Why 'Forever Chemicals' Are Still Spreading

A little-known American company has been giving plastic a special touch called fluorination for 40 years. After the EPA discovered treated containers can leach “forever chemicals,” the company refused to stop.

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[BrianMartensMusic]

Why not require companies that use fluorinated plastic containers to print a large warning label on them informing consumers of the danger like we do with cigarettes/tobacco? If the EPA can't force their hand, maybe we can try to change consumer behavior.

[lain]

What an extremely courageous and intelligent person 👏👏

[em]

Thank you Bloomberg for presenting these issues.
We are all in this together.

[dwylhq]

Insane that the greed of a handful of Chemical Company Execs can destroy the lives of so many people! 💭 how is this still legal?

[PatrickBaptist]

We stopped using teflon cookware back 16 years ago when my Wifey and I started having kids. We use stainless steel uncoated cookware.

[kathleenmilazzoswahn]

Exceptional. Sad, but critical work you are doing

[davidpedersen]

Another reason I listen to Bloomberg all week. Their reporting and investigations are impeccable.

[CIB]

Thank you for the info regarding fluorinated plastics. Peace

[templetonbob]

I hate DuPont with a passion. What are the other awful companies spreading toxicity for profit?

[cupwalker.]

Im a Environmental Driller . I Travel the United states Protecting Ground Water . You havent lived intill you have Drilled some of the Toughest Environmental Wells and ways to stop pfas out There in some of the Most Beautiful places to not so beautiful places 💪 Sometimes i get sprayed in the face and Slop around in Pfass, TCE, Vocs, Benzene, etc etc to Protect Other peoples Ground water Behind a Drilling Rig for 62 hours a Week .

[johnswanson]

That Korean War data is very accurate. My grand parents are born in 30s and have never had any long term disease until their 80s.
My parent generation (born in 50-60s) all my uncles and aunts had cancer which is not genetic at all.
They remember drinking tap water and eating a lot of fish.
I blame on my grandparent generation for being very naive and greedy. They either commited crimes or naively do whatever those criminals told them to do for money.

[panithera]

What a great woman you are. You did a wonderful job. And hopefully we will soon be able to stop this onslaught on sanity. I did some research and found that German companies are using and selling those plastics as well. I will do some additional research on that.

[Rene-uzeb]

Cosmetics, really? Maybe one reason why some diseases are massively overrepresented in women. I remember when consumer protection laws resulted in companies pulling entire types of products. The epa should have at least as much teeth. It really doesn't get any worse than massive environmental pollution and danger to human health, economic considerations, for real?

[KPZivot]

If in such a country who take action immediately the situation is like this what about countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh where tap water pipelines are laid from drainage systems

[thatguychris]

And they keep adding fluorine to tap water too. Archeologists will call this time we're in as the Fluoride Era.

[infinityzer]

forever chemicals VS prion disease.

Which one will out-live someone?

[bengrant]

Like asbestos. No amount is considered safe.

[fintux]

The sooner PFASs are banned the better. Lead in gasoline (prevents engine knocking). Arsenic in wallpapers (gave nice green color). Asbestos in pretty much anything (similar reasons as to why we use PFAS for everything). X-rays for fitting shoes (so convenient instead of, you know, walking a few steps). You name it. What could possibly go wrong? I mean, sometimes it is difficult to know beforehand how widespread effects something causes, but we should 1) study beforehand, 2) stop as soon as we realize something is wrong. But we mostly skip 1), and we take usually decades to react. And too often, the replacement is as bad.

I just wanted to check if in Finland we have some regulation on the substances (we usually have quite strict ones). Well, I found a store selling fluorinated plastic bottles with a mention on storing food items. And as far as I could tell, it was not FPE (it was said to be fluorinated from inside and outside). FPE should apparently not have dissolving PFASs in it, as the fluoride is in the polymers - and even for those, what happens when the plastic will eventually break down? What was worse, the company claimed that the bottles are fully recyclable. So that means that the PFAS will be making their way to all recycled plastic, which is also used for storing food items and cosmetics. And who knows what is being sold in PFAS-containing plastics?

[techcafe]

"Better living through chemistry" they told us. And we actually believed them.

[drpgfki]

3:350 bet those food cans have some form of harmful chemicals. Plastic lining.