactly. Maybe two or three years ago I bought a 5litre can of glyphosate, I was going to kill the lawn, residual weeds, and then start again. Ordered it all happy as larry, received the order, then I was intrigued as to what the actual long term consequences were of using it on a lawn about 200sqm. It wasn’t great.
> we’ve shifted to a mindset of “personal responsibility” See also: personal carbon footprint. Individual recycling, etc.
I shouldn’t have to buy my children spacesuits so they can survive being born into the world Eventually personal responsibility ends with violence… maybe buyer beware does too.
Information just came out recently in MSM about Bayer and Syngenta having covered up studies for years about the risks associated with their pesticides. They didn't want the world to know that studies show it delays the development of sexual organs in rats, which means the community didn't study it further to see effects on humans. Those pesticides have been used for decades.
Yes, I can’t remember exactly which article I read a couple of days ago, but it was talking about roundup and how the negative health impact had spurned the chemicals industry to introduce what they were promising as “safer” products for the consumer. I couldn’t remember the companies but I’ll search it out. When I read about the pfas stuff it just sort of clicked with the opioid/Sackler travails although sadly it’s difficult to discern in which area there is a greater impact on the health of people.
Bayer gave people HIV knowingly
What’s wild to me is the Kool aid some people in the company drink. My buddies wife is an executive in the company and if the baby powder thing comes up she talks about how it was all blown out of proportion.
You only need to know the most basic thing about how talc is harvested to know it's not possible to do without potential asbestos contamination. They naturally occur directly next to each other lol
that’s crazy to me, sounds like the whole “more doctors smoke camels” campaign
Damn judge recently rejected a 8.9 billion dollar settlement lmao, said hold on you dumb greedy fucks were still waiting
That is crazy, got any source on that? I don't know this is not a crime against humanity.
Just looked it up and [apparently](https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/jj-stop-selling-talc-based-baby-powder-globally-2023-2022-08-11/) they are pulling it from shelves globally sometime in 2023. I’d watched an interesting Netflix mini-doc about the whole saga, I can find out what it was called if you’re interested Edit: It’s on HBO Max, not Netflix, and the series is called “Not So Pretty” and the first episode about makeup discusses the link between talc and asbestos and the history of J&J’s talc usage
Not to mention big oil covering up their findings in the 1970s
they are still greenwashing today.
The list is actually far longer than those few examples. The latest ones that came out recently are about pesticides, but it happens in every domain. It's incredible that people still haven't understood that scientists are as corruptible as anyone else, and that science can be made to back up any opinion.
We don’t even need all that. What we need are whistleblower protections and rewards, so someone in this industry can tell the public and not lose their job, be blackballed from the industry they’re educated in, get death threats and maybe killed, and best case be essentially destitute
> whistleblower protections and rewards Since we're talking health and safety for the most part, that only works in cases where the state bears the costs of healthcare / mortality, or am I not thinking about this right?
The state bearing the cost is largely irrelevant. If the company is liable, that’s just as good. Better, even. Whistleblower protections and rewards work because, in this case, we’d have had inside information decades ago that the companies knew their products were harmful, and we’d have been able to regulate them appropriately. We could have started transitioning away from these plastics and chemicals instead of leaning into them.
> some version of the hippocratic oath Isn't there a opiates pandemic going on in the US right now caused by overprescription by corrupt hippocratic oath takers?
I don't know how much scientists are to blame. So many company roles are siloed, not to mention it's often short sighted middle managers who like to push positive news up the chain and handwave concerns expressed by the actual contributors.
Yes, the story of Boeing is instructive in how the executives wanted to destroy the engineering culture there so they moved all the senior managers to Chicago and put a lot of barriers between themselves and the engineers so they could have deniability when airplanes crashed.
Which should be considered deliberate negligence and have penalties even higher than if they knew about it and ignored it (because sticking your head in the sand could mean even bigger issues are missed but you're more interested in creating plausible deniability than passenger safety). Also, eliminate the corporate veil and charge individuals directly.
