Is your money that good?
Treacherous American Chemistry Council poisons us with chemicals and lies
By Pat Elder
April 24, 2023
Delivering PFAS-free water in Minnesota. - Minnesota Pollution Control Agency
In Minnesota, a bill likely to become law provides $25 million for grants to find solutions for public water treatment systems contaminated with PFAS. The measure will also provide $4.4 million to identify sources of PFAS entering water facilities. It sounds like a good idea, but the American Chemistry Council is fighting the measure.
Every dollar this unscrupulous lobby group gives to members of Congress ought to be returned and we should never again vote for the lawmakers who take the toxic money.
The Minnesota bill hopes to develop pollution prevention and reduction initiatives to reduce PFAS from entering facilities and to prevent releases. It may cost a hundred times more this initial investment – and perhaps a thousand times more - to provide PFAS-free drinking water to all Minnesotans.
By the end of this year, the U.S. EPA says it will finalize new drinking water standards for two PFAS: PFOA and PFOS. Once the EPA’s new standards are finalized, many public water systems in Minnesota will exceed the standards and the same is true for thousands of systems across the country. These drinking water systems will need to install expensive treatment technologies. It will cost many billions of dollars. Of course, this wont begin to clean up the PFAS in our food, especially our seafood, which is the number one pathway to human ingestion.
State governments and municipal water authorities are preparing to spend unprecedented sums to meet this new mandate. Consumers should brace themselves for substantial hikes in their water bills. State governments and municipalities are passing measures that will track the source of PFAS in drinking water while studying ways to cut off the flow of the carcinogens.
The American Chemistry Council (ACC) is working to safeguard chemical industry revenues derived from the lucrative business of manufacturing and selling products containing PFAS.
The ACC relies on a tired playbook to confuse the public and downplay the health impacts of these toxins. See their April, 2023 baseless rant: Lawmakers Poised to Ban Products Families Rely on Every Day.
Is their money that good? Could it buy them forgiveness? Do you think that it could? The vile misinformation in their press release is followed by my remarks in bold italics.
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ACC - Appropriations legislation being considered by both the Minnesota House and Senate threatens to ban products that families and businesses across the state use every day.
The legislation only calls for testing and analysis. People are consuming deadly PFAS from contaminated food, water, and air. The Minnesota bill would only begin the process of tracking down the sources of PFAS contamination in drinking water, something the ACC doesn’t want to see.
ACC - Included in SF 2438 and HF 2310 are multiple provisions aimed at limiting the availability of PFAS and fluorinated chemistries.
We must ban the production of all PFAS substances and account for them in the environment. PFAS are killing us. PFAS are an existential threat to humanity because of their great power to disrupt the human endocrine system and threaten the developing fetus. Manufacturing these substances is criminal behavior. The American Chemistry Council is an American criminal organization, operating within the law. Go figure.
ACC - PFAS are a diverse universe of chemistries with different physical, chemical, and toxicological properties that can come in solid, liquid, or gaseous forms. With these vastly different physical properties, it should be easy to see why there is a scientific consensus emerging that it’s inaccurate, or even impossible, to group all PFAS and fluorinated chemistries together the way this legislation aims to do so.
This line of reasoning appeals to cash-starved legislators. They need cover to take the chemical dollars. Meanwhile, a strong consensus is building among the scientific community that these chemicals ought to be treated as a class. Ban them all - and if a compound is found to be harmless, allow it to be manufactured.
ACC - If enacted, these appropriations measures could cost Minnesota countless jobs, harm economic growth in the state, and hamper the ability of businesses and consumers to access products like life-saving medications, rechargeable batteries, catheters and pacemakers, cell phones, automobiles, and many more.
Where’s the science that shows Minnesota spending $29.4 million to study PFAS will cost the state countless jobs?
I like the way Bob Dylan put it:
“You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world.
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins.”
American Chemistry Council, Don’t stand in the doorway. Don't block up the hall. Allow grownups to figure out how to deal with the calamity of your chemicals in our environment. The unborn are counting on it.
