from the unexplained to the mundane. Come join us on a Journey to the Fringe. Hello and welcome to Journey to the Fringe. And for just the small fee of $10 ,000, you too can learn the secrets of making $10 ,000 from us, the podcast host, Journey to the Fringe. We are the podcast host. Up during the fringe, Taylor or Chelsea? Yeah, during the fringe. Very clever and secretive in our own ways. Here today to do a Chelsea episode, so I will leave it to her from here. I don't
know, am I feeling non -secretive enough? Or too secretive? Well, just don't reveal those secrets that they gotta pay 10 grand for. Okay, okay, okay. Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. Everything else can be opened. Hey, Taylor. I got a Taylor episode for you today, funny enough. I'm the one full of bad news these days, and that's unfortunate that I'm feeling so Taylor. Let's talk about PFAS. Oh, good. And you know what? I asked Siri about PFAS the other day, and she pronounced
it P -F -A -S. Oh, that's terrible. She's wrong. Yeah. Okay, good. I was really concerned that she was right. No. I know you're thinking about it. I know we're all thinking about PFAS. And do you like things generally to not stick to other things? Like things like the food to your pan or rain on your jacket or red wine on your couch or clouds to your airplane? I was gonna say it depends. That's how it works, right? Yeah.
I assume. I don't know, was that a problem in like the 60s of clouds sticking to airplanes? Just constantly. That's like the reason the Rafe brothers only flew for like 100 meters because the clouds kept getting them and weighing them down. Yeah, see you're well read on the subject. Yeah, yeah. I thought you would be. I mean, I would say sometimes yes. I think that is the correct way to say that. Sometimes I don't want things to stick. Sometimes I do want them to
stick. That's true. Sometimes you really want them to stick and they're not sticking good enough. Yeah. In which case don't listen to this episode if you're in that state of mind right now. Come back when you're feeling like you don't want things to stick. Or if you want bad news. So where is this going? Well, I'll tell you. Do I ever have a Taylor story for you today? Like I already alluded to you. One that is not only
the origin story of PFOS. but also the story of Dupont and how they knowingly poisoned probably everybody in the world. Oh yeah, it's in all of our blood. Yeah, yeah. We've been talking about PFAS for a long time, so I assume you already have a working knowledge of it if you've been listening to us for any amount of time, because it comes up quite a lot on how we're basically made of them at this point. And the only way to get rid of them is to drain your blood. Not
all of it, just some of it. Just some of it. Just some. And then you got to keep doing it. So let's talk about this. The DuPont Company of Wilmington in Delaware. I don't even know what that means, but apparently it means something. Formed back in the 19th century, 1802 to be precise, by the French -American chemist. Here's a good pronunciation for you because this name isn't
even a word. Eleutherie? Irene Dupont de Nemours and this guy dies in 1834 so he doesn't even have a fucking thing to do with the story and it's probably for the best that he didn't know what happened to his company and he has nothing to do with it so Let's just move on. Over a hundred years later, DuPont the company is desperately trying to come up with a less toxic ultra. I'm just jumping right in. I don't even know what DuPont does for a hundred years. Unless you know.
