3M’s PFOS Secret Keepers
Generations of 3M executives protected PFOS from the public
In 2022, when I started reviewing historical 3M documents on the Minnesota Attorney General's website, I realized for the first time that 3M’s long-held awareness that PFOS was present in the blood of the non-occupationally exposed population was not limited to a handful of scientists. (My notes on my 1998 interview with one of these scientists are here [#2534]).
It wasn't the chemists who were calling the shots surrounding data associated with PFAS exposure, it was the corporation’s business and legal leaders. Most of them were scientifically trained; many were members of 3M’s leadership tier and wielded considerable power. As I continued my review and analysis, I dubbed that group of executives the Secret Keepers.
The documents that I reviewed in 2022 showed that, in the 1970s and 1980s, information about the human and environmental exposure to 3M’s PFOS was well known to 3M executives [e.g. #1145, #2771, #1204]. I was shocked to learn that what I had thought was a small episode driven by a few curious scientists was instead a decades-long, multidisciplinary crisis, all aspects of which were being managed by the highest levels of 3M’s hierarchy.
I continued to make my way through documents working from the 1970s up to the time of my research contributions in 1997, noticing as the players changed. When the first generation of Secret Keepers moved into other roles, retired or passed away, a second generation of executive Secret Keepers emerged [e.g. #1989, #1421, #1386, #1408, #1409]. Like their predecessors, the Generation 2 Secret Keepers were highly placed in the company and represented several different functions. However, unlike Generation 1, I personally worked with and trusted several of the Generation 2 Secret Keepers (I even reported to one!). After my “discovery” in 1997, I shared data, ideas and theories about possible PFAS exposure sources with the Secret Keepers. I wrote reports, gave updates and formulated ways to improve our knowledge. My work and ideas were met with skepticism, ambivalence, denial, and isolation. And the Secret Keepers kept their secret from me.
In Secrecy at Work: The Hidden Architecture of Organizational Life (1), authors Grey and Costas define informal secrecy as secrecy that exists across a spectrum from casual secrecy (informal gossip) to a highly restricted secrecy “in which a tightly knit group secretively controls and possibly even subverts the organization.” (pg 93) According to the authors, “informal secrecy takes place when actors involved are aware of the need to control certain information.” (pg 93) When informal secrecy is breached, “sanctions such as social exclusion, discrimination, ridicule, criticism, or inducement of shame can follow.” (pg 96)
In reflecting on my time researching and documenting various dimensions of 3M’s PFAS issue between 1997-2001, I often felt I was being punished. I thought the disdain directed at me was because some perceived I was being disloyal to the corporation. Now that I understand how much was known about 3M’s PFAS contamination before I made my contributions, I wonder if the resistance I encountered was in response to a more personal perceived threat: my work wasn't just exposing the secret, it was exposing the Secret Keepers.
While this revelation troubles me at a personal level, there are much more important ramifications associated with the work of generations of Secret Keepers when it comes to global distribution of industrial pollutants. Global PFAS contamination is a significant risk to public health. PFOS, a suspected carcinogen [e.g. LINK], passes through the placenta to the fetus during pregnancy; it is transferred from mother to infant via breast milk. It is present in healthy young people, but also in frail elderly people. It is present in people, young and old, who are fighting cancer or struggling with chronic conditions like diabetes or cardiovascular diseases.
These are the populations from whom the Secret Keepers extracted the highest price.
Citing Grey and Costas, “That information is being shared in a secretive way, for restricted consumption, matters in that in many contexts it is impossible to function fully and effectively if not included within such secrets.” (pg. 119, emphasis added) Had 3M’s Secret Keepers shared their secret openly with the scientific community inside and outside the corporation - ideally in the 1970s, but even in the 1980s - understanding about the scope, source and risk of exposure would have developed much sooner, as would have actions to mitigate risk to the health of the public and the environment. Even in 1997 as a 3M scientist, my work did not progress as “fully and functionally” as it would have had 3M’s history with PFAS been shared with me.
I often recall the meeting I had with 3M’s CEO in 1999. I was told it was a request for me to share data about my team’s PFAS “discovery” in humans and in the environment. I realize now, the interest in my science was not genuine. Instead, meeting with the CEO in the big conference room on the top floor or 3M’s corporate headquarters surrounded by a handful of 3M’s most powerful leaders and lawyers was an opportunity for those corporate executives to exercise sanctions against me for airing their secrets: disdain, ridicule, criticism, intimidation.
It seems, to 3M, the secret mattered more than the solution.
1. Secrecy at Work, The Hidden Architecture of Organizational Life; Costas, Jana; Grey, Christopher; Stanford University Press, 2016; ISBN(e) 9780804798167
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