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The Weinberg proposal
... While present-day regulatory and scientific ignorance of PFAS are frequently attributed to their "unregulated" status, examining the context of TSCA's formation and the law's weak design reveal historical, structural, political, and economic contributors to their relatively recent discovery as emerging chemicals of concern. Internal documents from both DuPont and 3M, made public through litigation, reveal histories of unseen science, research and data that were not disclosed outside of select industry circles, dating to before the passage of TSCA (Blake 2015;Richter et al. 2018;Lerner 2015;Sedlak 2016;Thacker 2006). PFAS compounds raised health and safety concerns as early as the 1960s, and by 1975, chemical industry executives were aware of research on finding fluorine in samples of human blood, suggesting that consumer products could be exposing the U.S. population to fluorine (Grandjean 2017;Guy, Taves, and Brey 1976;Taves 1968). ...
This article examines how ignorance can be produced by regulatory systems. Using the case of contamination from per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), we identify patterns of institutionalized ignorance in U.S. chemical regulation. Drawing on in-depth interviews and archival research, we develop a chemical regulatory pathway approach to study knowledge and ignorance production through the regulatory framework, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Investigating TSCA's operation, we consider why PFAS were relatively recently recognized as a significant public health threat, despite evidence of their risks in the 1960s. The historical context of TSCA's enactment, including the mobilization of the chemical industry, contributed to the institutionalization of organizational practices promoting distinct types of ignorance based on stakeholder position: chemical manufacturers who have discretion over knowledge production and dissemination, regulators who operate under selective ignorance, and communities and consumers who experience nescience, or total surprise.
In 1941 the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of diethylstilbestrol (DES), the first synthetic chemical to be marketed as an estrogen and one of the first to be identified as a hormone disruptor-a chemical that mimics hormones. Although researchers knew that DES caused cancer and disrupted sexual development, doctors prescribed it for millions of women, initially for menopause and then for miscarriage, while farmers gave cattle the hormone to promote rapid weight gain. Its residues, and those of other chemicals, in the American food supply are changing the internal ecosystems of human, livestock, and wildlife bodies in increasingly troubling ways. In this gripping exploration, Nancy Langston shows how these chemicals have penetrated into every aspect of our bodies and ecosystems, yet the U.S. government has largely failed to regulate them and has skillfully manipulated scientific uncertainty to delay regulation. Personally affected by endocrine disruptors, Langston argues that the FDA needs to institute proper regulation of these commonly produced synthetic chemicals.
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