Having already paid tens of millions of dollars to settle other lawsuits, a carpet manufacturer in Northwest Georgia is now suing several large companies that created products containing so-called "forever chemicals."
Mohawk Industries filed a lawsuit Nov. 8 in Whitfield County Superior Court against 3M Company, the Chemours Company, Daikin American and E.I du Pont de Nemours and Company (referred to as "DuPont" in the lawsuit). The complaint lists Mohawk Industries, Mohawk Carpet LLC and Aladdin Manufacturing Corporation as the plaintiffs.
Mohawk alleges the corporations concealed the risks of PFAS, an acronym for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, and made false or misleading assurances about their safety.
Used for decades because of their resistance to heat and stains, PFAS have resilient chemical bonds that take a long time to break down naturally and can build up in plants, animals and humans. Scientific research indicates PFAS can cause developmental delays in children, increase the risk of prostate, kidney and testicular cancers and reduce the body's ability to fight infections, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
For decades, the lawsuit alleges, DuPont and 3M sold soil-resistant treatment products to Mohawk without disclosing the potential presence of PFAS. Daikin started selling carpet treatment products to Mohawk at a later date, but it too initially concealed the presence of PFAS in its products, the lawsuit said.
Mohawk started buying products manufactured by 3M and DuPont in the 1970s, Daikin in 1999 and Chemours, which formed when DuPont spun off its performance chemicals division, in 2015.
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When the companies finally disclosed their carpet treatment products contained PFAS, they assured Mohawk repeatedly they were safe, the lawsuit said, touting their scientific expertise. Because PFAS were unregulated chemicals "for which the defendants were the world's leading experts," Mohawk relied on the companies' assurances.
However, the companies concealed internal studies about the toxicological and environmental effects of PFAS and their concerns about the potential effects on human health, the lawsuit alleges.
"Even when regulators and members of the public began questioning the safety of PFAS, defendants convinced Mohawk that such concerns were baseless according to defendants' scientists and their extensive study of PFAS," the lawsuit said.
The companies also knew certain Mohawk locations sent wastewater to publicly operated treatment facilities and that Mohawk did not have specialized technology to remove the chemicals, the lawsuit said.
"But, despite all of this, defendants never instructed Mohawk to remove PFAS from its wastewater or to dispose of its wastewater differently," the lawsuit said.
Starting in 2016, Mohawk was a defendant in a series of lawsuits, which claimed PFAS in the company's wastewater had made its way into local drinking water and onto landowners' properties, requiring expensive cleanup.
"With a highly profitable business at stake, defendants concealed the risks of PFAS, made false and/or misleading assurances to Mohawk regarding the safety of PFAS, and kept Mohawk in the dark in order to induce Mohawk to continue purchasing their fluoropolymer products," the lawsuit said.
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Mohawk has already paid more than $100 million in settlements to fund the construction of water treatment facilities that will remove PFAS from the drinking water of affected communities, the lawsuit said.
To this day, the defendants have not admitted the products they sold to Mohawk are unsafe, the complaint said. Mohawk recently discovered their assurances of safely were "knowingly false" through lawsuits and regulatory guidance.
The chemical companies -- not Mohawk -- should bear the costs of damage to Mohawk's property, settlements paid by the carpet manufacturer and any PFAS removal and remediation Mohawk covers in the future, the lawsuit said.
Daikin America, 3M and the Chemours Company did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday. Lawyers representing Mohawk Industries did not immediately respond to phone calls Monday.
In an email, spokesperson Dan Turner said there's a clear difference between DuPont de Nemours, which is not a party in the lawsuit, and legacy E.I. du Pont de Nemours.
E.I. du Pont de Nemours operated its performance chemical business until it was spun out and became the Chemours Company in 2015, he said. The people, products, brands and manufacturing facilities that were owned and operated by E.I. du Pont de Nemours transferred to Chemours as part of the spinoff.
Since then, E.I. du Pont de Nemours has changed its name to EIDP Inc. It is owned by Corteva Inc. and doing business as Corteva Agriscience, Turner said. Spokespeople for Corteva Agriscience did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.
In April, the EPA established the first legally enforceable regulatory limits on certain PFAS in drinking water, indicating that no detectable amount of these chemicals is safe, Mohawk's lawsuit said.
Jesse Demonbreun-Chapman, the executive director of the environmental nonprofit Coosa River Basin Initiative, said regulators have made improvements over the past few years, but there's been an "incredibly slow response" to those contaminants.
The federal government became aware of issues with PFAS around the turn of the century, he said, and allowed the industry to voluntarily phase out two of the worst-offending forever chemicals -- PFOA and PFOS.
"Meanwhile, the industry was constantly pumping out new versions of PFAS," Demonbreun-Chapman said in a phone call.
There are thousands of those chemicals being used in industrial settings, Demonbreun-Chapman said, and the EPA released standards for six PFAS in April.
"In the regulatory landscape, we are dreadfully behind," he said.
Contact David Floyd at [email protected] or 423-757-6249.