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anoother | 3 years ago

Genuinely serious and ignorant question: What grief?

discuss

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exmadscientist|3 years ago

3M products are great because they always do what they say they're going to do. They usually even overperform by a large margin. They're one of my suppliers of choice for industrial applications or anything R&D where we don't quite know how good it has to be yet.

3M toxic chemical waste is also a core 3M product, and overperforms too. Some of their Superfund sites, particularly the C8/PFOA/fluorinated crud ones, are among the worst around. (I grew up on the other side of the city from their worst one! Yay!)

And, like any company in the fluorinated chemicals business, 3M has overperformed at ozone depletion and greenhouse forcing. I can give them a pass on that particular one, since society as a whole didn't care much about that stuff until recently. I can't, however, give them a pass for how nasty Scotchgard was/is and how much of it was sprayed on/near me as a child. If you remember Scotchgard, don't look up what it really was or you might regret your parents' life choices.

hinkley|3 years ago

I recall once researching superfund distribution on some sort of thesis that the West Coast is Better, only to discover that Washington State is top ten for a superfund sites, and in large part because of all of the nasty ways we’ve come up with to preserve lumber over the years. Well, shit.

It’s no PFOAs but it’s a class of chemicals specifically selected for preventing decay so it’s up there. We really should know better by now.

swader999|3 years ago

Management by post it notes comes to mind.

hinkley|3 years ago

Scotchguard is the biggest black eye I know of. I don’t know what’s in it now but it used to be cancer in a can.

hinkley|3 years ago

Old formula Scotchguard had PFOS in it from the 1950’s until sometime in the last decades. People sprayed it on their furniture, indoors. We’re worried about off gassing from pans, and here was a can of the stuff in aerosol form.

Maybe ask instead of downvote?