Food

3M KNEW ABOUT PFAS FOOD CONTAMINATION IN 2001

LAST WEEK, we found out that the Food and Drug Administration had detected PFAS compounds in pineapple, candy potato, meat, and chocolate cake. The industrial compounds in our food became made public by the Environmental Working Group after a staff member of the Environmental Defense Fund took snapshots of the studies at a scientific conference in Europe.

While the FDA fields questions about why it didn’t gift this information to the general public itself (the organization released the statistics together with an assertion on Tuesday), it has turned out to be clear that 3M, the company that at the start, evolved PFOS and PFOA, had known for a long time that these poisonous and chronic chemical substances were in our meals.

According to 2001, backed by 3M, 12 samples of meals from around the United States — along with ground beef, bread, apples, and inexperienced beans — examined positive for either PFOA or PFOS. One piece of bread had 14 seven-hundred elements in step with trillion of PFOA, although the report referred to that the pattern changed into taking into consideration “suspect.”

The Environmental Protection Agency has acknowledged the look for years. However, it isn’t always clear if the FDA changed into awareness of the studies. The Environmental Working Group referred to the 3M, a 2002 file on PFAS chemical substances, alerted the Centers for Disease Control.

3M KNEW ABOUT PFAS FOOD CONTAMINATION IN 2001 1

On Tuesday, attorney Rob Bilott wrote to the FDA to ask “the extent to which FDA became aware of the information amassed on behalf of the 3M organization in 2001 that showed extended tiers of PFAS inside the U.S. Food supply.” In 1999, Bilott sued DuPont over PFOA contamination around its plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia, wherein the enterprise used the chemical to make Teflon. Through his litigation, he received many documents about PFAS, which he was due to the fact furnished to the EPA, FDA, and other federal companies.

The EPA did not reply to questions about when it became privy to the 3M. 3M has currently not responded to a request for comment.

Tuesday’s FDA announcement stated that recent exams “did not come across PFAS in the sizeable majority of the ingredients tested.” The announcement additionally said that “based totally on the best to be had the modern technological know-how, the FDA does not have any indication that these materials are a human health challenge, in different words a meals protection hazard in human food, on the stages found on this restricted sampling.”

Yet there’s abundant proof that even at deficient levels, both chemicals intervene with human immunity, reproduction, and improvement and cause more than one health problem, including accelerated LDL cholesterol, thyroid disease, and cancer. Virtually everyone has some PFAS chemical compounds in their blood. They enter the body through food, water, dirt, and exposure to customer merchandise.

There are several feasible ways the commercial chemical compounds input food substances, including contaminated groundwater and sewage sludge, which has been unfolding on crops worldwide. S . A. For decades.

New studies supplied at a PFAS convention at Northeastern University this week show other effects of the chemical substances, including improved hospitalizations of kids for infectious diseases, decreased kidney characteristics, and modifications in hormone stages at birth and during youth. A look in West Africa at the relationship between PFAS levels and the impact of the measles vaccine introduced evidence that the chemicals intrude with early life immunity and weaken the effect of vaccines. Another look from Harvard Medical School’s Department of Population Medicine observed that high PFAS stages were related to excessive weight-reduction plans in low-fiber carbohydrates, fish, and high-fat meat.

Duane Simpson

Internet fan. Zombie aficionado. Infuriatingly humble problem solver. Alcohol enthusiast. Spent several months exporting UFOs in Jacksonville, FL. A real dynamo when it comes to exporting gravy in Tampa, FL. Spent 2001-2004 implementing saliva in Edison, NJ. Had moderate success getting my feet wet with junk food on Wall Street. Practiced in the art of building Virgin Mary figurines in Tampa, FL. Practiced in the art of marketing Roombas in Phoenix, AZ.

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