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MIKE EDGERLY: On January 25, Oakdale residents learned their drinking water was contaminated with chemicals formerly made by 3M.

SPEAKER: We want to take this opportunity to announce a letter that we are sending to our citizens.

MIKE EDGERLY: At the news conference, health department scientists joined Oakdale's mayor and some of his staff at City Hall to get out the word. Test of six city wells showed that five of them were contaminated. But the amounts of the chemicals called PFOA and PFOS were small.

: Levels found in our local wells do not exceed those health-based values.

MIKE EDGERLY: In other words, Oakdale water was safe to drink. Prompted by TV reporters, Mayor Carmen Sarrack dutifully took a drink from the City Hall tap in front of the cameras.

CARMEN SARRACK: I don't feel there's a danger at all in the drinking water. I drink it myself. In fact, you asked me if I drank the water, this afternoon, I went home for lunch, had two glasses of water, and I'm still here.

MIKE EDGERLY: Oakdale is the second known location in the US where traces of PFOA and PFOS have contaminated a public water supply. Drinking water near a West Virginia chemical plant has also been contaminated. But no matter where you live, if you got your blood tested today, it would almost certainly contain traces of both compounds found in Oakdale's water. And you would not be alone.

An estimated 95% of adults and children in the United States would test positive for perfluorooctane sulfonate, known as PFOS, or a related compound perfluorooctanoic acid known as PFOA. The amount most people have in their blood is 5 parts per billion. That's like picking 5 seconds out of 32 years.

These chemicals are present around the world, including in the US blood supply. The blood of three implant workers, as well as fish, birds, and animals living far from chemical factories. In 2000, 3M was the sole manufacturer of this family of chemicals which went into Scotchgard. Scotchgard is made from a chemical that breaks down in to PFOS.

It was primarily made at 3M's plant in Decatur, Alabama. PFOA was produced at 3M's Cottage Grove plant and sold to customers like DuPont for use in its Teflon brand of nonstick coatings. Scotchgard is one of 3M's signature products, helping to earn the company millions of dollars and a reputation as one of the most admired companies in America.

For more than a century, 3M has been seen as a pillar of Minnesota's business community and known for corporate good deeds and financial support of nonprofits, including Minnesota Public Radio.

SPEAKER: You know who they are. 3M, my gosh, is one of the great names in American industry. Kind of like Sterling on silver is the way I like to think of them.

MIKE EDGERLY: Radio legend Arthur Godfrey was full of praise for 3M when he brought his CBS show to Minneapolis in 1969.

ARTHUR GODFREY: For example, one of the products that you sell about, which I'm crazy, is a thing called spray it on to keep clothing from being stained and upholstery. What's the name of it?

SPEAKER: Scotchgard brand fabric protector.

ARTHUR GODFREY: Scotchgard fabric protector.

MIKE EDGERLY: Scotchgard began as a brilliant success story for 3M. It was the result of a lucky accident. The company started a major research effort on something called fluorochemicals in the 1950s. In the lab one day, chemists Patsy Sherman spilled a mixture on a lab assistant's tennis shoe. The stain turned out to be impervious to water, soap, and scrubbing.

This led to innovative products like marine firefighting foam, food packaging, and most famously, Scotchgard fabric protector introduced in 1956.

SPEAKER: Whoops. A bit of champagne on the love seat.

SPEAKER: Not to worry. I sprayed it with Scotchgard brand fabric protector. Spills blot up instead of soaking in.

SPEAKER: Come sit on the dry part.

MIKE EDGERLY: Scotchgard was a hit with housewives.

SPEAKER: I've got a pat on the back for Scotchgard.

MIKE EDGERLY: In 1969, WCCO radio's Boone and Erickson featured inventor Patsy Sherman for a call-in segment on Scotchgard.

SPEAKER: Hello. Go ahead.

SPEAKER: Yes. I'd like to ask your guests whether or not Scotchgard is safe to use on items such as silk ties.

SPEAKER: Silk ties. You mean, whether it'll keep the gravy off?

SPEAKER: Yeah.

SPEAKER: OK. Patsy, how about ties?

PATSY SHERMAN: The spray can product should be safe for any product that is safe in dry cleaning. And yes, it will keep the gravy off the tie.

SPEAKER: Because the gravy can't get to the thread.

PATSY SHERMAN: Right-o.

