CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY
Makers of PFAS ‘forever chemicals’ covered up the dangers
Widely used in clothing, household products and food, they resist breaking down in the environment
Peer-Reviewed PublicationThe chemical industry took a page out of the tobacco playbook when they discovered and suppressed their knowledge of health harms caused by exposure to PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), according to an analysis of previously secret industry documents by UC San Francisco (UCSF) researchers.
A new paper published May 31, 2023, in Annals of Global Health, examines documents from DuPont and 3M, the largest manufacturers of PFAS, and analyzes the tactics industry used to delay public awareness of PFAS toxicity and, in turn, delay regulations governing their use. PFAS are widely used chemicals in clothing, household goods, and food products, and are highly resistant to breaking down, giving them the name “forever chemicals.” They are now ubiquitous in people and the environment.
“These documents reveal clear evidence that the chemical industry knew about the dangers of PFAS and failed to let the public, regulators, and even their own employees know the risks,” said Tracey J. Woodruff, PhD, professor and director of the UCSF Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment (PRHE), a former senior scientist and policy advisor at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and senior author of the paper.
This is the first time these PFAS industry documents have been analyzed by scientists using methods designed to expose tobacco industry tactics.
Adverse Effects Had Been Known for Decades
The secret industry documents were discovered in a lawsuit filed by attorney Robert Bilott, who was the first to successfully sue DuPont for PFAS contamination and whose story was featured in the film, “Dark Waters.” Bilott gave the documents, which span 45 years from 1961 to 2006, to producers of the documentary, “The Devil We Know,” who donated them to the UCSF Chemical Industry Documents Library.
“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,” said first author Nadia Gaber, MD, PhD, who led the research as a PRHE fellow and is now an emergency medicine resident. “This research is important to inform policy and move us towards a precautionary rather than reactionary principle of chemical regulation.”
Little was publicly known about the toxicity of PFAS for the first 50 years of their use, the authors stated in the paper, The Devil They Knew: Chemical Documents Analysis of Industry Influence on PFAS Science, despite the fact that “industry had multiple studies showing adverse health effects at least 21 years before they were reported in public findings.”
The paper states that, “DuPont had evidence of PFAS toxicity from internal animal and occupational studies that they did not publish in the scientific literature and failed to report their findings to EPA as required under TSCA. These documents were all marked as ‘confidential,’ and in some cases, industry executives are explicit that they ‘wanted this memo destroyed.’”
Suppressing Information to Protect a Product
The paper documents a timeline of what industry knew versus public knowledge and analyzes strategies the chemical industry used to suppress information or protect their harmful products. Examples include:
- As early as 1961, according to a company report, Teflon’s Chief of Toxicology discovered that Teflon materials had “the ability to increase the size of the liver of rats at low doses,” and advised that the chemicals “be handled ‘with extreme care’ and that ‘contact with the skin should be strictly avoided.’”
- According to a 1970 internal memo, DuPont-funded Haskell Laboratory found C8 (one of thousands of PFAS) to be “highly toxic when inhaled and moderately toxic when ingested.” And in a 1979 private report for DuPont, Haskell labs found that dogs who were exposed to a single dose of PFOA “died two days after ingestion.”
- In 1980, DuPont and 3M learned that two of eight pregnant employees who had worked in C8 manufacturing gave birth to children with birth defects. The company did not publish the discovery or tell employees about it, and the following year an internal memo stated, “We know of no evidence of birth defects caused by C-8 at DuPont.”
Despite these and more examples, DuPont reassured its employees in 1980 that C8, “has a lower toxicity, like table salt.” Referring to reports of PFAS groundwater contamination near one of DuPont’s manufacturing plants, a 1991 press release claimed, “C-8 has no known toxic or ill health effects in humans at concentration levels detected.”
As media attention to PFAS contamination increased following lawsuits in 1998 and 2002, DuPont emailed the EPA asking, “We need EPA to quickly (like first thing tomorrow) say the following: That consumer products sold under the Teflon brand are safe and to date there are no human health effects known to be caused by PFOA.”
In 2004, the EPA fined DuPont for not disclosing their findings on PFOA. The $16.45 million settlement was the largest civil penalty obtained under U.S. environmental statutes at the time. But it was still just a small fraction of DuPont’s $1 billion annual revenues from PFOA and C8 in 2005.
“As many countries pursue legal and legislative action to curb PFAS production, we hope they are aided by the timeline of evidence presented in this paper,” said Woodruff. “This timeline reveals serious failures in the way the U.S. currently regulates harmful chemicals.”
About UCSF: The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF's primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area. UCSF School of Medicine also has a regional campus in Fresno. Learn more at https://ucsf.edu, or see our Fact Sheet.
