The Wisconsin attorney general is trying to hold more than a dozen companies accountable for poisoning citizens in the state with PFAS chemicals. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: The Wisconsin attorney general is trying to hold more than a dozen companies accountable for poisoning citizens in the state with PFAS chemicals. You and I have done this story again and again. I don’t know, here again, how often do you see this story covered in the media?
Farron Cousins: Oh, never. This was a blurb kind of in the Chicago Sun Times. Had it not been for that I wouldn’t have seen it anywhere.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. You know why that is? 3M is one of the ugly ugliest. DuPont is one of the companies that we dealt with. We dealt with them up in the Ohio River Valley. But the truth is, 3M has contaminated water to where people, people, they don’t understand that this stuff will kill you. It causes cancer. It causes birth defects. And everybody, even if I were to tell, I was with some folks this weekend, they were, they were talking about, well, we just got this notice about PFAS in our water, think everything’s okay. No, everything is not okay. I mean, give me your take on it. You followed this story as much as I have.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. I mean, look, this, this is, it’s in my body right now. It’s in your body. 98% of people watching this, it’s in your body right now and it’s bioaccumulative. It’s going to build up over time.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: So what this Wisconsin attorney general is doing here is, is really trying to get his state to do what other states have done and say, listen, we’ve gotta hold these people accountable. It’s 16 companies, 3M, Tyco Fire, BASF, all these other companies as well saying, you guys knew you were poisoning us. You told nobody.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: You let it happen.
Mike Papantonio: Worst yet, the media kept it secret.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: The DOJ, the DOJ, we gave our information that we had in the Ohio River Valley to the DOJ. They have all of that information. Nobody’s been prosecuted. Nobody has, there’s been no meaningful criminal investigation that has followed the money here to where we know they’ve known about this for 50 years, they’ve been getting away with. US Chamber of Commerce. Everybody thinks, oh, the US Chamber of Commerce is mom and pop, they’re, they’re out there for us. No. US Chamber of Commerce. If you look at their board, they’re heavily heavily 3M folks. So the US Chamber of Commerce started a campaign to say, ah, this is not that bad. Don’t worry about PFAS. Every scientist that studied this said, it’s a killer. And even when you tell people it’s in your drinking water, that your kids are drinking it, it’s like, it’s like a yawn moment. It’s like when we post this and we talk about, you know, when this segment is posted and you compare this segment and, and, and the numbers of people coming through to look at this segment compared to a political segment, won’t be a comparison. And we’re talking about stuff that’ll kill you.
Farron Cousins: Right. Exactly, and that is part of the problem is getting the public to actually care about these things that are in your body that will kill you. And the steps you, you know, hopefully might be able to take, to encourage your politicians to do something about it.
Mike Papantonio: How, how about your local, how about your local water facility?
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: Demand, I wanna see how much PFAS in our water. I mean, a lot of this stuff is, goes undisclosed.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And, and that’s what people need to do. You have to take action because your life could be at stake here.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, there’s no question.