They probably just speak French as far as I can tell. Yeah. Exactly, it doesn't even fucking matter. The company's desperately trying to come up with a less toxic alternative than the refrigerant's methyl chloride and sulfur dioxide. Apparently pretty toxic. In 1983, Roy J. Plunkett was the scientist charged with finding the safer way to cool foods and households throughout the U
.S. It's all about refrigeration. He was experimenting with tetrafluorothylene, or TFE, which is a pair of double carbons each bonded with two fluorine atoms. However, when carrying out one specific test on the compound, he found that it had spontaneously polymerized into a white waxy solid, having been a colourless gas prior. The material turned out to be an inert fluorocarbon polyfluorothylene. PTFE, that had super non -stick properties. That's right, Roy J. Plunkett is the man you can blame
for inventing PFOS, the forever chemical. So, in 1945, DuPont trademarked the chemical Teflon, calling it, quote, the most slippery material in existence, end quote. Then, just three years later, the firm was producing two million pounds of the chemical each year in its factory in Pertsburg, West Virginia. For DuPont, Teflon, which was used to coat pots and pans, proved to be a gold mine. Nobody wanted their stuff sticking to their
pans. With sales peaking at roughly a billion dollars a year in 2004, according to the company's SEC filings. In 1951, DuPont created pure fluorolotatonic PFOA acid, which is often referred to as C8, due to its compound holding 8 carbon molecules. C8, which is a type of Pifa, went on to be used to manufacture cling film, pizza boxes, electrical cables, waterproof clothing, food wrappers, and more. And like I said before, we've talked about
them before. We'll talk about them again. These minuscule chemicals are now found in the blood of most people and animals around the world, as well as pretty much all our food products. According to the U .S. Environmental Protection Agency, exposure to PFAS can lead to harmful consequences on a person's health. Peer -reviewed scientific studies have found that exposure to
them can lead to reproductive effects. like decreased fertility and an increase in high blood pressure in pregnant women to name a miniscule amount of things that PFAS cause. It also includes developmental issues for children including bone variations, behavioral changes, accelerated puberty, low birth weights, as well as increasing the risk of some cancers like kidney, prostate, testicular
versions of the disease. They also interfere with the body's natural hormones, risk obesity, increased cholesterol, levels and reduce your immune system's ability to fight off infections. To name only a few. There's nothing good that these things do for you. Yeah, no it doesn't make you like taller or something like that. Not in the least, but every effect that it has on you is negative. It makes you look cooler to everybody around you. It makes you look cooler.
Oh my god, can you imagine if they tap into something like that? Even at least cigarettes for a while at least made you look cooler. That's true. And it's not like some nutty professor type thing. We just turn into like this cool guy that everybody loves. So back to DuPont. They're capitalizing
on poisons. Let's talk about that. The trouble was that the compound, C8 that is, which has since been linked to a variety of health risks including cancer, liver disease, you know, everything we just talked about right there, developmental problems, thyroid disease, plus more, escapes into the air easily. In fact, C8 was often shipped to factories pre -mixed with water to keep the dust from workers' lungs. Why pre -mixed, you ask? Do they know about the effects that these
are causing? Maybe we'll find out. Because it's an extremely stable chemical, C8 does not biodegrade. which is a super freaky thing. That's one of the big problems that we have with it. And it living in our bodies, literally. Just forever. Instead, it bioaccumulates, building up in people's blood over time. So literally, you are just acquiring more PFAS over time. And if they continue to drink, if you continue to drink, I'm going to make this apply directly to you because they're
making you seem like it won't. If you continue to drink water or breathe air, laced with the substance. Due to its ubiquitous use, the chemical can now be found in trace amounts in the bloodstream of more than 90 % of Americans and even in umbilical cord blood, breast milk, according to the Center for Disease Control. Again, this is something we've covered in many minis. I don't even know if it's made it into an actual full episode until now. Um, I think the recycling episode somewhat
speaks to it. The plastic one, yeah. It's also been found in the blood of seals, eagles, dolphins. I would go out on a limb to say, yeah, it's everywhere. They're making it seem like it's not everywhere because it's naming specific things. Literally, we can just say it's in everything. There was a fringy mini recently that we did where it was that rocks were forming on a remote island in the middle of the Atlantic of class. Yeah, so
yeah. Plastic bottles are made of this. The chemical is expected to stay in the environment for thousands of years. And I would go on a limb to say based on the information that I just said, that it bioaccumulates instead of not biodegrading, that it's gonna be much more than thousands of years affecting humanity. Concerns about the hazards posed by Teflon and CA began to garner public attention only about 15 years ago from this date, from today, 2025. The company issued a statement
in 2019 about PFAS. So quote, this is from DuPont. In June 2019, DuPont Demures Inc. was established as a new multi -industrial specialty products company. DuPont Demures has never manufactured PFOA, PFOS, or firefighting foam, it read. While DuPont is not a PFAS commodity chemical manufacturer, it does use select PFAS compounds with industrial processes pursuant to relevant environmental
health and safety rules and standards. Such uses are necessary to impart specific product performance criteria and only in products that are essential to safety and the critical functioning of society. That wording really makes me angry. Our use of PFAS is limited and managed as a substance of concern, brackets SOC, end quote, consistent with the company's chemical management policy. Substance of concern. We are currently pursuing alternatives to PFOS where possible. It continues.
