“The point of this analysis and the work we’re doing is to understand-in the industry’s own words-how they’re manipulating science and the communication of science towards the benefit of profit over the public’s health,” Tracey Woodruff, a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences and one of the authors of the study, said in an interview. It also underscores the importance of greater transparency in crafting regulations. Studying the documents from the corporations helps to broaden the understanding of how industry sources manipulate and withhold scientific data for financial gain, the researchers said. Researchers who examined the confidential papers of the two companies said that those settlements, while a step in the right direction, should be considered only part of remedying the harms caused by the chemical manufacturer. The 3M settlement came weeks after officials at DuPont agreed to pay $1.1 billion to resolve a similar set of lawsuits that they faced over water contamination. Officials at 3M, who last year said that they would stop producing the chemicals by 2025, announced Thursday they had reached a $10.3 billion settlement in a series of lawsuits that would require them to remediate PFAS contamination in public water systems. That’s when the environmental lawyer Robert Bilott secured the documents through a court order and shared his findings with the Environmental Protection Agency in a 19-page letter that described the substances as an imminent threat to public health.Įarlier this year, more than two decades after Billot’s warning, federal officials began taking the first steps to ban the substances. The files concerning PFAS from DuPont and 3M-the two largest makers of forever chemicals-contain internal memos, external correspondence, the results of concealed scientific studies and more stretching over the course of a half century, first came into public view more than 20 years ago. The substances, which were often used in the manufacture of non-stick pans, firefighting foam and water-resistant products, are also believed to be present in most of the world’s waterways. PFAS chemicals are so potent and so resistant to decay that they are commonly called “forever chemicals.” Since their creation in the 1940s, they have become so widespread that they are now believed to be in the bloodstream of virtually everyone on the planet.Įxposure to forever chemicals, researchers say, can increase the risk of cancer and a range of other health problems. A group of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco conducted a detailed analysis of hundreds of pages of previously secret documents from DuPont and 3M that outlined the efforts by the companies to hide the risks associated with the group of man-made chemicals commonly known by the acronym PFAS (pronounced: pee-fass) which stands for per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances. “They definitely took that same page from the tobacco industry where it continues to be all about money,” he said.Ī recent peer-reviewed study has found that Bailey’s comparison is an appropriate one. Maybe they really were just saying, ‘This was just an anomaly.’ And to see these documents where they were talking about it, they knew about it, and they chose to completely ignore it….” “I was always kind of, like, ‘Well, maybe they just didn’t know. “That was the clinching point for me,” Bailey said in an interview on Thursday. Then he began reviewing decades of DuPont’s own confidential files, which were made public through a raft of court proceedings over the past 20 years. He survived, and his early childhood was marked by dozens of surgeries to address the birth defects that his mother, a worker at a DuPont plant in West Virginia, initially struggled to explain.īut still-years after evidence began to emerge that the chemical manufacturer engaged in a cover-up about the dangers of so-called “forever chemicals”-Bucky Bailey, now 42, wondered if the ailments that he and so many other people suffered might have all just been a catastrophic, but unmalicious mistake. His condition was so grave that physicians warned his mother that he might not survive more than a few hours after his birth. He was born with only one nostril, and a keyhole-shaped pupil in his right eye covered by a deformed lid.
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