Lawyers To Plastic Makers: Prepare For 'Astronomical' PFAS Lawsuits (nytimes.com) 110
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The defense lawyer minced no words as he addressed a room full of plastic-industry executives. Prepare for a wave of lawsuits with potentially "astronomical" costs. Speaking at a conference earlier this year, the lawyer, Brian Gross, said the coming litigation could "dwarf anything related to asbestos," one of the most sprawling corporate-liability battles in United States history. Mr. Gross was referring to PFAS, the "forever chemicals" that have emerged as one of the major pollution issues of our time. Used for decades in countless everyday objects -- cosmetics, takeout containers, frying pans -- PFAS have been linked to serious health risks including cancer. Last month the federal government said several types of PFAS must be removed from the drinking water of hundreds of millions of Americans. "Do what you can, while you can, before you get sued," Mr. Gross said at the February session, according to a recording of the event made by a participant and examined by The New York Times. "Review any marketing materials or other communications that you've had with your customers, with your suppliers, see whether there's anything in those documents that's problematic to your defense," he said. "Weed out people and find the right witness to represent your company."
A wide swath of the chemicals, plastics and related industries are gearing up to fight a surge in litigation related to PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a class of nearly 15,000 versatile synthetic chemicals linked to serious health problems. [...] PFAS-related lawsuits have already targeted manufacturers in the United States, including DuPont, its spinoff Chemours, and 3M. Last year, 3M agreed to pay at least $10 billion to water utilities across the United States that had sought compensation for cleanup costs. Thirty state attorneys general have also sued PFAS manufacturers, accusing the manufacturers of widespread contamination. But experts say the legal battle is just beginning. Under increasing scrutiny are a wider universe of companies that use PFAS in their products. This month, plaintiffs filed a class-action lawsuit against Bic, accusing the razor company for failing to disclose that some of its razors contained PFAS. Bic said it doesn't comment on pending litigation, and said it had a longstanding commitment to safety.
The Biden administration has moved to regulate the chemicals, for the first time requiring municipal water systems to remove six types of PFAS. Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency also designated two of those PFAS chemicals as hazardous substances under the Superfund law, shifting responsibility for their cleanup at contaminated sites from taxpayers to polluters. Both rules are expected to prompt a new round of litigation from water utilities, local communities and others suing for cleanup costs. "To say that the floodgates are opening is an understatement," said Emily M. Lamond, an attorney who focuses on environmental litigation at the law firm Cole Schotz. "Take tobacco, asbestos, MTBE, combine them, and I think we're still going to see more PFAS-related litigation," she said, referring to methyl tert-butyl ether, a former harmful gasoline additive that contaminated drinking water. Together, the trio led to claims totaling hundreds of billions of dollars. Unlike tobacco, used by only a subset of the public, "pretty much every one of us in the United States is walking around with PFAS in our bodies," said Erik Olson, senior strategic director for environmental health at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "And we're being exposed without our knowledge or consent, often by industries that knew how dangerous the chemicals were, and failed to disclose that," he said. "That's a formula for really significant liability."
A wide swath of the chemicals, plastics and related industries are gearing up to fight a surge in litigation related to PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a class of nearly 15,000 versatile synthetic chemicals linked to serious health problems. [...] PFAS-related lawsuits have already targeted manufacturers in the United States, including DuPont, its spinoff Chemours, and 3M. Last year, 3M agreed to pay at least $10 billion to water utilities across the United States that had sought compensation for cleanup costs. Thirty state attorneys general have also sued PFAS manufacturers, accusing the manufacturers of widespread contamination. But experts say the legal battle is just beginning. Under increasing scrutiny are a wider universe of companies that use PFAS in their products. This month, plaintiffs filed a class-action lawsuit against Bic, accusing the razor company for failing to disclose that some of its razors contained PFAS. Bic said it doesn't comment on pending litigation, and said it had a longstanding commitment to safety.
The Biden administration has moved to regulate the chemicals, for the first time requiring municipal water systems to remove six types of PFAS. Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency also designated two of those PFAS chemicals as hazardous substances under the Superfund law, shifting responsibility for their cleanup at contaminated sites from taxpayers to polluters. Both rules are expected to prompt a new round of litigation from water utilities, local communities and others suing for cleanup costs. "To say that the floodgates are opening is an understatement," said Emily M. Lamond, an attorney who focuses on environmental litigation at the law firm Cole Schotz. "Take tobacco, asbestos, MTBE, combine them, and I think we're still going to see more PFAS-related litigation," she said, referring to methyl tert-butyl ether, a former harmful gasoline additive that contaminated drinking water. Together, the trio led to claims totaling hundreds of billions of dollars. Unlike tobacco, used by only a subset of the public, "pretty much every one of us in the United States is walking around with PFAS in our bodies," said Erik Olson, senior strategic director for environmental health at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "And we're being exposed without our knowledge or consent, often by industries that knew how dangerous the chemicals were, and failed to disclose that," he said. "That's a formula for really significant liability."