Additionally, we have rigorous systems, processes, and protocols in place to ensure that PFOS are used safely, are controlled to the highest standards, and are minimized in our operations. We support science -based efforts to develop guidelines for PFAS and commit to meeting these requirements in our global operations. We will continue to ensure our products and processes are fully compliant with laws and regulations on PFAS. Safety, health, and protecting the planet are core values at
DuPont. We are committed to continuous improvement of our chemical stewardship process and to upholding the highest standards for the safe operation of facilities and the protection of our environment, our employees, our customers, and the people of the communities in which we do business." End quote. What a bunch of bullshit. That's fun. Sorry, I'm not spoiling anything from here by calling that bullshit, but I think you're already
getting the gist of it. By 2003, DuPont had disbursed almost 2 .5 million pounds of C8 from its Washington Works plant into the mid -Ohio River Valley area, according to a peer -reviewed study. The company's shockingly bad disposal practices occurred before US environmental laws were first written in the 1970s and included burying toxic waste in drums along the banks of the Ohio River and dropping barrels of it out into the open ocean, where it once caused a scandal when a local fisherman
dredged a barrel up in his nuts. countries. How many things we just put into the ocean is like, well, the ocean is the ocean. We'll never have to worry about it. It's too big. Yeah, it's too big. Like, it just takes it and then we never have to think about it again. Or deal with the repercussions. Like, it's just ocean now. I think it's off the coast of Britain. They buried in the ocean all of their, like, war chemicals.
from World War II and there's like we don't have to worry about them because they're in the ocean now so exactly they don't belong to us they belong to no one now in the ocean all the way out there just remember that when somebody says we have too much regulation these days we had to put this into place because people just kept saying it's the ocean we can put stuff there yeah nobody even knows what's at the bottom of that thing it's so big I don't even think there is a bottom
yeah exactly yeah Hence why the ocean is in such rough shape right now. We're literally killing the ocean and everything in it. Yeah. I would maybe call it dead, but like it is dying for sure. Oh yeah. Which is super sad to think about, but yeah, here we are. Boy, we're talking plastics. That's just nice. Yeah. So yeah, and in more recent decades burying it in local non -hazardous landfills that is the drums filled with toxic
PFAS. Now information emerging from millions of pages of internal company reports reveal that several DuPont scientists and senior staff members had for many many many many years either known or at least suspected that C8 was harmful. Yet, DuPont continued to use the chemical, putting its own workers, local residents, and the American public and world and environment at risk. And the important thing here, when you're making a profit off it, the suspicions that it's bad
are inconvenient. So we're not going to look into them. Exactly. Because people over profit over people. I'm sorry. I got that very very wrong. Well, no, it's it's not profit over people. It's profit. Don't look at the other stuff. If it's not profit, it doesn't matter. And if it goes against the profit, you cover that up. Don't worry about it. I'm sure it's fine. Yeah. The document shows that signs of C8 toxicity began to emerge very quickly as DuPont scaled up its
Teflon productions in the 1950s. The company funds its own safety testing laboratory, the Haskell Laboratory of Industrial Toxicology, in part to screen workers for signs of illnesses that might be tied to DuPont products. I'm just going to add in here because I don't know that I put it anywhere else. 3M, the company, is also along for the ride with all of this. Yeah. In 1961, company lab tests linked C8 exposure to
enlarged livers and rats and rabbits. DuPont scientists then conducted tests on humans, asking a group of volunteers to smoke cigarettes laced with C8. Nine out of ten people in the highest -dose group were noticeably ill for an average of nine hours with flu -like symptoms that included chills, backache, fever, and coughing, the researchers noted. 1961, experimenting on humans. Oh wow, so they knew this pretty early. They're actually
doing this. Yeah, I know, right? I mean, the statement that they released in 2019 was just dripping of bullshit. How were we to know? Yeah, exactly. How were we to know? We don't have a precedent of this over 50 years of learning about it. It's not like we tested it for ourselves.
