The Toxic Legacy of 3M’s ‘Forever Chemical substances’

This is our garden. My father is cultivatingsome stuff like tomatoes, pumpkins, a lot of potatoes. And this is all polluted,heavily polluted. How does it make me feel beinga neighbor of 3M company? I don't like them being myneighbors, but they are. I use stuff of 3M, which I don't want to, but it's just like that. I have no other option.

They're everywhere. My entire family is highly affected by that stupid chemical. You may not realize it, but almost everyone has some level of PFAS in their bloodstream becausethese products are everywhere in our everyday environment. PFAS is the umbrella term.

For thousands of differentkinds of chemicals. They're known as “forever chemicals.” They are man-madechemicals used in thousands of different kinds of products. They are miraculous chemicals. You can't find a bettercoating, for instance, to make your jacket waterproof. They've made our livesconvenient in many ways. From the foods you eat,to the sofa you sit on,.

To the rain jacket you puton when you go outside. But the problem is they don'tdegrade in the environment, and they're almostimpossible to get rid of. They accumulate in soil, rivers, drinking waterand in the bloodstream of people who are exposed to them. And now, PFAS chemicalsare associated with a range of health problems: hormoneand immune disorders, thyroid malfunctions, but as well,.

High cholesterol anddiabetes, kidney problems and even a diminished vaccine efficacy. 3M maintains that thesechemicals are not harmful to human health in the levelsdetected in the environment. But of course, that really depends on where you're talking about. In some areas, particularly around thefactories that they have, the levels detected in theenvironment are incredibly high.

3M is a global corporation,a conglomerate, that makes a wide range of products. Everything from its flagship product, Scotchgard, to protectfabric and your sofa. It makes Post-it notes. It makes N95 masks. But italso makes everyday products that are not branded. 3M has billions in sales and factories in different parts of the world.

3M's factory is located onthe banks of the river Scheldt in the city of Antwerp. It is part of Europe'sbiggest chemical cluster. A highway separates that chemical cluster from what is a suburban farming community. 3M began operating in Belgium in the 1970s and started making PFOS there in 1976. Now it stopped making PFOS there in 2002, but in those intervening years,.

It contaminated the surrounding area. Those people living just behindthe 3M factory were exposed to the PFOS emissions from that plant, including from the air andthe soil and the water. And it's had a really devastating impact, both on the people wholive and work there. I live, let's say, 500 meters away from the chemical plant of the 3M company.

I live here with my family:three children, my husband, my parents just across the door, my brother across the street, and that's me. So, we live here for five generations long. Then, they tell me justlike two years ago, maybe it's better that yourchildren don't play outside and that you clean yourhouse two times a week.

In a really proper way. Because we know that we produce a chemical and it's in your house,it's in your garden, and it's not good for children. I don't want to expose mychildren to those chemicals. Everybody was like, move, move. And I was like, why? I already exposed them in a huge amount just by holding them,just by being pregnant,.

Just by feeding them. I exposed them as a mom. So, I breastfed my daughterfor at least a year, six months to a year. And I was happy, it wasfine, everything was fine. And suddenly, she becomes 4 years old and not everything was fine any longer. She has a problem. According to outside world,.

She's slightly disabled. Why? Because she had a shortnessof oxygen in her brain and some things are notworking that well anymore. Maybe the problem is causedby that chemical company. Maybe not. Is she dying? No. Will she get cancer?.

Who knows? I don't know. I don't know how bad it is, you know? And nobody knows. Nobody. Even 3M, they say they don't know. But I gave her a huge, huge, huge amount of that kind of chemicalbecause I thought, yeah, it's good to breastfeed, why not? It's easy, nice, easy,it's nature, you know.

It's just, like, yeah, whatyou're supposed to do as a mom. I didn't do anything wrong. So, we eliminate PFAS through loss of blood or in the urine. But one of the biggestways of eliminating PFAS is through pregnancy and breastfeeding, which is incredibly worrisome. That means that children havesome of the highest exposures because mothers pass PFASfrom their bloodstream.