They have known for a loooong time (Score:5, Insightful)
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The plastic companies have been well aware of what they have doing to the environment and people with PFAS for decades.
[Citation Needed] and it would be a quite welcome one. We know quite clearly that oil companies knew about climate change for decades and have discussed the Exxon papers at length, but it would seem that the impact of PFAS is scientifically a very recent development.
I mean you may be right, but right now your post is an empty claim.
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Only if you count since at least the 1980s as a very recent development.
That's not a citation. You're just making another empty claim.
Re:They have known for a loooong time (Score:4, Insightful)
That book and those articale all seem to be about one specific PFAS called PFOA, and this has indeed been known or suspected to be harmful for a long time. The author of the book learned that both "3M and DuPont had been conducting secret medical studies on PFOA for more than four decades", and by 1961 DuPont was aware of hepatomegaly in mice fed with PFOA.
But that was not the question. The question was about the broader catagory of chemicals know as PFAS. The health concerns for these in general is much more recent, as far as I know. As Wikipedia put it:
Only since the start of the 21st century has the environmental impact and toxicity to human and mammalian life been studied in depth. Due to the large number of PFAS it is challenging to study and assess the potential human health and environmental risks; more research is necessary.
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I imagine the existing stuff and the current journalist reporting is enough for a lawyer to move a case forward with the assumption they can find a client with potential damages to bring a suit. If the judge at least to move it to trial then I bet this lawyer or any lawyer confident in the case in question is expecting discovery and witness testimony to turn up even more details.
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Only since the start of the 21st century has the environmental impact and toxicity to human and mammalian life been studied in depth
You know we're about 23.5% of the way through the 21st century, right?
That's still plenty of time for them to say "uhm, this isn't awesome, is it? Maybe we should change some shit up here before we get sued for a few hundred billion dollars..."
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The narrative you want to build is that they knew but didn't tell us, otherwise of course we would have done something!!! So the hollywood movie is, if anything, a problem.
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Yeah, now you're gonna raise some pointless objections to waste more time & good will. You're a cancer on society.
Ironic for someone who claims a citation of someone having known something for decades and pointing to a publication from... *checks notes* 2019. Additionally from your other link PFOA isn't what is being discussed here. We've known about PFOA being toxic for decades. Your own mother presumably told you not to scratch a teflon frying pan for that reason. That's not the same thing as PFAS contamination in general products, and not at all related to what these lawyers are talking about.
Nice try though. Also y
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Re:They have known for a loooong time (Score:5, Informative)
https://theintercept.com/2015/... [theintercept.com]
> DuPont scientists had closely studied the chemical for decades and through their own research knew about some of the dangers it posed. Yet rather than inform workers, people living near the plant, the general public, or government agencies responsible for regulating chemicals, DuPont repeatedly kept its knowledge secret.
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It's reportedly somewhere in the court documents.
At this point I'll take journalists at their word, and assume wrongdoing by corporations. Luckily I'm neither judge, nor jury, nor executioner; those shouldn't take this approach.
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You sweet summer child, google Dateline NBC truck explosion and learn about "journalists." And this was back in 1992.
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between who are worse repeat offenders of ethical improprieties - journalists or corporations, I don't think I'm being Rage Against the Machine by believing that most investigative journalists are acting in good faith more often than corporations.
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At this point I'll take journalists at their word, and assume wrongdoing by corporations. Luckily I'm neither judge, nor jury, nor executioner; those shouldn't take this approach.
You sweet summer child, google Dateline NBC truck explosion and learn about "journalists." And this was back in 1992.
So your point is that mainstream journalists might be expected to deliberately mislead their viewers every 30+ years or so?
I'm not sure that example makes the point you wanted to make.
Of course journalists can occasionally cross ethical boundaries, just like every profession in existence. It would actually be kinda weird if being a journalist suddenly made people completely incorruptible.
However, for mainstream journalists their reputation is everything, so overall they generally do try to be as unbiased an
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However, for mainstream journalists their reputation is everything, so overall they generally do try to be as unbiased and impartial as possible (at least from the perspective of their audience).