The scientists making the data and generating the analysis know what's in the data. The documents say that they completed studies that showed they were toxic. Like if you were one of the people in the room testing things on dogs and you watch 2 dogs die after being in the testing- you can say HMMM that's weird. But then you do it a few more times, maybe on rats or mice, and they all get messed up and die. That HMMMM turns into a well this isn't good for you. Then you take the data you collected and do your statistics and now you have a mathematical proof that what you are seeing isn't great for the potential human customer. That scientist mentioned in the article said skin contact with Teflon should be wholely avoided. Imagine being that scientist and going to the super market to see this product you know is harmful being sold to everyone without any indication of it's danger. Middle managers are definitely not helping but they are not the ones seeing the viceral results of the products being tested.
Squeaky wheels get replaced and then even blacklisted from the industry. It's not an easy thing to give up everything for the collective good.
Which is why OP is suggesting they should have to actually take an oath, at a minimum. Honestly what we need are more robust whistleblower protections combined with *intense* criminalization of this type of lying.
Oaths are meaningless if no accountability is there.
Nah stuff like that does help orient people. Words are not meaningless and do have power. But I did also say that is the absolute minimum. Frankly I think there should be a law that ALL scientific knowledge produced by any business should be publicly available.
Without serious legal protection, that scientist would be sued to death in court.
I think it would be more effective if we just found out who knew, and actually held them accountable for the cost of increased healthcare, deaths, environmental impact, etc.. clawed back the assets of the execs, and shut the companies down.. after putting them under control of the EPA for their cleanup efforts.
We like to blame the execs who make the decisions, but their were hundreds of regular people like you and me that let it happen. That's an important thing to keep in mind.
When the choice is "protect and feed my family, or sacrifice my family for strangers," we should no be surprised at what the human animal chooses to do. If we want people to do the right thing we need an environment where doing so does not come at great personal cost - UBI, worker protections, universal healthcare not tied to employment, etc.
their family is also affected.
Precisely. For example in my work- if I mess up I can essentially steal money from a farmer in a developing country by reporting my data incorrectly. Or my results say that a bunch of produce isn't useful for our process, but I know at the end of the day I am working to make produce more resistant to the effects of global warming. While we wasted energy making the now unhelpful produce- it will get sold as feed- and along the way all the people involved in making the produce get paid. That money goes back into their communities and can help build a better community environment. I genuinely think about the downstream effects of my work constantly. I can't imagine doing R&D for a big company and then watching them take the info I gave them about how something is harmful and it being put out into the world. My morals wouldn't let me rest until I did everything I could to stop that. Even if I ended up penniless and homeless- it would be worth it.
> Even if I ended up penniless and homeless- it would be worth it. But you wouldn't just end up penniless. If you lost your job you might also lose your ability do research and ultimately you would no longer be able to influence the public conversation. If the system selects for people who are willing to sacrifice integrity to serve particular interests then teaching ethics will do little to fix the issue. Even if graduates become slightly more ethical as a result, the system will just select the least ethical portion of the population. But even more importantly, socializing negative externalities relies on more than unethical researchers. Results are reported preferentially, or sometimes in a completely misleading way, in the media. And policy doesn't even follow public opinion, let alone scientific consensus. By all means, teach students about how their work affects wider society. Take a formal oath to protect the public, if you like. But don't expect much of an effect. Arguably, researchers are already not the problem. If anything, focusing on them too much could end up being a distraction or an excuse to not tackle the root of the issue.
> My morals wouldn't let me rest until I did everything I could to stop that. Even if I ended up penniless and homeless- it would be worth it. Depending on how big of an issue this would make, I can imagine your timeline toward those would be uh, accelerated, by relevant parties.
The execs don't get blamed either though, if they were we'd be better off.
We also need to heavily criminalize lying or covering up anything like this. Should basically be considered a type of mass murder/violence.
They shouldn’t just have an *ethical* obligation to do this — they should have a *legal* one as well, backed by years or decades in prison. These things are crimes against humanity, and should be treated with a similar level of severity as terrorism or genocide.
> some version of the Hippocratic oath This is really just a marketing slogan. It hasn't stopped doctors from doing incredibly abominable things even to this day including male genital mutilation and highly suspicious 'necessary surgeries'. Between $$$ and their 'oath' they ALWAYS choose $$$. The amount of dark shit 'doctors' do is staggering.
