A brand-new paper published on June 1, 2023, in Annals of Global Health, analyzes files from DuPont and 3M, the largest makers of PFAS, and evaluates the strategies market utilized to delay public awareness of PFAS toxicity and, in turn, delay policies governing their usage. They are now common in people and the environment.
Despite these and more examples, DuPont assured its employees in 1980 that C8, “has a lower toxicity, like salt.” Referring to reports of PFAS groundwater contamination near among DuPonts factory, a 1991 news release declared, “C-8 has no recognized harmful or ill health results in human beings at concentration levels found.”.
As limelights to PFAS contamination increased following suits in 1998 and 2002, DuPont emailed the EPA asking, “We need EPA to rapidly (like first thing tomorrow) say the following: That customer products sold under the Teflon brand name are safe and to date there are no human health effects understood to be triggered by PFOA.”.
In 2004, the EPA fined DuPont for not revealing their findings on PFOA. The $16.45 million settlement was the largest civil charge acquired under U.S. environmental statutes at the time. It was still simply a little fraction of DuPonts $1 billion yearly earnings from PFOA and C8 in 2005.
” As lots of countries pursue legal and legal action to suppress PFAS production, we hope they are helped by the timeline of evidence provided in this paper,” said Woodruff. “This timeline reveals serious failures in the method the U.S. presently regulates harmful chemicals.”.
Reference: “The Devil they Knew: Chemical Documents Analysis of Industry Influence on PFAS Science” by Nadia Gaber, Lisa Bero and Tracey J. Woodruff, 1 June 2023, Annals of Global Health.DOI: 10.5334/ aogh.4013.
” These files expose clear evidence that the chemical market understood about the threats of PFAS and stopped working to let the public, regulators, and even their own staff members know the threats,” stated Tracey J. Woodruff, PhD, teacher and director of the UCSF Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment (PRHE), a previous senior researcher and policy consultant at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and senior author of the paper.
This is the first time these PFAS market documents have actually been evaluated by scientists using approaches developed to expose tobacco market methods.
Unfavorable Effects Had Been Known for Decades
The secret industry files were discovered in a lawsuit submitted by attorney Robert Bilott, who was the first to successfully take legal action against DuPont for PFAS contamination and whose story was included in the film, “Dark Waters.” Bilott gave the documents, which span 45 years from 1961 to 2006, to manufacturers of the documentary, “The Devil We Know,” who contributed them to the UCSF Chemical Industry Documents Library.
” Having access to these files allows us to see what the makers understood and when, however likewise how contaminating industries keep crucial public health details private,” stated very first author Nadia Gaber, MD, PhD, who led the research study as a PRHE fellow and is now an emergency situation medicine local. “This research study is very important to inform policy and move us towards a precautionary rather than reactionary principle of chemical regulation.”
Little was publicly known about the toxicity of PFAS for the very first 50 years of their use, the authors mentioned in the paper, The Devil They Knew: Chemical Documents Analysis of Industry Influence on PFAS Science, regardless of the truth that “industry had several studies revealing negative health effects at least 21 years before they were reported in public findings.”
The paper states that, “DuPont had proof of PFAS toxicity from internal animal and occupational research studies that they did not publish in the scientific literature and stopped working to report their findings to EPA as needed under TSCA. These documents were all marked as private, and in some cases, industry executives are explicit that they desired this memo destroyed.”.
Suppressing Information to Protect a Product.
The paper documents a timeline of what industry understood versus public knowledge and analyzes techniques the chemical market used to reduce information or protect their hazardous items. Examples include:.
UC San Francisco researchers reveal that the chemical market, particularly DuPont and 3M, reduced details about the health risks of PFAS (” forever chemicals”) comparable to tobacco market techniques. The research study highlights a hold-up in regulative and public awareness about PFAS toxicity in spite of industry knowledge of the risks.
Widely used in clothing, family items and food, they resist breaking down in the environment.
The chemical market took a page out of the tobacco playbook when they discovered and reduced their understanding of health harms brought on by direct exposure to PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl compounds), according to an analysis of formerly secret industry documents by UC San Francisco (UCSF) scientists.
A new paper released on June 1, 2023, in Annals of Global Health, examines files from DuPont and 3M, the largest manufacturers of PFAS, and examines the techniques market utilized to delay public awareness of PFAS toxicity and, in turn, delay policies governing their usage. PFAS are widely utilized chemicals in clothes, household items, and food, and are extremely resistant to breaking down, providing the name “permanently chemicals.” They are now common in people and the environment.
In 2004, the EPA fined DuPont for not revealing their findings on PFOA. The $16.45 million settlement was the largest civil penalty gotten under U.S. ecological statutes at the time. It was still simply a little portion of DuPonts $1 billion yearly incomes from PFOA and C8 in 2005.
As early as 1961, according to a business report, Teflons Chief of Toxicology found that Teflon materials had “the capability to increase the size of the liver of rats at low dosages,” and encouraged that the chemicals “be dealt with with severe care which contact with the skin need to be strictly prevented.”.
According to a 1970 internal memo, DuPont-funded Haskell Laboratory found C8 (one of thousands of PFAS) to be “extremely poisonous when breathed in and moderately hazardous when consumed.” And in a 1979 private report for DuPont, Haskell labs discovered that pets who were exposed to a single dosage of PFOA “died two days after consumption.”.
In 1980, DuPont and 3M discovered that 2 of 8 pregnant staff members who had operated in C8 manufacturing gave birth to children with birth problems. The business did not release the discovery or inform employees about it, and the list below year an internal memo stated, “We understand of no proof of birth problems triggered by C-8 at DuPont.”.