We live in two very different worlds.
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However, for mainstream journalists their reputation is everything, so overall they generally do try to be as unbiased and impartial as possible (at least from the perspective of their audience).
Yeah, they would never never, let's say, lend their full-throated support to politicians' jingoistic calls for a war that was patently illegal, inhumane, and virtually unwinnable. They'd lose all credibility after doing that...
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Best. Comedy. Evar.
Ever hear of Walter Duranty? The New York Times still hasn't handed back the Pulitzer it was given for his lies.
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So one bad-faith act 30+ years ago now discounts an entire worldwide profession and literally millions of good-faith acts of investigative reporting.
You didn't do very well in any classwork that required argumentation, did you?
If you want to question the particular reporters / journalists / producers that were responsible for that bad-faith report based on that, feel free. However, you don't get to smear all of investigative journalism because of one bad-faith report from so long ago like it's some victori
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PFOA is something we have *ALL* known was toxic for decades. Did your mother not warn you about the dangers of overheating or scratching teflon pans? It's not what is being discussed in TFS or TFA. You're going to need to provide an actual *relevant* citation.
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No, I've been taught it destroys the coating, not that it'll kill me. And I actually have a chemist in the family. It was NOT common knowledge. (3+ decades ago)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
Now stop shilling for those twats.
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Same exact story with leaded gasoline. People were being poisoned at the manufacturing plants and the company paid scientists to claim it was safe.
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DuPont repeatedly kept its knowledge secret.
Insanity. Those executives and their children have to live on this planet too. Why would they actively choose that for THEMSELVES? It is easy to do it to someone else (just don't pay attention)... but to yourself? Seriously, what the fuck?
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"Careful with those wolverines, they'll rip your face off!"
"Lol JSTOR link or GTFO"
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They've known since the 1970s [propublica.org]
And this further establishes that corporations are soulless, wantonly careless of harm in the pursuit of profit. Lot of historic examples. Big Tobacco, insecticides and herbicides such as DDT, the Radium Girls, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and more recently the Rana Plaza building collapse in Bangladesh. The mining industry is notorious for killing their own workers as well as innocent bystanders and dumping huge messes on public lands for everyone to clean up. Pr
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[Citation Needed]
"In one early experiment, conducted in the late ’70s, a group of 3M scientists fed PFOS to rats on a daily basis. Starting at the second-lowest dose that the scientists tested, about 10 milligrams for every kilogram of body weight, the rats showed signs of possible harm to their livers, and half of them died. At higher doses, every rat died. Soon afterward, 3M scientists found that a relatively low daily dose, 4.5 milligrams for every kilogram of body weight, could kill a monkey within weeks. (Based
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Um ok, so the average person with a body weight (in the US) of 80 kg, would need to consume 360 mg a day every day for weeks to experience this adverse effect. A typical teflon pan, before they discontinued use of PFOA, might have had a residual 1.1 ug (that’s micrograms) left after the heat treatment that was supposed to destroy it.
https://montrealgazette.com/te... [montrealgazette.com]
So what is the serious danger to the public that was concealed exactly? Dose matters.
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The plastic companies have been well aware of what they have doing to the environment and people with PFAS for decades. But they have not cared. Why? ... The punishment is systematically too little, too late, so this keeps happening time after time after time again. They should go after the management who oversaw all this, and give them consequences that they really, really feel in their life so that it would heavily discourage the risk taking on the expense of people's health and lives.
This is the problem. It's not that the punishment is too late. It's that the people responsible for the decisions and the people who profit are completely and entirely left unpunished. That's the way that our corporate system is set up. The corporation can be punished, but it's super hard to punish the people who benefited and profited the most. So, the people who are punished are the current employees and stockholders. The people who created the problem and did the damage have long cashed in their sa
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No one from Monsanto or Bayer ever got in trouble for covering the planet in Roundup. Bayer keeps trying to make it sound like the lawsuits are a huge burden that they need to get rid of, but really 50 billion in annual revenue vs 11 billion in payouts for 100,000 lawsuits. Stop making chemicals that cause cancer maybe.
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And even then, right in the summary:
Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency also designated two of those PFAS chemicals as hazardous substances under the Superfund law, shifting responsibility for their cleanup at contaminated sites from taxpayers to polluters.
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My favorite part was when Reagan did away with open carry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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It appears the Union Carbide manager who gassed Bhopal in 1984 finally outed himself. Kendal, why am I not surprised it is you...
