[HN Gopher] 3M heads to trial in 'existential' $143B forever-che...
___________________________________________________________________
3M heads to trial in 'existential' $143B forever-chemicals
litigation
Author : batmenace
Score : 251 points
Date : 2023-06-09 15:20 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Is this similar to "C8" / DuPont?
| greenie_beans wrote:
| put a fuckin CEO in jail for once
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| They are in elderly care or dead. This is from the 70s-80s.
| aio2 wrote:
| agreed
| [deleted]
| patapong wrote:
| I always find the discrepancy between drugs and chemicals odd.
| Drugs require years of research to prove that they are safe,
| whereas chemicals can seemingly be put into the environment as
| long as they are not proven to cause harm, and even then in some
| cases, despite the effects of chemicals being released into the
| environment potentially causing very bad effects.
| omeysalvi wrote:
| Johnson and Johnson tried to spin up a subsidiary and shift all
| the blame to it for including asbestos in talcum powder for
| decades. Thankfully, the courts saw through the move and made
| them pay billions of dollars too
| delfinom wrote:
| J&J ended up paying $9 billion but they still ended up being
| allowed to spin a subsidiary to hold that money and essentially
| take on the liability of future lawsuits or what happens when
| the money runs out and there are more claims.
| hackernewds wrote:
| What if this subsidiary has $1B in assets? Do they go
| bankrupt and not have to pay the rest of the $8B?
| arpora wrote:
| Would recommend the Matt Levine write-up:
| https://archive.is/44wfu
|
| In the J&J case, the subsidiary had the right to draw at
| least ~$60B in order to pay off future lawsuits if the
| initial subsidiary's assets ran out, so there was never any
| real risk that it would leave suitholders unpaid. The
| switch into bankruptcy court is a way to arbitrate and
| organize the lawsuits, which was overturned because given
| the right to draw money from the J&J parent co the
| subsidiary wasn't actually at risk of bankruptcy.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| See also DuPont spinning out Chemours
|
| https://www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/2023/06/08/critics-s...
| jeff-davis wrote:
| If the chemicals are bad, and everywhere, we need a reaction time
| faster than 50 years.
|
| For new inventions (not well-known issues), it would be far
| better to be fast-reacting and no-fault rather than slow-reacting
| with vengeance.
|
| Run studies as the use of the chemicals scales up and start
| raising warnings early so the company has time to collect more
| information and adapt formulas or applications. As the costs
| become apparent, start placing those costs on the companies ahead
| of time rather than 50 years later. That will sort out who really
| needs the new chemical, versus who just wants to spray it
| everywhere.
| eesmith wrote:
| > Run studies as the use of the chemicals scales up and start
| raising warnings early so the company has time to collect more
| information and adapt formulas or applications
|
| Part of the issue, and why this is 'existential', is that 3M
| appears to have known about the issues and deliberately hid the
| studies from the government or downplayed them. See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_subst...
| citing https://theintercept.com/2018/07/31/3m-pfas-minnesota-
| pfoa-p... where you can read:
|
| ] A lawsuit filed by Minnesota against 3M, the company that
| first developed and sold PFOS and PFOA, the two best-known PFAS
| compounds, has revealed that the company knew that these
| chemicals were accumulating in people's blood for more than 40
| years. 3M researchers documented the chemicals in fish, just as
| the Michigan scientist did, but they did so back in the 1970s.
| That same decade, 3M scientists realized that the compounds
| they produced were toxic. The company even had evidence back
| then of the compounds' effects on the immune system, studies of
| which are just now driving the lower levels put forward by the
| ATSDR, as well as several states and the European Union.
|
| For a large company like 3M, the goal isn't to figure out who
| really needs the new chemical, it's to figure out how to profit
| the most from that chemical. And who will fund all the testing
| required? I can just hear the cry of "too much government
| paperwork" and "bureaucratic obstacles in the way of the
| innovation and the free market."
| missedthecue wrote:
| Sometimes it's not possible to get fast reaction times. If I
| were the first person to invent asbestos, I could use it for
| the next 20 or 30 years and not get any symptoms. But of course
| we know in hindsight it is highly carcinogenic.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Prozac, Lipitor, Flonase and about of third of new
| pharmaceuticals are PFAS. Humans can figure out how to use this
| technology. Destroying 3M just means it gets made in China with
| no oversight.
|
| Lawyers will win in the end regardless of what happens.
| pcurve wrote:
| The chemicals in question are of type PFAS and believe it or not,
| they're still legal to use today, though they're being phased out
| and banned in a few years.
|
| The problem is 3M scientists have know toxicity to human and have
| withheld the information to the public and regulators. Since
| 1970s.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Requiring a business to report what it knows, but not requiring
| it to actually know in the first place, is a mess of
| enforcement challenge.
|
| Instead, government should require disclosure of new chemicals,
| tax the chemical industry (or use general fund), and perform
| its own studies on new chemicals.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| All those paper replacements for things like straws are coated
| with them :)
| nazka wrote:
| This is insane... We know it's dangerous. But here it is
| still used in food ustensiles used by millions.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Prozac is PFAS. Everything is toxic when it hits a certain
| human concentration levels. Now that we know, we have to
| manage waste better.
| baxtr wrote:
| Is it possible to determine a number of casualties through the
| withholding of information? I vaguely remember that there was
| number of induced deaths in the VW scandal.
| sneak wrote:
| I still walk into high end restaurants that put water resistant
| cardboard straws covered in PFAs into my drink.
|
| Sometimes I send them back and ask for another; always I remove
| the straw quickly.
| digging wrote:
| Wait, what kind of drinks from what kind of high end
| restaurants are coming with straws?
|
| And why don't you just ask for a drink without a straw
| instead of removing it later?
| ok_dad wrote:
| Oh boy, this PFAS stuff makes me feel bad because I recall
| using aqueous film forming foam as deck washing liquid in the
| Navy. AFFF contains a lot of PFAS, I found out a while ago. We
| just thought it was a good cleaner. I wonder if I'll have any
| personal medical issues from dealing with that stuff in my
| youth?
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| I would get frequent colonoscopies...
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Real killer is they already settled similar case in Minnesota.
| Sytten wrote:
| They are used in all kinds of products that I personaly use
| everyday from pans to dental floss. And the replacements are
| not better, they just dont have studies yet that prove they are
| toxic...
| yojo wrote:
| Dental floss is easy - the widely available/cheap waxed Reach
| floss tested negative for PFAs[1], and it does a better job
| of cleaning too. The non-stick flosses miss stuff for me.
|
| 1: https://www.mamavation.com/beauty/toxic-pfas-dental-floss-
| to...
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Oh thank goodness. When I started looking at the prices of
| the silk flosses and whatnot, I thought I'd had to take a
| second mortgage. I've been using Reach for years, due to
| the price, but also because it works so well for me. Thanks
| for posting this!
| stickyricky wrote:
| I hope steel pans aren't on that list. I prefer them to non-
| stick and I'm under the assumption that they're healthier
| than non-stick pans.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| I am also a big fan of carbon steel cookware, I've replaced
| everything with cast iron where that is necessary or carbon
| steel everywhere else. It really is a minor adjustment to
| workflow, non stick coatings can be pretty easily avoided.
| burke wrote:
| Steel pans--really any pans that just look like metal on
| the inside--are not made with "forever chemical" coatings.
| deserialized wrote:
| Oh well that excuses all of the poisoning, clearly
| BSEdlMMldESB wrote:
| disbanding this corporation doesn't undo decades of
| pollution either.
|
| I doubt very much that they're the only ones able to
| manufacture this stuff
| hackernewds wrote:
| But it will set a mighty example for others
| jquast wrote:
| Genuinely curious, would any money be extracted from the
| personal accounts of any executive employee that made
| these decisions, current or past, from any of these
| thousands of lawsuits?
|
| Unless the decision-making folks have their personal
| wealth destroyed, they really haven't anything to lose. I
| would expect the worst-case scenario is that their stock
| portfolios will need to be adjusted, by tax-loss
| harvesting their losses in 3m stocks as an opportunity to
| divest and rebalance their portfolios.
| pr0zac wrote:
| Considering Purdue Pharma, the Sackler family has so far
| had to pay out $10.5 billion (estimates of their net
| worth including those settlements have it dropping $8b
| during this time period) and despite trying quite hard
| have not managed to gain legal immunity or protection
| regarding civil and criminal liability. That means
| they'll very likely be hit with more lawsuits going
| forward and possibly even criminal charges.
|
| Looking at it, I think thats pretty good and hope the
| possibility for future lawsuits means they continue to
| pay, but knowing that case is an unusual outlier and that
| none of the other people involved like the CEO or other
| executives have had any consequences makes it feel a
| little underwhelming.
|
| I'm glad government is going after bad companies more and
| I hope they continue, but it does seem like our legal
| system is just not equipped to correctly hold people
| responsible in these cases.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| >> disbanding this corporation doesn't undo decades of
| pollution either.
