Industry docs reveal makers of 'forever chemicals' covered up health dangers | Hacker News Reader

Industry docs reveal makers of 'forever chemicals' covered up health dangers

phys.org

254 pointspseudolus111 comments

"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."

Spotted the problem.

The fix is simple, fine them 110% of the ill-gotten gross profits(from start to finish) attributed to all products impacted even slightly.

Then provide an instant settlement to all children born with health defects who's biological parents purchased any of the products. No lawyer cuts. The amount is $10,000,000 each and permanently funded healthcare.

Should the company go bankrupt, each person in position to become a whistleblower who chose not to, can work the rest of their lives paying "child support" equal to their earnings minus whatever social security gives. The same thing for the regulators who failed.

Most theories of optimal fining are based on social costs S, discovery cost C, and discovery chance P. If, for example, you would like to maximize total welfare, you would fine S/P+C. A rational actor would only engage in the behavior of their expected gain was larger than the expected cost to society.

The firms profit should be irrelevant in my opinion. But make these firms believe that they will have to cover the true costs of their behavior!

Yeah, I mean, as long as we're idealizing, let's have them pay the actual costs that were externalized to society instead of merely wiping out profits from misdeeds.

> A rational actor would only engage in the behavior of their expected gain was larger than the expected cost to society.

This is - bluntly put - a shite fucking idea. I am not trying to "maximize total welfare" where one way to accomplish that is to allow a bad actor to get ridiculously wealthy at the expense of everyone else (even if the total paid by everyone else is less than the bad actor makes).

We have a term for this: Privatized profits and socialized losses. We're witnessing that this mindset is completely dysfunctional.

It allows bad actors to accumulate immense wealth through behaviors that are net negatives for all other participants - further, those bad actors can then use that wealth to avoid or offset the share of their social costs that should be paid (ex: lobbying politicians, paying off regulators, bribing judges, etc)

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There is a reason most people don't accept a deal where both parties gain, but one gains at a heavy advantage over the other: We know that allowing this behavior is bad for long term social stability, and we have all sorts of ideas about "Fair" that we apply to stop it: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/ultimatum-...

> The firms profit should be irrelevant in my opinion. But make these firms believe that they will have to cover the true costs of their behavior!

The profit is the ONLY FUCKING THING that is relevant. The firms don't care about "true costs" (which, as an aside are often impossible to reasonably calculate). All the firms cares about is "Does bad behavior A lead to more net money, or less net money?" As long as the answer is "More net money" The firm is going to engage in bad behavior.

The answer ALWAYS needs to be: Fine the bad behavior until it is not profitable. Full fucking stop.

IMO, all that is necessary is the law strongly backing personal liability of C-level in all industries.

Trying to penalize companies never works in practice, regulators CANT let large companies going bankrupt, cascading defaults of creditors, creating unemployment, etc. It never happens. Also, this penalizes the workers the most.

Once psychopaths have certainty of personal consequences they will want to stay away from executive positions.

There is too strong an incentive to assign fall men to positions of "public responsibility" and then operate behind them at will (profitably).

I'd maybe be in favor of a law that demanded that fines be paid in equity of the company (starting with equity held by the C-level officers and board) at a steep discount on market price (say... 50% valuation).

Engage in enough bad behavior and you become nationalized over time, and then the public can decide what to do with the result.

Regulators definitely could let large companies go bankrupt.

They’d seize 100% of the stock and cancel any exit packages, then fire the board, and CEO, and claw back any remaining fines from the personal accounts and garnished wages of the executives responsible for the problem.

This would protect the employees, customers and creditors of the company.

Of course, it wouldn’t protect the people that own congress and the supreme court, so it will never happen.

To be fair, if you follow the GP's formula, and magically plug in the correct numbers...you'll socialize the gains as well. Because the social losses of the pollution will be offset by the high fines. It's a fair system, it just moves agency for "who can pollute for the social good?" from the government to the private corporation.

I don't love it personally, but it's decidedly not "Privatized profits and socialized losses". It's explicitly a system to make sure that the profits are shared from the damaging-corporation, to the government of the people damaged. In theory, I think they have a great point, which might be workable to inform future fine frameworks (we will always need fines in addition to anything else, and this isn't the worst way to set the fines). In reality, I suspect that captive government officials will set some of the variables far too "in-favor" of the corporations in exchange for backroom deals or cronyism.

But it's far from the worst idea I've seen.

But the issue is that it's not "who can pollute for the social good?".

It's "Who's been doing some serious illegal dumping?".

In almost all of these cases - the issue is NOT that the company simply didn't know what was going to happen (although in many cases this is where they started).

It's that the company hid facts, lied, manipulated the public, and in general attempted to squash any and all evidence that might hurt their profits.

The first is acceptable. The second should be met with termination (as in - the companies that do this should have leadership removed: anything from jail time to nationalization).

