3M Knew! Toxic Teflon Cover-Up Was Decades Long

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Toxic Teflon? You mean that set of cooking pans my parents swore by as state-of-the-art was, actually, transferring toxins to our family? And it’s much more than Teflon that’s now known to be toxic — it’s fabric protectors and firefighting foam, among other common items. A lawsuit filed by Minnesota against 3M, the company that first developed and sold these per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), has revealed that the company knew for more than 40 years that these chemicals were accumulating in people’s blood. An in-depth investigation by Sharon Lerner at The Intercept has uncovered many layers of conspiracy and deception, with the public as the ultimate victim.

Definitions and Background

PFAS encompass a whole family of synthetic chemicals that contain a carbon and fluorine atom backbone. There are hundreds of known PFAS compounds with varying functional groups, which can include other elements such as oxygen, hydrogen, or sulfur. 

PFAS compounds became common applications in the 1950s and ’60s and are now part of hundreds of industrial processes and consumer products. They are considered useful because they are resistant to heat, water, and oil. Consumers may be exposed to PFASs in non-stick cookware, grease-resistant paper, fast food wrappers, microwave popcorn bags, stain-resistant carpets and fabrics, water-resistant clothing, cleaning products, and personal care products.

According to the American Cancer Society, Teflon® is a brand name for the human-made chemical known as polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), one of the PFAS. It has been in commercial use since the 1940s and has a wide variety of applications due to its stability. PTFE doesn’t react with other chemicals and can provide an almost frictionless surface. Think of it as that non-stick coating surface that you see on lots of pans and other cookware.

PFAS are also used in industrial processes and, notably, in firefighting foams used by the military, airport authorities, and local fire and rescue agencies. The EPA says that it is these foams that are most often implicated when PFAS is found in groundwater or in the environment and that some PFAS take a very long time to break down in the environment and our bodies. As a result, they have the potential to build up in the organs and tissues of humans and animals. Animals further up the food chain — such as humans — may accumulate even more of the chemicals in their bodies when they eat plants or other animals that have been exposed to PFAS.

Research has shown that another type of PFAS, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), can increase people’s levels of triglycerides, which are a type of fat, and cholesterol, both of which can increase the chance of heart disease.

The Toxic Teflon Cover-Up and Its Consequences

3M has downplayed, avoided, and reframed research conclusions about the PFAS it produced. Its happy facade makes the PFAS compounds appear safer than they are, according to the documents made public by Minnesota’s attorney general.

In several cases, 3M appears to have not pursued further research based on discoveries that suggested the chemicals posed harm, and the company also relied on a number of paid scientists who neglected to disclosed their funding from 3M. Several government officials also understood the vast dangers that PFAS posed without informing the general public.

Timeline of Who Knew What & When about Toxic Teflon

Scientists, 3M researchers, and government officials have known about the dangers presented by these industrial PFAS chemicals for decades. The complexity of the coverup is most evident when seen as a timeline of events.

In 1947, the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company (3M) began producing perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) by electrochemical fluorination.

In the 1950s, 3M expanded worldwide with operations in Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, Australia, and the United Kingdom.

In 1951, DuPont started purchasing PFOA from 3M for use in the manufacturing of teflon, a product that brought DuPont a billion dollars a year profit by the 1990s. DuPont referred to PFOA as C8.

In the 1970s, 3M had evidence of the compounds’ effects on the immune system. Those studies are just now driving the lower levels put forward by the ATSDR, several states, and the European Union.

In 1993, scientific literature states that goats passed PFOS to their offspring through their milk.

In 1998, a discovery is made that PFOS had found its way into eagles found in the wild.

In 2000, 3M gave the EPA hundreds of documents it had withheld from the agency. This means that these documents were in the EPA’s possession for at least 18 years without the agency taking definitive action. PFAS were allowed to spread into groundwater and then drinking water, families, animals, plants, and the food system, where they remain today.

Since 2000, the number of scientific articles published on the health effects of PFAS has increased more than tenfold. The findings have linked the chemicals to a wide range of health effects in people, including testicular and kidney cancer, obesity, impaired fertility, thyroid disease, and the onset of puberty.

