Hi Sophia,
your linked article is paywalled - subscriber only.

(continued)

The spokeswoman said 3M was pleased the court had granted preliminary approval for the settlement. “We have and will continue to deliver on our commitments – including remediating PFAS, investing in water treatment, and collaborating with communities,” she said.
Jobs for a trillion chemicals

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a class of about 14,000 chemicals invented in the 1930s and prized for their stain, water and oil-repelling properties. They are called “forever chemicals” because they never break down in the environment and can linger for years in the human body.

It was $48.5 billion manufacturing behemoth 3M Company that first experimented with using forever chemicals for commercial purposes.

By 1952 3M believed it was possible to manufacture up to a trillion types of PFAS, but was still floundering to find uses for them. It advertised in trade journals: “Wanted: Jobs for a Trillion New Chemicals”. Then it struck the jackpot.

A type of forever chemical called perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) became the key ingredient in the company’s famous Scotchgard fabric protector as well as Scotchban, a grease-repelling treatment for food packaging that hit the market in 1970.

Forever chemicals had entered the blood of the Australian public by 1975, retrospective studies show. Levels ballooned more than seven-fold over the next two decades.

Average levels in Australians were soon higher than those in the populations of India, Italy, Japan, Brazil, Belgium, Sri Lanka and Peru, although they remained lower than in the US.

By 2003, PFOS peaked in the blood of Australians sampled across Sydney, Wollongong, Newcastle and Canberra at average levels of 20.8 nanograms per millilitre (parts per billion), a University of Queensland study shows.

That concentration was 20 times higher than the “safe” level of 1.05 parts per billion secretly calculated by Dr John Butenhoff while he was a corporate scientist working for 3M and revealed in court documents.

Dr Linda Birnbaum, former director of the US government’s National Toxicology Program, said Australians born up until the early 2000s would be right to be concerned about having been exposed to such concentrations.

“That is a level where multiple effects may be occurring, at least in some people – high cholesterol, thyroid problems, immune effects, kidney and testicular cancers (maybe others), hypertension in pregnancy, reduced fertility, low birth weight babies, etc,” Birnbaum said.

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Price to be paid

In 2000, 3M officials announced to the world it had come as a “complete surprise” to learn PFOS was in human blood samples worldwide.

The landmark US lawsuit has revealed word was already out at the company’s corporate headquarters decades earlier.

During his recent deposition, Dale Bacon, who worked in 3M’s environmental regulatory affairs unit, recalled colleague Frank Griffith telling him over coffee that PFOS had been found in the blood of the community.

“He shared that with you in this coffee meeting around the water cooler, that’s how you first heard about it?” asked Douglas, the plaintiffs’ trial counsel.

“That’s the way I remember it,” Bacon replied.

“Do you remember when you had this coffee clutch?” Douglas asked.

“When Frank Griffith died in about 1980-something, I would assume it was before that,” Bacon said.

Douglas said it was disturbing that the discovery was the subject of such casual conversations among 3M staff.

Price to be paid

In 2000, 3M officials announced to the world it had come as a “complete surprise” to learn PFOS was in human blood samples worldwide.

The landmark US lawsuit has revealed word was already out at the company’s corporate headquarters decades earlier.

During his recent deposition, Dale Bacon, who worked in 3M’s environmental regulatory affairs unit, recalled colleague Frank Griffith telling him over coffee that PFOS had been found in the blood of the community.

“He shared that with you in this coffee meeting around the water cooler, that’s how you first heard about it?” asked Douglas, the plaintiffs’ trial counsel.

“That’s the way I remember it,” Bacon replied.

“Do you remember when you had this coffee clutch?” Douglas asked.

“When Frank Griffith died in about 1980-something, I would assume it was before that,” Bacon said.
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Douglas said it was disturbing that the discovery was the subject of such casual conversations among 3M staff.

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‘A comedy of errors’

Eventually, 3M’s secret spilt into the public domain in the late 1990s in what lawyers pursuing the company dubbed a “comedy of errors”.

“It would be funny if it wasn’t so serious,” Douglas said.

Bacon was overseeing the highly sensitive work of monitoring levels of forever chemicals in 3M employees.

Overwhelmed by his workload, Bacon outsourced some sampling to Dr Jack Henion at New York’s Cornell University, nicknamed by those acquainted with the case as “Horse Track Jack”.

“Jack was from Cornell but he ran a private little side business where he analysed racehorse blood serum in New York state for dopers and cheaters; is that fair to say?” Douglas asked Bacon during his deposition.

“That was his claim to fame,” Bacon said.

Henion diligently attempted to find some clean samples from a blood bank – also known as “blanks” – to compare to the contaminated worker samples. The penny dropped: there were no clean samples.

Henion phoned Bacon urgently to relay his discovery. The news was immediately reported up the food chain at 3M and the company leapt into action, forming committees and calling in lawyers.

“Dale definitely did not win employee of the week that week,” Douglas said.
‘The lid is off’

The following year a committee of 3M scientists, including Bacon, urged management to report to authorities that forever chemicals were in the population’s blood.

Vice president Dr Charles Reich overruled the committee in March 1998, arguing 3M was not in the possession of information which “suggests a substantial risk of injury to human health or the environment”.

Reich had a sudden change of heart two months later, sending a letter to the US EPA disclosing that PFOS was widespread in the environment and human blood.

In the same year, a Post-it note was attached to a draft manuscript in 3M’s corporate files. It said: “John, now that the lid is off, Chris would like to get this paper out, any problem?”

Douglas alleged the evidence buried in 3M’s corporate files strongly suggested a cover-up.

“It wasn’t oh my god, I can’t believe our product is in everyone’s blood, what should we do?” Douglas said.

“Now that the lid is off suggests cover-up, that’s the plain meaning. Gee the lid is off, I guess we better come clean now.”

Thanks Carl,

it's strange because the only way PFOS could exist for a long time
is if it doesn't react with anything -
a bit like Gold which is inert.
if so then how could it harm anyone?