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The Companies Who Brought You Forever Chemicals Now Want to Sell You on Hydrogen
We should learn from the chemical industry’s track record on evading transparency and accountability to be suspicious of how responsibly this industry will develop clean hydrogen.
Mar 21, 2024
The very same chemical companies spending millions on lobbying against federal legislation and regulations that would force the chemical industry to clean up widespread “forever chemical” pollution are now going all-in on hydrogen as a “clean” form of energy.
We should learn from the chemical industry’s track record on evading transparency and accountability for the “forever chemicals” now found in the blood of up to 97% of Americans to be suspicious of how responsibly this industry will develop clean hydrogen.
For those unfamiliar with “forever chemicals,” also known as PFAS (short for per- and poly- fluoroalkyl substances), they are “a group of chemicals used to make fluoropolymer coatings and products that resist heat, oil, stains, grease, and water.” PFAS trigger scientific concern because, as the “forever chemicals” moniker suggests, they don’t break down in the environment, but instead stick around, building up in everything from soil to drinking water to the bodies of people and animals. PFAS have repeatedly made the news already in 2024, as new studies have come out indicating the widespread presence of PFAS in everything from nearly half of the U.S. drinking water supply to packaged tea and processed meats to turf sports fields.
The Biden administration must remain vigilant to the publicity campaigns and streams of lobbying money that extractive corporations deploy in their pursuit of maximal profits without regard to the impact on people, communities, and the planet.
PFAS are associated with a host of health risks. The EPA and CDC have acknowledged peer-reviewed scientific studies that show that exposure to PFAS may lead to reproductive and developmental effects in children, immune system damage, and increase the risk of developing cancer. Research is ongoing to confirm links between the various substances in the PFAS category and these and other worrying health outcomes.
Considering how blithely these companies shirk responsibility for polluting our environment to the extent that human fetusesand the rainnow show traces of forever chemicals, it’s hard to trust them when they say that hydrogen’s a climate winner.
Proponents of hydrogen laud it as a clean-burning alternative to natural gas and an energy carrier comparable to batteries. In reality, as we’ve written about at length, the vast majority of hydrogen production in the United States comes from a highly polluting process involving natural gas and steam. Hydrogen can be produced without natural gas, via electricity, but the vast majority of electricity is produced by fossil fueled power plants as well. So, while burning hydrogen is technically emissions-free, if the electrolysis used to create that hydrogen relies on fossil fuels or polluting forms of energy, the climate impact of “green” hydrogen can be worse than just burning fossil fuels. And due to how hydrogen interacts with other gasses in the atmosphere, hydrogen has over 32 times the indirect global warming potential of carbon dioxide.
These are some of the companies invested in the hydrogen economy that also lobbied aggressively against being on the hook for PFAS clean up:
- Chemours, which has been part of the aggressive, multimillion dollar lobbying blitz against strong PFAS clean up, is part of the Fuel Cell & Hydrogen Energy Association (FCHEA), a coalition of companies advocating for hydrogen as “clean, safe, and reliable.” It is worth noting Chemours opposed stronger hydrogen standards that would ensure they’re clean.
- 3M spent $17.9 million lobbying against the PFAS Act of 2019, which criminalized PFASS in sewers. 3M is currently expanding its research and redevelopment into green hydrogen.
- Dow spent $23.4 million on PFAS lobbying between 2019-2022, largely centered around the LIFT America Act (which would have created a grant program to help filter PFAS). In April, Dow selected Linde as a gas partner supplying hydrogen as a feedstock for Dow’s plastics facility in Canada.
- Honeywell, which spent $200,000 lobbying on the CLEAN Futures Act’s PFAS clean up assistance provisions, is also a member of the Fuel Cell & Hydrogen Energy Association.
- In 2021, Dominion Energy lobbied Congress in regards to the landmark Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which included $2 billion in funding to address contaminants in drinking water like PFAS. Dominion Energy also happens to be a member of the Green Hydrogen Coalition.
- Siemens Energy also lobbied Congress in regards to the CLEAN Futures Act, and also happens to be a Green Hydrogen Coalition member.
- Norfolk Southern, which was party to a lawsuit from the Justice Department over the derailment and toxic chemical release in East Palestine, Ohio, lobbied Congress on the Infrastructure law as well, and utilized hydrogen in its technologies.
These companies have clearly demonstrated that they aren’t committed to preventing their products from poisoning communities. Not only did they fail to prevent widespread pollution in the first place; they then actively spent their money lobbying to argue that they shouldn’t have to clean up their own messes. Rather than, say, spending that money to clean up the messes.
These corporations’ and coalitions’ track records raise immediate red flags regarding the legitimacy of these corporation’s future claims about how clean their hydrogen production is—not that we needed more indicators, given the hydrogen risks and drawbacks that scientists and environmental advocates have been pointing out for years.