> We have a term for this: Privatized profits and socialized losses

We have an even older term for that: The tragedy of the commons [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

What you are proposing is great in a black-and-white world where some party is doing something strictly “bad” and harming society for their own gain, but it’s disingenuous to pretend that everything is “good” or “bad” behavior. A lot of people have benefited in some way from PFAS products, like non-stick pans, waterproof clothing, etc. The problem is that the cost of those benefits was intentionally covered up to influence consumer behavior. Now, the logical thing as a society is to assess what we lost due to that bad behavior, and recoup that, maybe plus some punitive measure.

Look at different products to get an idea of what I’m talking about. For instance, prescription medicine often has side effects. People are aware of the side effects, typically, and make an assessment of whether the benefits outweigh the costs. When we discover that companies did not correctly assess the side effects, we react accordingly, and fine them, ban them from selling the product, etc. But some of those drugs, despite unknown side effects, do a lot of good in the world.

> The problem is that the cost of those benefits was intentionally covered up to influence consumer behavior. Now, the logical thing as a society is to assess what we lost due to that bad behavior, and recoup that, maybe plus some punitive measure.

So go back to the first point where the company is acting in bad faith: Covering up data that shows a danger. Take EVERY fucking cent since then.

If they don't have it? Nationalize them.

You're still entirely focused on the "Recover the commons" side of this, and what I'm saying is that punishment is used to establish the set of accepted social rules we play by. Right now, we're saying

"Lie all you want, obfuscate all you want, Literally kill people to make money - don't worry, we'll only fine you 5% of the profit you make doing it. (in reality: the fine here was less than 2% of the revenue made)"

My attitude is that this is unacceptable. I am not a fool - the world is incredibly complex and I know full well there is a LOT of nuance around this topic.

I still find it utterly galling that we're issuing fines that are literally chump change compared to the profits these companies are making.

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So given that we've been trying the whole "fine them but not too hard" strategy, and we have clear evidence that companies treat these fines as simple costs of business...

At what point do you admit that maybe a slap on the wrist is no longer the right answer?

I’m not advocating for a “slap on the wrist”. Between “slap on the wrist” and “take every cent and nationalize the company” is a very large range of ways to handle the matter.

What confuses me is why you seemingly do not believe companies’ fines should correlate with the damage they’ve done. Your stance seems to be a boolean “company did bad”, which invalidates their right to any profit they ever made. That doesn’t seem very fair.

An example: I went to a full-service gas station once, and asked the attendant for a full tank of 87 octane. I watched him select 93 octane (for an additional 70 cents per gallon), so my full tank came out $10 more expensive than it would have otherwise been. Clearly he was operating his business in bad faith. My remediation was to dispute the charge with my credit card company, and I paid the price of the 87 octane fuel after all. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the remediation you’re proposing seems to be that all profit that gas station made from that point on was invalid and ought to be taken from them, since they were operating in bad faith. You are of course entitled to your own opinion, but that seems a huge overreaction to me.

There is a whole world of shady and fraudulent businesses between “pumped the wrong octane gas” and “multi-generation coverup of externalities that will irreparably damage our health or ecosystem”. I believe the worst offenders should be punished, and harshly, because the damage they’ve done is so great (and often understated in these types of cases, IMO), but I don’t think we should indiscriminately nullify entire businesses over more mild issues.

> What confuses me is why you seemingly do not believe companies’ fines should correlate with the damage they’ve done.

Because a LARGE part of the damage they've done IS the bad behavior. It's the lying, hiding of evidence that things are harmful, manipulation of the public and regulators.

Those are ALL damage. They damage our social construct. That's in addition to the actual damage the product they're selling is doing to our environment and bodies.

I understand that it is basically impossible to bring a product to market without causing some sort of harm. At a minimum you are likely burning oil/coal product and consuming resources. You might also be creating products that we know and understand are dangerous - and we apply rules to those companies to limit and offset those costs.

THAT'S ALL FINE! If we can have a discussion about the harms and decide "we the people" are ok with it...

It's absolutely fucking unnacceptable when one greedy party KNOWS they are doing harm, and is hiding it from the public, because they know having to deal with additional taxes/regulation/monitoring will hurt their bottom line.

The literal harm here is the lying. If the company published the documents as soon as they knew... or were transparent from the start... then sure, lets have a small fine to help clean it up and address it moving forward.

If the company instead goes "Fuck that - I'm going to hide this to make as much money as possible and bank on being fined like I didn't know and was playing ball"... then fuck em, nationalize that fucker.

> I am not trying to "maximize total welfare" where one way to accomplish that is to allow a bad actor to get ridiculously wealthy at the expense of everyone else (even if the total paid by everyone else is less than the bad actor makes).

I don't know if parents suggestion leads to this or not, but I don't understand why we should have a problem with "maximizing total welfare" just because some entity would become ridiculously wealthy. Don't we want to incentivise that sort of behavior? Whether they're "bad" or not?

