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Nine Takeaways from Our Investigation into 3M's Forever Chemicals

What you need to know about the inside story of how the company allowed PFOS to seep into all of us while sitting on research that showed the chemical is toxic.

While that daily dose was orders of magnitude greater than the amount a typical person would ingest, the results show the chemical would currently fall into the highest of five toxicity levels recognized by the United Nations. Jim Johnson, Hansen’s former boss, said in an interview that he knew “within 20 minutes” that PFOS wouldn’t break down in nature and that he had identified the chemical in a sample he obtained from a blood bank in the 1970s. Recent studies have linked PFAS to an increased risk of some cancers, developmental effects in children, reduced immune function, interference with hormones and other health harms.

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