MIKE EDGERLY: Rich Purdy is a former 3M scientist familiar with the chemicals in Scotchgard.

RICH PURDY: If you put it on paper, then the doesn't soak through the paper, and you put it on fabric. It doesn't soil as easy or you put on your carpet. That's Scotchgard or stain master or two brands of carpet treatments that property.

SPEAKER: Sounds like a wonderful product.

RICH PURDY: Yeah, it has this wonderful properties. And then the other wonderful property, it doesn't break down as easy.

MIKE EDGERLY: In fact, scientists say perfluorochemicals like PFOS and PFOA don't break down at all in the environment. Scientists are still studying how they enter humans, but it's thought to be through air and water.

Once the chemicals are in the body, 3M's Medical Director Dr. Larry Zobel says they hitch a ride with protein and the bloodstream and circulate through the body.

LARRY ZOBEL: They're very unlike other materials that get in the body and stay a long time, which might go to fat or to bone. These materials don't. They're actively moving around the body. They bind to protein in the blood. The liver removes them and actually excretes them then in the bile.

So they get into the intestine. And as they're moved down the intestine, they are reabsorbed again into-- and so they come back through the circulation, back to the liver. They reattach to protein, and they circulate some more.

MIKE EDGERLY: Zobel says PFOS stays in the body about five years. PFOA, almost four. Scientists say that chemicals that stay in the body or stick around the environment aren't necessarily a problem unless they turn out to be toxic. Rich Purdy says when he joined 3M in 1981, it was his job to evaluate the environmental safety of the company's products, including Scotchgard.

He says he noticed the chemical structure of PFOA and PFOS carbon attached to fluorine was similar to other well-known environmental toxins.

RICH PURDY: You know about chlorinated chemicals, the dioxins in DDT and so forth. And fluorine belongs to the same-- in the periodic table, it's right next to the chlorine. And so you would expect it to be similar in several properties. So several of us, in fact, everybody in my group had concerns about them just because of their structure that they're likely to be problems.

We didn't have data that showed that they were very toxic or anything. But we looked at it in two ways. One, you should find out. But the other one is even if they aren't, you need to do the testing because somebody else is going to look at the structure and ask the questions.

MIKE EDGERLY: Purdy says in the 1990s, 3M tested the compounds in lab rats and monkeys, and the chemicals proved toxic. But 3M says the chemicals have not caused health effects in its workers. Michael Santoro, 3M's director of health safety, is working on the corporation's fluorochemical investigation. He says the company began monitoring its chemical plant workers for PFOS in the 1970s.

He says the company kept working to improve its detection techniques. In the 1990s, 3M was able to identify the presence of the chemical down to the level of parts per billion. In 1997, a lab comparing 3M workers' blood to randomly chosen Red Cross samples found the chemicals in the blood bank samples too. This indicated the chemicals had become widespread in humans, though at low levels.

Santoro says 3M began looking for a safer formulation to replace the old Scotchgard.

MICHAEL SANTORO: There was a number of factors that came together that said to us, it seems to us that phasing out here would be the most appropriate thing to do.

MIKE EDGERLY: May 16, 2000, 3M made its announcement.

SPEAKER: Bad news today for those of us who've grown accustomed to protecting everything from carpets to hiking boots with a coating of Scotchgard. The manufacturer of the stuff 3M says it will stop making popular Scotchgard products after tests revealed the chemical compounds in the water repellent stay in the environment and the human body for years.

MIKE EDGERLY: 3M's press release said the low levels of chemicals present in humans and the environment did not pose a health risk. Still, the company said it would phase out Scotchgard as a part of responsible environmental management. 3M says the decision costs $325 million in annual sales.

DuPont, 3M's major customer for PFOA, began making the chemical itself. Anyone wanting to make or use PFOS in the US must now get permission from the EPA.

In May 2000, when the phaseout was announced, Karen Studders was serving as the commissioner of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. She remembers the day she learned 3M would no longer make Scotchgard in its original formulation.

KAREN STUDDERS: And it was either one of two things. It was either 3M actually called the commissioner's office or one of the senior staff came into the commissioner's office and relayed it to me. So we actually heard about it before it was public. And I believe I saw it in the Star Tribune and the Pioneer Press a few days later.

MIKE EDGERLY: The story made the front page of the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the front of the business section of the Saint Paul Pioneer Press. After the news broke, Studders says she took no steps on the Scotchgard matter beyond her office. She did not ask for a meeting with 3M.

