Dark Skies, Deep Dark Waters

A Historic PFAS Payout From 3M Settles Lawsuits For Drinking Water Contaminated By Forever Chemicals. Plus: What A New Review Of Secret Industry Documents Reveals.

Photo by Amadej Tauses on Unsplash

As dark smoke from wildfires in Canada blankets Minnesota and other parts of the Midwest this week with a thick haze, it seems appropriate to talk about one of the state’s largest employers and the deep (dark) water they continue to find themselves in.

Last week 3M, one of the leading manufacturers of PFAS, reached a settlement valued up to $12.5 billion to address contamination of U.S. public drinking water supplies with PFAS.

Remember, PFAS is short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as forever chemicals because of their ability to linger in the environment and in human bodies.

The settlement was announced in the midst of ongoing multi-district litigation (MDL) against 3M by public water providers throughout the country claiming that PFAS released from aqueous film-forming firefighting foam (AFFF) has contaminated drinking water supplies (the AFFF MDL).

For years, 3M (and other manufactures) sold AFFF to airports and fire training facilities across the country as a necessary “safety” tool. The U.S. Navy was the first to use AFFF, using the foam to put out jet-fuel-based fires on aircraft carriers. Its use then spread to other military bases and then commercial and private airports, and fire departments. AFFF was used nationally and continuously for decades before its toxicity became widely known.

These forever chemicals have made their way into the ground and into the groundwater, and many people are now dealing with the toxic health consequences. Studies have linked them to certain cancers, reduced immune response, obesity, and infertility.

The fear of drinking PFAS-contaminated water has been building as more research has been amassed about how these substances impact the body at toxic levels.

What They’ve Always Known…

Make no mistake. The manufacturers of these chemicals, such as Arkema, DuPont/Chemours, and 3M, knew about the dangers associated with them for decades and failed to warn those who would come in contact with them.

A June 2023 review of previously secret industry documents by researchers from the University of California San Francisco reveals the great lengths PFAS manufacturers went to conceal what they knew about the chemicals’ hazards for DECADES.

“The chemical industry used the tactics of the tobacco industry to delay public awareness of the toxicity of PFAS and, in turn, delayed regulations governing their use,” the study authors wrote. “Our review of industry documents shows that companies knew PFAS was ‘highly toxic when inhaled and moderately toxic when ingested’ by 1970, forty years before the public health community.”

I’ve been saying it for my whole career. Corruption! Lack of transparency! It makes me sick.

The 3M lawsuit includes about 300 plaintiff communities, brought by the city of Stuart, Florida, in a case being heard in the United States District Court in South Carolina.

“We have reached the largest drinking water settlement in American history, which will be used to help filter PFAS from drinking water that is served to the public,” Dallas-based attorney Scott Summy, one of the lead attorneys for those suing 3M said in a statement. “The result is that millions of Americans will have healthier lives without PFAS in their drinking water.”

Our friend Rob Bilott, who helped lead the first litigation in the country against 3M for PFAS contamination in Minnesota in 2005 has been litigating these issues and working to raise awareness of the threat to public health and the environment from PFAS “forever chemicals” for more than two decades. He served as the court-appointed Advisory Counsel to plaintiffs in the AFFF MDL.

“This settlement with 3M is a significant step forward in what has been many years of work to make sure that those responsible for the contamination of our nation’s drinking water supply with PFAS “forever chemicals” pay for the damage—not the victims of the contamination,” he said in a statement.

Rob’s work has been chronicled in his book, Exposure (2019), the movie, Dark Waters (2019), and the documentary The Devil We Know (2018), and he continues to fight for justice, representing numerous water providers and others across the country dealing with PFAS “forever chemicals” contamination.

Will This Settlement Be Enough To Clean Up This Mess?

Stuart has a population of more than 17,000 people and has already incurred almost $120 million in costs, the city manager told The New York Times, just to replace existing wells. Ongoing cleanup costs, such as groundwater contamination, will continue to add up.

And let’s not forget this is not 3M’s first litigation rodeo.

In 2010, the Minnesota attorney general and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources filed a $5 billion lawsuit against 3M, headquartered in Maplewood, for damages to the environment. The lawsuit claimed that 3M released its perfluorochemicals (PFOS and PFOA) into the nearby groundwater and in 2004 the chemicals were detected in the drinking water of 67,000 people in Lake Elmo, Oakdale, Woodbury, and Cottage Grove.

While the company tried to argue that no health effect to humans had ever been proven, documents released in the case showed that 3M researchers knew these chemicals could bioaccumulate in fish and that the compounds were toxic.

3M settled the suit for $850 million in 2018, and afterward the Minnesota attorney general’s office released many internal documents including studies, memos, emails, and research reports, showing how much 3M knew about these chemicals and their harm to both people and the environment.

Talk about muddying the water! As much as people dislike the legal system and regulatory red tape, it’s important to remember that we wouldn’t need so much legal action and regulation if polluters were cleaning up their own messes or not creating them in the first place.

We’ve Gotta Continue To Make Polluters Pay.

Internally, 3M conducted more than a thousand studies on PFAS and their impact on animals and humans, starting in the 1970s, but documents and testimony show that the company did not share its findings with the U.S. EPA, or with AFFF’s biggest customer, the Pentagon. 

2023 marked the 122-year anniversary of 3M. That’s a long time!

“Many successful companies are founded on one big idea: for us, it was the power of material science to change the world. That’s our purpose as an enterprise, and it continues to drive us today,” wrote 3M CEO Mike Roman in the company’s 2022 annual report.

He also talked about the ongoing legal matters with PFAS, saying that the company will continue to defend itself “in court or negotiating resolutions as appropriate.”

The company announced in 2021 that they will exit all PFAS manufacturing and work to eliminate PFAS in their products by the end of 2025.

“While PFAS can be safely made and used, our decision is based on careful consideration of the external landscape, including regulatory trends and changing stakeholder expectations,” he wrote. “We have already reduced our use of PFAS through ongoing research and development, and will continue to innovate new solutions for customers.”

In May, the company put its 680-acre conference center and corporate getaway in northern Minnesota on the market.

Possibly looking to reduce costs in anticipation of their legal woes? This billion-dollar settlement is about one-third of their 2022 net sales, reported to be $34.2 billion.

CEO Mike Roman and other executives also shared plans to cut 6,000 workers, including hundreds in Minnesota, during an April earnings call.

In this latest legal settlement, 3M did not admit liability. The company still faces PFAS-related lawsuits filed by individuals with personal injury and property damage claims, along with U.S. states for damages to natural resources such as rivers and lakes that were not part of the settlement.

Earlier this month, three other companies, DuPont de Nemours Inc. and spinoffs Chemours Co. and Corteva Inc., reached a $1.18 billion deal to resolve PFAS complaints by drinking water providers.

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