New Jersey Wins $2 Billion Settlement From DuPont Over PFAS Contamination

PFAS substances — per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances — are commonly known as “forever chemicals” because they do not break down naturally for hundreds or thousands of years. There are tens of thousands of them invented by the chemical industry and all are characterized by strong carbon-fluorine bond. They are used in various products due to their water- and grease-resistant properties, such as:

• Food packaging: Takeaway containers, pizza boxes, and popcorn bags.
• Non-stick cookware: Pans and utensils.
• Textiles: Waterproof clothing, carpets, and mattresses.
• Cosmetics: Sunscreens, foundations, and hair conditioners.
• Fire-fighting foam: Used to extinguish liquid fires.
• Drinking water: Contaminated by industrial discharges and firefighting activities.

Studies have linked PFAS exposure to various health problems, including increased risk of some cancers, lower fertility, and developmental problems in children. So it should come as no surprise, given the massive incompetence of the failed US administration, that it has revoked nearly $15 million in research into PFAS contamination of US farms.

That decision will bring an end to scientific studies that public health advocates say are essential for understanding how the widespread used of PFAS chemicals is contributing to food contamination. But for the MAGAlomaniacs, preserving corporate profits is more important that protecting the health of US citizens, and so those funds get smeared with the “government fraud and waste” label so the ultra-wealthy can pay less in taxes.

PFAS And Food Production

Researchers in recent years have begun to understand that pesticides laden with PFAS chemicals and sewage sludge that gets used as fertilizer on farms contaminate the soil with forever chemicals which get taken up by growing crops and wind up in nearby bodies of water, according to The Guardian.

Sludge is a mix of human and industrial waste that is a byproduct of the wastewater treatment process which the EPA allows to be spread on cropland as “biosolid” fertilizer because it is also rich in plant nutrients. But public health advocates have blasted the practice because the nation spends billions of dollars annually treating water only to take this toxic byproduct, insert it into the food supply, and re-pollute the water.

The pressure on the government over forever chemicals is intense for much the same reason emissions from burning fossil fuels raise the hackles of industry lobbyists — profits. But what the federal government refuses to do does not limit what the states do to protect their citizens.

A History Of PFAS

Truthout reports that New Jersey has won what officials there say is the largest environmental settlement ever achieved by a single state. In that settlement, DuPont and its affiliates agreed to pay $2 billion to clean up four industrial sites contaminated with forever chemicals. It is the third PFAS related settlement New Jersey has reached in less than three years.

Mariah Blake is an investigative journalist who has been researching forever chemicals and has written a report published by the New York Times. She spoke with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! recently about the history of PFAS chemicals.

“This class of chemicals, that are now ubiquitous in the environment and consumer goods, was actually developed by the US government as part of the Manhattan Project. The reason the government needed them is for uranium enrichment, [which] involved a highly corrosive chemical called uranium hexafluoride. Almost nothing could contain it, and so they needed substances that could stand up to this chemical. They determined that the only ones that could were ones that combined carbon and fluorine, which together form the strongest bond in chemistry.

“It was clear from the beginning that these were dangerous chemicals. The plants where they were produced commonly had fires and explosions. Workers … were constantly being hospitalized with breathing problems and chemical burns. Around 1943, farmers downwind of this plant in New Jersey began to complain that their peach crops were burning up, that their cows were so crippled, they couldn’t stand. They had to graze by crawling on their bellies. In some cases, farmers were also falling ill after eating the produce that they picked.

“The farmers’ complaints really alarmed Manhattan Project officials…. In 1943, they launched the secret medical research program that researched the health effects of various Manhattan Project special materials. [Those] scientists had determined, as early as 1947 that these chemicals were highly toxic and that they were accumulating in human blood.

“One of the things that makes these chemicals so harmful is that they build up in human blood, and they stay there for a long time. This program continued after the war under the auspices of the Atomic Energy Commission, and by 1970, scientists within this program had determined that PFAS were accumulating in the blood of people all over this country.”

Did they teach you this stuff when you were in high school? No, me neither. Blake had more to say on her research — much more.

“After the war, 3M acquired a license to produce PFAS, and it hired Manhattan Project chemists to develop them for use in … manufacturing … and consumer goods. One of the first PFAS-based products was Scotchgard, the fabric protector.