KAREN STUDDERS: I don't think I did personally. I really think I would recall that if I had done that. What I do recall, however, is talking with the staff that work on compiling information about new and emerging chemistry and chemicals and talking to them to see what sort of information we had.

MIKE EDGERLY: Even though 3M cited environmental concerns and its voluntary decision to quit making the chemicals, the MPCA would not begin to investigate the places where the chemicals had been developed and disposed of for another two years. Staff and managers of the MPCA give differing stories explaining that delay. Some say they didn't know anything about this front page story. Others say they knew about the issue generally, but did not understand the extent of 3M's chemical production and disposal in Minnesota.

SPEAKER: A new study finds that the chemical compound used in 3M's Scotchgard is more widespread than researchers and the company originally thought.

MIKE EDGERLY: The next year, in 2001, 3M again made news when it released a study showing PFOS and PFOA had been found in the blood of bald eagles in the Great Lakes region, in river otters in the northwest, in birds and turtles in the southeast, in polar bears in Alaska, even in albatrosses in the Pacific Ocean. Michigan State University toxicologist John Giesy did the research, and 3M funded it.

He said at the time, his discovery increased the mystery of how these chemicals were spreading.

JOHN GIESY: We need more information on some of the toxicology to try to interpret what these levels mean.

MIKE EDGERLY: In the MPCA's correspondence file for the 3M Cottage Grove plant for the year 2001, there is just one piece of paper, a news report headlined "Scotchgard Sticks In The Environment." There were no memos, no studies, no records of communication with 3M. But one scientist at the agency was growing concerned about perfluorinated chemicals.

FARDIN OLIAEI: My name is Fardin Oliaei. I'm emerging contaminant coordinator.

MIKE EDGERLY: Dr. Fardin Oliaei's job at the MPCA is to identify new environmental threats, chemicals that, by definition, no one is regulating, chemicals too new to have much of a track record. Oliaei, a native of Iran, is a top research scientist at the MPCA. She was recruited to join the agency in 1989 because of her work on acid rain and dioxins in Lake Superior. Oliaei says perfluorinated chemicals hit her radar in 2000.

FARDIN OLIAEI: In 2001, PFOS and PFOA were climbing the ladder to become a priority. In my view, I would put those on the top of an emerging contaminant of concern.

MIKE EDGERLY: Oliaei got the go ahead from the MPCA to do one study in 2002 on 14 fish in Voyageurs National Park in Northern Minnesota. She wanted independent confirmation of what 3M was finding. She says half the fish samples were contaminated with perfluorinated chemicals.

FARDIN OLIAEI: And we couldn't get to any conclusion, except expanding our data and gathering, monitoring data from the environment.

MIKE EDGERLY: Oliaei wanted to trace the contaminants from their source, most likely 3M, through wastewater treatment plants, sewage sludge, sediment, and finally, to fish and humans. Her request would be repeatedly denied by MPCA middle managers. In March of 2002, 3M called a meeting with the MPCA. 3M reported that drinking water at its Cottage Grove plant, which had produced thousands of pounds of PFOA year, was contaminated with the chemicals.

Dave Douglas is the person at the MPCA who knew the most about 3M's Cottage Grove chemical plant. The MPCA had begun work at the plant in 1985 to clean up a small amount of hazardous waste as a part of Minnesota's Superfund Cleanup Program. Douglas had managed the project since 1987. Douglas was at the 2002 briefing with 3M.

DAVE DOUGLAS: It was at basically that briefing that this whole issue of perfluorochemicals came to my mind to my attention.

MIKE EDGERLY: 3M also passed on to the MPCA its studies showing the effects of PFOS on pregnant rats and their offspring. An internal memo from the EPA called the death of the rat pups unusual. Douglas, who's described by Fardin Oliaei as a morally alert scientist, was concerned.

DAVE DOUGLAS: I'll tell you from the get go here at the first meeting, 3M came in, and they started talking about the second-generation rat studies, which is troubling. And we've all recognized that. And we're going to ask questions of them about what they know about that because that goes to the question of whether we have a significant long-term human problem.

MIKE EDGERLY: After the 3M briefing, Douglas began to investigate what was at the Cottage Grove plant and how to clean it up. But the scope would keep growing. It emerged that at least three public landfills in Lake Elmo, Oakdale, and Woodbury also contain waste from 3M's perfluorochemical operations. All are surrounded by houses.