The Biden administration also has tools to crack down on many of these polluters. Recently, the FDA announced an initiative to stop the use of certain PFAS in food packaging, based on a “voluntary commitment” by companies to stop selling the products, which the FDA plans to continue to monitor. This kind of agreement should be rigorously reinforced by the use of investigations and penalties by the agencies entrusted with public health, to hold corporations accountable when they flout safety guidelines and laws.
In February, we commented on recent reporting by E&E News that the Energy Department was pushing the Treasury Department to align its clean hydrogen tax credit guidance with industrial polluters’ demands. We argued that it’s crucial that Treasury resist this industry pressure—even when it’s coming from their colleagues at the Energy Department—and address the potential loopholes in its tax credit guidance that could promote the growth of a so-called “clean” hydrogen industry that simply continues many forms of pollution.
The Biden administration must remain vigilant to the publicity campaigns and streams of lobbying money that extractive corporations deploy in their pursuit of maximal profits without regard to the impact on people, communities, and the planet. Otherwise, the same playbook we’ve seen with environmental and health disasters will continue to repeat itself—with continually escalating consequences.
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UN Experts Allege Human Rights Violations by PFAS Chemical Giant in North Carolina
In a letter to Chemours, the experts said they were worried about the company's "apparent disregard for the well-being of community members, who have been denied access to clean and safe water for decades."
Nov 28, 2023
United Nations human rights experts have expressed concerns over "alleged human rights violations and abuses" against people living along the lower Cape Fear River in North Carolina due emissions of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, from a Fayetteville chemical plant.
Five U.N. experts signed letters to Chemours—the plant's current operator—as well as DuPont, Corteva, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Dutch environmental regulators. The action marks the U.N. Human Rights Council's first investigation into an environmental problem in the U.S., The Guardianreported Tuesday.
"We are especially concerned about DuPont and Chemours' apparent disregard for the well-being of community members, who have been denied access to clean and safe water for decades," the U.N. experts wrote in the letter to Chemours.
"We hope the U.N.'s action will induce shareholders to bring DuPont and Chemours in line with international human rights law."
The Fayetteville Works manufacturing plant has been releasing toxic PFAS into the environment for more than four decades, according to the allegations detailed in the letter. PFAS dumped in the Cape Fear River have made it unsafe to drink for 100 river miles, and pollution from the plant has contaminated air, soil, groundwater, and aquatic life.
PFAS are a class of chemicals used in a variety of products from nonstick, water-repellent, or stain-resistant items to firefighting foam. They have been linked to a number of health issues including cancers and have earned the name "forever chemicals" for their ability to persist in the environment and the human body. One study found PFAS in 97% of local residents who received testing.
The letter also repeated allegations that DuPont, the plant's previous owner, and Chemours, a spinoff company, had not taken responsibility for cleaning up the local environment and compensating community members, and that DuPont had known about the dangers of PFAS for several years, but chose to hide this information from the public.
"We remain preoccupied that these actions infringe on community members' right to life, right to health, right to a healthy, clean, and sustainable environment, and the right to clean water, among others," the U.N. experts wrote.
The letters were sent in response to a request made in April by Berkeley Law's Environmental Law Clinic on behalf of local environmental advocacy group Clean Cape Fear. In the request, the groups said the matter was particularly urgent because Chemours plans to expand its making of PFAS at the plant.
The U.N. experts, or special rapporteurs, reviewed existing legal and scientific documents and media reports, rather than completing their own investigation, NC Newsline reported. They sent the letters in September, but made them public on Thanksgiving, 60 days later, according to Clean Cape Fear. During that time, Chemours, Corteva, and the Dutch regulator responded, but DuPont and the EPA did not.
"We are grateful to see the United Nations take action on behalf of all residents in our region suffering from decades of human rights abuse related to our PFAS contamination crisis," Clean Cape Fear co-founder Emily Donovan said in a statement. "Clearly, the U.N. recognizes international law is being violated in the United States. We find it profoundly troubling that the United States and DuPont have yet to respond to the U.N.'s allegation letters."
Clean Cape Fear called Chemours' response "classic corporate gaslighting." Chemours claimed to be "a relatively new company," despite being staffed by senior DuPont executives, focused mainly on the PFAS GenX despite the presence of several other pollutants, and focused on the impacts on private well owners, ignoring public utility customers who must pay to filter their own water because of PFAS contamination. However, the letter did acknowledge that Chemours knew about the PFAS pollution before the public learned of it in 2017 and tried to both resolve it internally and prevent the public from finding out.