Because welfare cannot be boiled down to simply "More dollars are here".

My problem with this is the same as my problem with using the average instead of the median.

Imagine two situations with a small group of 10 people:

In situation #1: All ten people have 10 dollars to their name. Net across the group is 100 bucks.

In situation #2: 1 person (we'll call him Bob) has 1000 dollars, and every other person is 100 dollars in debt. Net across the group is 100 bucks.

Which one of those do you want to live in? According to our "Money is literally all we care about because we're morally bankrupt" maximization strategy, these situations are identical, and everyone should be thrilled.

In reality... Bob is living the high life and everyone else is too poor to matter. Great for Bob in the short term, terrible for social stability, because those 9 other folks are starting to think he looks mighty tasty right about now.

That is why punitive damages are typically 10x. (S/P+C is roughly 10).

In this case, it’d be a 10B fine, which is 33% of their current market cap. That seems about right. They make other stuff, so letting the company survive (but barely) probably maximizes societal utility moving forward.

Fine them 10x the ill gotten gross profits and imprison the perpetrators.

3M is sunsetting their PFAS business at a cost of almost $2.3B. If they are voluntarily doing so, consider what future costs might be.

https://www.reuters.com/business/3m-stop-making-forever-chem...

By "sunsetting" do they mean selling it to a Chinese firm? No reason to suspect so, but you'd have to be mad not to, right?

They are simply stopping. 'Poof' gone. Multi billion dollar annual revenue supporting the semiconductor supply chain.

They are not selling the business.

What this means practically is that China will make it and the world will be worse off due to no regulations, but that is how the game theory plays out in the west time and time again over the last half century.

I'm curious how much this is disrupting tsmc...

3M made an exception for key industrial applications. The translation is "In light uncovered impacts to human health and in anticipation of pending lawsuits, we're curtailing wreck-less, excessive, and unnecessary usage of the product in industries where it isn't strictly necessary."

> 3M is sunsetting their PFAS business at a cost of almost $2.3B.

This isn't some altruistic gesture and 3m isn't spending $2.3B to wind down the business. That estimated 2.3 is a pre-tax charge against quarterly earnings that will do littler more than cause it's stock price to dip.

Businesses take these pre-tax charges all the time that lower their stock price AND also make unspecified retroactive account changes that mysterious cause their stock price to rise.

I think a more accurate statement might be "3M is sunsetting their PFAS business to protect itself from future litigation and to leverage a $2.3B tax write off".

This isn't enough, any executive involved in cover up should be civilly and criminally liable per person injured.

Someone here came up with the idea of Government ownership. First fine, 5-10% non-dilutable ownership that the Government can't divest for 10 years. That punishes the owners and adds the headache of having the Government now in-house instead of outside looking in. Keep it up and ultimately the Government holds a controlling stake in the company to force compliance.

People involved in covering up health dangers should be personally responsible for their criminal actions and prosecuted the hard way.

I really don't get that. I would think it's simple enough for the CEO to face criminal charges, unless they can clearly show which other individual(s) are responsible, or very clearly demonstrate there was some special and exceptional circumstances that necessitated the exception.

Instead we call companies people and let them wash things away with money. No one faces guilt, maybe a CEO 'steps down' to spend more time with family until the anti-competitive clause finished and they pop up somewhere else.

As someone on a sibling thread noted, if you limit the personal liability to the CEO, then that creates a strong incentive to make the CEO position into "highly-paid fall guy" while the other people responsible—quite probably even the people primarily responsible—laugh all the way to the bank.

At a minimum, liability must be possible for the entire C-suite and the board.

Depending on the nature and degree of the atrocities being committed, I can see a pretty strong argument for liability for anyone involved in any way who's being paid more than, say, national median salary + 50%—that is, anyone for whom "I was just following orders" doesn't have with it the background of "and if I disobeyed, I would risk destitution for myself and my family." The horrible effects of some of these decisions, and the number of people who have to suffer them, mean I have no compunction about comparing acts like these to war crimes, and we don't allow "I was just following orders" as a defense to those, either.

I was thinking that if the CEO needs to show who is responsible, they would make sure their auditing and retention/archiving practices are in good order and tested and accountability would improve all-round. But yeah, there's always complexities that make things difficult... Still, you're paid tens or hundreds of millions, it should come with some risk.

It will never happen. There's a long long list of companies who are guilty of trying to cover up harms they know exist in their products and the result is basically mass poisonings committed by serial killers, but they never face any meaningful justice. At most they'll have to surrender a tiny amount of the vast fortune they made off of death and human suffering, and almost none of that will ever reach an actual victim.

If we had any means whatsoever to change that situation it would have been done ages ago because it isn't as if the piles of dead bodies and deformed infants weren't enough to enrage people. Recently the Sacklers got away with it too and people are rightly pissed about it, but they're also totally powerless which is why it will happen again and again and again.

