Travel 14 miles north of Cottage Grove, past cornfields and the odd hobby farm for fall pumpkins, and you hit Oakdale. Here, test wells pull up the area’s highest concentrations of PFOS and PFOA. Each May, the city’s Tartan High School is one of the top fundraisers in the Relay for Life, a nationwide run that raises money to find cancer cures.

Last May, as dusk descended ahead of the all-night relay, students took to a podium set up in front of Tartan’s football field. Amara Strande, 16, described herself as “medically famous”—after she was diagnosed with hepatocellular carcinoma, the surgeon who removed a 15-pound mass from her liver said he’d never seen anything like it. Ben Rule, a 21-year-old Tartan alumnus, said that after his diagnosis of acute lymphoblastic leukemia at 16, he endured an allergic reaction to chemotherapy, a coma and a collapsed hip bone. But he wouldn’t go back in time and stop himself from getting cancer. “It taught me lessons,” he said.

Safe to Drink? Communities affected by PFAS contamination in 2012 Contaminant type: ◼ PFBA ◼ PFOA ◼ PFOS ◀ EPA’s health advisory level of 70 ppt ◀ for safe drinking water Cottage Grove 879 parts per trillion 17 Lake Elmo 118 9 Newport 371 6 Oakdale 667 214 275 St. Paul Park 1,163 24 3 Woodbury 254 13 4 Contaminant type: ◼ PFBA ◼ PFOA ◼ PFOS ◀ EPA’s health advisory level of 70 ppt for safe drinking water 879 parts per trillion Cottage Grove 17 118 Lake Elmo 9 371 Newport 6 667 Oakdale 214 275 1,163 St. Paul Park 24 3 254 Woodbury 13 4 Contaminant type: ◼ PFBA ◼ PFOA ◼ PFOS 1,163 879 parts per trillion 667 EPA’s health advisory level of 70 ppt for safe drinking water 371 275 254 214 118 24 17 13 9 6 3 4 0 0 0 Cottage Grove Lake Elmo Newport Oakdale St. Paul Park Woodbury Source: Report prepared for Minnesota’s case by The Brattle Group

Note: PFBA, once used to make photographic film, is also a product of other broken-down PFAS.

No one mentions the chemicals, or 3M at the event. But privately, Jan Churchill, a Tartan math teacher, keeps a grim tally: Five students have died over a 10-year time-frame, many parents and teachers are also sick, and her own husband was just diagnosed with a rare blood cancer after years of mysterious immune problems. She suspects 3M is to blame. “Every time I drink out of the water fountain, I want to throw up,” she said.

Establishing that a chemical actually causes harm is a monumental task. It often takes decades of study in petri dishes and on animals, and then there can be doubts about how well such studies translate to humans. Spotty census data and death records can also leave doubt.

But in Oakdale, PFAS show the “clearest evidence” of impact on human health, according to an expert report for Minnesota’s case by David Sunding, a professor at the University of California Berkeley’s College of Natural Resources and a principal at consulting firm The Brattle Group. The reason: water filters installed in 2006 lowered the levels of the chemicals, and after that, instances of low birth weight or premature babies decreased, as did signs of infertility . Still, troubling statistics remain in Oakdale. A child who died there from 2003 to 2015 was 171 percent more likely to have had cancer compared to those in a larger tri-county area, according to Sunding’s report.

Every time I drink out of the water fountain, I want to throw up. Jan Churchill, Tartan High School teacher

Disputes over the science have done little to slow lawsuits over PFAS across the nation. They’ve been on the rise ever since a 2017 victory against DuPont, which started making its own PFOA after 3M phased it out. In that case, a “medical monitoring” project studied the blood and health of 70,000 people near a DuPont plant in West Virginia for years. It eventually linked PFOA to six diseases, including ulcerative colitis and testicular cancer. The findings spurred a handful of trial victories and, ultimately, a $671 million settlement for 3,500 people. (DuPont has since spun the business off as Chemours and merged to become DowDuPont.)

A spokesman for DowDuPont, Daniel Turner, said the company doesn’t comment on pending litigation. “However, throughout the time it used PFOA, DuPont had a well-founded, good faith belief that low levels of PFOA exposure did not pose a health hazard,” Turner said, adding that it operated with “the health and environmental information that was then available to the industry and regulators.” Chemours declined to comment.

In 3M’s home state, there have been no such tests or legal victory for individuals. Gale Pearson, a Minneapolis lawyer who sued 3M in 2004, says she struggled to find willing plaintiffs from Cottage Grove or other affected towns. The stoic, polite “Minnesota nice” culture kept many people from signing up, she said. And many people had friends or family who worked for 3M.

One was the judge who oversaw the case. Washington County District Judge Mary Hannon granted 3M’s bid to dismiss Pearson’s class complaint in 2007, court records show. Her reason was that the case failed to show a link between the personal injury claims and 3M’s alleged wrongdoing, and had major flaws, like failing to put an end date on the class period. It wasn’t public at the time, but Hannon confirmed that her father worked for 3M for about 40 years. After discussing it with the lawyers in the case, Hannon decided at the time that it wasn’t a conflict of interest, and she says today that her ruling wasn’t influenced by that family connection.

All the revelations since the class-action failed have caused residents to rethink what 3M has long told them.

Amy Kirkwood, 34, who watched the Relay for Life from the Tartan bleachers with her 10-year-old daughter, Lexi, said she regrets that she threw away an invitation to join the class action in 2004. After that, she recalled reading local news articles that mentioned the chemicals in water, but often had a 3M official saying they were safe, and that the water was ok to drink. “I’m fine, the water’s fine,” she thought at the time, and during her pregnancy, when she also drank it.

