Washington Post is not a source I trust, so the story is likely propaganda.
When I went to that link, it tried to download a virus in form of a dll.
1970s The Quartz said that according to a document on file with the US Environmental Protection Agency, and discovered by The Intercept's Sharon Lerner in June 2019, reported that the document was on file with the US Environmental Protection Agency, that Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company (3M) "knew as early as the 1970s that PFAS was accumulating in human blood." 3M's own experiments on rats and monkeys concluded that PFAS compounds "should be regarded as toxic."[31]
1973 "DuPont finds there is no safe level of exposure to C8/PFOA in animals."[27]
1976 "3M begins testing some workers’ blood for PFOA and finds it in almost every one tested."[27]
1970s In the 1970s researchers at 3M documented the presence of PFOS and PFOA—the "two best-known PFAS compounds"—in fish.[32]
1970s In Australia, firefighting foams containing PFAS had been used "extensively" since the 1970s, because they were very effective in "fighting liquid fuel fires."[33]
1978 3M scientists, Hugh J. Van Noordwyk and Michael A. Santoro published an article on 3D's hazardous waste program in the Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP) journal,[34] which is supported by the United States Department of Health and Human Services's (DHHS) National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), an institutes of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The authors said that 3M considered "thermal destruction of hazardous wastes" as the "best method for their disposal".[34] By 1978, 3M had built seven incineration facilities throughout the United States on "3M manufacturing plant sites at Brownwood, Texas, Cordova, Illinois, Cottage Grove, Minnesota, Decatur, Alabama, Hartford City, Indiana, Nevada, Missouri, and White City, Oregon."[34]:247
September 1982 3D found drums stockpiled and buried deep in the trenches of the Oakdale Dump's Abresch site.
1983 Following approval by the Federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency in July, 3M, described by The New York Times as a "diversified manufacturing concern" announced their $6 million clean up of what would become known as the Oakdale Dump.[35] The Times said that is was the "second major clean of a hazardous waste area in Minnesota to be financed entirely by a private company." The three dumps, that had been abandoned by 3M, had "contaminated ground water and soil with hazardous chemical wastes", according to environmental officials.[35] According to the unreferenced Wikipedia article, Oakdale Dump, "3M commissioned a surface cleanup of wastes at the Abresch site beginning in the winter of 1983. During the excavation activities, a total of 11,500 cubic yards of waste material was removed including 4,200 empty drums, 8,700 empty 5-gallon pails, 4,660 cubic yards of contaminated soil, and 15 intact containers that were over-packed. Most of the waste, 11,800 tons, was transported to the 3M Chemolite incinerator in Cottage Grove, Minnesota. An additional 6,500 tons of excavated waste containing more than 50 parts per million (ppm) of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were transported to a hazardous waste landfill for disposal. Excavated soils with low levels of contamination were treated on-site utilizing construction aeration pads. Approximately 173,000 gallons of contaminated water was collected during excavation activities and transported for treatment at the 3M Chemolite facility."[citation needed]
1998 Cincinnati, Ohio-based Robert Bilott, an American environmental attorney, formerly with Taft, Stettinius & Hollister LLP, took a case representing Wilbur Tennant, a Parkersburg, West Virginia farmer, whose herd of cattle had been decimated by strange symptoms that Tennant blamed on DuPont's Washington Works facilities.[36]
1998 The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) "was first alerted to the risks" of PFAS—man-made "forever chemicals" that "never break down once released and they build up in our bodies".[37] The EPA's Stephen Johnson, said in Barboza's 18 May 2000 Times article that The EPA first talked to 3M in 1998 after they were first alerted to 3M's 1998 laboratory rat study in which "male and female rats were given doses of the chemical and then mated. When a pregnant rat continued to get regular doses of about 3.2 milligrams per kilogram of body weight, most of the offspring died within four days." According to Johnson, "With all that information, [the EPA] finally talked to 3M and said that raises a number of concerns. What are you going to do?"[38]
Summer of 1999 Bilott filed a federal suit in the Southern District of West Virginia on behalf of Wilbur Tennant against DuPont.[36] A report commissioned by the EPA and DuPont and authored by 6 veterinarians—3 chosen by the EPA and the others by DuPont—found that Tennant's cattle had died because of Tennant's "poor husbandry", which included "poor nutrition, inadequate veterinary care and lack of fly control." The report said that DuPont was not responsible for the cattle's health problems.[36]
2000 In a highly cited 2001 article in the Environmental Science & Technology, published by the American Chemical Society, John P. Giesy and Kurunthachalam Kannan reported "for the first time, on the global distribution of perfluorooctanesulfonate (PFOS), a fluorinated organic contaminant." Based on the findings of their 2000 study, Giesy and Kannan said that "PFOS were widely detected in wildlife throughout the world" and that "PFOS is widespread in the environment." They said that "PFOS can bioaccumulate to higher trophic levels of the food chain" and that the "concentrations of PFOS in wildlife are less than those required to cause adverse effects in laboratory animals."[3][39]
PFOS was measured in the tissues of wildlife, including, fish, birds, and marine mammals. Some of the species studied include bald eagles, polar bears, albatrosses, and various species of seals. Samples were collected from urbanized areas in North America, especially the Great Lakes region and coastal marine areas and rivers, and Europe. Samples were also collected from a number of more remote, less urbanized locations such as the Arctic and the North Pacific Oceans. ... Concentrations of PFOS in animals from relatively more populated and industrialized regions, such as the North American Great Lakes, Baltic Sea, and Mediterranean Sea, were greater than those in animals from remote marine locations. Fish-eating, predatory animals such as mink and bald eagles contained concentrations of PFOS that were greater than the concentrations in their diets.
— John P. Giesy and Kurunthachalam Kannan. 2001.
May 17 2000 Prior to May 2000, when 3M stopped manufacturing "PFOS (perfluorooctanesulphonate)-based flurosurfactants using the electrochemical flouorination process" which is a "class of chemicals known as perfluorochemicals (PFCs) in a classification of firefighting foam called Aqueous Film Forming Foams (AFFF).[40] Prior to 2000, the "most common PFCs" used in Aqueous Film Forming Foams (AFFF) were "PFOS and its derivatives."[40] According to Robert Avsec, who was Fire Chief Robert Avsec of the Chesterfield, Virginia Fire and EMS Department for 26 years, in fires classified as Class B—which includes fires that are difficult to extinguish, such as "fires that involve petroleum or other flammable liquids"—firefighters use a classification of firefighting foam called Aqueous Film Forming Foams (AFFF) foams.[40] Concerns have been raised about PFCs contaminating groundwater sources.[40]
Timeline of events related to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances - Wikipedia
