U.S.-based manufacturing conglomerate 3M agreed to a massive $10.3 billion settlement on Thursday in response to claims that the company’s forever chemicals had tainted drinking water in localities across the country.
3M will pay for the testing and clean-up of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in public water supplies over 13 years, pending the agreement’s approval, according to The New York Times.
Other chemical manufacturers Chemours, DuPont, and Corteva have also settled recently over PFAS lawsuits filed by local authorities.
PFAS are the main components of various household, commercial, and industrial products, including jet fuel and certain food packaging. They are infamous for their persistence in both the environment and the human body, where they can cause various cancers as well as reproductive and immune system problems.
The Texas Observer reported in 2019 that nearly half a million Texans lived within 3 miles of sites where extreme levels of PFAS contamination had been found in the groundwater.
A peer-reviewed study appearing in Environmental Science & Technology Letters in 2020 claimed that nearly all Americans, including newborns, had traces of PFAS in their bloodstream because of contaminated drinking water.
Yet the effects of contamination extend well beyond drinking water.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, a study conducted on 501 fish samples collected across the U.S. from 2013 to 2015 found that eating just one serving of locally sourced freshwater fish each year could have the same effect as drinking water that is heavily polluted with PFAS for an entire month.
As of June 22, 3M was facing approximately 4,000 lawsuits filed by states and local authorities over PFAS contamination.
3M Chairman and Chief Executive Mike Roman released a statement after the settlement saying it was “an important step forward” and pledged that the company “will exit all PFAS manufacturing by the end of 2025,” according to NYT.
Yet some local authorities have argued that the $10.3 billion settlement was not enough to adequately combat the soil and water contamination from these hazardous compounds, leaving a financial burden on local taxpayers.
For instance, Brunswick County in North Carolina already spent close to $100 million cleaning up PFAS contaminants from the Cape Fear watershed and continues to spend roughly $2.9 million a year, according to NYT.
Similarly, Orange County in California estimated that $1 billion would be required just to lower PFAS levels in its drinking water, NYT reported.
3M’s settlement still needs to be approved by the federal court in South Carolina handling the multidistrict litigation as well as the plaintiffs.
While the Environmental Protection Agency announced last year that it was working on a proposal that would require near-zero levels of the chemicals in drinking water, some industries have pushed back at what they have called an unattainable standard, according to NYT.