“Those two companies also began studying the health effects. As early as 1960, they knew these chemicals were toxic. As early as 1970, they knew they were accumulating in the blood of people all over the United States. They subsequently examined thousands of blood samples from people all over the world, including remote rural China. The only samples they could find that didn’t contain these chemicals were collected from Korean War vets before 1952.

“The findings about their presence in human blood alarmed insiders in DuPont and 3M, and they began intensively studying the health effects of these chemicals. They quickly discovered … they didn’t break down in the environment. They also discovered they had a devastating effect on lab animals. In one case, 3M tested these chemicals on monkeys…. The study had to be aborted because all of the monkeys died.

“As early as the 1970s and ’80s, they were linking these chemicals to leukemia, kidney cancer, immune suppression, organ damage, dramatic drops in testosterone. Even more alarming, they had begun to connect these chemicals to birth defects. In the 1970s, 3M conducted a study that found that a certain PFAS caused birth defects in the eyes of rats who were exposed in utero.

“DuPont decided that it would start to monitor the pregnancies of workers in its Teflon factories — Teflon is made with PFAS — to see if their children also developed birth defects. And in fact, two of seven women who gave birth during the course of the program gave birth to children with facial deformities very similar to those found in rats.

“But rather than inform workers or regulators or the public, DuPont simply canceled the study and continued exposing workers to these chemicals and continued releasing these chemicals into the environment, even though there were very simple steps the company could have taken to filter them out of the air and wastewater that was coming out of their plants.”

$2 Billion Is A Pittance

Are you properly horrified yet? $2 billion sounds like a minuscule sum to compensate for the damage done by these chemicals. All across America, officials at public water suppliers are trying to weasel out of installing filters to remove PFAS contamination from the water they supply because it is too expensive. What? Why are 3M and DuPont not paying to clean up the mess they caused?

The answer is the same as it always is in America, where making polluters pay is anathema to governments because those polluters hire workers and pay taxes — and also make substantial campaign donations to buy the silence of elected officials. Federal, state, and local officials have been throwing their constituents under the bus for decades because the notion that polluters should pay is foreign to American thinking.

A Partial Solution

There may be nothing you can do to end PFAS pollution, but there may be something you can do to protect yourself and your loved ones. Recent research by professor Dhimiter Bello at the Zuckerberg College of Health Sciences and professor of environmental health Jennifer Schlezinger of Boston University has found that taking a common, readily available dietary supplement — soluble, gel forming fiber — with meals can remove some PFAS toxins from the body, according to a report by Earth.com.

Two studies by the pair of researchers suggest that regularly consuming such fiber can reduce PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) and PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfonate) — two of the most studied PFAS in a family of over 15,000 human-made chemicals. “By consuming gel-forming fibers such as psyllium with a meal, we can trap PFAS inside the fiber gel, which can then be removed in feces,” explained Bello, whose lab developed methods for measuring PFAS in human tissues and biological fluids while documenting PFAS exposure sources.

Soluble fibers such as beta-glucan and psyllium form gels in the gut that can bind bile acids. That action is known to help lower LDL cholesterol by pushing the body to make new bile acids instead of reusing old ones. Because PFAS share some chemical features with bile acids, trapping them in the same gel is a realistic approach.

In one pilot study, the researchers documented an 8 percent decrease in PFOS and PFOA after four weeks among people who took a fiber supplement. They are conducting additional studies to replicate the results. “Increasing fiber intake with a supplement could be a win-win situation, reducing PFAS in the body with a supplement that’s available and economical,” Schlezinger said.

This research suggests a practical, low cost way to remove PFAS chemicals — take gel-forming soluble fiber like psyllium or beta-glucan with meals to trap PFAS in the gut and send them out of the body. The researchers are now testing other novel and inexpensive PFAS removal and detoxification strategies such as multiple fibers, different diets, and cholestyramine, a medication used to lower cholesterol.

“With thousands of PFAS species in use, we as a society have a long way to go before we can claim that we have fully understood the real scope of PFAS exposures to humans and the environment and their health impact,” Bello said.

This is just another example of how profits take precedence over people. Elon Musk tried to tell us about the tyranny of untaxed externalities — an economist’s way of saying polluters get a free ride — but no one listened. In the words of one musical lament, “They would not listen, they’re not listening still. Perhaps they never will?”

This post has been syndicated from a third-party source. View the original article here.