The Biggest Chemical Cover-Up In History Was Kept Hidden For Years

Up to 99 percent of people have “forever chemicals” in their bodies, where they linger indefinitely and potentially cause a host of health conditions. Disturbingly, the manufacturers of these chemicals were aware of the risks and deliberately concealed them, following a playbook strikingly similar to that of Big Tobacco.

PFAS, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a synthetic group of compounds added to everyday products to boost their waterproof, non-stick, and stain-resistant properties. They are commonly found in items such as non-stick cookware, fast food packaging, certain fabrics, firefighting foam, and even components of jet engines.

Despite being less than a century old, they have become ubiquitous in the environment and the bodies of animals, including humans. This is because PFAS are incredibly persistent by design. They do not break down easily in nature or in the human body. Their chemical structure makes them resistant to heat, water, and oil, allowing them to accumulate over time in soil, water sources, wildlife, and human tissue. 

In a 2023 study, researchers from UC San Francisco and the University of Colorado analyzed documents belonging to DuPont and 3M, the largest manufacturers of PFAS, using methods designed to expose tobacco industry tactics.

The internal documents, which span 45 years from 1961 to 2006, were uncovered during a famous lawsuit filed by attorney Robert Bilott, whose story was the basis of the 2019 movie Dark Waters.

They reveal that the companies had a load of evidence that PFAS were likely to be harmful, but they did not publish the material and failed to report their findings to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as required by US law. 

“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,” Tracey J. Woodruff, professor and director of the UCSF Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment and senior author of the paper, said in a statement.

One memo from the DuPont-funded Haskell Laboratory in 1970 found C8, one of thousands of PFAS, was “highly toxic when inhaled and moderately toxic when ingested.” A later report in 1979 verified that the Haskell labs found that dogs who were exposed to a single dose of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) “died two days after ingestion.”

In 1980, DuPont and 3M discovered that two out of eight pregnant workers involved in C8 production had given birth to children with birth defects. However, the companies neither disclosed this information publicly nor informed their employees. The next year, an internal memo claimed, “We know of no evidence of birth defects caused by C-8 at DuPont.”

After being informed about their potential dangers, the companies repeatedly told the public there was nothing to worry about. DuPont told employees in 1980 that C8, “has a lower toxicity, like table salt” and published a press release in 1991 that claimed: “C-8 has no known toxic or ill health effects in humans at concentration levels detected.”

The truth eventually came out, however. In 2004, DuPont was fined $16.45 million by the EPA – the largest civil penalty under US environmental law at the time. Still, the fine was a mere drop in the bucket compared to the company’s estimated $1 billion in 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 US currently regulates harmful chemicals.”