[joshe]

Strange that we sue companies for selling products we haven't even bothered to ban yet. The idea that 3M "knew the whole time" is kooky when we aren't even sure now, 15 years after people started looking into this, whether we should ban them.

Scientists, regulators and legislatures should decide what the rules are and then hold companies accountable for actually breaking the rules.

[4ec0755f5522]

Hard disagree; companies should be responsible for harm caused by their products regardless of whether it's "legal". This is "loophole thinking" and it only benefits bad actors.

[fluoridation]

Doing something that's not illegal is not a loophole. A loophole involves doing something that would otherwise be illegal in a manner that makes it ambiguously not illegal, often due to a poorly-made law.

[graeme]

A lawsuit is about harm. If it's a civil lawsuit, you can absolutely be sued for doing things which you know to be harmful to others, even if they aren't crimes. That's what a tort is. The purpose of such private lawsuits it to give people a legal mechanism for redress that doesn't involve physically attacking each other or trying to legislate everything.

[cpncrunch]

>know to be harmful to others

This is the key fact. I had a look at the evidence, and I'm not seeing any harm myself.

See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_subst...

Taking an example of developmental problems, there is this study:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4344877/

but it doesn't seem to have been replicated, at least in mice:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5345697/

[magicalist]

What is your goal with this comment?

> I had a look at the evidence

The evidence isn't difficult to search for, and your 30 second "look" at two sources from the Wikipedia article doesn't exactly amount to a meta analysis.

[cpncrunch]

If you can post that meta-analysis that would be helpful, thanks. My goal is to find the evidence. It seems you have it, so it would be useful if you could post it. Generally if there is a meta-analysis or robust evidence it will be in the wikipedia article. If not, I'd love for you to add it (or I can). Evidence shouldn't be hard to find...

[graeme]

Well the question of whether there was harm and whether it was or ought to have been known is precisely what a court would decide.

[cush]

How do we know that any new product doesn't have long term health effects? As science advances, the ability to precisely measure health effects advances as well. In most cases, we simply don't know until it's too late. There's a realistic balance between caution and innovation.

That said, if 3M knew about and covered up known health effects, then take em for all they're worth.

[liquidise]

Care you elaborate? I'm genuinely curious about how this plays out in in practice.

From the perspective of a driver, this fits: i am held responsible for harm i cause even if i was otherwise driving lawfully. But should my car maker be held responsible for the harm their car caused under lawful use?

[Miraste]

If the scientists who invented and tested it worked at 3M, how would the government know it was harmful before they distributed it?

[BatFastard]

The government did not know, but 3M knew. They made a choice not to burn it in order to save money.

[mensetmanusman]

PFAS was military tech before it came to 3M.

[specialist]

Does "Don't (knowingly) poison the whole earth and all its inhabitants" need to be a written rule?

[kubota]

Yes.

[arcticfox]

If the other commenter saying "The problem is 3M scientists have know toxicity to human and have withheld the information to the public and regulators" is accurate, your point is invalid. How could we ban a product that we were misled on.

[biofunsf]

I totally agree if the toxicity is known. But the fact that these chemicals aren't banned completely, must mean that this isn't yet widely excepted?

Toxicity is a wide spectrum so the truth could be somewhere in between. Maybe teflon coated products don't have enough to be toxic, but dumping the chemicals wholesale into the water supply is enough to be toxic. And 3M could have concealed this high-dosage toxicity from regulators. (I'm trying to reconcile "3M scientists have know toxicity to humans" and the fact that these chemicals aren't banned)

[stonogo]

Scientists, regulators, and legislatures already decided the rules. They're not being sued for "selling products we haven't even bothered to ban yet." That summary is inaccurate.

They're being sued for selling products they knew to be toxic, without disclosing that information, which is already against the law.

[turnerdhooch]

Regulatory capture.

[fluoridation]

Presumably these are civil suits, not criminal cases. Whether the chemicals in question were banned or not is irrelevant.

[greenie_beans]

don't you think lobbying might play a factor in whether or not they're banned yet?