> It will never happen.

We can make it happen. It's just a legislative change away.

Legislation is a function of money via lobbying. So law is not gonna change, unless someone wants to spend enough money to make troubles for others. And enough money means "more than others". Making money is "expensive", by the way, if doing so responsible. Like, paying for nature and health damage.

This brings in an interesting dilemma. Lobbying for such a legislation change would most probably damage the initiator.

There has been legislation that wasn't bought. There has been legislation that just had huge public support without major industry lobbying. Lobbying is effective, but it's reductive and dishonest to pretend that it's the only way to make legislative change.

So what's prevented us from passing the laws we'd need to fix this? Yes, in the past the people have managed to make some changes, but none of that prevented this. We managed to get regulatory agencies which should have, but they are either toothless or run by the same industries they are supposed to oversee.

What was the last time legislation was voted on that caused the collapse of one of the largest corporations in the world? When was the last time a corporation that poisoned a massive number of people was held truly accountable and the victims were actually made whole?

Maybe you still think we have the power to make those kinds of changes, but what's your evidence for that?

If we could make it happen then why hasn't it happened? We are told that we can make these kinds of changes, and we have a system that makes it theoretically possible, but in practice, the people are powerless. Occasionally we've found ways to overcome the obstacles put in place to prevent meaningful change, but over a period of centuries the system has been carefully manipulated to eliminate those opportunities. We are plainly incapable of passing the legislation we'd need to fix this situation.

Even if we somehow did manage to get the laws passed (which we can't) they'd be quickly overturned or worked around. We fought like hell to get regulatory agencies that were created to protect us from exactly the kinds of biological and ecological harms we suffer under yet they've all been captured by industry or made toothless. Legalized bribery, a largely ignorant and uneducated public, and a broken legal system all conspire to protect profits over people and nothing suggests meaningful change is possible, let alone likely.

> It will never happen.

That is very defeatist. Many things have changed in our history. Public advocacy can and do lead to changes in public attitudes and changes in public attitudes lead to changes in our laws.

If it's defeatist, that's only because we've been soundly defeated. Sure lots of things have changed in the past and anything could happen in the future, but I've seen zero evidence suggesting that anything will change for the better in this area, and there is a growing collection of evidence to suggest that it won't.

History is filled with examples of companies getting away with this again and again, and shows us that only with massive amounts of effort has anything ever been done to improve consumer and environmental safety, and even then the few small steps we've managed to make toward change have been largely overturned or worked around.

Today nearly half the country has been successfully manipulated into thinking that strong regulation, government oversight, and holding corporations accountable for the harms they cause is a terrible idea. In fact, often it's the people who are most impacted by the environmental and biological harms created by these companies who would most likely oppose the environmental reforms and regulations needed to prevent them.

They're convinced that the economy will collapse if we make the changes we'd need. They're more motivated to vote against "frivolous" lawsuits and punitive damages than holding companies accountable. They consistently vote to weaken people's ability to seek justice, increase the influence of money in politics, and remove what few regulations constrain industry.

Meanwhile, even when most people are in full agreement that something needs to be done, bribery has been effectively legalized and regulatory agencies are either toothless or run by the same corporations and industries they're supposed to be keeping in line. Regulations are written by and for industry to prevent competitors and protect profits over people.

Yes, it's possible that magically one day things will change, and I genuinely think that would be a good thing, but I have zero confidence that it will because there's nothing to pin my hopes on. What reason is there to assume that things will improve?

I think the parent comment was talking about individuals, not companies. At the end of the day most companies can outlast a change in government, which is why the government settles. Jail time for bad actors in companies is probably the best way to deter corporate bad action. I wonder if sharing some of the money from damages with the whistle blowers f* the game up enough to not make it worth a companies time to act in bad faith.

Classic prisoners dilemma. which makes me wonder what the prisoners dilemma looks like with different points distributions for each outcome if it changes the long term strategy. if you can adjust the points so you can predetermine "rational" strategy for an agent.

This kind of response, on a society-wide scale, is exactly what allows these things to keep happening. The broad populace gets tired of being outraged and retreats from the public sphere, which gets captured by ghouls. Imagine the difference between public outrage at a story like this in Finland vs Russia. A strong public bulwark against corruption and abuse is the sum of millions of small decisions to not shrug it off with "oh well, just another day in X country"

"This research is important to inform policy and move us towards a precautionary rather than reactionary principle of chemical regulation."

This is the central point. Reacting to such stuff after everything is poisoned already is a stupid way to go about things.

What is needed is robust precautionary regulation.

Coming with regulation ensuring a good level of safety would be a good thing but it will never ensure that everything is harmless.

It can be tricky to define and demonstrate a specific level of precaution. Precaution is always limited, at some point you have to stop testing and start producing something at reasonable cost.

