US chemical giants have spent more than $100 million lobbying politicians to eliminate or weaken laws against their “forever chemicals,” which could contaminate water sources and farmland for decades, according to a new report.
Researchers at Food & Water Watch say Dow, DuPont and other companies, along with their industry group, the American Chemistry Council (ACC), paid out millions to have safety legislation diluted between 2019 and 2022.
It worked, the researchers said in their Study of 11 pages. During that period, lawmakers debated 130 bills addressing and cleaning up chemicals forever, but only four of them made it to the books.
Amanda Starbuck, the group’s research director, said that “chemical companies have lied to the public for years about the alarming health consequences” of polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), known as “forever chemicals.”
A harmless fast food packaging? Think again. It contains ‘forever chemicals’ that can persist in the human body for years
Politicians who received millions from chemical giant lobbyists killed the most serious legislation against PFAS
“Now that the truth about the many harmful effects of PFAS has been exposed, the industry is trying to avoid liability by using its vast lobbying arsenal,” she said.
Amanda Starbuck Says ‘Chemical Companies Lied’
The tiny man-made compounds — which got their name because they don’t break down in the body — were a dream for manufacturers when they were invented nearly 100 years ago because of their durability.
Due to their ability to repel water, stains, grease and oil and to make cardboard and plastic packaging stronger, they have been used in many everyday products, from non-stick cookware to clothing, carpets, cosmetics, children’s toys, food and bottles drink.
But they are also dangerous. They accumulate in the human body and research has linked them to a variety of cancers, blood disorders, fertility problems and birth defects.
A report this year found that PFAS manufacturers had been trying to cover up the dangers they posed for more than three decades. Internal records showed how executives first became aware of the health risks in 1961 – but did not warn the world until the 1990s.
According to Starbuck, those same manufacturers are still at it. In the three years to 2022, eight major PFAS manufacturers, including Dow and DuPont, have spent at least $55.7 million lobbying companies.
At the same time, the ACC spent another $58.7 million on lobbying.
Dow, DuPont and the ACC, which represents more than 190 chemical companies, did not return DailyMail.com’s requests for comment.
Between 2019 and 2021, lawmakers debated the PFAS Action Act — a sweeping bill that would have forever designated two major chemicals as hazardous substances, with restrictions on their use.
The eight PFAS manufacturers paid 28 lobbyists to fight the 2019 version of the bill, investigators said.
The bill passed the House, but was rejected by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
Two-thirds of committee members had received about $450,000 in campaign contributions from PFAS manufacturers, Starbuck told DailyMail.com.
The victims are ordinary Americans, she added.
“Communities from coast to coast are being left to foot the enormous bill for PFAS contamination in their drinking water, on their farmland and in their bodies,” she said.
The federal government must change course and “hold polluters accountable for the cleanup,” she added.
Research shows that half of America’s drinking water is laced with toxins; as many as 98 percent of Americans have detectable levels of PFAS in their blood.
As this chart shows, no room in the average household is completely chemical-free.
Forever chemicals can be found in every corner of a typical American home
Chemical manufacturer Du Pont is one of the companies highlighted in the damning report
A DailyMail.com investigation earlier this year revealed much higher than average rates of cancer cases and deaths, as well as pregnancy complications, in most provinces where drinking water contains high levels of PFAS chemicals.
PFAS are ubiquitous in modern life.
Some of the estimated 12,000 PFAS chemicals are used to give nonstick cookware its distinctive quality, repel water from raincoats and form the firefighting foam used by firefighters.
The chemicals are also often listed on the packaging of some foods, which can then absorb some of the toxins.
Washing dishes coated with PFAS and covering crops with PFAS-laden pesticides creates runoff that seeps into drinking water sources.
DuPont was at the center of a PFAS-related controversy this year when it, along with two other chemical companies, agreed to settle pollution complaints for about $1.2 billion.
Central California, where agriculture is a major industry, has found high levels of PFAS in its water systems. This may be due to PFAS-laden insecticides used on agricultural lands leaching into groundwater
Food & Water Watch says too many forever chemicals are getting into the water we drink
Although many manufacturers have phased out the use of certain PFAS, such as PFOA, the chemicals have an extremely long half-life, in some cases as long as ten years.
The half-life of a substance is the time it takes for half of the original amount of a chemical to break down or disappear.
For example, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), one of the most studied PFAS chemicals, is estimated to have a half-life of several years to more than a decade in the environment before breaking down.
Earlier this year, researchers from the US Geological Survey, a federally led study, tested water sources at more than 700 locations across the country for PFAS.
They found that 45 percent of drinking water sources contained at least one PFAS – with the highest concentrations in the Great Plains, the Great Lakes, the East Coast and Central/Southern California.
The team’s tests were limited to 32 types of PFAS out of more than 12,000 in existence, meaning thousands of chemicals could have gone undetected. If so, it may indicate that the problem is even bigger than the research suggests.