You're listening to Toxic Traces, a report on chemicals 3M no longer manufactures, but which linger in our environment. I'm Mike Edgerly. Coming up, neighbors questions.

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Before there was an SPCA or even a Superfund Cleanup Program, people who live near 3M's Cottage Grove plant at its nearby Woodbury landfill had questions. Susan Berndt's family had lived in the area since before the Civil War. In the 1960s, neighbors and businesses dumped their trash in the woods not far from her family's home. 3M had bought the landfill in 1961. She and the neighborhood kids would play amid household junk and derelict cars there.

SUSAN BERNDT: There were no fences. Or if there were, I was just a farm kid, and we didn't pay much attention to fences. The land was pretty much free. We would just go wherever we wanted, and people didn't mind.

It was a different more innocent time. We didn't think about the things there that could have hurt us. We never thought of chemicals at all.

MIKE EDGERLY: Berndt's most vivid memory is of the year the dump burned. In the '60s, cleanup meant burning what was there. In 1968, 3M burned the dump.

The fire sent soot up into the air for weeks. 3M says the mass burning took place with the consent of nearby communities in the state. Berndt remembers skiing the woods near the fire and how the snow had changed color.

SUSAN BERNDT: That winter, when the dump was burning, there was a Black layer. And there'd be swirls of the ash in the black layer in the snow, and there'd be clear white snow. And it was so different from what it had been in the past.

We also would eat the icicles off the house. And that year, there was a lot of black particles in the icicles. And I remember that the icicles tasted very different.

MIKE EDGERLY: When the burning was over, Berndt recalls, 3M showed up at the family's house bearing gifts.

SUSAN BERNDT: Two guys from 3M came up in a car, and they were going to give us a gift. And they wanted to apologize for the burning for the last year or however long it was. And my brother was there, and they opened the car window just far enough to give him a box.

And he pulled the box out, and he ran in the house. He thought he had a great treasure. And that was their apology. They gave us for having to put up with the smoke and the smells for that period of time. They gave us a box of tape.

MIKE EDGERLY: Susan Berndt says this wasn't her family's last contact with 3M. She and her sister Cindy Ratzlaff recall men in 3M uniforms coming by without warning to take water from their outdoor tap.

CINDY RATZLAFF: The specific time that I remember, so I was babysitting the neighbors, and it was a 1974, because their mother was in the hospital. And the guy came, and he went to the faucet. And I said, what are you doing? And he said, I'm just taking a water sample. Filled up a bag of water and rolled it up at the top and left with it.

SUSAN BERNDT: But he had something that said 3M on it.

CINDY RATZLAFF: Yeah. He had a jacket that said 3M on it. A white jacket, I think, said 3M. And he came twice that summer that I can recall.

MIKE EDGERLY: Did it ever scare you? This testing in the fire and all that stuff?

SUSAN BERNDT: I can't say that it did. But over the years, there has been a lot of questioning of whether they really cleaned it up and whether they were really truthful with us about what it was.

MIKE EDGERLY: 3M says in the mid-1960s, it tested some private wells for contamination, but not contamination for polyfluorinated chemicals. The technology for those kinds of tests didn't exist then. 3M says only one shallow well showed drinking water contamination. The company replaced it with a deeper well to solve the problem.

Today, the Woodberry landfill is a grassy field surrounded by a tall cyclone fence along County Road 19. It's managed by 3M and a voluntary program with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

STANLEY HALE: It says, "no trespassing. 3M property."

MIKE EDGERLY: Stanley Hale lived near this landfill for 24 years. Hale is a white-haired meticulous Englishman. Like a lot of people around here, he's a former 3M employee. He leads a driving tour through his old neighborhood where he lived and raised his family.

STANLEY HALE: Now, you know the location of the dump site, this one here. I live down here on the left. So you can see why I had an active interest.

MIKE EDGERLY: The 3M smokestacks on the edge of the Mississippi River come into view.

STANLEY HALE: We're heading right towards Chemolite.

MIKE EDGERLY: This is the 3M Cottage Grove plant, the one the locals know as Chemolite.

STANLEY HALE: Now, this is the facility, where a number of years ago, I tried to get details on the total emission, not that stack, not that stack, not this one, but the grand total of all emissions.