|
| Yes, but it prevents them from harming the public like
| this in the future, and also serves as a very strong
| deterrent for others.
| BSEdlMMldESB wrote:
| or mabye we should be more honest and consider that maybe
| this is a way for the USA government to fill its coffers
| back up?
|
| (rapping on another comment saying that there's a chance
| this is a way for the USA government to sell the
| 'manufacture capacity' that 3M _is_ to other "greener"
| owners)
|
| now that I type this out, I realize that this is
| perfectly consistent with the behavior of empires. the
| realization that the alleged 'pax romana' (stability and
| 'peace' for the roman empire) was built on stealing from
| 'barbaric' tribes and selling stuff to more 'civilized'
| owners in Rome.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| Ther is a danger of confusing cynicism with honesty.
| sokoloff wrote:
| If the government were somehow able to capture the entire
| market cap of 3M (without any execution slippage, which
| is obviously an unrealistic assumption), it would be
| enough to run the federal government for a little over 3
| days...
| digging wrote:
| It is imperative to control material incentives for all
| entities, both individuals and organizations. Entities
| will pursue incentives; money is no exception. Therefore,
| if we have designed a government so that it profits from
| protecting citizens from the ravages of corporate
| greed... that still counts as a good system.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| As long as the laws and their enforcement are just, a
| theoretical government profit motive doesn't seem like a
| bad thing.
|
| But it's hard to see how the particular people who
| brought this case to bear would be motivated by the small
| slice of the increase in federal funding that would
| redound to them. And it's not consistent with most of the
| government's behavior -- it doesn't spend as many
| resources extracting judgments from big corporations as
| would be likely if its profit motive loomed large.
| BSEdlMMldESB wrote:
| no, you gotta be much more deep in your reasoning this
| "high" up
|
| philosophically, at this height, the principle of
| "justice" is to not so simple... what does it even mean
| "to be just"? may as well say "be good" but the point is
| that the issue is good _for whom?_
|
| the concept is "Empire"... USA government is the empire?
| aside question: can there ever exist multiple "empires"?
| monotheistic~ally speaking?
|
| uff... My English prose is answering its own questions...
| I am no longer deeply disturbed by this phenomenon... but
| it's not something scientifically real so it still shakes
| me.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| Philosophers seem to delight in the idea that the common
| good is hard to define. I'm an economist. I don't see
| much wiggle room. The wiggle room that exists is:
|
| (1) How much do you care about whom? In particular, do
| you care equally about everyone, or are you a jerk?
|
| (2) How do you weight the relative value of things like
| money, health, longevity, entertainment?
|
| (3) At what rate does the marginal utility of such things
| diminish?
|
| Okay maybe that's a lot of wiggle room. Still, under any
| reasonable set of weights, making millions of people sick
| is not worth the money 3M made.
| [deleted]
| jackmott42 wrote:
| The point isn't to undo the past, it is to make it clear
| to other companies that if they lie about safety they
| will face an existential threat too.
|
| Who are you people who feel compelled to defend mega
| corporations that screw people over? What is your
| psychology? What do you value in life? My goodness.
| RajT88 wrote:
| > The point isn't to undo the past, it is to make it
| clear to other companies that if they lie about safety
| they will face an existential threat too.
|
| DuPont, while removed from the threat of this lawsuit, is
| guilty on plenty of counts of the same behavior with
| other chemicals.
|
| I believe I've read articles about GE and Monsanto also
| knowing the health risks _to their own employees_ and
| doing nothing about it. Let alone the dumping into public
| waterways.
|
| $143 billion is hopefully the judgement which is levied,
| and hopefully the first of many.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| > this lawsuit
|
| There can and will be others. Esp. if there is a legal
| precedent.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| There are millions of people all over the earth that
| genuinely believe "might makes right", or "greed is
| good", or "capitalism inherently results in meritocratic
| and technocratic allocation of resources so nothing that
| happens under capitalism can possibly be bad".
|
| That's not even the least liberal worldviews widely held.
| Love thy neighbor and the golden rule and accountability
| are not universal
| njanirudh wrote:
| I would say that billions of people believe that "might
| makes right".
|
| Its been seen across the centuries and countries alike.
| Colonialism, MegaCorps, Hague Invasion Act and countless
| examples that prove that morals matter very less in the
| long run.
| [deleted]
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| That's a pretty shitty response to an actual problem.
|
| Companies don't need to prove the safety of things like
| this.
|
| Look at bpa free. Most people don't even know that bpa free
| plastic tends to be just as bad, or potentially worse than
| bpa. The press doesn't give a shit I guess. Society went
| through its giant bpa panic and now it's tired of dealing
| with this so let's just ignore it and move onto the next
| thing. Ignorance is bliss.
| bravoetch wrote:
| You're okay with companies not being responsible, but you
| want the press to help you out here? I feel the opposite.
| Companies should be responsible for poisoning us, and the
| press has zero to do with it.
| pizlonator wrote:
| I don't think that the problem some posters are alluding
| to is the kind where we should be placing blame.
|
| The problem is:
|
| - Humans invent something useful and cool.
|
| - Humans discover that the cool and useful thing is toxic
| as fuck, but only after years go by. It takes years for
| the awareness of the toxicity to become widespread enough
| for everyone to concur it's a problem. Often, we only
| find out about the toxicity as a result of the cool
| chemical becoming hella widespread.
|
| - Humans invent alternatives that are different enough to
| obviously not have the same exact problem.
|
| But: what toxic nonsense or buttcancer risks will we
| discover about the alternatives? No way to know
| immediately since it takes years to find out. And it's
| only when the alternatives become widespread that we can
| even do the science to figure out what's up. And by the
| time they become widespread, some folks got buttcancer.
|
| That's the problem: just because there's an alternative
| that is different from the thing we found out to be toxic
| doesn't meant that the alternative isn't toxic. And we
| find out it's toxic because people get hurt.
|
| It's not that the press is bad... it's just a fundamental
| problem in science and engineering. You need scale to
| discover the really bad issues.
| Miraste wrote:
| The problem is the point between 2 and 3:
|
| - Humans who discovered the toxicity lie, bribe, bully,
| and cheat to stop anyone else from finding out. The
| solution is delayed by decades and deaths go through the
| roof.
| pizlonator wrote:
| Yup.
|
| But we have seen that movie many times, haven't we? It's
| a given that if someone builds a business on a thing and
| that thing turns out to cause buttcancer, they gonna
| cover that shit up.
|
| Sometimes covering it up is easy if you just rely on
| scientific ground truths, like "the dose is the poison".
| Even water is a poison if you chug too much of it, so
| just the discovery that something is poisonous at some
| dose is almost like tautological. I wouldn't be surprised
| if part of the "cover up" was based on that kind of
| science.
|
| Basically, if there's utility to something, then there's
| money to be made, careers to be made, legacies at stake,
| etc - and that will bias folks towards covering shit up.
|
| I bet you the folks involved in the cover up were good
| people who just failed to check their biases.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| > it's just a fundamental problem in science and
| engineering.
|
| In my opinion is is a problem not of science and
| engineering, but of human greed.
|
| We do not need these products, we want them. As a species
| we did fine without them but suddenly in the last 100
| years we need the so desperately?
|
| Adding, no one can give me a response, just downvotes.
| Why is the aversion to speaking about greed so strong
| here on hacker news?
| pizlonator wrote:
| Greed is always part of it. It's a part of everything.
|
| Thats why I don't usually use greed as an explanation for
| stuff. Of course greed is part of the system and
| sometimes it causes bad things to happen. Sometimes it
| also causes good things to happen. So, if you want to
| prevent the bad, it's useful to look for some explanation
| that isn't just "greed".
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| > Greed is always part of it. It's a part of everything.
|
| That statement is doing allot of heavy lifting.
|
| Greed: excessive or rapacious desire, especially for
| wealth or possessions.
|
| That definition of greed is certainly not a part of
| everything in my life.
|
| Can you name something that that greed leads to something
| good happening?
| [deleted]
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Case in point: new refrigerants with lower global-
| warming-potential were adopted after the hue-and-cry
| about CFCs. Many of the new refrigerants are now also
| source of concern due to PFAS. The CFC refrigerants
| themselves were introduced as superior and safer
| alternatives to things like ammonia and chloromethane.
| digging wrote:
| > Humans discover that the cool and useful thing is toxic
| as fuck, but only after years go by. It takes years for
| the awareness of the toxicity to become widespread enough
| for everyone to concur it's a problem.
|
| There's no reason for there to be years between discovery
| and action. It doesn't matter how quickly the discovery
| ripples through lay society. Once it's known that
| something is harming and/or killing people, it _should_
| be stopped.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| "There's no reason for there to be years between
| discovery and action."
|
| Democracy is slow.
| digging wrote:
| Most government actions aren't democratic.
| pizlonator wrote:
| Yeah, _should_.
|
| But what if there are no alternatives?
|
| What if the alternatives are worse?
|
| What if the alternatives are the kind of thing that could
| possibly be worse but we don't have enough experience
| with them yet to know that they are worse?
