Companies that make so-called “forever chemicals” knew before health officials that they were toxic, but hid that information from the public, according to a peer-reviewed study of previously secretive industry documents.
new Study The Annals of Global Health concluded that 3M and DuPont, the largest makers of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, have actively suppressed evidence that the chemicals are dangerous since the 1960s, long before public health research caught on.
“The chemical industry took a page from the tobacco playbook when they discovered and suppressed their knowledge of health harms from exposure to PFAS,” the researchers claimed in a statement.
“These documents reveal clear evidence that the chemical industry knew about the dangers of PFAS and failed to inform the public, regulators and even their own employees about the risks,” Tracy Woodruff, the paper’s senior author, said in a statement.
PFAS are a range of chemicals used for their slippery or lubricating properties. Teflon and ScotchGuard are the best-known brands of this chemical coating, but there are more than 12,000 types of this chemical, according to the paper. First produced commercially in the 1940s, PFAS were widely used in cookware, fabrics, food packaging and insulation – and today they are ubiquitous in the human body.
Chemicals linked to cancer, birth defects and other illnesses were believed to be “biologically inactive” until studies published in the late 90s revealed their toxicity.
But for 40 years before that, manufacturers of PFAS-based products already knew that these chemicals could Toxic to animals and humans, but withheld that information in violation of public health laws, the study revealed. The internal “documents were all marked ‘confidential,’ and in some cases, industry executives expressly stated that they ‘intended to destroy this memo,'” the report said.
A 1961 Teflon company report found that low doses of the material caused liver enlargement in rats and advised that the substance “should be handled with extreme care” and that “contact with the skin should be strictly avoided,” the paper showed.
Researchers at a DuPont-funded lab discovered by the 1970s that C-8, an old name for the chemical, was “highly toxic by inhalation and moderately toxic by ingestion,” and a 1979 report found that two dogs died after a single dose of PFOA. . A few days later.
In 1980, DuPont and 3M learned of eight pregnant women who worked to manufacture PFAS, two of whom gave birth to babies with birth defects. Not only did the two companies withhold that information from their employees, but DuPont sent out an internal memo the following year saying, “We know of no evidence of birth defects caused by C-8 at DuPont.”
In a statement, DuPont said it could not comment on the results due to a corporate restructuring.
“In 2019, DuPont de Nemours was established as a new multi-industry specialty products company. DuPont de Nemours has never manufactured PFOA or PFOS,” said spokesman Dan Turner. “DuPont de Nemours cannot comment on the allegations in the UCSF paper that relate to historical EI du Pont de Nemours matters.”
3M noted that “the paper is composed largely of previously published documents – as evidenced by the paper’s reference section, which includes citations as far back as 1962.”
“3M has previously addressed many of the mischaracterizations of these documents in previous reports,” the company said, without specifying what they were.
Some public health researchers say that the evidence found in this paper shows that companies cannot be trusted to monitor their own compliance with public health laws and safety standards, and that regulators should take a tougher stance with manufacturers of potentially dangerous products.
“Like Big Tobacco, major chemical manufacturers have a vested financial interest in suppressing scientific evidence of the harms of their products, maintaining the public perception that their products are safe,” the study’s authors wrote. “The failure of the United States to shift the burden of proof on chemical policy to industry means that we may always be chasing the devil they know, rather than protecting public health from the start.”
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