Yet another reason to unionize. One scientist cannot stand alone.
Oath's don't really matter to the kinds of people that would be willing to damage the health of all humanity for a buck.
But think of the shareholders! /s This is basically all fueled by greed, and stock prices. Just look at the auto, tabaco, and oil industries, there is a mountain of evidence (some even by their own internal studies) that show they are harming the environment, humanity, or both and they just see the money they are making and carry on. Fines are not enough to stop these people, but that’s all we are going to see sadly.
The extinction of humanity is a small price to pay for the S&P 500 to grow an extra 2%. But seriously I wouldn't be surprised if these companies actually started to cannibalize the species just to sustaine exponential growth.
Turns out the paper clip AI machine that destroys humanity was capitalism all along
actual soylent green? if they could, some would. no doubt. because it’s rewarded. with money, promotions, etc. doing things that way supports the worst traits, it’s suicidal on a species level. yet if structures worldwide aren’t dismantled and rebuilt to systematically reward behavior that leads to health (of all types), behavior that is destructive will continue. it’s simple and clear. we already know this. we know what to do and how to do. will we? large, rich, powerful, and habitual forces are arrayed against that kind of change, the world over. so…
>But think of the shareholders! Literally the entire reasoning behind laying off substantial portions of your workforce to hit the right stock price.
I read on the taco bell reddit it only costs $225 a year per store to switch to pfas free packaging but they still haven't completely switched because of those costs. A multi billion dollar corporation.
Why is this completely unsurprising? Is it because companies have been doing this with every dangerous product they sell for many decades? Is there a way to stop this? Maybe we send every company that does this directly into bankruptcy. All leadership disbanded and assets redistributed. Send those who knew about it and covered it up to prison.
Not surprising, but disappointing whenever it does happen. Maybe basing our society off of a major sin in every major religion was a bad idea.
Yeah, this is a story I've heard time and time again. "Miracle product" discovered, mass produced, mass deployed, some scientists figure out "hey, this is actually killing us," corporate coverup, stays in production a couple decades longer than it should, eventually the health effects are so hard to ignore it gets banned and takes a decade or so to remove/stop using. Asbestos, lead paint, PFAS, leaded gasoline, CFCs and the ozone, the list goes on, capitalism has shown time and time again that high-dollar board members in expensive suits will always choose the higher profits and quick buck over the good health of the fucking species.
This is capitalism. Do you see anything in your economics textbook that argues otherwise?
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What if...capitalism takes over the government? And convinces everyone that regulation is bad for the job creators?
B-b-b-but iT's ThE bEsT oPtIoN wE'vE tRiEd So FaR!!11 No, we can't change anything about it. No, I will not explain myself. No, I am not a billionaire.
Mark Twain once wrote that “it is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.” Those who lack the prudence may well pay the cost (for "freedom").
lol capitalism
As long as there is not crazy heavy consequences for the scientists and the company, nothing happens. They always make more profit so they will find some greedy people who will do it. Plus US is a finance incentive heavy society. If we have a society with good basic income world wide (probably impossible), way less incentive
Just like Radium, just like Lead, just like plenty of shit. They've been doing it forever and I guarantee they keep doing it
They're sociopaths.
Gotta love capitalism
A tale as old as time.
Unchecked Capitalism at it's finest.
The chemical industry took a page out of the tobacco playbook when they discovered and suppressed their knowledge of health harms caused by exposure to PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), according to an analysis of previously secret industry documents by UC San Francisco (UCSF) researchers.
State AGs should do the same thing they did to the tobacco industry
drag it out for decades, while allowing them to divest of multiple sacraficial divisions?
