[CPEO-MEF] PFAS: "3M admits to unlawful release of PFAS in Alabama"

[Lenny Siegel]

3M admits to unlawful release of PFAS in Alabama
US EPA barred company from discharging two substances to water

by Cheryl Hogue
Chemical & Engineering News
JUNE 25, 2019 

3M has voluntarily acknowledged to regulators that its Decatur, Alabama, plant illegally released a perfluorinated chemical to the Tennessee River, which supplies drinking water to hundreds of thousands of people.

The chemical is perfluorobutane sulfonamide (FBSA), which the company began to manufacture and use at the Decatur facility in 2009. As a condition of allowing manufacture of the substance under the US Toxic Substances Control Act, the Environmental Protection Agency prohibited 3M from releasing FBSA into US waterways.

3M says its Decatur plant may also have released a related chemical, a polyfluorinated sulfonamide alcohol, to the river as well. That substance, which 3M calls FBSEE, is a derivative of FBSA. It is also covered by the 2009 EPA order prohibiting release to water.

…

For the entire article, see
https://cen.acs.org/environment/persistent-pollutants/3M-admits-unlawful-release-PFAS-in-Alabama/97/i26

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Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650/961-8918 
<lsiegel at cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org