Precautionary regulation is orthogonal to responsibility of individuals putting public health, safety or environment at risk and knowingly hiding the risks. Even if we could argue that strong responsibility encourage precaution with no further regulation: something too risky would be cancelled quickly or C-levels would risk serious jail time and bankruptcy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_East_(2013_film)

I recently stopped using Oral-B Glide dental floss because of this study [1] that showed elevated levels of PFASs in blood of users of that type of dental floss.

[1] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/dental-fl...

Thanks for the link, going to toss mine too

What did you switch to? I have one of those waterpiks but I don't feel like it does a very good job

I got this on a discount and it has been great. I use a waterpik too, but honestly I feel like it is best at blasting the oils from your teeth before you brush.

https://www.burstoralcare.com/product/floss?color=black

Why do you think that is any better?

The cynic in me says: because it's not a visible corporate target unlike Oral-B so nobody bothered to test it, but it's likely to have the same problems unless they explicitly say they don't and had an independent party validate the claim and possibly an auditor confirming.

It seems to be made of polyester, charcoal and wax, explicitly no PFAs, so what would be the reason to assume "it's likely to have the same problems" if the problem is the PFOA coating?

I found it annoying that I had to go searching through multiple pages to get the full list of things that this is made of.

On the product page[1] I had to scroll all the way to the bottom and expand 2 of the "Got Questions" sections to get info:

> Our BURST Floss is beautifully packaged in an eco-friendly sustainable case, the textured filament has expanding technology for a deep clean. Charcoal coated for adsorption and anti-microbial for healthy white teeth, the unique black coloring of the floss exposes plaque lurking in the mouth.

> Yes The BURST Floss uses Microcrystalline wax, there are No PFAs.

Then I had to search through multiple questions on their FAQ page to finally find this[2]:

> Is the BURST Floss biodegradable? > No. The BURST Floss is comprised of Polyester so is not biodegradable.

So we have:

   - Polyester
   - Microcrystalline wax
   - Charcoal
   - an eco-friendly sustainable case

I can't tell if the Microcrystalline wax _is_ the Charcoal or is something separate. No explanation on what the case is made of. "Eco-friendly" is vague, I'm guessing this is because it's re-usable, not because it's biodegradable.

1. https://www.burstoralcare.com/product/floss?color=black#

2. https://burstusa.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360053208094-...

I also want to add that Burst was listed in one of the parent links on flosses that failed the test for PFAS. (if you trust that site)

> According to our EPA-certified laboratory, these products contain detections of organic fluorine, which is a chemical marker for PFAS “forever chemicals.” This section represents some products that have levels that are clearly intentionally added, while other brands have levels that are more “unintentionally added” from contamination somewhere. Brands with jaw-dropping amounts of organic fluorine we marked with *.

> Burst Refillable Dental Floss Juniper & Berry — 208 parts per million (ppm) organic fluorine

https://www.mamavation.com/beauty/toxic-pfas-dental-floss-to...

I really wish mamavation would link the study they are citing... Did I just miss it? They have numbers, but don't give you access outside of the article or elaborate on the responses of the companies. I'm going ask burst about this, because the polyester or wax should have no flourine as far as I can tell. I have a pfas testing center near me - If I test this soon I'll make a show hn or something.

I don't think they were citing anything. They supposedly performed their own tests. The very first sentence of the first paragraph says:

> Mamavation sent 39 different dental floss products off to an EPA-certified laboratory to look for indications of PFAS “forever chemicals.”

and there's also this:

> Disclosure: This consumer study is released in partnership with Environmental Health News. Scientific reviews were performed by (1) Terrence Collins, Teresa Heinz Professor of Green Chemistry & Director of Institute for Green Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University, (2) Linda Birnbaum, Scientist Emeritus and Former Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and National Toxicology Program, & (3) Pete Myers, Chief Scientist at Environmental Health Sciences, Adjunct Professor of Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University, and Co-Author of Our Stolen Future. This post was medically reviewed by Sondra Strand, RN, BSN, PHN. Donations were provided by Environmental Health News and Mamavation community members. This post contains affiliate links.

Well, they actually do mention an existing study and link to it:

> In a study published in 2019 in the Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology, researchers found that women who flossed with tooth floss product Oral-B Glide dental floss had higher levels of PFAS in their blood than those women who didn’t. After marker testing was run on Oral-B Glide, it was confirmed that this product had indications of PFAS “forever chemicals” intentionally added to the product.

which had a link to this: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41370-018-0109-y

All that being said, almost all of this site's articles are either "This is bad, buy this instead" or "Best and Worst X", all with affiliate links.

Yeah, the affiliate link thing gives it a propaganda feel but I wanted to know where the 1),2),3) linked to. I went to the ehn site and found the same article, but not much more detail. I found the first researcher listed,

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Terrence-Collins

but not immediately a pfas focused study, so just a little confused. If it does have pfas incidentally, I'm guessing it came from a place that processed pfas and microcrystalline wax. I know they scaled up recently, and I'm curiously guessing that their supply line changed... For better or worse I wonder. Regardless, more polyester production isn't great, and shreddable pfas is terrible, so go with what you can find that is best. I haven't gone down the amazon rabbit hole yet.