|
| Often the known bad thing is better than the thing you
| don't know to be bad yet.
| digging wrote:
| Then we don't have that product until it can be safely
| created. It's extremely dangerous to treat innovation as
| irreversible
| jansan wrote:
| What does "toxic" mean in this case. AFAIK "toxic" can mean
| that you will get a headache if you eat a gram, but it can
| also mean that it will kill you if it touches your skin. For
| example I do not mind drinking a beer or two, which includes
| 5% of toxic ethanol, but I prefer not having lead in my
| drinking water.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| They're bioaccumulative and are linked to high cholesterol,
| thyroid disease, kidney and testicular cancer, and other
| chronic diseases.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| "Why are so many young people getting colon cancer...????"
|
| >They [PFAS] are used in all kinds of products that I
| personaly use everyday from pans to dental floss.
|
| Perfluorooctanoic acid enhances colorectal cancer DLD-1 cells
| invasiveness through activating NF-kB mediated matrix
| metalloproteinase-2/-9 expression
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4637576/
|
| I just do not understand how people can be so "whatever"
| about this stuff. It is sad and infuriating.
| tomxor wrote:
| You are referring to Teflon, there's some confusion with the
| differences in toxicity between the chemical used in the
| final products (today at least) and the chemical used in
| manufacturing. Although the human impact is only subtly
| different (that in theory it makes no personal difference
| whether or not you buy such products, which is a worse
| position to be in than it sounds)...
|
| As a non-chemist I don't claim to have a comprehensive
| understanding, but as far as I can tell: PTFE (Teflon) is
| found in consumer products today, and has not been directly
| linked to cancer yet, i.e if you eat teflon (and you have) it
| will supposedly just pass through your gut in an inert
| fashion. PFOA and more generally PFAS are used to
| _manufacture_ PTFE, these are known carcinogens according to
| independent studies and (allegedly) internally by 3Ms own
| research, unfortunately PFOA is also in your blood and my
| blood, not because you ate teflon from a frying pan, but
| because once it 's in the environment it doesn't get broken
| down, and so inevitably we end up ingesting it.
|
| The reason we have to generalise to the group of chemicals
| "PFAS", is because once PFOA specifically was found to be
| problematic companies looked for similar alternatives, but
| these have also found to cause similar issues.
|
| To complicate matters the PTFE in your non-stick frying pan
| can also releases PFOA if heated high enough, supposedly the
| threshold is around 300 degrees C, however it has been found
| that this threshold varies between products and can be
| realistically reached under in "normal" cooking scenarios,
| but usually when someone accidentally dry heated a frying pan
| too much, or is just plain cooking on too high a temperature.
| The side effects of being exposed to PFOA in this way are
| supposed to feel similar to catching a cold that disappears
| fairly quickly, and is often mistaken as such, I presume this
| is because it's vaporised.
|
| Even knowing all this (that provided you don't nuke your
| cookware it likely makes no personal difference) I've still
| decided to personally go down the stainless steel route, it's
| not very scientific, but the relationship between PTFE and
| PFOAs is close enough, and it flakes off my frying pans
| frequently enough that I've decided I don't want to keep on
| ingesting it only to find out later that it's also a problem.
| Although stainless is not hazard free, because you can get
| problems with metals leaching into the food and have to be
| careful with acidity, and also make sure you buy high quality
| pans. They also require more skill to cook with without
| destroying them, but ultimately last indefinitely if you can
| take care of them.
|
| The main problem with continuing to use PTFE in products is
| the indirect cost to the environment and human health through
| the "externalities" of manufacturing.
| cyberax wrote:
| The difference between teflon and PFAS is in the
| hydrophilic "head".
|
| Basically, teflon consists just of long chains of carbon
| atoms saturated with fluorine. They are extremely
| chemically resistant, and they appear to be biologically
| inert. Even if you heat the teflon past its decomposition
| temperature, you simply get pieces of the hydrocarbon chain
| as a result. They are nasty, but they are not persistent
| pollutants.
|
| PFAS are different. They also consist of a chain of carbons
| with fluorine atoms attached to them. But they also have a
| hydrophilic "head" attached to them at the beginning of the
| chain. This hydrophilic head allows PFAS to function as
| surfactants, and it also makes them biologically active.
| The body can't do anything with the hydrocarbons saturated
| with fluorine, but the head provides a "handle" that can be
| used to absorb the PFAS into cell membranes where it can
| stay and cause all kinds of issues.
| rdli wrote:
| We've worked to reduce plastics & chemicals in our house.
| Some things we do:
|
| * We use silk dental floss (we use Radius)
|
| * We use glass storage containers instead of Tupperware
|
| * For cooking, we use All-Clad.
|
| * If a recipe calls for non-stick (e.g., pancakes) I use a
| braiser from Le Creuset, which works reasonably well.
|
| (Edited: formatting)
| [deleted]
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > If a recipe calls for non-stick (e.g., pancakes)
|
| My dad has made pancakes for my entire life without ever
| using, or owning, a non-stick pan.
| AnonCoward42 wrote:
| Honest question: Why do you try to replace Tupperware?
|
| Plastic has a bad reputation because of its longevity, but
| that also makes it a good material for containers. That -
| in turn - makes it bad for throwaway packaging of course. I
| might have missed something, that's why I ask.
| waif wrote:
| Also, "microwave safe" does not mean it's safe for
| people... it only means the container won't melt in the
| microwave. If you're going to reheat leftovers,
| definitely don't keep it inside a plastic container.
|
| I also switched to glass containers and stainless steel
| everything, about 20 years ago, out of distrust for
| reasons like in this article.
| rdli wrote:
| There's definite leaching of plastic compounds into food,
| which gets exacerbated when heated. My concern is the
| number of unknown unknowns. BPA became a big part of the
| consciousness a few years ago, and now it's PFAs, but
| what else?
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/18/are-
| plastic-...
|
| My general view is that glass is super-durable,
| microwave-safe (I would never microwave Tupperware), and
| the cost tradeoff is minor, so it seems worthwhile. That
| said, if I order takeout and it comes in a plastic
| container that's hot ... I still eat it :).
| AnonCoward42 wrote:
| > There's definite leaching of plastic compounds into
| food, which gets exacerbated when heated. My concern is
| the number of unknown unknowns. BPA became a big part of
| the consciousness a few years ago, and now it's PFAs, but
| what else?
|
| PFAS and BPA are not used for (multi-use) food containers
| I think. Don't get me wrong! Avoiding throwaway
| packaging, where possible, absolutely makes sense. I
| specifically mean to find the culprit with Tupperware (or
| multi-use plastic food containers in general).
|
| > My general view is that glass is super-durable,
| microwave-safe (I would never microwave Tupperware), and
| the cost tradeoff is minor, so it seems worthwhile.
|
| Glass breaks faster than plastic containers (usually). I
| still use glass containers, but I am always aware that
| they break relatively easily.
|
| Regarding microwave-use I am with you. Not a fan of
| microwaving plastic, even if it is safe for many plastic
| materials (the term plastic is vague I admit).
| JPws_Prntr_Fngr wrote:
| > Glass breaks faster than plastic containers (usually)
|
| The plastic lids always break way more quickly than the
| glass containers IME. Can't remember the last time I
| broke a glass one, actually. Plus, they actually stay in
| good condition. An abused plastic container will cloud,
| warp, gouge, and release god knows what into your food
| the whole time.
| phil21 wrote:
| > Glass breaks faster than plastic containers (usually).
| I still use glass containers, but I am always aware that
| they break relatively easily.
|
| I have maybe 60-70 or so glass food containers that get
| very regular use from being used for leftovers, to being
| put in the deep freezer for 6mo and then warmed up.
|
| We handle at least half a dozen of these a day on average
| from filling/cleaning/removing portions and putting back
| into the fridge.
|
| I've broken dozens of the plastic lids for them. I can't
| remember a single case (although I'm sure it's happened)
| of breaking a glass container in the past decade. They
| have survived more than a few rather large drops. These
| are the Pyrex brand glassware with the new glass that is
| more drop but less heat shock resistant.
|
| Luckily Snapware also sells lids, since the glass
| containers far outlast the plastic lids and we end up
| replacing 3-4 of those a year as wear items. That doesn't
| bother me much since very little food gets in contact
| with them.
|
| I expect my Snapware/Pyrex food storage sets to largely
| outlast my lifetime, but without lids to match once they
| stop manufacturing them.
| MarkMarine wrote:
| Same here, additionally reducing plastic packaging in our
| food purchases has been a constant effort. Glass milk jugs,
| baby bottles, etc. It's probably only touching the margins,
| but we're trying.
| notatoad wrote:
| A great alternative to a non-stick pan is a stainless steel
| pan with a sheet of parchment paper in it
| kbos87 wrote:
| I switched to carbon steel a few years ago. There's a
| definite learning curve when it comes to getting them
| seasoned properly and a lot of people give up. But once
| they are seasoned, nothing sticks to them, and they need
| almost no maintenance. I'm never giving them up!
