For at least 21 years, company leaders at DuPont – the maker of Teflon – and 3M – the maker of Scotchgard – sat on some seriously concerning results.
In internal research, two of their most popular chemicals, called PFOS and PFOA, were proving to have all sorts of adverse health effects that government officials weren't made aware of.more than 7,000 tons of PFAS-laced sludge into the Ohio River, did the company's secrets first come to light. Now, a small sampling of company documents from DuPont and 3M, spanning 1961 to 2006, has allowed researchers to assemble a timeline of the deception.
These documents were initially obtained by the attorney Robert Bilott, who successfully sued DuPont for PFAS contamination in the early 2000s. More recently, these documents were donated to researchers at the University of California, San Francisco , by the producers of a 2018 investigative documentary on DuPont called"Having access to these documents allows us to see what the manufacturers knew and when, but also how polluting industries keep critical public health information private,""This research is important to inform policy and move us towards a precautionary rather than reactionary principle of chemical...