Well, no Teflon-type chemicals are coating it and it has just worked better being a larger floss - Teflon floss will feel easier between teeth that are very, very close together, but this scrubs more, faster than those types. The word they use, expanding, might be a little bit much, but the way the fiber rolls to the right thickness makes things easier comparatively. Nice taste too I guess; I've tried both. The color being black does kind of help too. My dentist told me about them and gave me a discount... so I was definitely lured in, but the floss is good. I haven't found another to replace it with.

It boggles the mind that shreddable Teflon seemed like a good idea to anyone.

Can you buy dental floss without coating?

Easily. It's more effective, too -- friction is good for removing debris.

Personally I use these: https://www.thehumble.co/collections/dental-floss

It says on the packaging, PFAS & BPA free, the string is made from polyethylene. In the UK I buy them off Amazon. I have no association with this company.

BPA free means nothing. There are many BPA alternatives which are just as harmful. That's the funny thing. These companies love the "BPA free" badge because consumers don't know this.

Like tech, chemistry moves faster than law ;D

Does this affect non-Glide dental floss produced by Oral-B? I'm using Pro-Expert Premium. I cannot find a clear answer but I guess that's a yes.

In a quick search for an alternative, looks like this non-credible Web site commissioned testing by credible-sounding researchers:

https://www.mamavation.com/beauty/toxic-pfas-dental-floss-to...

Without time to research further right now, I'm going to try this Reach Mint Waxed floss (unfortunately from J&J, of asbestos baby powder infamy):

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B013OKRGWW/

Also, I'm not qualified to assess the HSPH work, but if turns out there's evidence that a company did something possibly criminal with PFASs, where should we be expecting a criminal investigation? US AG? States AG?

Why would you want anything waxed or otherwise “gliding” for floss? I don’t get it. The point is for friction to remove the tartar.

Some very small gaps between teeth. No time to research more today; first priority is to stop possibly ingesting PFAS; degrees of floss effectiveness can come later.

What people don't realize is everything has or is made with pfas on some part of the supply chain.

About a third of new medicines are pfas and many popular common ones like Cipro, Prozac, and Flonase.

Engineers going into the field to sample for PFAS contamination have a massive list of things they're not allowed to bring with them because it will skew results. That list includes types of paper and pens, it's truly mind boggling how pervasive these chemicals are.

Knowing something is "toxic" is not the same as knowing we should not use it, or that it's particularly dangerous. Tylenol is very toxic to ingest. So is gasoline. Yet we use both every day. Caffeine is pretty toxic as well. Not only do you need to know a product's toxicity, but also the expected dose, and exposure over time. PFAS may very well be dangerous -- I haven't looked at it closely -- but the reporting has all been a mess.

Even the linked article here doesn't tell us much. In the first bullet, the quote of a quote with excerpts out of context is telling. The second bullet about toxicity when ingested -- again, that's true of lots of products. At what dose, over what period of time? The third bullet about birth defects -- that happens. The question is whether they had reason to believe it was related to exposure to C-8.

As a modern society, it would be extremely expensive to have a zero tolerance position for toxics. Many every-day products that produce a great deal of value in our lives are toxic. The question is one of whether the toxicity is material or likely to affect people, and whether the risks outweigh the benefits. None of this reporting grapples with those issues.

The point is that industry knew that there were dangers associated with the use of PFAS, not that it was toxic but still used safely.

3M's website lists their uses of PFAS, including cookware.

We probably would be upset if they coated paper plates with Tylenol and hid the effect that could have on people.

https://pfas.3m.com/pfas_uses

Nobody's arguing for a zero-tolerance policy, that feels like a strawman. Most of the toxic products we use have very strict usage guides and/or regulations attached.

There's two issues, and you're glossing over both:

1) purposefully hiding the negative effects of your products

2) the lack of meaningful accountability for those doing 1

Not only do you need to know a product's toxicity, but also the expected dose, and exposure over time

Exactly. And it seems that people knew about those, yet chose to hide these things from the public.

The question is whether they had reason to believe it was related to exposure to C-8

No, the question is whether they had a moral obligation to research that and publicize it, given what else they knew and didn't tell. If they had shared the rest of their knowledge, maybe they could be absolved from this particular point if nobody else in society thought it worthwhile to look into. But given that they didn't, this obligation falls only on them.

> Nobody's arguing for a zero-tolerance policy

Well, what level do you find acceptable? It seems even very, very low exposures to toxic products are objectionable.

> it seems that people knew about those, yet chose to hide these things from the public.

Did they? They saw some data -- but data are just data. I haven't seen anything indicating they deliberately hid "unacceptable risk."