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| The great thing about them is that if you really mess
| them up you can just sand them down and re-season
| anamexis wrote:
| They're not cheap, but Scanpan makes great non-stick pans.
| PFAS-free, dishwashable, metal utensil safe.
|
| https://www.scanpan.com/haptiq-8-inch-fry-
| pan-40141-configur...
| rdli wrote:
| I don't think Scanpan is PFA free:
| https://www.scanpan.com/chemical-components.
| anamexis wrote:
| Oh, huh. It certainly seems not. That is disappointing.
| stephencanon wrote:
| A plain cast-iron skillet works flawlessly for pancakes and
| crepes, FWIW.
| Miraste wrote:
| Cast-iron is a huge pain to maintain in my experience,
| but ceramic pans are a good non-carcinogenic alternative.
| modzu wrote:
| once cast iron is properly seasoned it maintains very
| well, and can last for generations! and they are dirt
| cheap to boot. but yes there is a little learning curve.
| they are heavy, so use two hands when handling. it _must_
| be seasoned (many come preseasoned) and never put it in a
| dishwasher for example -- but when properly seasoned the
| nonstick properties are so effective food just rinses
| off. i encourage everyone who cooks to try one!
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| I also got a high carbon steel pan which is not as thick
| and heavy but has all the other properties of cast iron.
|
| I had a few "ceramic" pans but inevitably they become
| scratched (and useless) after a year or two in everyday
| use
| dontlaugh wrote:
| You might prefer carbon steel to cast iron.
| omnicognate wrote:
| Cast iron skillets just take a bit of getting used and
| are then zero maintenance and last for ever. The problems
| people have with them are usually due to trying to season
| them and doing it so badly (due to abundant online
| misinformation) they'd have been better off not doing it
| at all.
| basisword wrote:
| How would you suggest seasoning and maintaining cast
| iron?
| JadoJodo wrote:
| I have several now in various sizes that are in a great
| place now, seasoning-wise. After each use, I rinse the
| pan with warm water and a small amount of soap. I use a
| Lodge scrubbing tool if there are things stuck on.
|
| I then dry it with a towel, heat up the pan with Avocado
| or Bacon grease until it almost starts smoking. I then
| use a paper towel to wipe out the pan and it stays on the
| stove until the next use.
|
| Of the pans I have now (bought over the past 2 years), 3
| are seasoned well enough that they're effectively non-
| stick.
| miloandmilk wrote:
| I just use mine, always with some oil. I never season it
| as a separate process.
|
| Eggs pancakes, fish, no problems.
| [deleted]
| krisroadruck wrote:
| Literally just cook with it. The main thing with
| everything except for teflon pans is you need to bring
| them up to temp before cooking, and you need to use some
| fat of some kind (olive oil, butter, whatever). The oil
| itself will provide the "non stick" until it's seasoned,
| and it'll also do the seasoning. You can waste a bunch of
| time doing seasoning as a separate step (light coating of
| oil, bring up to smoke point, let cool, repeat) but this
| is mostly just a giant waste of time. Just cook on the
| dang thing, and don't be afraid to toss in a chunk of
| butter or some oil. It won't kill ya :-)
| JPws_Prntr_Fngr wrote:
| > Literally just cook with it.
|
| Lmao. Hapless beginner follows your advice, decides to
| scramble some eggs on day 1 with his badly-factory-
| seasoned Lodge pan. Egg glue now encrusts his shiny new
| pan. What do? Wash with soap? BAD NOOB - that's bad for
| the seasoning. Scrape it off with steel wool? BAD NOOB -
| that's even worse for the seasoning.
|
| (If you do this, fellow noob, I think oil + a scrubber
| sponge got me out of the predicament)
| [deleted]
| omnicognate wrote:
| Yes, scrambled eggs works wonderfully in cast iron but
| needs to be well worn in. On a new pan you'll end up with
| an awful mess. But feel free to go to town on that with
| washing up liquid, steel wool and a sandblaster if you
| want. There isn't some magical pixie dust on it you need
| to worry about rubbing off. Just dry it properly after
| and oil it before you put it away. Keep frying in it
| regularly and it'll be fine. A brief hiccup in your
| skillet's breaking-in process.
| omnicognate wrote:
| The typical cooking uses to which a skillet is put season
| it automatically, because it spends its life being oily.
| The polymer coating known as "seasoning" forms naturally
| from long contact with oil (even without heat). So the
| idea of seasoning being something you have to put on the
| pan and then maintain is wrong. You can explicitly
| "season the pan" as a sort of bootstrapping to get that
| layer started off quicker and protect it from rust in the
| early days, but it's optional and doesn't need
| maintaining afterwards. An alternative to protect it from
| rust (and encourage the formation of the polymer) when
| it's new is to brush it with oil before putting it away.
| Once it's broken in (you'll know) it doesn't require
| special care. You can scrub it, use washing up liquid,
| whatever.
|
| If you do season the pan, the most important thing is to
| wipe off _all_ the oil after applying it. You brush the
| oil on and then wipe it _completely_ dry. It should be
| dry to the touch and matt, not shiny. You should not be
| able to see ANY oil. The microscopic invisible bit of oil
| left is all you want. Only then do you heat it. The
| temperature doesn 't matter much. 180 C or so in an oven
| is what I've used. The kind of oil used also doesn't
| matter. For best results do the whole thing 3 or more
| times. If you bake a visible layer of oil onto your pan
| you're not seasoning it, you're just covering it in burnt
| crap.
|
| And it's optional!
|
| Note that the above is for skillets, which self-season
| because they're used for frying. (Hence "seasoning" -
| i.e. using them for a while.) The story is very different
| for some other things. For example, we have a dutch oven
| used for baking bread, which is not an oily process. For
| that you really do have to season. Ours came pre-seasoned
| but it rusted after an unfortunate baking mishap and I
| had to electrolyse it and then give it 5 rounds of oven
| seasoning (as described above), after which it has been a
| zero-maintenance workhorse.
|
| Griddles are absolute fucking bastards and will ruin your
| life.
|
| If you ever do electrolyse any cast iron (it's great fun
| and will restore anything), A) pay a few quid for
| graphite electrodes (overgrown pencil leads, available on
| Amazon), rather than using an old stainless steel knife
| and producing hexavalent chromium (Erin Brockovich's
| favourite chemical) and B) use a bench power supply
| because nobody sells the kind of car battery charger all
| the online tutorials tell you to use any more (they're
| all pulsed ones now, completely useless for
| electrolysis).
| JPws_Prntr_Fngr wrote:
| I feel compelled to back you up on this one. You mention
| your experience with cast iron, and 20 semi-pro internet
| chefs jump all over you to gaslight you with "you just
| didn't season it properly bro"
|
| No. I polymerized it with the grapeseed oil. I tried it
| with sunflower oil. I polymerized until my apartment
| swirled with smoke. I wiped it down with nothing besides
| a paper towel and water. I followed youtube guides.
|
| Nothing worked, and that goddamn pan would lose slickness
| in the heavily-used center every other day. Plus, I'd
| leave it unused for a few weeks while traveling, and upon
| returning, it'd be covered in rust! This happened with at
| least 3 different pans from 2 different manufacturers.
|
| Low-maintenance my ass.
| mint2 wrote:
| Welp the method that doesn't slowly poison our
| environment or kill our parrots is less convenient, guess
| we have no choice but to layer on the forever Chemicals.
| juujian wrote:
| Thinking about buying one. Would I be wrong in assuming
| it was just a matter of the order: (really) heat the pan,
| add the oil, and then whatever you need to cook?
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| Care is a big component as well. The real power of cast
| iron is that you can renew the coating when it wears off
| by re-seasoning the pan. Using a drying oil like flax,
| you coat the pan and heat the oil until it starts
| smoking, then wait for it to stop smoking. Repeat this
| process a couple of times and you have a durable non-
| stick surface again.
|
| If you ever have the surface roughen up you can also
| strip the old seasoning by covering it in oven cleaner
| and heating it to cleaning temperature. The easiest way
| to do this is to stick it in an oven on high.
|
| I've had the same frying pan for 10 years now and this is
| how I keep it non-stick.
| shrx wrote:
| It's kind of funny that heating up the oil to the point
| of smoking is considered a healthy alternative to teflon
| coated pans. When oil is heated up to the point of
| smoking it produces carcinogenic compounds.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Not significant. You aren't burning the oil or keeping it
| at high temp for a long time, you are just getting hot
| enough to smoke, then you cut the heat. That polymerizes
| the oil into a non-polar coating. Can't get non-stick
| without some kind of polymer that things don't stick to.
| zukzuk wrote:
| Comparing the misc acrylamide and other byproducts of
| seasoning a cast iron skillet to the PFAS and other
| byproducts of teflon production is nonsense.
|
| Yes, complex hydrocarbons are not good for you, but PFOAs
| and their ilk are really really really bad for you and
| the environment. It's like comparing spent nuclear rods
| with brazil nuts. Yes, both are radioactive, but there is
| zero equivalence.