So, concerns about the potential toxicity of C8 had been raised internally within DuPont by at least 1954, leading DuPont's own researchers to conclude by at least 1961 that C8 was toxic, and according to DuPont's own toxicology section chief, should be handled with extreme care at the very least. So we can continue on. Well, yeah, but that's only workers. Customers are
fine. I think that's how it works, right? It's only people like who you have to pay to deal with it, who have to worry about the health implications, not people who pay you for it. Yeah, exactly. Not the people using it for sure. That's how that works. So this is Bartlett's February 2013 suit against Tupont Allege. So not to spoil anything,
but... It wasn't until the 1970s that DuPont's researchers began to understand that C8 was building up in the bloodstreams of workers and soon after they began to see troubling signs that the chemical could pose serious health risks. The stakes were high. The Washington work plant where Teflon is manufactured was one of the biggest employers
in the region. The plant currently employs more than 2 ,000 people, 3 ,000 if you include subcontractors in a sparsely populated Appalachian community alongside the Ohio River separating West Virginia from Ohio. In 1981, the company ordered all female employees out of the Teflon division after two out of seven pregnant workers gave birth to children with birth defects. One of those children, Buck Bailey was born with just one nostril and other facial deformities that required many painful
surgeries to fix. In 1984, DuPont quietly began collecting tap water samples from Ohio and West Virginia, discovering that its chemical C8, PFOA, had contaminated local water supplies at levels eight times higher than normal. Internal documents revealed the company was more concerned about its public image than public health and deemed pollution control too costly. Instead of reducing C8 use, DuPont increased production while continuing to dump the chemical into the environment. This
is fucked. I'm sorry. I know I wrote these notes, but this is absolutely fucked. In 1989, many DuPont employees were diagnosed with cancer and leukemia. And they're just fucking dumping this shit into the river. The contamination came to light in 1998 when West Virginia farmer 1998 they've now been dumping the shit into the environment 30 years 35 years Since what? Where did we start out? 1945. Oh, 40, yeah. So 50 years almost.
So 1998, a West Virginia farmer, Wilbur Tennant, sued DuPont after hundreds of his cattle died due to runoff from a nearby landfill. So he's living next to a factory. Tennant's lawyer, Robert Billet, uncovered thousands of pages of internal documents revealing that DuPont had known about C8's risk for decades. but kept it secret. The documents showed alarming internal emails and reports including concerns about the need for gas masks and deliberate efforts to downplay
the chemicals risk to regulators. This is fucked up. So I don't have it in my notes, but I've been listening to a few things here and there. There's a lot to this story that we're not going to cover on here. I'm going to recommend something for you to listen to at the end if you want to look into it more. But this this farmers cows
were drinking from this runoff. They were dumping into the river and their teeth would turn black and they were essentially the cows were drinking from this and it killed them and just had these horrific. effects on these cows, and that's what tipped this guy off. This actually leads to a class action lawsuit in 2001 on behalf of 80 ,000 people exposed to C8 through their drinking
water. The EPA also sued DuPont, resulting in a $16 .5 million fine, the largest civil penalty in the agency's history, still minor compared to DuPont's profits. At that point you don't deserve any profits. Who would hope, but that's not how our system works. No, unfortunately not. DuPont agreed to a 100 million plus dollar settlement and funded a large health study. They've been doing this the whole time. Oh yeah, like 60 years, right? Yeah. No, they've been studying it the
whole time. Like they clearly know that this is not good. At the very minimum, they know it's killing a lot of people and it's not good. Which makes it worse. Like, why are they studying it and then not doing anything? Why? Like, why don't you just say we don't need to study this? Yeah. Don't spend money on this, yeah. Why spend money on this when no one's bad? We're just documenting
how bad we know it is. The independent C8 science panel ultimately linked the chemical to six serious health conditions, ulcerative colitis, pregnancy -induced hypertension, high cholesterol, thyroid disease and testicular and kidney cancers. To name a few, blood tests from residents showed C8 levels far above the national average. Thousands of residents then filed personal injury lawsuits, including Carla Bartlett, whose 2015 victory