Re:Do you really want no plastics? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the plastic makers are all sued for the amounts being talking about and they all go bankrupt and make no plastics...
Well just what kind of a world do you think you'll be living in?
They would never even cease operation. They would be bought within an hour. The two results would be that the shareholders would be punished by losing a part of their equity (which is what they deserve for choosing profits over lives), and the new owners would be more cautious about chemicals that will eventually lead to lawsuits.
The world would not lose access to plastics. That's just silly. Supply and demand would not allow it, plus bankruptcy does not work that way.
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They would be bought within an hour
This is hyperbole, by the way. But even very distressed assets often get bought. For example, note the people that made mint buying FTX debt.
Re:Do you really want no plastics? (Score:5, Funny)
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the new owners would be more cautious about chemicals that will eventually lead to lawsuits
By "more cautious", the most likely thing would be to move production out of reach of lawsuits. Most likely to an Asian country.
Of course, the western world could do something, like banning such imports, but we like our cheap plastics, and are generally happy to pollute other countries.
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That's how change happens though and the more prosperous countries tend to set the example for everyone else. If the US bans these chemicals and puts import restrictions on them it changes the industry, even if slowly. Other countries will move to ban as well in short order after that. Doubly so if it can be demonstrated this is a problem that goes beyond border, much like CFCs which were able to be eliminated to the tune of like over 80% with only small pockets still being produced.
If the negative out
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Didn't Johnson & Johnson already try that with talcum powder?
Turns out it causes cancer, so they spun off the talc business into a separate company that was immediately bankrupted by lawsuits. Last I heard they were in court with the plaintiffs arguing that they shouldn't be allowed to do it, and the parent company must pay out.
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Turns out it causes cancer
Not quite- it may. The evidence isn't good, but there is some.,
The bigger scandal there, is that talc is often mined right next to asbestos.
Generally, makers of talcum powder make sure there's no asbestos in it, but as it turns out, J&J knowingly sold baby powder with asbestos in its talc for decades.
That's the big judgement- the many billion dollar one.
The cancer ones are smaller, are frankly loads of bullshit, and have even been dismissed on appeal because the evidence isn't good.
The game there
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That's called the Texas Two Step manuever: spin off a division and then bankrupt it. It doesn't work in mass torts, at least not any more. The second step, chapter 11 bankruptcy is not going to work. If the spin-off under a huge liability is going to be allowed, the new entity has to be capitalized. If it's got no money, it can't be spun off as a shield from liability. Maybe in Texas.
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Actually specifically it has to have at least enough money to cover its liabilities/pending lawsuits. J&J spun off the talc division, but that division still has to pay. It just means J&J don't have to deal with it anymore, which is well, shitty, but that's the purpose really. It can't just spin off a bankrupt division, it has to create a division to handle the lawsuits legally. Once that's over the division has no purpose and it can file for ch 11, and pay the CEO out a few million in golden parach
And sued the hour after (Score:1)
They would never even cease operation. They would be bought within an hour.
But you have ignored the conditions that brought them to sale, the massive lawsuits.
Any company buying them would face continued massive lawsuits. No company could or would touch them.
The world would not lose access to plastics. That's just silly.
I guess you have not been paying attention... that is not silly, it is the goal (by some).
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Re:Do you really want no plastics? (Score:5, Insightful)
glass isolated power cords no thank you
Wrapping deadly volts and amps in insulation, makes sense.
Wrapping a banana in plastic and putting a plastic price tag on it to be paid for with plastic cash and carried home in a plastic bag, makes a planet want to beat the shit out of the plastic human poisoning it.
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A single plastic card or even several is probably a good trade off for oodles of cash bills, as far as the environment goes, when you consider the energy input.
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but I don't like being tracked. Cash is virtually untraceable.
Every dollar is serialized. Won’t be long before bank tills will come with optical readers built in to get rid of that last loophole and tie you to that cash purchase, time-stamped and correlated with the other 753 public cameras and 17 facial detection systems that documented you between your driveway and the cash register.
I couldn’t even buy a bottle of water at a public event held in a sports stadium with cash recently. Only credit cards. Good luck with your efforts to reman untracked.
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A single plastic card or even several is probably a good trade off for oodles of cash bills, as far as the environment goes, when you consider the energy input.
Well, metal (as in coins) proves to last a hell of a lot longer than any plastic or paper. We should have made that plastic cash out of metal long ago. Metal can also be melted down and reused easily.
