3M Knew About PFAS Food Contamination in 2001

by Lionel Casey

Last week, we learned that the Food and Drug Administration had detected PFAS compounds in pineapple, sweet potato, meat, and chocolate cake. The presence of the industrial compounds in our food became made public with the aid of the Environmental Working Group after a body of workers member of the Environmental Defense Fund took pix of the research at a systematic convention in Europe.

3M Knew About PFAS Food Contamination in 2001 3

While the FDA fields questions about why it didn’t gift this data to the general public itself (the enterprise released the statistics together with a declaration on Tuesday), it has become clear that 3M, the employer that at first developed PFOS and PFOA, had known for a very long time that these toxic and chronic chemical compounds had been in our food.

According to 2001 observe sponsored using 3M, 12 samples of meals from around the united states of America — along with floor pork, bread, apples, and green beans — examined high quality for both PFOA or PFOS. One piece of bread had 14,seven-hundred elements in step with trillion of PFOA, though the document cited that the sample became taken into consideration “suspect.”

The Environmental Protection Agency has regarded the observation for years, but it is unclear if the FDA was privy to the research. The Environmental Working Group referred to the 3M study in a 2002 file on PFAS chemical compounds and alerted the Centers for Disease Control.

On Tuesday, lawyer Rob Bilott wrote to the FDA to ask “the extent to which FDA becomes aware of the statistics gathered on behalf of the 3M organization in 2001 that confirmed elevated degrees of PFAS inside the U.S. Food supply.” In 1999, Bilott sued DuPont over PFOA infection round its plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia, in which the employer used the chemical to make Teflon. Through his litigation, he received many files about PFAS, which he has for the reason that supplied to the EPA, FDA, and other federal organizations.

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