Lawyers warned plastics makers to prepare for a wave of litigation over "forever chemicals" that could dwarf asbestos (gifted link)

“Review any marketing materials or other communications that you’ve had with your customers, with your suppliers, see whether there’s anything in those documents that’s problematic to your defense,” he said. “Weed out people and find the right witness to represent your company.”

How lovely that they're advocating for destruction of evidence right there. Wish I could be more surprised.

“To say that the floodgates are opening is an understatement,” said Emily M. Lamond, an attorney who focuses on environmental litigation at the law firm Cole Schotz. “Take tobacco, asbestos, MTBE, combine them, and I think we’re still going to see more PFAS-related litigation,” she said, referring to methyl tert-butyl ether, a former harmful gasoline additive that contaminated drinking water. Together, the trio led to claims totaling hundreds of billions of dollars.

It would be about time. The chemicals are so sturdy that I really wonder what's the most common way they do break down. I can't imagine they can last some of the cosmic radiation and free radicals but well, it's pretty clear it's a major health issue in this century.

Nature rarely gives us magic property for free. Last century already saw a lot of environmental actions which is relatively new in the long arc of humanity(no really, think about it: for millennia nature was more or less our #1 enemy). And now we're entering a stage in the arc of humanity where it turns out that if we hurt the course of nature too much, we get hurt too.

Sometimes I wonder if the next generations will ever forgive our short-sightedness.