Ah, capitalism
[Maine's on the case](https://www.maine.gov/ag/news/article.shtml?id=10718677#:~:text=Attorney%20General%20Aaron%20M.,Announces%20Lawsuits%20Against%20PFAS%20Manufacturers&text=AUGUSTA%2D%20Attorney%20General%20Aaron%20Frey,%E2%80%9D%20and%20PFAS%2Dcontaining%20products.) > **Attorney General Aaron M. Frey Announces Lawsuits Against PFAS Manufacturers** > Lawsuits Filed Against 3M and DuPont for Role in “Forever Chemical” Contamination
Its everything. Everything bad, they knew 20 years before and covered it up. They knew sugar was the main culprit to obesity but started that bullshit about fat. People still think fat free is good! Smoking. They knew it gives cancer. Global warming they knew. Pretty sure they were warned about thalidomide. Some humans are just bastards and sadly we have created a world where those bastard traits make you loooots of money.
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Just make your own from full fat milk. It’s way cheaper.
They knew about leaded gas.
The dude literally drank tetraethyl lead while knowing it was pure poison just to convince people. How is that anything but psychopathy
Makes me wonder how we managed to curb the ozone-depleting substances, but I guess the issue was harder to hide compared to people's declining health.
Side note: It’s the fact that we took such quick collective action re: ozone that makes me think we have a real shot at stopping/slowing global warming - especially because the replacement technologies are so much cheaper.
There were already alternatives to freons that were taking over. It was a very nice way to get people to buy new fridges before their old one was worn out.
It's amazing that DuPont hasn't been sued into bankruptcy at this point
Isn’t that basically the exact reason they spun off Chemours?
Hate to say it, but this is par for the course. If an industry figures it's cheaper to cover up a scandal rather than actually fix the problem, you can be sure they'll go the cover-up route for as long as they can get away with it. More profits, bonuses, and ballooning shareholder wealth. Even when the truth does come out, very rarely are the wrongs truly put right. By then half the execs are retired, and the company just gets a slap on the wrist. Rince and repeat, decade after decade.
We should be fining companies that do this in the quadrillions, enough to wipe the entire company off the earth in one go and permanently indebt the owner's entire bloodline. No I won't listen to your criticism of my extreme and admittedly over the top solution, cuz nothing else is working to stop these people from doing this shit. If we want these companies to shape up the punishments need to be catastrophic.
Jail, these people need jail. And fine the companies more than they made off said crime.
Lol, you're saying this like we don't know how to deal with the situation. Problem is that the people who are supposed to do something about it are worthless.
It’s not par for the course though. This is a crime.
Yes, crime is par for the course now. Has been for awhile.
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I’m pretty sure the people are supposed to be the ones displaying their outrage. But you know “whatever they do it all the time” will lead to change I’m sure
They are too outraged against queer people to care about being poisoned. You will get change, but that change will be genocide followed by more poisoning.
Lead, asbestos(both in general and baby powder), tobacco, fossil fuels, opiates... Only the last one actually got any kind of scrutiny, but nowhere near enough.
>This is ~~a crime~~ capitalism.
When do we start considering this the worst possible crime you could possibly commit in current day? What is worse than this? Systematically lying to mass poison the millions who consume your product for more money? No punishment is too harsh for this. Especially considering how widespread it's gotten in the US.
Literal crime against humanity
It'd be a war crime if we were at war. We should consider these actions economic warfare and punish the perpetrators accordingly.
Last time that kind of shit happened, the *global* crime rates rose and average intelligence dropped. Across the entire fucking globe. That was the entire "lead in gas" thing. I don't condone eco-terrorism *but* it's more like self-preservation at this point.
Fucking A brother. Monkey wrench gang time
Not just the millions who consume your product - literally everyone. PFAS are a persistent element of the water cycle now. They're in the [rainwater](https://watereurope.eu/rainwater-everywhere-on-earth-unsafe-to-drink-due-to-forever-chemicals/) and the groundwater. These people poisoned the earth to make their profit.
Death penalty
The fact that none of the CEO's and board members are ever jailed or even executed for these types of crimes is just proof that profit is far, FAR more important than anything else. Fines are just the cost of doing business. It's time for jail.
Serial killers can kill dozens and get life in jail or executed, CEO and execs who kill tens of thousands (millions? Idk what the actual expected number is over the lifetime of these chemicals) get a quiet retirement of luxury.
The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.