| shrx wrote:
| If you don't scratch the surface the teflon coating is at
| least as safe as the cast iron.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Animal fats. Not vegetable oils. Vegetable oils
| polymerize to a sticky substance. Animal fats carbonize
| and protect the metal. Also using a metal spatula is a
| must in cast iron. The metal spatula keeps the surface
| smooth which enhances the non-stick property. Also wash
| after use and spread a little fat in it to prevent
| rusting. Don't scour. Just wash with soap and water.
| cptaj wrote:
| In my experience all non-stick strategies are a hoax,
| including teflon XD
| hedora wrote:
| You don't want to get it super hot (the oil/butter should
| not smoke). Medium heat is fine. They do take a long time
| to warm up to a uniform steady state temperature though
| (this is both an advantage and a disadvantage, since it
| means the temperature stays stable as you cook).
|
| For instance, when making pancakes, my first step is
| putting the griddle on the range. Next, I start making
| the batter.
|
| Of course, you can set the range to high and heat it up
| really fast, but then you end up risking overheating it.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| Don't overthink it. Look up America's Test Kitchen videos
| on cast iron pans. They probably have one to recommend
| the best one for the $$ and how to take care of it.
|
| I have an old school cast iron skillet and pot. I wish
| I'd watched videos because newer types of cast iron
| apparently has a smooth finish and is thinner and
| lighter. When new, I washed it with soap and water, dried
| it, added a nice and thin layer of olive oil all around
| wiped it with a kitchen towel to take off the excess,
| then baked it for half an hour. Let it cool. Repeated
| that once or twice. You can even just heat it on a stove
| top.
|
| Once I'm done cooking something, I rinse scrub and rinse
| with warm water to get all the food off and add a touch
| of oil. A little goes a long way.
|
| That's all, really. It isn't complicated or particularly
| laborious. It just weighs a fair bit - it'll take your
| hands a couple of weeks to get stronger and then you
| won't care.
| tobr wrote:
| Consider butter instead of oil for pancakes. The water
| content of the butter boils between the pancake and the
| pan. The escaping water vapor pushes them apart, which
| helps prevent the pancake from sticking.
| hammock wrote:
| I don't use oil at all for pancakes. Just cook them in a
| dry pan. That's the only way to get the perfect even
| golden brown
| sergiomattei wrote:
| Butter also adds awesome taste to them :)
| mtalantikite wrote:
| There are plenty of pans you can use that don't have these
| chemicals -- cast iron, carbon steel, stainless steel, clay,
| etc. I agree about the floss and other plastics though. I
| just try to use other types of materials whenever possible.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Actually, the problem is, we allow new chemicals to be
| introduced with minimal if any testing. Imagine if medical
| chemicals (i.e., drugs) were allowed the same Wild West
| approach?
|
| In short, industrials chemicals are innocent until proven
| guilty. That's great for the justice system. It's a complete
| clusterfuck for Mother Nature and all her creatures, including
| humans.
| clnq wrote:
| At these times, it's good to remember that PFAS will very likely
| kill more people than any terror attack so far. Among cancers, it
| is a known contributor to obesity and many other diseases.
|
| We go to war over terror attacks. And for this, we probably won't
| even bankrupt 3M, nor DuPont.
|
| To my mind, it brings into question what qualifies as terrorism.
| Is it not terrorism if many people die to push the stock price up
| when it's terrorism if many people die for some other selfish
| end?
| sneak wrote:
| Accidents due to carelessness and greed lack the same intent as
| terrorism.
|
| You may recall Exxon's famous memos from the 60s or 70s when
| they realized that continued use of fossil fuels was going to
| incinerate the planet.
| clnq wrote:
| Is it still carelessness if one knows they are going to kill
| people for their own selfish, perhaps greedy, goals?
|
| I don't see such a big difference in intent. I think it's
| more that terrorist groups have people that do what they do
| for selfish reasons very directly. And corporate groups have
| people that do what they do for selfish reasons in a way
| where they are acting on behalf of shareholders' greed, and
| they aren't really directly harming anyone right now. So it's
| very indirect. But the intent is kind of similar morally -
| personal gain at the cost of crimes against humanity, right?
| bastard_op wrote:
| So what, they'll pay a few million (even few billion) fine, and
| go back to doing it anyways. Having grown up as part of the
| "Maryvale Cancer Cluster" in Arizona in the 70's with DuPont
| dumping fluorine and other bad things into the well water and
| giving most of my family leukemia, cancer, and who knows what
| else. Class action ensued, DuPont lawyers fought it for 30 years,
| end of the day my dad got a check for $200 dollars. Thanks, sorry
| about that leukemia there...
| TheJoeMan wrote:
| I sympathize with your family's hurt. Is this case equivalent?
| DuPont did the dumping into the well water.
|
| 3M manufactured a non-stick coating used by thousands of
| companies on thousands of different products. What is the end
| game here? They never produce teflon again and industries like
| biomedical suffer?
| peteradio wrote:
| Dude this lawsuit is about improperly dumped chemicals
| leaking into the water supply! Its almost exactly the same
| thing!
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| I'm always amazed that in cases like this nobody gets crazy and
| try to get justice themselves.
|
| There are so many guns in the US, and we hear about rogue
| snipers and school shooters, but never about one guy that
| decided a CEO should pay for his bad deeds in blood.
|
| Maybe it shows that the average human being is quite stable and
| peaceful?
| dylan604 wrote:
| In certain circles this might be considered a call for action
| by a lone wolf. Not saying that this is one of those circles.
| hgsgm wrote:
| CEO has a $million+ security detail. What does your
| kindergartener have?
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| Vigilante justice died down with the phase out of leaded
| gasoline. One of the effects of people not being so violent
| and impulsive anymore is that people are not so violent and
| impulsive anymore
| vkou wrote:
| And yet, you still get 'I hate society and I'm going to
| shoot up a school/mall/movie theatre/parade/nightclub'
| terracts on the regular.
|
| It is strange that intersection of 'I'm angry at stuff and
| want to make people pay', and 'I own guns and I'm going to
| use them' seems to consistently result in rage and violence
| against society at large, rather than bad actors in
| particular.
|
| It's almost as if there's a kind of slant to the propaganda
| that pushes people into those buckets. Not a lot of
| unhinged, violent anti-3M/Purdue/Kaiser/DuPont rhetoric on
| the *chans and in the Q-sphere...
| sneak wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Austin_suicide_attack
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_McVeigh
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Despite our media, it isn't part of our shared culture to go
| out shoot someone in revenge. Things like murder and
| generational feuds are taboo. And we're too individualistic
| to do things like make the ultimate self-sacrifice in pursuit
| of justice.
|
| We are also very far removed from nature and death. Most of
| us fear death and do everything to avoid it. Few of us have
| any experience in killing.
|
| It's easy to get a gun and kill someone in broad daylight.
| But you have to be really motivated to overcome all that I
| mentioned and accept the consequences.
| JPws_Prntr_Fngr wrote:
| To whoever flagged this: grow a spine. The poster is making
| an _observation_ - and an interesting one. Not even a call to
| action. Instead of plugging your ears and screaming lalalala,
| why don 't you come up with an equally interesting response
| to this question that has apparently made you so
| uncomfortable?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| "So what, they'll pay a few million (even few billion) fine,
| and go back to doing it anyways."
|
| The chemicals in question have stopped being made for decades
| by 3M.
| johnfn wrote:
| Huh? The point of an 'existential' trial is that it's
| 'existential' i.e. it threatens the existence of the business.
| hgsgm wrote:
| What the plaintiff asks for isn't what they get.
|
| The Sacklers and Purdue did fine even with their extremely
| intentional opium war against America.
| clnq wrote:
| This trial, if it goes wrong, threatens the existence of life
| on the planet.
| rob-olmos wrote:
| 3M is also in another lawsuit for defective earplugs supplied to
| the US military: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/legal/product-
| liability/3m-ea...
|
| Additional info: https://www.millerandzois.com/products-
| liability/3m-combat-a...
