3M May Escape Toxic Chemical, PFAS Manufacturing Legacy

The International Ski Federation (FIS) now bans fluorinated wax in all their competitions, and this wax is explicitly called out alongside cookware in much of the legislation that's going around in places like CA/CO for PFAS bans.

- Dale Carnegie

People care about things that there are campaigns about, that get media coverage. They also avoid thinking about things that they think cannot be changed. These are correlated: if there is a campaign to change something people think it cannot be changed.

So, like, you realy think israel, russia, america, china, india are all flirting heavily with fascism because of their religion, nationalism, isolationism? Or is it more likely they're trying to isolate themselves from humanity to reduce the overall social costs.

Biollionaires out there building their bunkers, and here we are...

Short term changes in Gaza/Ukraine/PFAS proliferation will all have very little effect on the current daily lives of most Americans.

But those same short terms changes in all of the above will have massive changes in the future of most Americans.

E.g., if public pressure had prevented the U.S. from invading Iraq on March 20th, 2003, not much would have changed for Americans on March 21st, 2003. But by the end of the war, that would be over $1 trillion that would have been spent differently by the U.S. government. You apparently like statistical estimates-- tell me how much of that $1 trillion you estimate would have gone to research grants for PFAS proliferation risks and/or alternative technologies over a 20-year period.

And that's just the opportunity cost. With Gaza and Ukraine there is further escalation of weapons use and drone tech, damage to the Chernobyl sarcophagus, potential use of tactical nukes, endless appetite for incorporating AI into war and mass surveillance... the list goes on and on.

It just cannot be overstated how wrong it is to blithely assume that focus on current events is somehow short term thinking while armchair quarterbacking PFAS proliferation 100,000 generations into the future is somehow more consequential and erudite.

Edit: change "stated" to "overstated" (hehe)

In a way, I think people tend to fight for causes they are exposed to and think their voices are on the right side of History. I'm appalled that Belgians are out protesting for Gaza (which is also important) but don't care one iota for what 3M did to half the ground water of the country — and how Belgian politicians and the EPP looked the other way. We're being slowly poisoned over here, but it's the war over there, you have nothing to do with, that matters the most. Right.

We are facing the dismantling of social protections, climate change, corrupt governments, and so on, perhaps people pick the one issue that feels remote enough yet meaningful to fight for.

But someone has to care about Gaza as well, I suppose. It would be far more useful to their lives if people fought for local causes.

I've gotten rid of anything in my kitchen that I can that contains PFAS or is produced with PFAS or PFOAs. I use cast iron or stainless steel cookware, glass and silicone only for things that cannot be made of stainless steel. I've more or less eliminated plastics as much as possible from the kitchen. Unfortunately, I can't necessarily do that with food packaging, but even there when I have an option I will change brands or stores to buy things without plastic packaging, or paper packaging coated in PFAS/Teflon. Similarly to avoid PFAS and other chemicals in the production of plastics, as well as microplastics, I almost exclusively buy clothing made entirely from natural fibers.

Beyond that, I have a whole home water filtration system, and after that whole home filtration system I additionally run an undersink 5-stage RO system, both of which are NSF/ANSI certified (53 for the filter system and 58 for the RO system) to remove PFAS and PFOAs. I also go out of my way to find and buy products that don't contain added PFAS, because unfortunately PFAS are in many basic everyday household products like dishwasher detergent, rinse aid, laundry detergent, fabric softener, and the like. If you dig into this you will be disturbed at how many things have PFAS intentionally added to them, and then you will be even more disturbed to find out how many things contain PFAS incidentally, mostly due to contaminated water supplies.

Even with all of this effort, and more I'm not detailing in this comment, I am exposed to PFAS in the food supply and water supply daily, and in a myriad of other ways. It's impossible to avoid, even with a major budget and being extremely conscious of this issue. There is no way to get away from it. The entire world is contaminated. I don't even know how much my mitigations have any helpful effect towards my health, because it's so difficult to mitigate.

Paying $6B out of $11B earned from literally killing hundreds of thousands of people.

Meanwhile Alex Jones receives a $1.5B judgement (against ~$10 mil in assets) for just harassing people that were killed?

Even involuntary manslaughter comes with years of jail time. Recklessly killing a single human being. Willfully destroying thousands? Nah, just give us some of the money you earned and we're square.

How does this make sense? This is an extreme injustice no matter how you look at it. The Sacklers deserve far, far worse.

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

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

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

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

Just because we don't have a great framework for something today doesn't mean we should not have it, just that incentives have been against it up to this point.

So the scientist who knew it was harmful didn't know it was everywhere and the scientist who knew it was everywhere didn't know it was harmful.

Point is that it's possible to silo scientists in this way so they can't see the big picture.

Another thing we should flush down the drain to begin with

A small business, which practically is comprised of - in the US in most cases 1 employee, or maybe 1-3 employees, most likely related.

That person, who you say did a copyright issues, but maybe I say, accidentally used a chopsaw on someones hand... they're liable.

some fake paper does not reduce liability.

would Enron have been Enron if it wasn't an LLC?

Whether criminal liability needs to flow to individual owners I don't know, but I'm sure someone has done the thinking here about how to make this less insane.