Business: Externalizing risk and damage while privatizing profit for the elites

Contaminated residential parcels near the Chemours chemical factory in Fayetteville, N.C. More than 4,000 homes qualify for under-sink water treatment systems.

The New York Times writes in an article, How Chemical Companies Avoid Paying for Pollution, on how chemical companies externalize human risks and environmental damage in their quest for profit above all other concerns:

DuPont factories pumped dangerous substances into the environment. The company and its offspring have gone to great lengths to dodge responsibility.

Brian Long, a senior executive at the chemical company Chemours, took a reporter on a tour of the Fayetteville Works factory.

Mr. Long showed off the plant’s new antipollution technologies, designed to stop a chemical called GenX from pouring into the Cape Fear River, escaping into the air and seeping into the ground water.

There was a new high-tech filtration system. And a new thermal oxidizer, which heats waste to 2,000 degrees. And an underground wall — still under construction — to keep the chemicals out of the river. And more.

“They’re not Band-Aids,” Mr. Long said. “They’re long-term, robust solutions.”

Yet weeks later, North Carolina officials announced that Chemours had exceeded limits on how much GenX its Fayetteville factory was emitting. This month, the state fined the company $300,000 for the violations — the second time this year the company has been penalized by the state’s environmental regulator.

GenX is part of a family of chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. They allow everyday items — frying pans, rain jackets, face masks, pizza boxes — to repel water, grease and stains. Exposure to the chemicals has been linked to cancer and other serious health problems.

To avoid responsibility for what many experts believe is a public health crisis, leading chemical companies like Chemours, DuPont and 3M have deployed a potent mix of tactics.

They have used public charm offensives to persuade regulators and lawmakers to back off. They have engineered complex corporate transactions to shield themselves from legal liability. And they have rolled out a conveyor belt of scantly tested substitute chemicals that sometimes turn out to be just as dangerous as their predecessors.

PFAS substances are known as “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down and can accumulate in the environment and in the blood and organs of people and animals.

Most Americans have been exposed to at least trace amounts of the chemicals and have them in their blood, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Research by chemical companies and academics has shown that exposure to PFAS has been linked to cancer, liver damage, birth defects and other health problems. GenX was supposed to be a safer alternative to earlier generations of the chemicals, but new studies are discovering similar health hazards.

This week, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it was going to start requiring companies to test and publicly report the amount of PFAS in the products they make. It is an early step toward regulating the chemicals, though the E.P.A. has not set limits on their production or discharge.

Chemours argues that most of the pollution in North Carolina occurred long before it owned Fayetteville Works. DuPont, which built the factory in the 1960s, claims it can’t be held liable because of a corporate reorganization that took place several years ago. DuPont “does not produce” the chemicals in question, “and we are not in a position to comment on products that are owned by other independent, publicly traded companies,” said a DuPont spokesman, Daniel A. Turner.

If the ex-president had been re-elected in 2020, as he still claims he was, the EPA would not be starting to regulate these dangerous chemicals. And, if chemical companies put human health first, the EPA would not need to regulate them because they would not be used much or at all.

Like their attitude about climate science and global warming, fascist Republican Party (FRP) elites do not believe that chemical pollution is a human health problem. In their minds, environmental damage is a grossly overblown non-issue. Regulations are out of the question. So is honesty. 

Questions: 

1. In view of core radical right dogma that free markets always do better than any government, is it fair or accurate to argue that the FRP opposes regulation of chemical pollution and honesty about its existence because the profit motive trumps both human health concerns and environmental damage? 

2. If the FRP was in control of the White House, (i) would the EPA be starting data gathering in a process to regulate PFAS or GenX chemicals, and/or (ii) would this kind of reporting be attacked as fake news and lies from the failing “enemy of the people” New York Times? If there is an enemy of the people, who or what is it?

3. Are the American people too spoiled, ignorant and/or deceived to tolerate EPA regulations that cause some loss of convenience or functionality in consumer products that contain toxic chemicals? Does it matter if most of the harm occurs with local people and the local environment where they are made? 

2,854 PFAS contaminated sites in the US

blue dots - contaminated drinking water

purple dots - military sites

red - other sites