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| The difference in harm between these two transgressions is a
| few orders of magnitude at least.
| tclancy wrote:
| I think the idea is suggesting a problem at the corporate
| culture level.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Yeah I mean maybe mussolini liked to kick puppies too but I
| don't really need it as evidence of his character you know
| what I'm saying? The pfas stuff is so heinous it downplays
| it to even _mention_ this other thing in the same context.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| 3M acquired that company and then was on the hook. A few bad
| decisions at the wrong level can sink a company.
| joshe wrote:
| Strange that we sue companies for selling products we haven't
| even bothered to ban yet. The idea that 3M "knew the whole time"
| is kooky when we aren't even sure now, 15 years after people
| started looking into this, whether we should ban them.
|
| Scientists, regulators and legislatures should decide what the
| rules are and then hold companies accountable for actually
| breaking the rules.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| don't you think lobbying might play a factor in whether or not
| they're banned yet?
| arcticfox wrote:
| If the other commenter saying "The problem is 3M scientists
| have know toxicity to human and have withheld the information
| to the public and regulators" is accurate, your point is
| invalid. How could we ban a product that we were misled on.
| biofunsf wrote:
| I totally agree if the toxicity is known. But the fact that
| these chemicals aren't banned completely, must mean that this
| isn't yet widely excepted?
|
| Toxicity is a wide spectrum so the truth could be somewhere
| in between. Maybe teflon coated products don't have enough to
| be toxic, but dumping the chemicals wholesale into the water
| supply is enough to be toxic. And 3M could have concealed
| this high-dosage toxicity from regulators. (I'm trying to
| reconcile "3M scientists have know toxicity to humans" and
| the fact that these chemicals aren't banned)
| turnerdhooch wrote:
| Regulatory capture.
| 4ec0755f5522 wrote:
| Hard disagree; companies should be responsible for harm caused
| by their products regardless of whether it's "legal". This is
| "loophole thinking" and it only benefits bad actors.
| fluoridation wrote:
| Doing something that's not illegal is not a loophole. A
| loophole involves doing something that would otherwise be
| illegal in a manner that makes it ambiguously not illegal,
| often due to a poorly-made law.
| graeme wrote:
| A lawsuit is about _harm_. If it 's a civil lawsuit, you
| can absolutely be sued for doing things which you know to
| be harmful to others, even if they aren't crimes. That's
| what a tort is. The purpose of such private lawsuits it to
| give people a legal mechanism for redress that doesn't
| involve physically attacking each other or trying to
| legislate everything.
| cpncrunch wrote:
| >know to be harmful to others
|
| This is the key fact. I had a look at the evidence, and
| I'm not seeing any harm myself.
|
| See:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-
| _and_polyfluoroalkyl_subst...
|
| Taking an example of developmental problems, there is
| this study:
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4344877/
|
| but it doesn't seem to have been replicated, at least in
| mice:
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5345697/
| magicalist wrote:
| What is your goal with this comment?
|
| > _I had a look at the evidence_
|
| The evidence isn't difficult to search for, and your 30
| second "look" at two sources from the Wikipedia article
| doesn't exactly amount to a meta analysis.
| cpncrunch wrote:
| If you can post that meta-analysis that would be helpful,
| thanks. My goal is to find the evidence. It seems you
| have it, so it would be useful if you could post it.
| Generally if there is a meta-analysis or robust evidence
| it will be in the wikipedia article. If not, I'd love for
| you to add it (or I can). Evidence shouldn't be hard to
| find...
| liquidise wrote:
| Care you elaborate? I'm genuinely curious about how this
| plays out in in practice.
|
| From the perspective of a driver, this fits: i am held
| responsible for harm i cause even if i was otherwise driving
| lawfully. But should my car maker be held responsible for the
| harm their car caused under lawful use?
| cush wrote:
| How do we know that any new product doesn't have long term
| health effects? As science advances, the ability to precisely
| measure health effects advances as well. In most cases, we
| simply don't know until it's too late. There's a realistic
| balance between caution and innovation.
|
| That said, if 3M knew about and covered up known health
| effects, then take em for all they're worth.
| stonogo wrote:
| Scientists, regulators, and legislatures already decided the
| rules. They're not being sued for "selling products we haven't
| even bothered to ban yet." That summary is inaccurate.
|
| They're being sued for selling products they knew to be toxic,
| without disclosing that information, which is already against
| the law.
| specialist wrote:
| Does "Don't (knowingly) poison the whole earth and all its
| inhabitants" need to be a written rule?
| kubota wrote:
| Yes.
| fluoridation wrote:
| Presumably these are civil suits, not criminal cases. Whether
| the chemicals in question were banned or not is irrelevant.
| Miraste wrote:
| If the scientists who invented and tested it worked at 3M, how
| would the government know it was harmful before they
| distributed it?
| BatFastard wrote:
| The government did not know, but 3M knew. They made a choice
| not to burn it in order to save money.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| PFAS was military tech before it came to 3M.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| > Financial research firm CreditSights estimates that 3M could
| ultimately be on the hook for nationwide PFAS cleanup costs of up
| to $142.7 billion. That's almost triple the company's $53 billion
| market capitalization, and that's before any personal injury
| claims and other lawsuits.
|
| What does this actually mean? It's just showing off a big number
| without giving any real context. 3M is the only manufacturer of
| tons of important materials as I understand it, so it's not like
| they can just get erased from the market. But what does
| accountability actually mean in this context?
| feifan wrote:
| I read that sentence as saying someone came up with a cost
| estimate of $142.7b to clean up everything, and then there's a
| comparison to 3M's $53b market cap for scale/comparison.
| cwkoss wrote:
| I don't think all the money in the world could cleanup
| "everything" that is contaminated with PFAS - it is
| effectively pervasive in the ecosystem at this point.
| paiute wrote:
| I'm starting to see a pattern which basically amounts to
| corporate shakedowns. I think the trend has only been
| accelerating since Perdue Parma. They will take the money and
| never do a thing to clean up the chemicals.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Better than not taking the money, at least.
|
| At a minimum it reduces inflation a tiny bit which helps
| everyone.
| moomoo3000 wrote:
| Are there examples of that happening?
| slymon99 wrote:
| They go bankrupt, because their liabilities exceed their
| assets. There are three main sets of creditors - the US
| government who are receiving this $142.7 billion, equity
| shareholders who own $MMM, and bondholders. In a bankruptcy,
| you arrange levels of creditors by "seniority", where more
| senior creditors are paid first. In this case, I would imagine
| the levels of seniority are:
|
| 1. The US government 2. Bondholders 3. Equity shareholders
|
| 3M has plenty of assets to be distributed to the creditors -
| the manufacturing capabilities that you mention, intellectual
| property, relationships with purchasers. These assets might be
| sold directly on the market (this is easier with physical
| assets like manufacturing labs). A new corporation with new
| management might be established to handle liquidating the
| assets, or even running the business (this is what happened
| with FTX). Either way, it seems like bondholders and
| shareholders alike would get zero'd out and the US government
| could do what it want with 3M's assets.
|
| To answer your question succintly: > 3M is the only
| manufacturer of tons of important materials as I understand it,
| so it's not like they can just get erased from the market
|
| 3M is a corporation and one of their assets is their ability to
| manufacture tons of important materials. 3M the corporation
| would be obliterated but their ability to manufacture tons of
| important material would likely be sold off.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| The shareholders shouldn't just get zeroed. There should be a
| clawback of profits made by 3M since the 1970s. Raid my 401k
| -- someone has to pay.
| abeppu wrote:
| Everyone's hating on this, but I do think we have to
| rethink limited liability because of some of these
| contexts. 3M paid out dividends for years while producing
| these chemicals. Their liabilities exceed their _current
| market cap_, but their market cap could have been higher
| had they not decided to consistently make those payouts.
|
| Consider J&J's (failed) attempt to spin out a new company
| to hold their liability over the talcum powder case. It was
| attacked and shot down because it was so clearly a post-hoc
| maneuver. If they had merely spun out that child company
| earlier, would it have been ok?
|
| What if the new playbook is:
|
| - spin out a new company for every potentially risky
| product line. A parent company may hold a large stake, but
| other investors can hold shares too.
|
| - sell, grow revenue, but keep few assets in the company;
| pay out dividends aggressively
|
| - drag out or quash or deny any research or evidence
| suggesting your product is dangerous, or being sold in an
| irresponsible way
|
| - when you're finally sued and lose, the company has very
| little money left in it; plaintiffs get relatively little
| compensation for their harm, but you don't care because
| you're busy growing your next dangerous company
|
| If that works, it sounds like a broken system. If you're
| doing something you should expect will cause large
| liabilities to crop up later, it seems abusive to pay out
| dividends to shareholders today and become insolvent
| tomorrow.
| rapht wrote:
| Hello, "limited liability company".
| sokoloff wrote:
| We'll put you down in the "not a fan of the rule of law"
| category.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| https://www.copblock.org/40719/myth-rule-law-john-hasnas/
| hgsgm wrote:
| Taking the L out of Limited Liability Corporation.
|
| If you paid $100 for a share after the damage was done, who
| should pay? You, or the shareholder who sold to you?
| KMag wrote:
| Exactly. Dollars are fungible, and spread around the
| economy pretty quickly. It's just not clear the "right"
| way to do any clawbbacks after a few years. If not done
| carefully, someone who inherits $1,000 worth of stock
| from their rich uncle on just the wrong day could the
| very next day discover they've inherited a $100,000 debt
| through the crime of being born in the wrong family.
| People die, people inherit stock, there are lots of
| second- and third-order effects to take into account in
| order to have a proper accounting of everyone who
| profited from the misbehavior.
|
| In a relatively short period, the answer becomes "pretty
| much the whole economy benefited financially". On the one
| hand, that's a good argument in favor of partially
| funding the healthcare system via a financial transaction
| tax, but is also less emotionally satisfying than what
| you're looking for.