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JOURNAL
Annals of Global Health
Sandia scientists achieve breakthrough in tackling PFAS contamination
IMAGE: RYAN DAVIS, LEFT, AND ANDREW KNIGHT WORKING AT SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES ON A NEW MATERIAL TO BETTER ABSORB PFAS ON A LARGE AND SMALL SCALE. view more
CREDIT: CRAIG FRITZ/SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A team at Sandia National Laboratories is developing materials to tackle what has become one of the biggest problems in the world: human exposure to a group of chemicals known as PFAS through contaminated water and other products. Sandia is now investing more money to take their research to the next level.
“It’s in the news constantly. It seems every day we hear of another product that is contaminated. We saw sparkling water with PFAS, toilet paper with PFAS, so it’s not just a groundwater problem; it’s popping up everywhere,” said Andrew Knight, a chemist at Sandia who has a passion for solving PFAS contamination. “It has become clear to the world it is a growing problem. It is a national security issue of a large scale.”
What are PFAS?
PFAS, an abbreviation for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a group of chemicals used to make fluoropolymer products that resist heat, oil, stains and water. They are also known as “forever chemicals” because they do not break down in the environment but can move through soil and water and build up in wildlife and humans.
While human health effects from low levels of PFAS have yet to be defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, scientists have documented 12 types of PFAS in people tested and four types of PFAS in every human tested, revealing widespread exposure in the U.S. population. Tests on laboratory animals using high levels of PFAS exposure have shown an increased risk of cancer, liver damage and compromised immune systems.
PFAS are found in products including Teflon, fast food packaging, pesticides, eye makeup, cleaning products, dental floss and shampoo. However, one of the biggest contaminations identified in recent years is the groundwater under U.S. Air Force bases, which is a result of the use of PFAS-containing firefighting foam.
Creating a unique solution
Knight has been working with Ryan Davis, who specializes in materials science, to create a filter that could not only eliminate PFAS in water on a large scale but also in a household setting. “This could be something that could be deployed for major remediations or could be something that could be kept under your sink. If the initial treatment is already done, what does come through the water treatment facility through your faucet can be filtered by you, prior to end use,” Knight said.
To do this, the team must approach things differently. PFAS do not degrade on their own because the carbon-fluorine bond is so strong. They are also not the only pollutants present. This results in a sort of competition, during absorption efforts. “We are working to design materials that are more selective in absorbing PFAS. Traditional methods involve ion exchange of resins or granulated activated carbon. While these are effective at absorbing some PFAS, they lack specificity and versatility,” Knight said.
With $100,000 in recently awarded funds from the Sandia Technology Maturation Program, the team hopes to build its data to show how well the materials work. The goal is to commercialize the product to remove 99% of PFAS from water. “Our analytical lab here at Sandia is much better equipped than your average analytical lab, with Andrew’s synthetic capability and our analytical capability. It really is a perfect match,” Davis said.
A different approach inspired by nature
This project is just one of several on which these Sandia researchers are working to tackle PFAS contamination. Joined by geoscientist Mark Rigali and materials scientist Jessica Kustas, they are partnering with a local business to try a different approach that goes beyond just capturing PFAS. “It’s a one-two punch as we are combining two different technologies to develop something more effective than either one individually,” Rigali said. The materials they are working with are inspired by nature. Rigali is particularly interested in how PFAS behave in the body. He looked to medical literature for guidance and got the idea of creating a material that targets and absorbs PFAS by mimicking its behavior in humans, an approach that appears promising.
Some of their work is being paid for with $150,000 in funding from the New Mexico Technology Readiness Initiative. Through the program, Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories can provide technical assistance to help private companies mature technology. In this case, researchers are working with New Mexico-based Sigma Advanced Technologies, LLC.
The inspiration behind the project
The inspiration for this project also comes from personal experience. Kustas completed her post-doc with the U.S. Army where she tested water at military bases for PFAS. She found that the contamination was widespread, not just in those locations. “It’s a little scary. I saw a figure that this ‘forever chemical’ is in the blood of 97 % of the U.S. population. We consume more plastic than we realize. It used to be just in plastics, but now it’s in water and in all the animals we eat because their bodies don’t know how to break it down,” Kustas said.
For others on the team, it’s about accomplishing what no one else has. “Honestly, I like hard problems, and I like problems that can have very impactful solutions. If we can find a better way to treat PFAS, we can positively impact not only the U.S. but also places around the world,” Rigali said.
This team believes Sandia is the perfect place to accomplish this. “It’s a large-scale problem, and with Sandia’s mission of national security, water security and energy security, it’s important for Sandia to get involved. It’s something Sandia can directly tackle and address,” Knight said.
Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. Sandia Labs has major research and development responsibilities in nuclear deterrence, global security, defense, energy technologies and economic competitiveness, with main facilities in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Livermore, California.
Sandia news media contact: Kim Vallez Quintana, kdquint@sandia.gov
Andrew Knight mixes a sample at Sandia National Laboratories while working on the problem of PFAS contamination.
Jessica Kustas, left, and Andre Benally work with a mass spectrometer at Sandia National Laboratories while trying to pair up technologies to go beyond just absorbing PFAS.
CREDIT
Craig Fritz - Sandia National Laboratories
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