Onto their fetuses. And children are incrediblyvulnerable to contamination because their organs are still developing, their biochemistries are still evolving. Some scientists described this to me as a ticking time bombfor future generations. This contamination mightnever have come to light if not for a plan to builda multi-billion-euro tunnel and highway project that wasdue to pop out right next.

To 3M's factory in Antwerp. The plan required thedigging up of tons of soil and river silt and being moved to different parts of Belgium. The decision to move allthis soil to other parts of Flanders led activiststo start scrutinizing what's in the soil. And two activists cameacross some documents that they requested fromthe state highway company.

And from Flemish regulators and discovered that the soil being dugup near the 3M factory was heavily contaminated with PFOS. In the middle of this environmental report on the sanitation report for 3M, I find what's pretty much a photocopy of groundwater measurements from 2000s. And my first reflex is, like, oh, there's a problem with thedecimal comma or point.

You know, I was thinking, oh,you know, they misplaced it, so it's like a thousand timestoo much, or it must be. But it wasn't, it was like, you know, 250,000 micrograms per liter, I think. Just so staggeringly high. I'd never seen numbers like that, even in, you know, theseinternational reports. And that was loose in thegroundwater underneath 3M. If we go by the currentdata and the knowledge.

From the European FoodSafety Administration, they get to, like, a normaround 4 nanograms per liter for drinking water. Now, what we saw therewas something that was in the order of a couplehundred million times that. That's what we're talking about. Now this caused a chain of events that caused a huge political scandal. What came out was that thestate-owned highway company.

Had done a secret deal with 3M that would enable them todeposit the most contaminated and polluted soil onto 3M's factory site to build what they calleda security wall on a site that previously didn't needany kind of security wall. And the catch was that theycould move contaminated soil as long as it served a function. And if you look at the permit for it, there's no indicationthat's actually storage.

For polluted soil. It's just not in there. So this roundabout actually contains really heavily polluted PFAS soil. So technically, it'san illegal waste dump. But because it's already in here, they're basically saying, oh,you know, it's a done deal. We're not going to bother, you know, getting it out, if it's even possible.

So, this is a whole problem,you know, in this area with the tunnel construction company, is they're trying to create situations where it's impossible to rectify. There was a public outcry. Activists then crowdfundedto start testing the bloodstream of certain residents who lived near the factory for PFOS. And when those resultscame out in August 2021,.

It caused mayhem becausemany of those people that they tested, and just at random, had incredibly high levelsof PFOS in their bloodstream. In one case, a woman in her 60s had levels that were comparable toindustrial wastewater. So 3M has been churning out varieties of PFAS chemicals since the 1950s. But it began doing studies in the '70s that made them realizethat these chemicals.

Were highly toxic, including two studies inthe late 1970s on monkeys, which were disclosed aspart of a lawsuit in 2018. It was being sued for harmingthe health of residents of Minnesota who livednear 3M's headquarters. They found high levels ofPFAS in drinking water, particularly those people whohad wells on their property. And they noted higher rates of cancer and leukemia in residentsthat live nearby.

In 2018, 3M agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by the state ofMinnesota by paying $850 million without admitting any wrongdoing. In 2000, 3M announcedit would stop producing longer-chain PFAS as aprecautionary measure, saying the chemicals were safe. But they announced thatthey would be replacing them with shorter-chain equivalentsthat they said were safer. Those are now believed to bepotentially equally dangerous.

To the environment and to human health because they're highlymobile and they spread in the environment more easily. They try to project a, you know, societal, corporate responsible view. But in the end, they'veknown since the '80s how toxic this product was. I think it's really disappointing that 3M reached thisagreement to pay $580 million.

To the Flemish government, but so many of theresidents are left in limbo, worried about their health,worried about their kids, worried about their house prices, worried about theirsurrounding environment. And very little has been done. Now they say, don't play outside, don't eat your vegetables. I'm like, hmm, it's your child.

How I can tell my child, like, please don't walk with your bare feet. Don't touch the soilbecause it's polluted. It's impossible. And now I have to say,don't touch that apple. Don't touch, don't do, it's poison. And then they're like, hmm, is it a fairy? No, it's not a fairy. It's real life. We cannot eat those apples.

It's poison. Don't touch.

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