CENTRAL MAINE • September 27, 2023
American chemical companies have to learn it doesn’t pay to keep secrets. DuPont and four other companies have filed to block legal that filings that reveal how much the companies are paying to settle a lawsuit over the contamination of a river with “forever chemicals.” Manufacturers upstream use PFAS, a possible carcinogen, in the making of carpeting and flooring. The case is one of more than an estimated 15,000 claims that have been filed nationwide against DuPont, 3M, and smaller companies for PFAS contamination. The biggest PFAS manufacturers spent four decades suppressing information about the dangers. Now they are paying the price for that secrecy. The massive litigation underway might have been avoided if two of the biggest manufacturers of PFAS had been more forthcoming in the 1970s when they first learned about the health impacts of these forever chemicals. Instead, they suppressed unfavorable scientific research. More than $200 billion dollars later, we know what happened when the tobacco industry did that. PFAS producing companies got themselves into this mess by keeping secrets. Maybe the truth will help set them, and us, free. ~ Nedra Rhonethe, Atlanta Journal-Constitution