Thread by @MariahCBlake

Robert Mueller’s testimony isn’t the only important event happening Wednesday. The House is holding hearings on industry’s Big Tobacco-style campaign to suppress data on the health effects of #PFAS. Bucky Bailey (pictured below) is the first witness. images.app.goo.gl/M4TofNt2NZPGNK…? 1/

Bucky is not the only American touched by #PFAS. More than 99% of us have #PFAS—chemicals linked to cancer, thyroid disease, immune suppression, reduced penis size, low birth weight—in our blood. Also some of these health effects occur at general-population levels of exposure. 2/

But Bucky’s story is particularly illuminating when it comes to certain chemical giants’ willingness to put profits above the wellbeing of ordinary people. Bucky’s mother, Sue, worked at a DuPont plant in WV, which manufactures Teflon, using PFOA (part of the PFAS family). 3/

Bucky & his mother believe his severe facial birth defects were caused by her exposure to PFOA during pregnancy. Industry data lend credence to this belief. In the late 1970s, a study by @3M, which then manufactured PFOA, found it caused eye and nostril deformities in rodents. 4/

Both DuPont & @3M feared it might have the same effect on people. So 1981, DuPont began secretly monitoring 50 female employees who had been exposed to PFOA. Under the guise of routine medical checks, it collected blood samples and had the women fill out questionnaires, etc. 5/

The goal, DuPont’s medical director explained in a memo, was to “answer a single question—does [PFOA] cause abnormal children?” The resulting data showed that two of the seven pregnant workers exposed to the chemical had given birth to babies with eye and nostril deformities. 6/

One of these women was Bucky’s mother, Sue (referred to as “Employee W”). DuPont scientists concluded that the rate of defects was a “statistically significant” increase over the two-in-1,000 birth-defect rate in the general population, suggesting there was a link to PFOA. 7/

But rather than informing regulators or employees that a chemical in its most profitable product might cause birth defects, DuPont quietly abandoned the pregnancy study and continued exposing pregnant women to PFOA. This was part of a pattern of obsfucation. 8/

By the time DuPont conducted the pregnancy study, DuPont and @3M had known for years that PFOA and its cousins were toxic; that they didn’t break down in the environment (hence the nickname #ForeverChemicals); that they were polluting human blood, even in remote rural China. 9/

But they kept this information from regulators and the public, too. They also withheld data suggesting widespread #PFAS drinking-water contamination. We now know that #PFAS are polluting the drinking water of at least 14 million Americans in 48 states. /10

For more on this history, see my 2015 story on @highline. 11/ highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/we…

Also check out @fastlerner’s reporting on the topic. 12/

CC: @RachelMorris @gpveis @PlasticsBeyond @ewg @MelanieBenesh @KeepYrPromises @buckybailey @MarkFavors @faberfamilyfarm @pfoaprojectny1 @rebecca_altman @PlastispherePod

For more information on the hearing, see the link below: oversight.house.gov/legislation/he…