Amy Kirkwood and her daughter Lexi. Photos: Houston Cofield/Bloomberg

In January 2015, her attitude changed almost overnight. Lexi came down with a stomach ache, and the next day she was diagnosed with a type of kidney cancer, Wilm’s tumor, already in stage four. It had encased her kidney, metastasized to her lungs and begun wrapping around blood vessels, headed toward her heart.

Kirkwood threw out anything Teflon or Scotchgard and switched to bottled water. Now, after 3M’s settlement with the state, she’s incensed about the earlier lawsuit’s failure. She wonders why state and federal officials didn’t act sooner, and she fears that people in charge are withholding information. “It’s scary,” she said.

A Drop in a Pool 50m 3m 1 cubic meter 25m 50m 3m 1 cubic meter 25m 50m 3m 1 cubic meter 25m 1 liter 1 liter 1 liter PFOA PFOS PFOA PFOS PFOA PFOS PFOA PFOS PFOA PFOS PFOA PFOS Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician and professor at Boston College’s Global Public Health initiative, says because even very low levels of PFAS are a concern, he recommends people not use the reformulated Scotchgard, “even as we wait for definitive information. I worry about exposures in kids and pregnant women,” he says.



Just how low are the levels? The EPA’s “health advisory” for PFOA and PFOS is less than 70 ppt. That’s less than a few drops in an Olympic-size pool, which contains about 3,750 cubic meters of water... To give you a sense of how little that is, one cubic meter holds 1,000 liters of water, which a person could easily fit into. It would be impossible to tell how many particles of PFAS, if any, make it into that 1-liter cube, but... If you were to condense that 70 ppt into an even smaller cube, you could see how much Minnesota’s new 2017 guidelines shrunk the advised levels of PFAS, to 35 ppt for PFOA and 27 ppt for PFOS. This June, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) suggested even lower levels of 11 ppt for PFOA and 7 ppt for PFOS. Philippe Grandjean, a Danish scientist and professor at Harvard University’s School of Public Health, who has studied immune effects of the chemicals, is among the most cautious on them. He suggests a safe level of 1 ppt for PFAS overall. That’s less than 1 drop in an Olympic-size pool. According to a recent Environmental Working Group (EWG) study, more than 110 million Americans have drinking water with more than 2.5 ppt of PFAS. Sources: EPA, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Minnesota Dept. of Public Health, Environmental Working Group, Fédération Internationale de Natation

Scientists outside of 3M have become increasingly outspoken about the risks of PFAS. Linda Birnbaum, director of the toxicology program in the National Institutes of Health, said there’s evidence the chemicals are toxic. Most of the thousands of PFAS variants haven’t been tested, she said, but all that have been show problems. Phil Brown, a Northeastern University sociology professor who specializes in toxic exposures, likens 3M’s actions to cigarette makers who for decades avoided liability from their products’ links to cancer.

Minnesota’s statute of limitations might complicate any new lawsuits there. For plaintiffs elsewhere, Swanson’s airing of the company’s internal memos drew a roadmap, said Rob Bilott, a partner at Taft Stettinus & Hollister LLP, who sued DuPont in West Virginia. “Those documents are helpful for establishing what 3M knew and when it knew it,” he said.

Bilott sued 3M and other PFAS users in October, saying they “maliciously conspired” with trade groups to conceal the chemicals’ toxicity. 3M won’t comment about ongoing litigation.

The suit, which seeks to represent everybody in the U.S. with PFAS in their blood, alleges that 3M and other companies have refused to fund extensive testing, and demands that they pay for it. Such studies may also come out of other lawsuits, including one over pollution in Hoosick Falls, New York. In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, testing is planned amid a dispute over whether a pediatric cancer cluster is linked to a former air force base that used firefighting foam.

In Hoosick Falls, where Saint Gobain Corporation used the chemicals, the company says that before it was asked, it started supplying the village with potable water. “It is important to note that we never manufactured PFOA,” spokeswoman Dina Pokedoff said, adding that it came from suppliers, which are kept confidential for business reasons.

Meanwhile, 3M says it is also addressing historic PFAS disposal at two other manufacturing sites in the U.S.—in Cordova, Illinois, and Decatur. And the list of products using PFAS continues to grow. Private labs have recently warned technicians who test water to avoid cross-contaminating their samples by steering clear of blue chemical ice packs, certain brands of sunscreen and Post-It Notes. And scientists are discussing ways to break down their powerful bonds. So far, high temperature incineration seems to work, according to a Danish Environmental Protection Agency report.

Back in Cottage Grove, white clouds still billow from 3M’s factory at the end of the street named Innovation Road. Bailey struggles to reconcile the friendly company that donates money to the town’s basketball leagues and the Fourth of July fireworks with the one portrayed by his state’s lawsuit. “My belief is there are certain people within 3M that wanted to keep it quiet, and others at 3M that didn’t know it was as bad as it is,” he said.

Bailey wonders if the problem is truly behind the community. The water filters will be effective for only five years, and a permanent solution will likely cost $100 million. 3M’s settlement with the state is meant to cover that, but the fund has other demands on it: A nearby community, St. Paul Park, found more PFAS contamination after the settlement, and officials are still evaluating rural wells.

Bailey said 3M has been more generous than usual since the settlement. But he wants something more than the company’s money. “To this day they have said they don’t believe anything is wrong,” he said. “If you are a business or individual who has done something wrong, I believe you can be accountable, and say you did it.”