The U.S. Chamber’s Pro-Pollution Battle
The U.S. Chamber is fighting to help 3M get away with covertly polluting Americas drinking water.
By Leo Menninger, November 30, 2020
The US Chamber of Commerce has joined 3M’s fight to get off the hook for polluting tens of millions of American’s drinking water with “Forever Chemicals”. After decades of concealing information about the toxicity of these chemicals, the PFAS Action Act of 2019 has finally emerged to get these chemicals out of America’s drinking water and make corporate polluters pay the bill. 3M is trying everything they can to avoid paying for their criminal action, and the US Chamber of Commerce has joined their effort to do so.
A 3M plant on the Mississippi River
3M’s 1963 manual describing the toxicity of PFAS
“Forever Chemicals” (PFAS) are toxic chemicals that degrade at devastating low rates. They do not break down in the human body or the environment, so they are difficult to clean up and can cause more damage in lower doses than chemicals that break down more easily. 3M began learning of their ability to accumulate in living things in 1950 but recklessly forged ahead to use these chemicals in their various products. This irresponsible behavior lead to the proliferation of PFAS in our environment, and now at least 97% of Americans have detectable levels of PFAS in their blood.
When the PFAS Action Act of 2019 surfaced in the House, environmental groups rejoiced. The bill promised to regulate PFAS and PFOS, and to make the polluters pay for the damage they caused by listing the forever chemicals under CERCLA. As environmental groups celebrated, the Chamber put together a coalition statement from twenty massive industry groups to state their opposition to the bill. These coalition statements are powerful tools of the Chamber because politicians rightly aligned with the Chamber interests can receive massive support. It is not unlike the Chamber to spend up to or greater than a million dollars financing the election campaign of an official poised to help them out, such as when they spent over $1,300,000 supporting Susan Collins in 2020. Therefore, coalition statements are a powerful coercive tool to politicians interested in the financial backing of the U.S. Chamber.
When the PFAS Action Act of 2019 eventually comes to a vote in the Senate, Susan Collins may have the potential to shut down the bill to satisfy the Chambers interest. Collins is a position where she could support the bill and allow it to become law, or instead she could cater to the interests of her primary financial constituency - large corporations.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has also been exerting its significant lobbying muscle on PFAS Action Act. Due to the lack of transparency in the American lobbying system (that the Chamber eagerly exploits), it is impossible to tell exactly how much money they spent lobbying on the PFAS Action Act of 2019, but it is known that the Chamber lobbied the act.
This story is unfortunately all too common for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Rather than considering the interests of the general public, the Chamber has again chosen to protect corporate polluters, even at the cost of allowing tens of millions of Americans to continue drinking contaminated water. This demonstrates an incredible moral bankruptcy at both 3M and the Chamber, which might ironically lead to the well-deserved bankruptcy of another greedy corporation.