|
| If you want to make long-term clawbacks practical, you
| need to do something like force all dividends to be paid
| as long-duration low-seniority zero-coupon corporate
| bonds backed by a special-purpose legal entity that holds
| cash/treasuries to fully back the bonds and can only be
| raided via bankruptcy hearings. That way, the value is
| kept non-fungible and risk explicitly tracked.
|
| Though, in practice, equity holders would probably sell
| those bonds immediately on the market, offloading the
| risk to third parties. You could make the bonds non-
| transferable except in case of inheritance, and ban
| short-selling/creating derivatives to prevent
| transferring the risk, but that's a lot of complication
| and overhead with little chance of improving corporate
| behavior.
|
| Ultimately, long-term corporate responsibility is much
| harder to enforce than long-term personal responsibility.
| You need a licensed Professional Engineer (or something
| similar) overseeing safety testing of the chemicals
| putting their personal career on the line with their
| stamp of approval. "If everyone's responsible, nobody is
| responsible." You need a mechanism to make individuals
| both responsible and legally empowered.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Both?
|
| Just track everyone who has ever owned a share and
| confiscate their whole property.
| sigstoat wrote:
| what's the point of even typing such silliness? you just
| said "confiscate the property of everyone on the _planet_
| who has ever had a retirement account"
|
| you might as well propose "we should just snap our
| fingers and wish really hard for utopia"
| kmod wrote:
| Assuming those numbers are realized it would mean bankruptcy,
| essentially, and questions like this are pretty standard and
| well-thought-about there. IANAL but I think this is why Chapter
| 11 bankruptcy exists (where you keep the company going because
| that's valuable) vs Chapter 7 (where you liquidate it). I think
| the Purdue bankruptcy is similar where the company is somewhat
| being handed over to the people that were harmed, because
| that's more valuable to them than selling the company piecemeal
| and then distributing the proceeds.
| TylerE wrote:
| 3M going under would be bad in a lot of ways. They are THE
| name is serious respiratory and other PPE, for instance.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| Would it? If they can earn the value of their liabilities in
| three years, why not just do that?1
| sokoloff wrote:
| How can they do that? Their entire _sales_ for full year
| 2022 were only $34.2 billion, with adjusted free cash flow
| of only $4.7 billion.
|
| They literally could not cover the _interest charges_ on a
| $143B judgment, let alone pay it off in 3 years.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| I stand corrected, thanks.
| batmenace wrote:
| Well if the company goes bankrupt, theoretically other
| companies can buy e.g. 3M's patents / processes / subsidiaries
| and continue their production. THe company isn't unprofitable,
| so it would be sold off in parts and the proceeds of the sale
| (theoretically) would go towards settling lawsuits.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| or it might just be sold as a whole to another company, or
| continue to exist post bankruptcy
| dylan604 wrote:
| Unlikely though. Nobody would want to buy the company whole
| as that would include all of this liability. Selling of the
| individual parts to raise funds for paying the debts of the
| unsold parts of the business entering bankruptcy seems like
| the only way to go
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Breaking it up doesn't change the liability post
| bankruptcy.
| nickelpro wrote:
| If I buy a candy bar from a bankrupt chocolate company I
| don't inherit any liability from the candy bar.
|
| "Breaking up" a company by selling its assets and
| distributing the profits to creditors absolutely does
| vanish the liability.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think maybe we're confusing terms here. Breaking up a
| company normally means separated into smaller existing
| companies. If you buy 3m's candy bar division, you still
| might be on the hook for the forever chemicals the candy
| shop dumped in the river.
|
| If you're just talking about dissolving a company and
| selling off the tangible assets, not selling off
| functional business units then I agree, liability doesn't
| follow material Goods. This generally isn't considered
| breaking up a company.
|
| Breaking up a large company into smaller ones during
| bankruptcy does not by default absolve the smaller
| companies of liability. Courts can add bankruptcy
| settlement terms that absolve a company of liability
| moving forward, but these can be applied to the company
| at all as a whole or the smaller businesses if it is
| broken up.
| valleyer wrote:
| What statute or case law supports this distinction
| between material goods and business units?
|
| It seems reasonable to me that you could absolutely
| purchase a business unit from a bankrupt company without
| any associated liabilities. Of course, you'd pay the full
| price for it (as compared to the discount you'd be able
| to negotiate if you accepted liabilities). And, of
| course, the proceeds of the sale would go to the
| creditors before the shareholders.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I am not a lawyer, but here is a decent summary [1]. The
| legal term you would be looking for is "successor
| liability".
|
| Liability can be servered from a operational buisness
| unit, but it basically requires the court intervention to
| formalize the seperation. Liability follows the
| functional business so that sale can't be used to evade
| liability.
|
| Imagine if this wasnt the case. 3M could take on 100B
| debt, sell the bussness & assets to "4M" , leaving "3M"
| with no funds or assets for the creditors to go after.
|
| https://www.ballardspahr.com/insights/alerts-and-
| articles/20....
| dylan604 wrote:
| I didn't say it removed the liability of the company. It
| just means that the company that is left after selling
| off its profitable assets has the burden of the liability
| but with nothing but literal toxic assets. They can use
| the proceeds of the sales to start paying down the debts.
|
| The assets sold would obviously not be the toxic assets.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| See my response to the sibling post for Clarity on what I
| mean.
|
| The nature of the liability depends on what is being sold
| off and the terms of the bankruptcy settlement
| dylan604 wrote:
| right, but you introduced "breaking up" into the
| conversation
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but you said the company
| would be sold off in individual parts to pay the debt.
|
| My point is that selling it off as a complete company or
| mini companies doesn't really impact the liability. Both
| would be possible. What matters from a debt or liability
| perspective is the terms of the settlement.
|
| In reality, the company is probably worth more as a
| single entity, sorry I wouldn't be surprised if it stays
| that way. That would maximize the recovery of damages and
| repayment of debt.
| dylan604 wrote:
| You sell of the formulas for scotch tape, and maybe the
| factories that make it as long as it is sequestered from
| the PFAS type stuff. You sell of the audio tape/VHS
| factories (haha). You sell off the patents/copyrights for
| all of that stuff as well. Those are the salable parts.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| You _can_ do that, but it isnt very practical.
|
| My point is that the whole thing is sellable. Propbably
| with a new stock offering for the whole company as a
| single entity.
|
| If there is a huge judgement larger than the market cap,
| the most likely oputcome would be chapter 11 bankruptcy
| wiping out the investors, and the company moving forward
| as a single entity with a new ticker and new investors
|
| This is the best of all worlds because it maximises the
| money recovered for damages and debtors.
| simonster wrote:
| It means that the market believes they are unlikely to be on
| the hook for that amount, or else the market cap would be near-
| zero. Given 3M's current profits, assets, and liabilities, a
| 142.7B payout would bankrupt it.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| What it should mean is the US government taking ownership of
| the company, appointing its' own executives and either selling
| the company to pay for the cleanup, or using the forward
| profits from the company to pay for it.
|
| That won't happen, but wouldn't it be nice if it did? Just
| once.
| delfinom wrote:
| Government bailout, it's clearly too big to fail
| [deleted]
| atoav wrote:
| Socialization.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I wonder - could a bankruptcy court simply transfer ownership
| of all 3M stock to the injured parties?
|
| Seems to me that would make them as whole as possible, while
| retaining 3M's ability to manufacture other crucial products.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| That's effectively how bankruptcy works but with more
| paperwork. You take assets (whether it's the deeds to the
| equipment or ownership of the whole company via stock) and
| you give the value of that (in the form of money or assets)
| to the claimants.
|
| Either way it's a transfer of wealth from the current
| business owners (stockholders) to claimants, just a matter
| of how that transfer happens.
| NickC25 wrote:
| Exactly. They should be nationalized. If they are the only
| producer of a number of strategically important materials,
| nationalization needs to happen.
|
| The private markets are great, but cannot be trusted to clean
| up after their own mess - they have proven this time and time
| and time again. The taxpayers will ultimately be on the hook
| for this payout, and that's simply unacceptable.
|
| If the public has to bail out this company, at the very
| least, the board and C-Suite need to be liquidated and be
| fined substantially for this sort of behavior. They've known
| about the danger of these chemicals for almost 60 years, and
| not once did they (AFAIK) go to the government and actively
| ask for help to replace said chemicals with safer
| alternatives that don't literally last forever if consumed.
| gwright wrote:
| Right, because nationalized industries/companies have a
| wonderful track record of environmental concern and
| practices?
|
| I'm not sure what the solution is to these problems (or
| this particular problem) but "nationalizing" producers
| certainly isn't one of them. Destroying 3M isn't one
| either.
|
| I don't understand the approach to difficult problems that
| starts with thinking "the government" is effectively a
| magic wand.
| NickC25 wrote:
| I'm not saying nationalized companies are great. I'm
| saying that if a company engages in such deceptive
| practices with materials that they know are toxic, and
| they fail to disclose that to the relevant parties (the
| government, and the people), they have no business being
| in business, as they are effectively externalizing the
| risk their products put on the rest of us.
