If it feels good, pass a law, and damn the consequences

That was then. March 21, 2011: LePage unveiled the new sign today under a “Welcome to Maine” sign along Interstate 95 in Kittery near the New Hampshire border. LePage has repeatedly vowed to streamline regulations, make government more responsive to business needs and create jobs.

Like Biden, Maine’s next governor, Janet Mills, who took office on January 2, 2019, immediately set about reversing the policies of her predecessor. January 9, 2019: Maine to change ‘Open for Business’ sign to ‘Welcome Home’

Maine is moving forward with plans to replace its “Open for Business” highway sign with one that reads, “Welcome Home,” as part of Democrat Janet Mills’ push to attract a more diverse population, including immigrants and young people, to the aging, rural state.

Mills offered no explanation for why encouraging business and job creation would deter immigrants and young people from staying in Maine, while discouraging such enterprise would drive them out, but presumably, she knows her ideal Democrat voter constituency.

Anyway, here’s her party’s latest attempt to cripple business:

Maine businesses say PFAS reporting requirement is ‘unworkable’

In January, Maine became the first state in the nation to require that reporting. Maine’s sweeping law would also effectively ban PFAS in most products sold in the state by 2030.

The Maine Legislature and governor passed a law in June that extended the Jan. 1 deadline requiring manufacturers of products sold in Maine containing PFAS to report them. Now they have until January 2025. Maine had led the nation in launching a law requiring manufacturers to disclose PFAS in products sold in the state, but the January implementation was pushed back two years as environmental regulators remain understaffed and work to clarify reporting rules. The extra time still is not enough.

One reason is the sheer number of PFAS potentially in products, business leaders said. Another is the international nature of business, with components suppliers selling to other manufacturers who in turn add components and resell their products.

Animal products company IDEXX Laboratories, one of the state’s biggest employers, conducts 90 percent of its worldwide manufacturing in Westbrook, Geoff Baur, the company’s tax director, said. But only seven labs in the world can test many of the types of components IDEXX uses, and none of them are in the United States, he said. And those labs can only test for 70 out of the more than 15,000 compounds covered by Maine’s law.

Another issue in advancing a workable PFAS reporting requirement is that many businesses will not talk about it for fear of having their company stigmatized by customers and other businesses, said Stacey Keefer, executive director of the Maine Marine Trades Association.

Keefer said the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, which is charged with rolling out the complex program, only has a couple staff people devoted to it.

The chamber also wants to add exemptions to the state’s complete ban of PFAS in 2030 to include aviation and defense contracts, Woodcock said. It also is looking to prohibit products faster by looking for substitutes that do not have PFAS in them.

“The statute we’re talking about is requiring an unworkable notification by January 1 of next year or you cannot sell your product in the state of Maine,” Woodcock said. “That is a serious threat to all Maine businesses.”

There’s no question that, with modern, sophisticated instruments, PFAS have been detected in almost everything, and people have been panicked into action — futile action, but as they say, “when in danger when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout”.

But are PFAS really the menace they’re being whooped up to be? So far, there’s no convincing evidence to back up the alarmists’ claims. Which hasn’t stopped legislatures like Maine’s from enacting wildly impractical laws that will cripple businesses. (Very similar to the laws demanding that food manufacturers and farmers provide a precise accounting of their “Greenhouse Gas Emissions”, from their entire production line, including “downstream sources” — that would include small farmers who, unable to track that kind of information, will simply go out of business. Naturally, California is leading the way in this crusade and has already enacted it into law.)

Back to PFAS

In 2020, Researchers at the NIH’s National Library of Medicine reviewed a large number of studies of the PFAS and cancer link, and, so far, they aren’t impressed:

PFAS and cancer, a scoping review of the epidemiologic evidence

Each study’s design has strengths and limitations. Weaknesses in study design and methods can, in some cases, lead to questionable associations, but in other cases can make it more difficult to detect true associations, if they are present. Overall, the evidence for an association between cancer and PFAS remains sparse. A variety of studies with different strengths and weaknesses can be helpful to clarify associations between PFAS and cancer. Long term follow-up of large-sized cohorts with large exposure contrasts are most likely to be informative.