In 2001, 3M staff epidemiologist Geary Olsen wrote a report based on an enormous database of more than 55,000 products and more than 90,000 3M employees. The report stated that a positive association existed between the amount of PFOA in workers’ blood and their levels of cholesterol and triglycerides.

In 2003, Olsen and 3 co-authors  — all 3M employees — published an article in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine that contradicted Olsen’s original research. “There were no substantial changes in hematological, lipid, hepatic, thyroid, or urinary parameters consistent with the known toxicological effects of PFOS or PFOA.” The authors note that PFOA was “positively associated with cholesterol and triglycerides” and that “serum PFOS was positively associated with the natural log of serum cholesterol … and triglycerides” but dismiss these effects as “minimal.” The article omits most of the original information that laid out the increase in cholesterol and triglycerides in exposed workers.

In 2005, many of the 3M documents were placed under seal as a result of a separate lawsuit over PFAS contamination in Minnesota.

In 2006, 3M was slapped with more than $1.5 million in penalties for 244 violations of the Toxic Substances Control Act.

In 2010, the Minnesota attorney general filed a lawsuit that charged that 3M polluted groundwater with PFAS compounds and “knew or should have known” that these chemicals harm human health and the environment and “result in injury, destruction, and loss of natural resources of the State.”

In 2012, Robert Delaney, a Minnesota state scientist who tried to raise alarms about the chemicals, was largely ignored. Now Delaney, who delivered a report to his superiors about high levels of the chemicals in fish and the dangers they presented to people, has been “heralded as prophetic.”

In February, 2018, 3M settled the suit for $850 million, in essence admitting that they “acted with a deliberate disregard for the high risk of injury to the citizens and wildlife of Minnesota.” The Minnesota Attorney General’s Office released a large set of documents — including internal studies, memos, emails, and research reports — detailing what 3M knew about the chemicals’ harms.

The EPA says it remains committed to evaluating PFOA and PFOS under the regulatory determination process using the best available science. As a part of the evaluation, EPA will be reviewing all newly available scientific information including the Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry (ATSDR) report. (Their 2-page fact sheet is quite helpful.)

The EPA says it is taking steps to accelerate the determination process before the existing statutory deadline, which is 2021.

Final Thoughts

Lerner’s investigation has uncovered how the EPA pressured the federal ATSDR to suppress a study showing PFAS chemicals. The delay is another in a series of blatant missed opportunities for the government to get critical health information to the public.

Yes, 3M paid its fines, but the decades of secrecy have allowed PFAS chemicals from the company’s facilities to enter the water in Minnesota, Alabama, and elsewhere. PFOS and PFOA were accumulating in the environment and in people, the vast majority of whom now have the chemicals in their blood.

The lag in getting scientific information to regulators resulted in prolonged public exposure to the chemicals, as Philippe Grandjean argues in an editorial in the journal Environmental Health. A physician and environmental health scholar who has studied the immune effects of PFAS and provided expert testimony for Minnesota in the 3M case, Grandjean argues that regulators should learn from this massive misstep, and that substitutes for PFOS and PFOA “should be subjected to prior scrutiny before widespread usage.”

3M’s fluorochemicals helped the company expand into a multibillion dollar entity it is today. Lerner argues that “the real-life implications of this careful curation of the scientific record on PFAS is still coming into relief as the public begins to grapple with the likelihood that the EPA’s safety levels for these two chemicals are far too high.” She points to a study released by the ATSDR in June that calculated the limit for PFOS and PFOA in drinking water ought to be around 7 and 11 parts per trillion or ppt, respectively, just a fraction of the 70 ppt that the EPA set for the chemicals in 2016.

The number of people thought to be affected by this contamination continues to expand as the scientific information is refined. In Minnesota, where 3M is headquartered and the lawsuit was filed. PFAS water contamination is now a national — and international — issue. Using data collected by the EPA, the Environmental Working Group calculated that more than 100 million Americans may be have some level of PFAS in their drinking water.

Philippe Grandjean, who has been a physician and environmental health researcher for more than 40 years, has also been affected by the realization of just how long he and others were kept in the dark about the harms of the chemicals. “I lost my confidence in the scientific literature,” said Grandjean. As he sees it, his whole profession has been stained by the experience. “We in my field have failed.”

Photo by JPC24M on TrendHype / CC BY-SA

Source: Sharon Lerner and The Intercept