|
| Destroying the company is not the best idea, but there
| has to be a line society has to draw and be vigilant
| about defending it. Otherwise, you're going to just
| encourage more of this behavior...because the flip side
| is a really ugly precedent to set.
|
| You want companies to use toxic chemicals in their
| products, lie about it, and when found out, just pay some
| fine and walk away like nothing happened?
|
| No, there has to be a line where we say "you made a ton
| of money by lying to us and putting toxic chemicals in
| our air, our water, and our bodies. you're going to now
| pay that back with substantial interest, and be barred
| from ever being in a position of any level of corporate
| power whatsoever for the rest of your life". The taxpayer
| CAN NOT be the one to be on the hook for corporate
| misdeeds time and time again.
|
| In countries like China, executives get disappeared for
| such hubris.
| youreincorrect wrote:
| > Destroying the company is not the best idea, but there
| has to be a line society has to draw and be vigilant
| about defending it.
|
| Why is it not the best idea? It's a great idea. Fine them
| more money and let them go bankrupt. Let companies that
| did not go under for such awful practices pick up the
| pieces. Why is bankruptcy acceptable for Kmart but not
| 3M? Be specific, no nonsense about how they are the only
| company in existence ever capable of creating some
| mysterious chemical yet also only have a $50B market
| capitalization (if their chemicals were so rare,
| impossible to produce, and highly sought after, market
| cap would be higher).
|
| > The taxpayer CAN NOT be the one to be on the hook for
| corporate misdeeds time and time again.
|
| I don't understand. You think the taxpayer cannot be on
| the hook, yet you also think we are obligated to bail out
| the business by nationalizing it? What do you think
| nationalizing a business entails? It would literally
| place the taxpayer on the hook for that business.
| Nationalizing it would not imply any guarantee the
| business remains profitable, and future losses would be
| owned by the public.
|
| I do agree that execs should be punished more severely
| though. We are absolutely on the same page there. And I
| don't care if the current execs are not the original
| execs responsible. As far as I can tell, they've allowed
| the problem to continue if not get worse.
| justrealist wrote:
| The US government cannot and should not run a chemical
| company. It's a dumb idea.
|
| You're just throwing around the word "nationalize"
| because it feels empowering and edgy, not because it
| solves any problems.
| youreincorrect wrote:
| Nowhere am I suggesting they should nationalize it.
| Reread the comment.
| NickC25 wrote:
| Thanks for taking my points in good faith - others have
| not done the same (or to your points either). Upvoted.
|
| > _Why is it not the best idea? It 's a great idea. Fine
| them more money and let them go bankrupt. _
|
| It's not good politics, unfortunately. The political
| actors that have the will to do such a thing would get
| trounced by the next "pro business" candidate, and a lot
| of Americans would back such a candidate no matter how
| obvious the problem is. Job losses (albeit temporarily)
| as well as the temporary supply shock if 3M is the sole
| producer of any chemical or material that is of strategic
| importance. Voters who aren't the smartest lot would eat
| that sort of candidate up, and that candidate would also
| be backed heavily by other corporate wrong-doers who
| might also be in the crosshairs down the road. It's a
| tough situation.
|
| The issue then becomes - if they don't have enough money
| to pay the fine, who is on the hook for the remaining
| damages? Think about it - if the company's market cap,
| assets, C-Suite/board combined net worths, etc.. is worth
| $N, and the total fine is $X (and N is less than X), who
| picks up the remainder of the cost to fully help those
| affected by the toxic chemicals? It's a tough question.
|
| On a personal level, I fully agree with you - burn the
| company down and punish their board and C-Suite. Those
| who play by the rules get to participate in the free
| market, and those who don't need to suffer (and have
| their golden parachutes shot down). Skirting the rules is
| hubris at the end of the day, and hubris is not good.
|
| > _I don 't understand. You think the taxpayer cannot be
| on the hook, yet you also think we are obligated to bail
| out the business by nationalizing it? What do you think
| nationalizing a business entails? It would literally
| place the taxpayer on the hook for that business.
| Nationalizing it would not imply any guarantee the
| business remains profitable, and future losses would be
| owned by the public._
|
| Fair point. This is where things become difficult -
| because as I said above, who ultimately bears the
| responsibility if the company cannot afford to pay the
| full cost of damages? My solution would essentially be
| placing the company into a trust owned by the government
| - and the trust would be responsible for conducting a
| sale of the company's assets in a timely fashion.
|
| The problem is that the taxpayer eventually foots the
| bill in one way or another. Damned if you do, damned if
| you don't.
|
| > _I do agree that execs should be punished more severely
| though. We are absolutely on the same page there. And I
| don 't care if the current execs are not the original
| execs responsible. As far as I can tell, they've allowed
| the problem to continue if not get worse. _
|
| Fine them all. Old and new.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > if they don't have enough money to pay the fine, who is
| on the hook for the remaining damages?
|
| No one. The remaining damages go uncollected as there is
| no one to collect them from. Shareholders, bondholders,
| and junior creditors are wiped out of their ownership
| stake in 3M and the 3M company would cease to exist.
| NickC25 wrote:
| And see - that's my issue. The fact that real people will
| still be fucked and unable to pay real medical costs
| associated with 3M's actions, yet the company and its
| shareholders can just say "oh, no more money, sorry" and
| wipe their hands.
|
| I get the legal concept of Limited Liability, and
| appreciate why it's a thing, but I also get a really bad
| taste in my mouth if a corporation willingly and
| knowingly causes mass harm and doesn't face the full
| consequences for its actions.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| In a company of 100k, probably like 8 people are at fault
| for this from the 80s and 90s. The rest are taking orders
| and are working on completely different areas of
| industry.
|
| 3M only works because they share R&D across various
| divisions. If it was broken up, the R&D goes away and new
| materials development all moves to Asia.
| prpl wrote:
| There's some irony that one of the M is for Mining - the poster
| boy for superfund cleanups. I guess this would be an ultrafund
| BSEdlMMldESB wrote:
| I wonder what the role of this corporation has been in
| historically 'hiding away' (making the knowledge 'safe') the
| majority of "our" know-how around industrial scale chemistry?
|
| I am curious about this because they did to chemistry what (? the
| nuclear bomb programmes?) did to physics?
|
| This that I have seen happen against computer technology during
| my short time on earth so far (related: "war on general purpose
| computers").
|
| ...that for the sake of safety (you wouldn't want randos making
| TNT? then nuclear bomb... now computer malware or 'dangerous' AI
| tools?) a way is found to make knowledge inaccessible (for
| safety's sake)
|
| on the level of reasoning i'm seeking, 3M is one of many examples
| of an older 'deeper' practice around knowledge, accessibility,
| government, organization-constructing, etc...
| pleb_nz wrote:
| I can't believe people do this just to make money. And it's not
| just this case, for example, our food supply is filled with stuff
| that is really bad for us, barely passes as edible, and is even
| sold as a healthy alternative in a lot of cases. For example,
| vegetable oils and cooking with vegetable oils and the growing
| evidence behind how bad they are, they extremely highly processed
| and in some cases not even an edible product until the last
| refinement step.
|
| We're out own worst enemies and greed is so often the issue.
| aio2 wrote:
| All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit
| quietly in a room alone.
|
| Blaise Pascal
| elwebmaster wrote:
| Or fake "beyond" meats. Highly processed, who knows what. The
| opposite of fresh vegetables and meat.
| js4ever wrote:
| https://archive.is/8mVcB
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| https://archive.ph/vYbB7
| orangepurple wrote:
| In the future there will be a $200 trillion dollar lawsuit
| against tire manufacturers and brake disc manufacturers once
| people learn about those
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Yeah, people don't know that everything that last long is pfas.
| Tires are a great example.
| someweirdperson wrote:
| Those are perfectly safe. People rolling those wheels and
| breaking is what's causing all the harm.
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| The most depressing part of this? Stopping the creation of PFAS
| might help out kids or grandkids, but we're kind of screwed.
| Well, unless you give blood a lot?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Invest in leaches!
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Giving plasma is actually better if you want to remove PFAS.
|
| And giving either is a good thing, so if this can mean people
| will give 2 or 3 times a year, everybody wins.
| npongratz wrote:
| Suppose I give plasma or blood, and it removes PFAS from my
| body. Does it give those PFAS to the recipient of my
| plasma/blood?
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Yes, but:
|
| - it removes only a fraction of it from your body, so it
| gives only a fraction of it to the recipient.
|
| - if you need a donation, this dose compared to what you
| get in exchange is usually a very good deal
|
| - some blood don't actually go to people, but is used for
| manufacturing drugs, science tests or expires
|
| - hopefully people don't get blood transfusions very often
| and have a blood level of PFAS close to the average and the
| given blood. Hopefully.
| quesera wrote:
| Also: recipient likely has a similar PFAS concentration
| in their blood already, so there's minimal net impact
| (aside from the life-saving part!)
| [deleted]
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