Besides, there’s plenty of money for you to make developing non-toxic substitutes.
Stop making PFAS!
ACC – The (MN) measure would also contribute to a scenario where U.S. manufacturers face varying restrictions and rules from state to state that could overlap, conflict with each other, or run afoul of federal efforts on PFAS.
You are the main beneficiary of a weak EPA! Your money deeply influences Congress and the EPA, and you’re doing one hell of a job confusing the American public.
ACC - Indeed, a similar unscientific, broad restriction on these chemistries has been attempted in Maine. The implementation has run into significant problems for the state and businesses that operate there, resulting in numerous extensions. In fact, the Chair of the Maine Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee is on record saying, “We don’t always get it right the first time which is why we have the word amendment.”
This is a cheap shot, even in this business of cheap shots. Maine is following the science!
Sen. Stacy Brenner, D-Scarborough, is a leader on the PFAS front, while Maine is making strong progress in addressing PFAS contamination and preventing further proliferation throughout the Pine Tree state. (“Dirigo” is Latin for “I lead.” )
Maine is a pioneer in regulating PFAS. States across the county are busy copying and pasting measures passed in Maine, so it makes sense the ACC is going after them. The products of chemistry are killing people and the ACC is lying about it.
This is about human health over profit and corruption.
How do we define corruption, exactly? The ACC would give five thousand dollars at the drop of a hat to be able to send a letter in a few months to a member of Congress that expresses the views of the ACC on a particular piece of legislation. That’s how it works, and it’s legal. Corruption is legal in the USA because the bad guys are writing the campaign finance rules.
ACC - The fact is that PFAS and fluorochemistries are vital to enabling our lives in the 21st century and are absolutely critical to our nation’s economy and supply chain resiliency. Essential U.S. industries such as transportation, healthcare technology, telecommunications, semiconductors, aerospace, construction, renewable energy, and many more rely on PFAS to create, innovate, and lead globally in their respective fields.
Neoliberal gibberish. Remember Icarus of old! Technologies must be controlled. We’ve reached a limit to what free market capitalism can offer us in this realm.
ACC – We urge Minnesota lawmakers to take a commonsense approach to the regulation of these important chemistries and come to the table to work on constructive solutions that are protective of public health and the environment, while still allowing Minnesota families and businesses to access the many products they enable.
Come to the table? You can burn in hell with your table.
These Democratic Party PAC’s take contributions from the American Chemistry Council:
During the 2022 election cycle the American Chemistry Council gave Republican congressional candidates and political action committees, (PAC’s) $202,084 and gave Democrats and their PAC’s $133,075. They also spent nearly $20 million on lobbying. Open Secrets.org
We can’t solve the PFAS crisis unless we overhaul the financing of federal elections. John Gardner served as President Johnson’s Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. Secretary Gardner launched Common Cause, the citizen’s lobby.
He told me in 1972 when was I was an intern in Washington that money was the root of all evil on Capitol Hill and to understand how environmentally destructive policies are adopted, we must track the corporate money and then cut it off. “We must establish citizen-funded elections,” he said.
I was 16 and I worked for Common Cause during the summer of 1972. Here I am in Miami, lobbying delegates during the Democratic National Convention. We were partially successful in inserting campaign finance language into the Democratic Party Platform, although the country was not in the mood for reform and the Democrats have since relapsed.
President Richard Nixon swamped his Democratic challenger, Sen. George McGovern, winning 60.7% of the popular vote and 520 electoral votes, to McGovern’s 37.5% and 17 Electoral votes, respectively.
Campaign finance reform is the mother of all issues.
Financial support from the Downs Law Group makes this work possible.
The firm is working to provide legal representation to individuals with a high likelihood of exposure to PFAS and other contaminants.
Interested in joining a multi-base class action law suit pertaining to illnesses stemming from various kinds of environmental contamination? Join the Veterans & Civilians Clean Water Alliance Facebook group.
(2.3 K members and growing rapidly.)