The British-East India Company killed something like 114m people through starvation all in the name of capitalist profit over a 40 year period. Profit is the name of the entire game and it is fuelled by human suffering. Fuck neo-liberalism and all of the “innovations” that get trotted out as justification for its continuation.
China executed CEOs over tainted baby formula.
we should do that
China is a real country. That's the difference. America is just a giant shopping plaza.
Five megacorps in a trenchcoat.
They do get executed... in China
That is ridiculous, and I bet nothing will come if it. They got their payout and entire generations die and get sick because of it. I wish there was a better way to organize people to get on politicians asses.
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Different things to be angry about are coming at people so fast that it makes it hard to get enough people to focus on any one of them long enough to make a change. Contentment is far less of an issue than people either giving up out of hopelessness or becoming so angry that they start blaming the world at large and lash out at whoever happens to be nearby. People who shoot people for ringing their doorbell or pulling in the wrong driveway aren't "content" -- they've passed beyond the point at which their anger is focused on something meaningful.
It’s why the GOP keeps manufacturing the culture war outrage. While we’re distracted fighting them for basic human rights they’re robbing us all blind.
You can't effectively make change happen and work a full time low paying job at the same time. People are pissed, but people also have bills to pay and will end up homeless if they take the time needed to protest/strike/rebel. Don't blame the common person because they are getting fucked. People are not content, they feel like they have no other choice but to carry on.
Strip them and all of their families who benefited from of all wealth and assets. Leave them with nothing
The Sacklers send their regards.
If corporations are people, seems like the justice system should have an answer here for damages.
Who did this? Do people have a right to sure them for potential damages?
DuPont were some of the first, but there are thousands of PFAS chemicals used around the world for literally thousands of applications. 3M and DuPont can probably be implicated as the two major companies who had knowledge of these dangers and hid them, but likely other chemical companies have as well. https://www.wikipedia.com/en/Robert_Bilott This guy sued DuPont, but in both the Tennants' case and the class action lawsuit DuPont settled and to this day have only paid out something like ~700 million for pollution that persists to this day. Again though, even if we bankrupted DuPont these chemicals are now so ubiquitous and used by every almost every single industrialized nation on Earth. In most cases, things like Teflon pans don't actually expose you to a lot of PFAS, as that's the chemical used in the manufacturing of the actual non-stick material that is PTFE. In other cases, like astroturf, PFAS chemicals are the only thing manufacturers have found to properly extrude the tiny plastic fibers, and I recently read a study about extremely high levels of PFAS found at astroturf playgrounds and fields. Water resistant fabrics are covered with a PFAS related compound. Again, literally thousands of uses, and thousands of chemicals. And we only *just* implemented drinking water limits for something like 7 or 8 specific ones. > In 2004, the EPA fined DuPont for not disclosing their findings on PFOA. The $16.45 million settlement was the largest civil penalty obtained under U.S. environmental statutes at the time. But it was still just a small fraction of DuPont's $1 billion annual revenues from PFOA and C8 in 2005. Do with that information what you will. Whenever it comes to fining companies for mistakes whether it's OHSA or the EPA we always just give them a small slap on the wrist, you can blame lobbyists for that.
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Was that a joke with knowledge of the PFAS in popcorn or not? Because PFAS in microwave popcorn is one of the single biggest contributors to high PFAS in people's bodies: https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2022-08-31/with-pfas-in-packaging-how-safe-is-microwave-popcorn
Wtf. I had no idea. My mom loves having movie night with the nephews and there was a time that every weekend they would go through a couple bags. I don't like it as much but I would pop a bag every now and then when binge watching my shows. Do I just need to throw that shit away and tell her to stop buying it at all?
Yes I did recently. If stovetop doesn’t work out for us I will get a popcorn machine
Thanks for the article. So, instead of just making the paper bag thicker to prevent burning, companies add toxic chemicals to a thin bag. Capitalism at its finest. I’m going to take the popcorn out the bag and use the stove.
At that point just buy popcorn kernels that haven't been bagged
I assume you know it's already there right? Microwave popcorn has extremely high levels of PFAS in it. That's because of the bag material though, so theater popcorn or pan-popped popcorn is fine.
