In December 2022, 3M shocked the chemicals world when it announced it would stop PFAS production. The company, which pioneered PFAS in the 1950s and now faces billion-dollar lawsuits over the resulting pollution, said it would stop making PFAS by the end of 2025.
Now the deadline has passed. So: how have things turned out?
3M says it has stopped making PFAS
“3M completed its exit of PFAS manufacturing at the end of 2025,” says 3M’s annual report, published earlier this month. It means this huge multinational has taken an important step towards detoxifying its production.
When it promised to quit PFAS, 3M started an industry trend. The world’s largest chemicals corporation, BASF, will exit PFAS by 2028, ChemSec revealed last year. Other companies, such as US giant Ecolab, are also taking this step.
This is an important step towards detoxifying production
The company continues to make many thousands of products that include PFAS
Making PFAS is different from using it in products and processes. 3M continues to manufacture some 14,000 products that include PFAS, according to information on the company’s website.
When it announced it would stop making PFAS, the company said it would also “work to discontinue the use of PFAS across its product portfolio by the end of 2025”. Indeed, we can see that 3M has removed PFAS from almost 7,000 products during the past three years – that’s about one-third.
Where do the remaining PFAS come from? The company refers to “PFAS-containing materials in 3M’s supply chain”, in other words, PFAS continue to enter 3M’s products via its suppliers.
However, we cannot exclude the possibility that 3M purchases PFAS to replace the chemicals it has now stopped manufacturing.
What is 3M doing to eliminate PFAS from these products?
3M’s recent annual report says only that it will “continue to evaluate” the 14,000 products it continues to make containing PFAS.
It is likely the products from which it has already eliminated PFAS were low-hanging fruit. The vast majority of these are:
- Abrasives (belts, discs, wheels, sheets, rolls, and pads designed for grinding, cutting and polishing)
- Tapes (duct, electrical and masking tape, protective films, specialised adhesive solutions for aerospace, automotive, and electronics).
In other words, 3M has mainly removed PFAS from just two product categories.
The company’s use of PFAS is likely to grow unless it finds alternatives
3M says the products it makes containing PFAS include lithium ion batteries, printed circuit boards, seals and gaskets, and other products widely used in commerce across a variety of industries.
Lithium ion batteries are vital to a vast range of mobile consumer products, the use of which is projected to grow rapidly. This means 3M’s use of PFAS in its products will also grow unless it finds alternative inputs from suppliers.
3M has mainly removed PFAS from just two product categories
3M has removed PTFE (Teflon) from two product categories
Out of all 3M’s products that are now PFAS-free, almost 90% previously contained PTFE (Teflon). In other words, 3M has succeeded in removing PTFE from thousands of products. As we have seen above, these products are overwhelmingly abrasives and tapes.
The company is vague about PFAS in its manufacturing processes
3M states the company continues to “review, control, or eliminate the presence of certain PFAS … as byproducts of some of 3M’s current manufacturing processes, products, and waste streams”.
Use of PFAS in manufacturing processes may additionally create PFAS as byproducts. The phrase “certain PFAS” also implies that some specific kinds of PFAS may not be controlled or eliminated.
In total, the data show that 3M has fully removed only 3 types of PFAS from its products. It continues to use 139 other types, of which 29 are unidentified because of “vendor trade secrets”.
There are many unanswered questions
The company website still carries advertisements for the PFAS it until recently manufactured. Moreover, 3M’s sales of the PFAS it manufactured more than doubled last year compared to 2024.
Why was that? Is it appropriate to sell its remaining PFAS inventory? When will it take down ads from its website? What is 3M doing to remove PFAS from its remaining products and processes? We put these questions to 3M, but the company politely declined to answer.
Not the whole story
3M needs to be far more open about its use of PFAS going forward. It is no surprise that the company scored zero for transparency in last year’s ChemScore sustainability index of the world’s largest listed chemicals corporations.
Without greater transparency, citizens and investors will continue to ask whether 3M can do more to reduce third-party PFAS in its products and processes.