Instead, we have landfills full of dead plastic cash, sold under the guise of “recycling”.
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Plenty of other non plastic substances. Natural rubber, silicone, etc etc.
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Well just what kind of a world do you think you'll be living in?
Even in the ludicrous scenario where this resulted in the end to all plastics, I can't be horrified by that notion. It's not like we don't know what kind of world we'd be living in, we've done that before.
There is a big difference between that world and this one: six billion more people. Plastics are a big part of how we've been able to keep that from busting. If we had to make everything from wood, for seven times as many people, we'd quickly run out of trees.
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Before plastic packaging a huge amount of food went bad before it hit the shelves.
This is the problem with plastic egg cartons aside from being gross. When they hit the shelves the food goes bad.
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Refrigeration is also under attack from eco-fundamentalists. They are more worried about a hole in the ozone than about meat being affordable to the working classes.
The sanitation factor is veryu important. Even with the current system we get mass outbreaks of food poisoning. Imagie the numbers without plastics. Or how about HIV numbers if disposable
Re:Do you really want no plastics? (Score:5, Interesting)
Plastics are used for everything, including clothes.
what are you talking about? pfas are quite specific and are present only in a minority of all plastic. they are very convenient but we can do perfectly without. we should have stopped using them yesterday. those who got out will stay for a long, long time.
microplastics are nasty too but are a different problem. we can still use plastic but need to dispose of it correctly. that's not possible with pfas, which also are much more harmful.
maybe educate yourself a bit before opining?
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it's still a minority of plastics, and much of it isn't used on plastic at all (e.g. metal or textile). plastic is a different problem. meaning that banning pfas completely does not by any means send us back to the middle ages like gp implied. we don't really "need" that stuff.
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Things like plastic "fleece", Gortex, stain-resistant couches and carpets are all made with PFAS, which they are constantly shedding into the environment of the home, where they accumulate and eventually end up in you.
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we should have stopped using them yesterday
Yeah that's not even remotely as easy as you think. The very device you're reading this post on cannot be made without PFAS. They are a big class of chemicals used for everything from non-stick cookware to advanced semiconductor manufacturing. This isn't like asbestos which can be trivially changed for an alternate material.
I'm reminded of one recent case of regulation in firefighting foam. We stopped using firefighting foam containing PFAS a while back, end result,... we can no longer put out ethanol pool
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It's not a zero sum game. Reducing PFA use throughout would still help. We don't have to phase it out completely to help mitigate the issue of overexposure en masse.
Thinking like that is why so many problems remain unaddressed.
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Well just what kind of a world do you think you'll be living in?
Suppose it wouldn't be one made out of lego blocks?
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If the plastic makers are all sued for the amounts being talking about and they all go bankrupt and make no plastics...
Well just what kind of a world do you think you'll be living in?
Plastics are used for everything, including clothes. There is no aspect of your life that will not suck 1 billion times more than it does now unless you are rich enough to afford boutique plastic products, or you will be using progressive older plastic products from the before times until they die.
Honestly non even nuclear war I think is as big of a danger to civilization overall, as is the destruction of every plastic maker. This may be the final point where we decide as a species to fall back into the mud, or progress.
Ok, lets skip past the obvious point that everyone pointed out, that they'd all get bought out of bankruptcy, and get to the actual point.
Would you drastically cut down your plastic usage if it reduced your life expectancy by a day? Probably not.
Would you drastically cut down your plastic usage if it reduced your life expectancy by a decade? Almost certainly.
The problem is we're not being given that choice. If manufactures knew about the danger and either ignored it or worse, tried to conceal it, then they
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So you're advocating for continuing to pollute the environment with carcinogens because it's convenient, regardless of the wide-ranging problems we know it will cause?
Do you think the only options are "meh whatever" and "DOOM! ALL PLASTICS MANUFACTURERS MUST STOP AND LIQUIDATE IMMEDIATELY!!!1!!one!!1!" ?
Could you not energize enough brain cells to think of a regulatory regime that sunsets the use of PFAS after X years, giving the industry time to transition out of using this shit without wreaking massive g
I want Coca-Cola - not a plastic bottle (Score:2)
At no point did customers demand plastic bottles from the likes of Coca-Cola. The customers are primarily interested in getting a cold drink - not a bottle. The company moved from glass to using plastic for it's own convenience and cost. If the company moved back to using glass, c
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Stupid US legal system (Score:2)
I can see it now: swarms of greedy lawyers filing class action lawsuits. The goal will not be any sort of meaningful reimbursement of individuals, or even a legal win. Instead, the goal will be to extort settlements out of companies, with those settlements going to the lawyers.