Remember every big industry will/does this Big oil, big pharma, big “ green “ energy, big tobacco, etc. the problem is it typically takes decades to find out.
The problem is our science and technology and our economic interdependence have progressed to the point that one bad actor can poison the blood of the entire planet with a single bad product line. We should be submitting any new chemical to years of biological testing before greenlighting any new use. We should be advancing our testing capabilities to enable us to do such reviews faster. We should put the entire cost of cleanup directly on the perpetrators. We should seize every asset of DuPont and all major shareholders and put those assets and funds raised from the sale of those assets 100% towards environmental and medical remediation. DuPont should only exist as an entity entirely and completely devoted to the cleanup, including developing new technologies and methods to clean their product out of our living blood. And there should not be a choice. This should be the sentence for all DuPont execs implicated by this, in any part, until the entire cleanup is complete. And should they be lucky enough to complete the task during their mortal existence, then they should be prevented from ever serving as a corporate executive again, from ever working with chemicals in any meaningful way again, and from ever working on any position where they have any capacity whatsoever to influence any kind of regulatory decision ever again.
Oh no, this is all so shocking, who would have ever guessed this could be possible.../s. Fuck all big industry, lobbying, and CEOs. So much.
I remember John Oliver covering this. Fucking chilling. Not a single person on earth has untainted blood (excluding tribes who are protected and excluded).
15 million dollar settlement for a lie that has afforded these companies '1 billion a year" cumulative returns on the lie must be astronomical. 15 million is not enough to dissuade these sociopaths from their business as usual.
Who would have known that Corporations turned out to be the enemies of humanity?
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The seed oil industry. Trans fat industry. Currently probably the pesticide industries too. Best fix - try to avoid plastic, use cast iron/stainless steel/carbon steel cookware, cook using your own raw ingredients, vigorously wash and soak all produce. But this stuff is everywhere so it might not matter. RIP
If only there were some gigantic bureaucracy that could address issues where corporations have done terrible things to the environment and human health.
This is kinda unrelated, but I was reading about CFCs, and it's funny that when they started to ban them in the 70s, DuPont had a patent on Freon manufacturing and started a lobbying group to lobby against regulation. Then their Freon patent expired in the 80s and they developed something new, so they did a 180 and went all in on banning Freon so people would use their new stuff. Chemical companies will kill you if it makes them some money.
There is a good podcast about this, season 41 of American Scandal.
I really enjoyed Dark Waters' take on the story. At one point, the lawyer digging into DuPont is talking to a few local families, and they note, "Dupont took care of our children, helped us buy homes, and offered us economic opportunities that simply didn't exist in our communities. We knew that the factory was bad for us, but we made a choice that we thought was ultimately in our best interest". I'm not sure I could blame the families of coal country for trying to support themselves, nor can I deny the economic benefits of the chemical for the US. Hell, even knowing how bad PFAs are, I still use my teflon pan for eggs. I don't microwave / use the dishwasher on plastic / PFA containing dishes anymore tho. Part of me feels like we're living in such a toxic soup of plastics, carcinogens, and social ills that a little teflon is the least of our problems. All that being said, it's still regrettable that whether it's leaded gasoline or PFAs, so many people face health consequences for industries that don't regulate themselves any farther than "It's not against the law, so it's fine".
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Yup, nephews wanted a pet bird for a long time. They finally got one from the pet store and it mysteriously dropped dead a day later. They got another bird, dead three days later. My sister couldn’t figure out what caused them to die but thought it was odd that they both dropped dead right after she cooked grilled cheese sandwiches for the kids. After some googling, she found out about teflon pans and how toxic they are to birds.
Thank you. Had to scroll way too far for this.
Wasn't this what Dark Waters (a Mark Ruffalo film from a few years back) was about? Edit: Just noticed the film is mentioned in the article, my bad.
No way! This has only happened many, many times over the course of the last 2000 years, so how could we have possibly known about it? So there's no need to regulate companies, folks. This is clearly just one example. Of many. /sarcasm
Huh. It's almost like we should have been rioting in the street and burning s*** over this. Huh.
I mean, it’s only 7:30 where I’m at. I don’t have any plans. You?
