The disappearing words exposing 3M’s decades of deception over cancer link

After 3M learnt that one of its best-selling chemicals had contaminated the blood of the general population, it was what the company’s internal documents didn’t say that was most incriminating.

It was April 1979 and the Wall Street giant’s top executives hopped in the company jet and flew from their headquarters in Minnesota to San Francisco for secretive talks with two world-leading scientists to gauge their opinion on a pressing issue.

How big a problem did the company have following the discovery its miracle waterproofing ingredient, perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), had been turning up in the blood of the general public?

The answer was ominous. The substance caused symptoms in animals “similar to those observed with carcinogens”, the scientists warned.

If high levels were widespread in people’s blood for long enough, “we could have a serious problem”.

But when the final version of the meeting minutes was published, those comments had mysteriously disappeared.

But as detailed in a new documentary investigation from Stan, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, and iKandy Films, whoever removed them left a trail of breadcrumbs.

Fast-forward 40 years and an earlier draft still containing the damning comments had been left sitting in 3M’s files, waiting to be subpoenaed by class action lawyers who pounced on their smoking gun.

Last month, they reached a $US12.5 billion ($19 billion) settlement with the chemicals maker over the pollution of thousands of water supplies across America with the chemical.

“It was our ‘holy shit’ moment. Like, people do this?”

Gary Douglas, lawyer

“This world-renowned expert, his conclusion was completely deleted from the final draft,” lawyer Gary Douglas says in the documentary, How to Poison a Planet.

“It was our ‘holy shit’ moment. Like, people do this?” says Douglas, a partner at New York law firm Douglas & London and the lead trial counsel in the recent case against 3M.

The film lifts the lid on 3M’s alleged decades of deception after it discovered its chemical, PFOS, had contaminated the entire planet through its widespread use in food packaging, the best-selling fabric protector, Scotchgard, and firefighting foam sprayed at airports, fire stations and Defence bases.

Almost no Australian has escaped unscathed, with revelations 98 per cent of the population has been contaminated with forever chemicals.

By the early 2000s, when 3M pulled PFOS off the market, most Australians had levels in their blood well above what the company’s own scientists deemed safe.

In recent years, authorities in the United States and Europe have linked forever chemicals, also known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS, to cancer, suppression of the immune system, high cholesterol and endocrine disruption.

The US Environmental Protection Agency has recently designated PFOS a hazardous substance. It says there is no safe level of exposure in drinking water.

Now a trove of correspondence unearthed by this masthead has raised fresh questions about whether 3M properly warned the Australian government of the risks of the foam containing PFOS.

It can be revealed that a 3M employee told Australian bureaucrats the foam’s waste could be allowed to “bleed” into the environment. The comments were made in a letter written in 1985, years after the company was warned about the chemical’s carcinogenic potential in the meeting with the vanishing minutes.

At the time, the Fortune 500 company also knew the PFOS in the foam killed monkeys in laboratory studies, would not break down in the environment and was “considerably” more toxic than anticipated, its own internal documents show.

The 1985 letter is likely to be a flashpoint if the Department of Defence follows through on its threat to sue 3M for firefighting foam contamination that has seeped off its bases and poisoned tens of thousands of Australian homes.

So far, Australian taxpayers have been saddled with a bill of more than $366 million to settle class actions launched against Defence by those home owners.

The trove of documents, obtained by this masthead from the National Archives of Australia, also show grave warnings were sounded from within the NSW government in the 1980s that the foam could contaminate drinking water if it was allowed to escape into waterways.

The documents shine a light on the disturbing extent to which the foam has also been used at the country’s major airports.

Emergency services personnel from across Victoria attended training courses with the foam at Melbourne Airport multiple times a week over the decades. About 21,600 litres of the foam concentrate were sprayed at Tullamarine in 1984 alone.

When a small fire broke out a year later at Avalon airport, it took only two minutes for a deluge of about 35,000 litres of firefighting foam solution to be sprayed over the floor.

It was then “squeegeed” into a drain at the hangar, which belonged to Government Aircraft Factories.

“It took about three hours to clean the floor,” a briefing paper said. “It is estimated about 60,000 litres of water was used to wash down the hangar.”

Authorities closed the airport’s fire station in 2022 after unsafe levels of forever chemicals were discovered in the drinking water.

Documents show concern was brewing within multiple Australian government departments about the disposal of the firefighting waste in the early 1980s.

A policy drafted in 1984 outlined five acceptable ways of dealing with it, including diluting it and discharging it to surface water or the sewerage system, disposing of it on land where it would not significantly affect groundwater, by evaporation or by dumping small quantities.

“Selection of the appropriate disposal method will depend on cost and environmental factors for the particular location,” the draft policy said.

The draft provoked a furious response from a NSW bureaucrat, who warned it contravened the law and could result in the contamination of the public’s drinking water.

“The summary is totally unacceptable to NSW,” said the director, who worked in the NSW division of the Department of Housing and Construction

“The problem is contamination of groundwater which may be permanently contaminated and then the water would be unsuitable for either industrial, agricultural or potable use.”

The director savaged the idea of diluting the waste, warning it would place unacceptable stress on waterways by leaving them with inadequate oxygen.

“The NSW region has run training courses on waste treatment and the rhyme, ‘the solution to pollution is dilution’, is strongly emphasised as a process of the past,” the director said.

“To issue a guide with dilution suggested is to undo many years of hard work and reintroduce a false process.”

The director noted the RAAF base at Richmond in Sydney could trap about 1 million litres of firefighting foam solution in the event of a fire, and if that ended up in the Hawkesbury River, it could have “a severe consequence on the ecosystem”.

His warnings stand in stark contrast to the comments made by 3M in response to the draft policy.

A manager at its Sydney headquarters said he had consulted with his counterparts at head office in the US, and “their overall impression of the draft is that it is fairly accurate and a reasonable approach to what can develop into an emotive issue”.

The company was supportive of diluting the waste and said this could also be accomplished by the “slow bleeding” of more concentrated waste into the environment.

The 3M manager said the draft could finalise “what has been a contentious issue for some years”.

After the NSW bureaucrat’s scathing review of the draft policy, a handwritten note said it would be changed to reduce the emphasis on dilution. However, the documents suggest that, years later, the policy had still not been finalised.

This masthead contacted multiple government departments to ascertain the outcome but did not receive a response.

A Department of Defence spokesperson said the government was “considering its options” in relation to the manufacturers and suppliers responsible for selling the foam to the government.

“Defence’s priority is to assist the communities impacted by PFAS contamination on and around Defence bases, by reducing their exposure to PFAS,” the spokesperson said.

3M has not admitted any liability in reaching the recent court settlement in the US. In response to this masthead’s detailed questions, a company spokeswoman issued the following statement.

“3M is committed to providing accurate information about PFAS with appropriate context,” she said.

“We have shared significant information about PFAS over the decades, including the results of studies 3M conducted on PFOS.

“3M also published many of its findings regarding PFAS in publicly available scientific journals dating back to the early 1980s. Those journals were and remain available to the scientific community and the public.”

She declined to comment on any specific statements made by 3M employees to the Australian government.

Revealed: How To Poison A Planet now streaming, only on Stan.