Toxic Gaslighting: How 3M Executives Convinced a Scientist the Forever Chemicals She Found in Human Blood Were Safe
Source: ProPublica
Decades ago, Kris Hansen showed 3M that its PFAS chemicals were in peoples bodies. Her bosses halted her work. As the EPA now forces the removal of the chemicals from drinking water, she wrestles with the secrets that 3M kept from her and the world.
Kris Hansen had worked as a chemist at the 3M Corporation for about a year when her boss, an affable senior scientist named Jim Johnson, gave her a strange assignment. 3M had invented Scotch Tape and Post-it notes; it sold everything from sandpaper to kitchen sponges. But on this day, in 1997, Johnson wanted Hansen to test human blood for chemical contamination.
Several of 3Ms most successful products contained man-made compounds called fluorochemicals. In a spray called Scotchgard, fluorochemicals protected leather and fabric from stains. In a coating known as Scotchban, they prevented food packaging from getting soggy. In a soapy foam used by firefighters, they helped extinguish jet-fuel fires. Johnson explained to Hansen that one of the companys fluorochemicals, PFOS short for perfluorooctanesulfonic acid often found its way into the bodies of 3M factory workers. Although he said that they were unharmed, he had recently hired an outside lab to measure the levels in their blood. The lab had just reported something odd, however. For the sake of comparison, it had tested blood samples from the American Red Cross, which came from the general population and should have been free of fluorochemicals. Instead, it kept finding a contaminant in the blood.
Johnson asked Hansen to figure out whether the lab had made a mistake. Detecting trace levels of chemicals was her specialty: She had recently written a doctoral dissertation about tiny particles in the atmosphere. Hansens team of lab technicians and junior scientists fetched a blood sample from a lab-supply company and prepped it for analysis. Then Hansen switched on an oven-size box known as a mass spectrometer, which weighs molecules so that scientists can identify them.
Read more: https://www.propublica.org/article/3m-forever-chemicals-pfas-pfos-inside-story
A very disturbing story about how 3M knew from the 1970s that PFOS were toxic. They had to go back to the 1950s to find blood from humans and animals that wasn't already tainted by these man-made chemicals.
They had conducted tests on animals that resulted in injuries and death. They then covered up the knowledge for decades.
mopinko
(70,713 posts)great flick if u havent seen it. iirc, after this testing, they took all the women off the teflon line. they put them all back less than a yr later. they knew their employees were having deformed babies. they did not gaf.
and as a long time pet bird owner, ive known about this for at least 3 decades. known they were laying about its heat stability.
thank ja for joe. another thing hes trying to fix.
robbob
(3,554 posts)about a subject that hasnt gotten nearly the attention it deserves.
IronLionZion
(45,886 posts)we can't be having any more job killing regulations getting in the way of freedom
Farmer-Rick
(10,393 posts)3M corporation is more interested in making money then in making good products.
Capitalism encourages this behavior. Doing anything to make more money, even at the expense of the lives of people. Lying, cheating, breaking the law it's all good if they make more returns for the handful of majority stock holders.
Yeah, in the end it destroys domestic tranquility and the general welfare of society but... MoNeY!!!!!!
flying_wahini
(6,861 posts)they have given us.
Hekate
(91,656 posts)yankee87
(2,216 posts)Reminds me of what is going on at Boeing right now. Until we hold corporate executives accountable for their actions with some serious jail time, nothing will change.
not fooled
(5,830 posts)This story likely won't make a ripple in the public consciousness. The corporate media will barely if at all cover it.
What a contrast to decades ago when the news media did investigative reporting and informed the public about corporate malfeasance, at least to some degree. Now corporations and their bad actions get a pass and no one seems to care. Decades of propagandizing the public to hate and distrust government and regulations. together with boosterism for hands-off corporate rapacity and illiteracy about science, have brought us to this sorry state, in which the general population is a giant petri dish for inadequately tested chemicals and anything goes to make money.
erronis
(15,812 posts)and deciding for themselves what is right or wrong.
I don't know if this has changed over the last 50 +/- years, but I bet gutting the Fairness Doctrine along with the proliferation of single-issue cable channels helped.
Hekate
(91,656 posts)erronis
(15,812 posts)How many times do the chemical companies and their profit-driven shareholders have to kill us all before it's finished?
Hekate
(91,656 posts)Article from the LA Times that mentioned research on amniotic fluid that found upwards of 200 chemicals in every sample. ( They stopped counting after 200, I think. )
That just seared into my soul. My kids were born in the 70s and I was as conscientious about my nutrition as I could possibly be.
dweller
(23,873 posts)No harm came to the forever chemicals from contact with human blood.
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