set the tone for future cases. DuPont, meanwhile, shifted its liabilities to a spin -off company, Shemmers, and began marketing C8 -free Teflon products, though the safety of replacement chemicals remains unclear. I'm sure they know. Yeah, they apparently do study that for some reason. Just to make sure they're being evil, I guess. Exactly. Just to make sure that every non -stick fan is coded. We don't want it to be environmentally friendly or to be beneficial in any way. Coded
in so much evil. New possibility to suppress information for decades was partly due to weak U .S. chemical regulations. The 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, which is the TSCA, if you like to put things in acronyms, heavily influenced by industry, and DuPont itself didn't require safety testing for most chemicals already in use. As a result, chemicals like C8 remained unregulated
until legal and public pressure mounted. Although reform efforts have gained momentum, critics argue proposed changes still fall short of giving the EPA the power and resources needed to protect public health, which is a fucked sentence if you ask me. The story of C8 reveals the deep flaws in America's chemical safety laws and the influence of industry on regulation. There are now a ton of legal things going on around this
in, well, within the last little while. In 2015, DuPont spun off its chemical division into a new company, Schemmers, as I kind of mentioned up above, and later Corteva. Corteva. Cortiva. Aimed to limit liability for PFAS -related harms. She pursued DuPont in 2019, claiming that DuPont's liability estimates were spectacularly wrong. The case was dismissed in 2020 over procedural
issues. I mean, if anybody does know about the damage that they could do, technically is the company who's been researching it for like, I don't know, 80 years. So maybe we should listen to them on that. Yeah, maybe. I don't know, though. I don't know for sure. Yeah, you can't give them that much damage. We couldn't. We've looked at it for 80 years. It couldn't hurt that many people. But what about their bottom line? I don't think you're getting the most important part. Fuck.
The Environmental Working Group has documented the decades long deception of chemical companies like DuPont burying the truth that PFOS build up in our blood and present risk to human health. EWG, which is the Environmental Working Group, I'm sorry I bring that on you like that. Created a timeline that shows by the 1960s, animal studies conducted by DuPont revealed that PFAS chemicals could pose health risks. I mean, you don't need to convince me at this point. I don't know. I'm
still skeptical. You're still skeptical that they knew about it? Yeah. You really had to prove it. For decades, these corporations have knowingly contaminated our drinking water, food supplies, and the blood of virtually every person on the planet. Need I say it again? with these highly toxic chemicals," said Scott Faber, EWG's senior vice president for government affairs. It's long past time that the polluters pay for their malicious drive toward profits over public health. Way
to go Scott Faber. The binding memorandum of understanding establishes an immediate cost -sharing arrangement, including an escrow account worth upward of $1 billion to cover potential future legacy PFAS liabilities from before the spinoff. Under the terms of the agreement, expenses will be split 50 -50 with DuPont and Cortiva responsible for half and Schemers responsible for the other
half. Both companies have agreed to share the cost of certain qualified expenses over a period of no longer than 20 years or an amount over $4 billion. separately. DuPont, Corteva, and Schemers have agreed to settle ongoing matters in the multi -district PFOA litigation in Ohio for $83 million. DuPont will contribute $27 million. Corteva will contribute $27 million. Schemers will contribute $29 million in the settlement. And the agreement resolves approximately 95 pending
casings as well as unfiled matters. That's all I have. This is as every episode of ours is for the most part. It's literally a skim over of what is going on right now. And there is a documentary right now that I want to recommend that is gonna cover a lot more than what I just went over if you're interested in it. Is it Aaron Brockovich?
by chance it is not okay it's called dark waters not what i was just about to say the devil we may know which is apparently another documentary that is an investigation documentary of the health hazards from teflon Probably go watch that. I might go watch it too. But Dark Waters is the one that I'm specifically referring to or was thinking of and it's talking about the legal fight against DuPont. So the devil we know might cover it a little bit differently. Dark Waters.