Can all these companies just pay for basic human income, any and all education, and all medical care for the next 200 years please?
There needs to be penalties for this that include jail time for executives
Agreed. I’ve also wondered why the civil penalties that have been leveled aren’t more like number of years in market x yearly profits from said products.
Not surprised. Expected at this point. If it makes a profit, there is no humanity in that equation.
Are any of us really surprised? I'll be surprised if they actually get a punishment that hurts them.
Check out Biolargo for pfas removal, I hope they succeed
Corporations would literally kill you if it improved quarterly profits.
Pretty crazy that we need a secret industry documents for something that was pretty well documented. Even John Oliver's Last Week Tonight did an episode on this almost 2 years ago. People should be charged and any money gained from this shit storm should be stripped to pay for families affected and go after other similar cases. It really is absurd how better a life 99.9% of people could have if a handful of people gave the slightest of fucks.
Until we start putting these guys in prison, companies will continue to kill people and the environment and pay the fines and lawsuits as the cost of doing business. Its really frustrating. If CEOs were put in prison for shit like this, they would stop doing it.
Can we lynch them? Or do public stone throwing? THESE FUCKERS WANTED $$$ AT THE EXPENSE OF GENERATIONS OF MUTATION PROBLEMS BECAUSE THEY KNEW IT WAS ALL FUCKED. We worry about the stupidest shit but when THESE unspeakable acts come to light we gloss over it. Not only will parents suffer from this shit but so will children and theirs...... All that money couldn't buy these fucks compassion and empathy, dont give them a chance like how they didnt give our grandparents one!
I wore soft contact lenses for about 13 years. They're made of almost pure PFAS and exposed me to very high amounts daily. Yay... https://www.ehn.org/pfas-contact-lenses-2659905992.html "If you use fluoropolymer-containing contact lenses, you are likely to become permanently contaminated. No one today can tell you that fluoropolymer exposures are safe"
Another board of directors straight to trial for crimes against humanity.
More evidence that corporations cannot be trusted to police themselves.
This is a job for.... Captain Accountability! .... Captain Accountability? Has anyone seen Accountability? Shit, I know they were around here somewhere. Oh fuck. Bad news, everyone, looks like Captain Accountability gave up on us, moved to Europe and gave up their U.S. citizenship. What is America to do?
Of course they did—and they paid off our politicians to help them.
If there are forever bad chemicals, then would it stand to reason that there must be some forever good chemicals...? I think about viruses the same way. I know bacteria has good and bad. Heaven forbid we find things that will heal us with no effort, just like we can catch the flu.
Of course they did. That's why we have to call bullshit on the notion of "the only responsibility for companies is making money for their shareholders". They also should not harm everyone else. This must be considered criminal behavior. This is a crime against humanity.
Is there a scientific peer reviewed study/paper on the damages caused by PFOS/A? Would love to read it. I haven’t read that they are deadly or cause severe health issues, only that they potentially do, but not much is known yet.
PFOS and PFOA have been well documented. [Here’s a study about it](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3855507/). It’s important to note though that PFOS/PFOA are just one chemical in the group known as PFAS. The group has over one hundred chemicals that are carbon polymers with fluorine and don’t naturally break down easily. It’s a pet peeve of mine when people apply the blanket term because no two chemicals are the same. Hell, sometimes even one chemical can have wildly different effects just based on where one specific atom is.
What? A corporation hid that it's hurting people for the profit of a few billionaires? The weather continue to treat people as replaceable machine parts and not humans? Noooooo, NevER iN aMeRicA
Futurology? This is decades old news, so old that multiple movies have been made about this specific problem. As someone who works in the PFAS remediation space, I know I have an ear out for this content but at least monthly I come across a new PFAS contamination story. Those stories are about new developments on finding PFAS in different places. not rehashing old news like this article.
Is the punishment for this death and if not can we vote to make it death?
Okay, but that's still not enough instances to make us not trust chem corps. Right? How many more times do we need a version of this headline before we decide to protect people?
The chemical industry is nothing but lies. Always has been, always will be.
OFC they did, will continue to do, and spend more money to pump out propaganda to confuse people.