The Price of PFAS
It’s incredibly challenging to calculate the impact of PFAS on the environment and people. To hold polluters accountable, however, it’s a challenge we need to take on and to measure accurately.
In the final weeks of January, DuPont and its spinoff companies Chemours and Corteva have agreed to a $4 billion payout to address their role in decades of pollution. The company and its subsidiaries have a long track record not only of polluting the family of ‘forever chemicals’, but also have a history of downplaying the health risks of PFAS despite evidence to the contrary.
That money will be available for 20 years, while an additional $1 billion will be held in escrow.
Those are big numbers, but they’re nothing compared with the total worth of DuPont. The company merged with Dow Inc. in 2017. The following year, the conglomerate reported revenue of $86 billion, with some experts estimating the company’s total net worth is around $130 billion.
With that perspective, $4 billion is a slap on the risk, especially split across the books of three separate companies and spanning potentially two decades of payouts.
Additional lawsuits drive up the total, but nowhere near the real cost. The famous multistate suit filed in Ohio paid out $83 million.
PFAS clean-ups have a massive bill, much of which is paid for by taxpayers. In Michigan, the state government has already spent $69 million in 2018 to 2019 to clean up PFAS. Even when lawsuits hold polluters accountable, it’s almost impossible to calculate the loss in property and home value, health impacts, and the environmental toll. To date, no state has a comprehensive plan of formula to calculate PFAS impact, and few have the legislation in place to hold companies that have used PFAS accountable without drawn-out and expensive court cases and exorbitant court costs.
Over the next several years, states like Michigan need to draft and enforce laws with the teeth to put the cost on polluters based on calculations created by experts in chemistry, health, and real estate. Even more important is the need for federal agencies like the EPA to arm states by classifying all PFAS variants as dangerous chemicals so legislators can stop playing whack-a-mole as ‘new’ kinds of PFAS pop-up to dodge regulations.