It's all the people bringing against the class action towards DuPont that was started by that farmer, if you remember him. But yeah, super dark. These corporations, in my personal opinion, These guys just need to be shut down. Yeah. And like, we need to stress this. Like, you listening now are impacted by this. This is in your blood because of them. Like, it's an unfathomable percentage of people are impacted by this. And just like, yeah, they still exist. They're still profitable
because this all came and passed. And I mentioned Erin Brockovich because the movie Erin Brockovich, that lawyer Erin Brockovich from the movie, who I keep saying her name a lot. It was 3M is one of the companies she went after. Oh, it is. Yeah. Okay. I can't remember Erin Brockovich that well, Erin Brockovich, but Erin Brockovich did that. She's actually still very prominent in like these types of things. Yeah. Is that PFOS as well? I'm not read up on it. I don't know if it's specifically
that. I had to watch the movie again, but yeah, me too. It is that this is what she's doing. At least we know it's 3M. And 3M is along for the ride with DuPont on this because they were also using the same chemicals. I just didn't talk that much about them. Super crazy story. This is something that the world is gonna be dealing with, who knows, for the rest of the world's existence. I don't know, like at least
a thousand years, isn't it? Like minimum? It said a thousand years in this, but it also said that it is... It doesn't break down. Like it doesn't break down. Then it said a thousand years. So that did not add up to me. It bioaccumulates. So it doesn't break down. Like you're just gaining more and more PFAS over your life and henceforth over the Earth's life. So it's never gonna go away and it's a poison. It's causing cancers. It's not conducive to life. It is killing. life,
they dumped it into waterways and oceans. And yeah, it's everywhere. We were cooking with pans that are on it. I'm pretty sure we still have Teflon. It's probably a little bit more regulated than it used to be now, but everyone was cooking with it. Everybody had it on their couch. Everybody had it in the takeout and the plastic bottles that they were using. It was advertised as a good thing they could upcharge for. Yeah. Remember those commercials? Oh no, I spilled wine on my
couch and it just slid off. It didn't absorb into the couch at all. It's poison! It's gonna kill ya! But that was in the five - No, it wasn't in the five print because they technically weren't investigating it at that point. Yeah. But it also had been for like 60 years almost. Exactly. We've known about this for a long long time. Which is fucked. And just about surmises everything that's wrong with corporations that run the universe at this point. And I just, wow, I didn't suspect
I would be the positive one this week. I know, and last week. Yeah. Son of a bitch. But here we are. Yep. It's me now. Just happened to make sense of the world, and yeah, like, if you need it, like, I think it's probably important to remind everybody, technically, you can get rid of some of the PFOS in your body by donating plasma. That has been shown to have no good effect. What about just blood? Just blood, okay? It still
helps, it's not as good. Because you technically filter more of your blood when you do a plasma donation than you do with blood donation. Son of a bitch. So, here's a Chelsea problem. The only plasma donation center is so far from me. So I can only conveniently donate blood, so this makes no sense. Ask them to do more and they give you some of it back. Can you please filter this and give it back? Okay, next time. I'm sure
they'll be receptive to that. And for more tips for your local blood donation clinic, I have been Taylor. You were Chelsea. We are Journey to the Fringe. Thank you all for listening. We'll see you next week. Bye. Thank you for listening to Journey to the Fringe. If you have liked what you have listened to, please like, share, subscribe, or follow, depending on what venue you are listening to us through. Also, please, if possible, leave a five -star review, as that really helps us
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