"If corporate malfeasance had a name in N.C., it would be Chemours," said Rebecca Trammel, leadership team member of Clean Cape Fear and founder of Catalyst Consulting & Speaking. "Impunity is the accomplice of injustice. It is the obligation of governments and regulatory agencies to ensure that innovation, economic gain, and progress are in service of humanity, not at its expense. I extend my deepest thanks to the United Nations for its defense of our right to safe water and life itself."
The letter to the EPA focused in part on its failure to study the health impacts of PFAS exposure on the community, while the letter to the Netherlands focused on imports of GenX from that country to Fayetteville Works.
Clean Cape Fear said it hopes the letters will put pressure on both the private companies and the government regulators to act.
"We hope the U.N.'s action will induce shareholders to bring DuPont and Chemours in line with international human rights law," the group tweeted, noting that both companies are publicly traded.
"We also hope that the risk of being named a violator of international human rights laws will give the U.S. EPA the political courage to do what it must to curb toxic PFAS pollution in North Carolina and nationwide," the group added.
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North Carolina Group Asks UN to Probe Chemical Company's PFAS Pollution
Local residents have accused Chemours of violating their human rights by discharging "forever chemicals" into the Cape Fear River watershed.
Apr 28, 2023
A citizen-led organization in North Carolina on Thursday asked the United Nations to investigate several alleged human rights violations related to the release of "forever chemicals" from Fayetteville Works, a manufacturing plant previously owned by DuPont and now owned by a spin-off company called Chemours.
Roughly half a million people live in the Cape Fear River basin between Wilmington and Fayetteville, where the Chemours-owned facility has produced per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) for more than four decades, poisoning the region's air, soil, and water and undermining public health in the process.
In a letter to U.N. Special Rapporteur Marcos Orellana, Clean Cape Fear and the University of California at Berkeley Environmental Law Clinic wrote that due to chronic exposure to "dangerous quantities" of PFAS, area residents are facing an "environmental human rights crisis."
PFAS are a class of hazardous synthetic compounds widely called "forever chemicals" because they persist in humans, animals, and ecosystems for years on end. Scientists have linked long-term human exposure to PFAS—used in dozens of everyday household products, including ostensibly "green" and "nontoxic" children's items, as well as firefighting foam—to numerous adverse health outcomes, including cancer, reproductive and developmental harms, immune system damage, and other negative effects.
"Incredibly—and without meaningfully redressing past and ongoing harm from its toxic air emissions and discharges into the Cape Fear River, and the resulting widespread contamination of local drinking water—facility owner Chemours now proposes to expand its production of PFAS," says the letter. "Pursuant to your mandate under Human Rights Council Resolution 36/6, we seek your urgent intervention to actualize local residents' human rights to safe drinking water, bodily integrity, health, a life with dignity, and an environment free from toxic contamination."
As The Guardian reported Friday, Clean Cape Fear and the Berkeley Environmental Law Clinic are asking Orellana to "pressure regulators to stop the Fayetteville Works expansion, ensure clean water in the region, conduct an epidemiological study, hold Chemours financially responsible for cleanup and ban the entire PFAS for non-essential uses, among other measures."
According to the newspaper:
If the U.N. human rights commission chooses to investigate, a special rapporteur would fact-check the allegations in the communication, then issue "pointed" allegation letters to regulators, Chemours, and other culpable parties detailing problems and posing questions, said Claudia Polsky, director of UC Berkeley Law Clinic.
Businesses and governments would have a chance to respond, and usually do, Polsky said. International law is not legally binding, but the process would "put recipients on the defensive" and provide a platform on which the region's compelling human rights violation narrative is told "to the world at large," Polsky said. That would put tremendous pressure on the government to act, she added.
"It’s not just words in the wind," Polsky said, adding that it can also "provide cover and give backbone to agencies to do things they may want to do, but feel browbeaten by industry."
Researchers first documented pervasive PFAS pollution throughout the area in 2017. Inhabitants of the region are "in disbelief that we are still living with this," said Clean Cape Fear co-founder Emily Donovan, who resides near Wilmington.
"We're nearly six years into this and my kids still go to a school that has water with high levels of PFAS," she added. "Everyone is aware of the problem... and is outraged, and we're all asking, 'Why is this still going on?'"
According to the group's letter to Orellana, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality "are also, through regulatory timidity and enforcement half-measures, responsible for acquiescing in past and ongoing human rights violations."
"The pervasive toxification of human bodies and the ecosystem of the lower Cape Fear River watershed with PFAS that persist essentially forever lends particular urgency to controlling these toxics at their source," the letter states.
The U.N. human rights commission has yet to probe an environmental crisis in the United States. A 2021 investigation of forever chemical pollution in Veneto, Italy, "inspired" Clean Cape Fear to take the step, Donovan told The Guardian.
"There's a lack of accountability," said Donovan, "so we'll ask anyone who is willing to help, and we thought, 'Maybe that's the kind of leverage that we need.'"
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