> the question is whether they had a moral obligation to research that and publicize it

But that is, in fact, a question in dispute. Not everyone agrees with the extremely precautionary position commenters here are taking.

One thing to keep in mind and that also calls for the the precautionary principle – it's not only does and exposure over time that determines toxicity. Different substances can cause damage during different times of development in humans. There are for example substances that can cause fetal damage if the mother is exposed to it during a specific week during pregnancy.

I don't believe the U.S. has the institutions in place to have sophisticated conversations around this. We will just let China make it and wonder why only their weapon systems are operating under high pressure and temperature in twenty years.

I also find it interesting every article doesn't mention that many of the readers are eating or injecting pfas medicines daily: Cipro, Prozac, and Flonase, among hundreds ...

I think the distinction is that those chemicals you mentioned (Tylenol/Acetaminophen, Caffeine) are not "forever chemicals" and, to my knowledge, there's no evidence of long term negative health effects of either within reasonable dosages (well, Tylenol has some restrictions, but there are directions and warnings on the package).

Also, saying that caffeine is "pretty toxic" seems like an exhageration to me. Can you elaborate on that?

This page has a helpful graphic showing the reference dose for several chemicals, including caffiene: https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2017/04/18/caffeine-40-ti...

We need to be more like China [1]:

> China executed a dairy farmer and a milk salesman today for their role in a tainted infant formula scandal in which at least six children died and 300,000 were made ill, state media said.

Or jailing 50 steel executives for faking emissions data [2].

Fines are the cost of doing business. Jail is the only thing those responsible fear.

Take the example of Purdue and the Sackler family. This company and family is largely responsible for the opioid epidemic by knowingly lying about Oxycontin. They amde billions from it. Despite a total worth of $11 billion a court recently granted them immunity from civil lawsuits for $6 billion of that [3]. So despite killing hundreds of thousands of people, they get to keep $5 billion of that.

Be more like China. But since US corporations own the government that will absolutely never happen.

We routinely use civil asset forfeiture in this country, primarily against poor people (eg parents' house seized after son's drug bust [4]).

Personally I think it's a ridiculous perversion of justice that civil asset forfeiture isn't unconstitutional but here we are.

Every single asset of the Sacklers should be viewed as the proceeds of an intentional crime that killed many people and has had a huge cost of society. It should be seized. All of it.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/24/china-executes...

[2]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-28/china-jai...

[3]: https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/30/business/sackler-purdue-opioi...

[4]: https://www.cnn.com/2014/09/03/us/philadelphia-drug-bust-hou...

They key question is whether death penalty or life sentence acts as an effective deterrent. We all heard that Chinese execute for big corruption. Does this mean China has eradicated corruption? I have my doubts (and believe me, I don’t ever jump on CCP hate train).

I think it would. Why would someone falsify data for a company if they know they might get executed. It wouldn’t be for their own gain.

Eradicate corruption? Almost certainly not. That's not really possible. The goal is largely to keep it below a certain threshold so the country can actually function.

As the death penalty, personally I'm not a fan. But I am a fan of severe punishments for the kind of intentional corporate malfeasance we're talking about.

Here's the lesson I'd like people to take from all of this: markets need strong voernments to function. Libertarianism is a fantasy with no basis in reality (eg [1]). Political movements such as "starving the beast" [2] are nothing more than an attempt to extract even more profits from the populace, even to the point where that society can no longer function because no one can afford food or housing, the drinking water is poisonous and none of the roads or bridges can be repaired.

[1]: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

Eradicated is quite a high bar, isn't it?

I don't think any category of crime has ever been eradicated from anywhere. The question is whether China's measures reduce corruption. My bet would be yes, but who knows.

But we’re not going to introduce death penalty based on bets, right?

I'm against death penalty, not only for corruption but in general. But there's a huge spectrum between death penalty and the almost irrelevant penalties for corruption in most of the West.

Being more like China, in this case, is being hard on this kind of crime, the death penalty or life sentences isn’t germane to the conversation. Whether China eradicated corruption or not, doesn’t have bearing on whether we should have stronger responses to this kind of fraud and harm.

Cover up aside. As I understand it, currently the way these chemicals are regulated is: manufacture and use first, worry about safety issues later. More or less the opposite of how medical chemicals (i.e., drugs) are overseen.

As a result, a buffet of chemicals have been put in use and we know very little about their solo effects or what happens when they interact with other chemicals in the wild.

These companies not disclosing their awareness is criminal. But that doesn't explain why the government refuses to update regulations to be proactive in preventing such substances from being "use first, ask questions later."

Probably the idea is to trust that people are inherently good and not malicious jerks willing to endanger everything around for personal gain. I think maybe it's the way to go indeed but then when it does go wrong the punishment should be proportionate to that trust.

Funny thing is that we have been proven wrong with that for centuries now... Maybe the powers just don't want to learn.

So you think it's better to live under a regime where anything not explicitly sanctioned is forbidden?