The interesting technical question is: To what extent have companies reduced or eliminated their usage of PFAS since the initial concerns were raised about 20 years ago? Usage before then are not really relevant, because we didn't k
The tobacco industry precedent (Score:2)
In that case the tobacco industry has made payments of billions to US state governments, so your cynicism is a little unfair
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The lawyers got theirs. The government got theirs, and spent "40 years of compensation" in 1 to 2 years.
Yes, this will be grand.
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The tobacco lawsuits and measures were not just about money-in-money-out though, it really changed the entire public perception which really is the outcome we were after and it worked, tobacco usage has dropped pretty much steadily in the 40 years since
https://www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-disease/tobacco-trends-brief/overall-tobacco-trends [lung.org]
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Well... I for one am looking forward to my $9.48 class action settlement gift card, while the lawyers who file these suits get billions of dollars.
The plastic manufacturers will just roll the legal fees into the costs of future goods sold, so I'm sure that they'll quickly get back their $9 from me the next time I buy something like trash bags or leftover food containers.
Headline is wrong, this is NOT about plastics (Score:5, Insightful)
Look on Wikipedia. This includes fire fighting foams, anything with Teflon & relatives, HFCs like R134a, most (all?) synthetic water repelling coatings, etc.
The headline, as common on /. & news these days, is patently false (like most patents): this includes way more than plastics and NO plastics that don't contain fluorine!
Now if we were talking micro-plastics we could be in serious trouble, and I think that'll be next.
Holy Shit! (Score:3)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
PFAS production generates approximately US$4 billion in profits annually, but remediation costs may exceed that figure. One estimate is approximately US$17.5 trillion in global costs annually, amounting to 17.5% of the US$100 trillion global GDP in 2022
Maybe the "privatize profits, socialize costs" model isn't the best for this.
They have two main markets: a $1 billion annual market for use in stain repellents, and a $100 million annual market for use in polishes, paints, and coatings. ... Over the past two decades, production of certain PFASs has increasingly moved to Asia, where there is less regulatory scrutiny. ... In 2022, it was found that levels of at least four perfluoroalkyl acids (PFAAs) in rainwater worldwide ubiquitously and often greatly exceeded the EPA's lifetime drinking water health advisories as well as comparable Danish, Dutch, and European Union safety standards
Oops... who would have thought exporting pollution was like pissing into the wind. Oh well, at least our things are mildly stain resistant.
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Oops... who would have thought exporting pollution was like pissing into the wind.
Nope, it makes perfect sense for the corporations. If you're assuming that the toxic rainwater is what concerns them in the slightest, then you're very wrong.
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In 2022, it was found that levels of at least four perfluoroalkyl acids (PFAAs) in rainwater worldwide ubiquitously and often greatly exceeded the EPA's lifetime drinking water health advisories as well as comparable Danish, Dutch, and European Union safety standards
Hadn't read about that. That's just wonderful.
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Your opinion on Wikipedia is as accurate as your estimate.
"Sir, sir ... " (Score:2)
"... there's some chance that we might actually manufacture something or employ someone!"
"Code red! Release the lawyers!!"
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Some numbers from consumer reports (Score:2)
https://www.consumerreports.or... [consumerreports.org]
I also expect the PFAS folks to lobby for blanket immunity like the covid shot makers got.
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t's not illogical but the circumstances are very different or at least they are so far. Vaccines don't really have alternatives like plastics do and the Injury Fund law only passed since vaccine makers were stopping production due to unfounded lawsuits so there was a public incentive to keep production online. I don't think we have gotten there yet with these plastics, there are plenty of alternatives we can use if this shakes out that the chemicals are toxic.
Subvert the legal process? (Score:2)
"Review any marketing materials or other communications that you've had with your customers, with your suppliers, see whether there's anything in those documents that's problematic to your defense," he said. "Weed out people and find the right witness to represent your company."
Translation: "Bury as much culpatory written material as you can, and start work immediately on minimizing and rationalizing what you can't bury. Get rid of employees who might tell the truth, and find or hire someone who will lie convincingly on your behalf".
What it doesn't say is imporatant (Score:2)
it happens over and over.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
It's a trap! (Score:2)
"Do what you can, while you can, before you get sued,"
That might be a trap. The argument could be made that attempts to clean up are an admission that the companies knew the harm they caused.