The Commonwealth is suing the manufacturer of the firefighting foam containing so-called "forever chemicals" for $2 billion in damages, and it's about time.
The federal government is alleging 3M and 3M Australia, a global manufacturing and science conglomerate, withheld its own environmental laboratory testing that showed there were significant adverse environmental effects linked to its own PFAS products.
A misdeed of this scale, involving such significant harm and vast sums of money, calls to mind previous such scandals, including James Hardie's asbestos products.
That company has long been synonymous with poor corporate social responsibility, and 3M is on a rapid route to join its ranks.
Many 3M products, including Scotchgard, Post-it notes, cosmetics and non-stick cookware, are scattered around the average home.
It's also known for having manufactured PFAS - per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances - a group of synthetic chemicals widely used to make products resistant to heat, oil, stains, grease and water.
These chemicals don't break down in the environment or the human body, and concerns about their potential health impacts have been ramping up in recent years.
3M has used the chemicals in firefighting foam, widely used in Royal Australian Air Force bases, where it leaches into water systems, and has been found in the blood of people and animals throughout the world.
Exposure to these chemicals has been linked with diseases such as high cholesterol, lower birth weight in babies and an increased risk of kidney and testicular cancer.
The federal government has already settled a class action of PFAS contamination from firefighting foam at seven Defence sites across the country, paying out $132 million to about 30,000 claimants who alleged they were exposed to the chemicals that leached into groundwater around the military bases. Before this, the government paid out $212 for property value loss and distress in several regional communities.
These have seen a significant cost to both the Department of Defence and the taxpayer that the Commonwealth is now rightly seeking to recoup, in what has proved the largest legal claim it has ever brought.
Attorney-General Michelle Rowland, in announcing the legal action on Thursday, said the alleged misconduct had already cost more than $1 billion to date to investigate, remediate and mitigate PFAS contamination at defence estate sites.
She said 3M had withheld its own environmental laboratory testing, which showed "there was significant adverse environmental effects associated with the use of 3M firefighting foam" and represented that the foam was biodegradable, non-toxic and could be safely disposed of.
A spokesperson for 3M has vowed it would "defend ourselves against these claims through the legal process", maintaining it had never manufactured PFAS in Australia.
The corporation says the Department of Defence continued using the PFAS-containing firefighting foams for two decades after 3M stopped selling the product in Australia.
The matter will likely be drawn out for years to come, as is the way of such large corporations with large-scale liabilities, and lawyers will line their pockets via obfuscation and plausible deniability.
But 3M must not be permitted to wash its hands of the obligations it owes to the communities from whom they make their considerable profits. And the taxpayer shouldn't be left to pick up the tab.