Even under that assumption, the interaction of chemistry and biology is tricky (even drugs that have a well-established track record of being safe still have negative side effects for some people). Even moreso when you just let the chemical loose into the world rather than administering it in a controlled scenario like prescription pharmaceuticals.

Medication is tested on men only. So consequences for (pregnant) women will surface when prescribed to them.

Good people make perfectly good mistakes.

We have safety requirements for medical chemical (i.e., drugs). Why can't we do the same for industrials chemicals when we all know those chemicals end up in the environment, in our bodies, etc.?

It's silly (read: insulting) to hear, "...incidents of Cancer X, Cancer Y and behavior Z are increasing and we have no idea why that might be..." Good people want to know. Not so good people turn a blind eye and feign ignorance.

History is littered with good people, with good intentions, creating things with not-so-good consequences.

The topic is people with clearly bad intentions intentionally covering up or obstructing research...

> But that doesn't explain why the government refuses to update regulations to be proactive in preventing such substances from being "use first, ask questions later."

Because people, by and large, like the convenience of these substances. It is not a politically popular position to go around banning things that people find increases their quality of life, even if just in the short term.

See fossil fuels and carbon emissions. It would be trivial to slap a 10,000% tax on them to limit its use and bring down carbon emissions, but it would come at the cost of people not being able to do things they want to do.

> manufacture and use first, worry about safety issues later

And at that point, use something similar that probably has the same safety issues. Like the switch from BPA to BPS and BPF.

https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/pfas/health-effects/us-population....

I found this website useful and I found this encouraging.

>Since 2002, production and use of PFOS and PFOA in the United States have declined. As the use of some PFAS has declined, some blood PFAS levels have gone down as well.

>From 1999-2000 to 2017-2018, blood PFOS levels declined by more than 85%.

>From 1999-2000 to 2017-2018, blood PFOA levels declined by more than 70%.

Of course they may have just switched to other PFAs but it is something.

I also found this recommendation useful-

>Below 2 nanograms per milliliter: If blood concentration levels fall below 2 nanograms per milliliter, people “are not expected to have adverse health effects,” the committee said.

When looking at the charts remember that 2 ng/mL is the same at 2 ug/L, the units used in the graphs.

If we are not going to regulate these in a manner similar to pharma, then we need robust liability framework that would pierce the corporate veil for executives and large equity owners, as well as requiring extensive lability insurance.

What an infuriating article.

What is everyone’s pot and pan of choice these days? I just realized we are still using the nonstick gifted by my in laws. They need to go into the garbage.

I only use cast iron or stainless. I don’t get the need for non stick. Maybe it’s because I don’t cook eggs every morning.

I cook eggs every morning with a pat of butter in a well-seasoned cast iron pan. Works great.

Then there we have it then. I use cast iron for anything that requires heat, frying and browning, and for anything like boiling, tomato sauces or stews I use the stainless as to not strip the fats from the cast iron.

Keeps it simple.

I use a ceramic coated cast-iron pan most of the time, and a normal non-stick for when I really need non-stick (eggs, some fish).

For fish and eggs it’s worth looking into carbon steel as well. You can get basically a non-stick surface without PFAS and it’s lighter than cast iron.

It would be worth it, if I regularly used it. But for that one time a month and less, I’ll stay with the non-stick. Even scrambled eggs work in the ceramic, it’s only fried eggs, and super-flaky fish that aren’t that great in it.

The chips and scratches are the signs to dispose of non-stick pans. Wooden spoons before that, and no stacking harder pans inside of them.

I only use stainless and glass in my cookware and dishes now. Iron cookware is good too. I bought a stainless demeyere skillet that will probably last the rest of my life.

Also be wary of older colored pyrex glass and enamel coated ceramic dishes for lead and cadmium content.

I use a cast iron grill, a cast iron skillet, and a carbon steel fry pan. All very non-stick if you care for them properly (which is pretty straightforward, there are a million guides online)

Nonstick pans are also known to kill pet birds when they off gas during cooking. Would not use.

Green Pan.

Every review I've read/watched universally warns that ceramic non-stick doesn't last long. We're talking on the order of 1 year before it's useless. e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G21f_ny_lxs

It's true. I've selectively accounted for replacing them every 2 years in my budgeting, for now. I also use a cast iron for some things, sometimes.

I recently switched to stainless steel. Had to get the hang of pre-heating the pan to ~150 °C before adding oil and eggs.

Leaded gas all over again, huh... Profits always speak louder

Sadly yes, since with profit in the billions you can buy a few politicians, who look like beggars in comparison to big corp execs. /jaded

Shocked, shocked I tell you! Well, not that shocked.

We really do learn these lessons the slow way. Now watch the media really hold them to account...hmm.

Surely this is the last industry to be doing this stuff, surely.

It should be obvious by now that we should ban all chemicals that don't have extensive, long term 3rd party safety testing/history.

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