One of the world’s largest manufacturers of PFAS — the synthetic compounds linked to cancer, heart disease, and developmental harm — announced it will stop making them entirely by 2025 C.E. The decision by 3M, a U.S. industrial giant, marks one of the most significant corporate withdrawals from forever chemicals production in history, and analysts say it could push the broader chemical industry to follow.
At a glance
- PFAS phase-out: 3M set a firm 2025 C.E. deadline to halt all manufacturing of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly called forever chemicals, across its global operations.
- Financial cost: The company expects to absorb between $1.3 billion and $2.3 billion in pre-tax charges to exit production — a signal that it views long-term liability as the greater risk.
- Investor pressure: Fund managers overseeing $8 trillion in assets had written to 54 companies earlier in 2022 C.E. urging them to phase out PFAS use, showing how shareholder activism is reshaping chemical industry norms.
Why forever chemicals became impossible to ignore
PFAS have been used in manufacturing for decades. They make products heat-resistant, water-resistant, and durable, which is why they show up in everything from cell phones to semiconductors to non-stick cookware.
The problem is the name is accurate. These compounds do not break down in the environment — or in the human body. In recent years, dangerous concentrations have turned up in drinking water, agricultural soils, and food supplies around the world. The health links are serious: studies reviewed by the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences associate long-term PFAS exposure with kidney and testicular cancer, thyroid disruption, immune system suppression, and low birth weights.
By the time 3M made its announcement in December 2022 C.E., the legal and regulatory walls were closing in. California’s attorney general had filed suit against 3M and DuPont de Nemours, among others, to recover contamination cleanup costs. The Biden administration had moved to designate certain forever chemicals as hazardous substances under the U.S. Superfund program. And five European countries — Denmark, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands — were finalizing a proposal to restrict PFAS use across the continent.
The weight of 3M’s decision
3M is not a peripheral player in this market. Its annual PFAS sales ran to roughly $1.3 billion — about 3.7% of the company’s total 2021 C.E. revenues of $35.4 billion. Walking away from that revenue stream, and absorbing billions in exit charges, is a meaningful business decision.
That is precisely what made analysts and sustainability investors sit up. “With 3M’s scale and position as one of the world’s largest producers of PFAS, we feel this could represent a turning point in the transition towards a more sustainable chemical industry,” said Victoria Lidén, sustainability analyst with Storebrand Asset Management, a Norwegian fund with a strong track record on responsible investment.
DuPont, for its part, said it was limiting PFAS to “essential industrial applications” and working with customers on alternatives — a softer commitment, but a sign that the industry’s direction is shifting.
A push from investors and regulators alike
The 3M announcement did not happen in a vacuum. It reflects a convergence of legal liability, regulatory momentum, and shareholder pressure that had been building for years.
The investor coalition that wrote to 54 companies in 2022 C.E. represented a new kind of market force — one that treats environmental contamination not as a PR problem but as a financial risk. When fund managers overseeing $8 trillion in assets send a coordinated letter, companies pay attention. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s PFAS Strategic Roadmap, published in 2021 C.E., had already set out a multi-year federal plan to study, limit, and remediate PFAS exposure — adding regulatory teeth to the investor push.
In Europe, the EU’s European Chemicals Agency was preparing assessments of PFAS restrictions in firefighting foams, with broader industrial restrictions expected to follow. The science and the policy were moving in the same direction.
What still needs to happen
3M’s commitment is significant, but it covers production — not the contamination already in the environment. Hundreds of thousands of sites worldwide are estimated to carry PFAS pollution, and cleanup technology remains slow, expensive, and incomplete. Affected communities, many of them low-income and disproportionately communities of color living near manufacturing or military sites, will be dealing with that legacy long after 3M’s factories go quiet.
There is also the question of substitutes. Some PFAS alternatives carry their own environmental concerns, and the pressure to find truly safe, effective replacements for the properties these chemicals provide is a research challenge the industry has not yet solved.
Still, a firm production deadline from the world’s largest PFAS maker is not a small thing. It sets a clock ticking, and it tells every other manufacturer that the era of treating forever chemicals as normal industrial inputs is ending.
Read more
For more on this story, see: Reuters
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