MIKE EDGERLY: In the 1990s, Hale organized other residents who shared his concerns about potential ground and air contamination from the plant and the landfill. We're going to visit Winston Riedesel, one of his old compatriots. Winston Riedesel, does he live here?

WINSTON RIEDESEL: Yes.

MIKE EDGERLY: Good to see you. Long time no see. I brought your name up as being one of the erudite people, one of the driving forces. I said that you talk straight. So you're nickel now.

Riedesel is a retired civil engineer. He's tall and thin with large glasses. We settle into his tidy living room with a picture window and a bird clock.

WINSTON RIEDESEL: I'd ask people that lived down there in the area, I said, do you know what the Chemolite plant, do you know what they do? And nobody knew they'd been there for all their lives. And nobody knew. And that just amazed me.

MIKE EDGERLY: Depending on the direction the wind blows, Riedesel and his family can smell the plant. Riedesel complains that 3M hasn't been open enough about what it's producing and burning in its incinerator. 3M gave riedesel a tour of the plant, but he still wasn't satisfied with answers from the company or from the MPCA and other public officials.

WINSTON RIEDESEL: Everybody was in bed with 3M, and they were all just sleeping together. Nobody was looking out for the health and welfare of the citizen.

MIKE EDGERLY: Riedesel says he's been frustrated about this for years.

SPEAKER: The MPCA is supposed to keep the public informed. The easiest way they could do is put up a sign.

MIKE EDGERLY: In 1996, the old Cottage Grove concerned citizens group petitioned the Cottage Grove City council. It wanted to ban housing developments near the landfill until the MPCA could prove the underground pollution was contained. At this meeting on September 2, 1998, the MPCA and 3M had been invited to answer residents questions about the cleanup of the adjacent Woodbury landfill.

The MPCA showed maps of the contaminated groundwater. At this point in time, the agency did not to test for perfluorinated chemicals. 3M was piping this groundwater to the plant and then to the Mississippi River.

SHERYL CORRIGAN: I'm Sheryl Corrigan from 3M. And the question was, what are we doing with the water?

MIKE EDGERLY: 3M senior environmental engineer Sheryl Corrigan explained the water was used as a coolant at the Cottage Grove chemical plant and at a power plant.

SHERYL CORRIGAN: There is a monitoring point for this water before it's discharged in a city, and it's consistently clean.

MIKE EDGERLY: In this videotape of the 1998 meeting, Corrigan says the water was clean. 3M says the water was clean according to the standards of the day. MPCA records estimate 45 tons of perfluorochemical waste are buried at the Woodbury landfill. The groundwater below the landfill is not treated before it reaches the Mississippi River.

In response to a request from Minnesota Public Radio, the MPCA calculated that the 3M Cottage Grove plant released about 10,000 pounds of perfluorinated chemicals into the river in 2001 when 3M was in the middle of its phase out of PFOA production. Today, 3M has installed filters at the plant to catch most of the perfluorinated chemicals.

3M Sheryl Corrigan was also, for a time, Dave Douglas's counterpart on the Cottage Grove Superfund site. As 3M representative, it was her job to give him data about the contamination there. In 2002, Corrigan left 3M to become commissioner of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

Republican Governor elect Tim Pawlenty named Corrigan to the post. The governor said he was looking for an environmental watchdog with a business perspective. Corrigan says a 3M manager recommended her for the job.

SHERYL CORRIGAN: Well, it actually was my understanding is a former boss of mine forwarded my name as someone who had the kind of experience that the Pawlenty administration was looking for in terms of an environmental management background.

MIKE EDGERLY: Corrigan still owns stock in the company. By law, she reported her 3M stock holdings to the ethical practices board. She told Minnesota Public Radio it amounts to about $20,000.

Corrigan says she has had no contact with MPCA staff who handle 3M matters from the time she took office. She put her recusal from 3M matters into writing a year and a half later. The letter was addressed to her top managers and the governor. It was not distributed to MPCA staff.

At the MPCA headquarters in Saint Paul Corrigan, is relaxed and confident, eager to talk about her initiative to clean up polluted waterways across the state. When asked about her 1998 statement at Cottage Grove residents that the landfill water flowing into the Mississippi was clean, Corrigan says her words still stand.

SHERYL CORRIGAN: The statements that I made in 1998, I would have made today. I understand that the science has changed again and has evolved. And so we know more. But that's the nature of our business. As time goes by, we learn more. And so then we're able to respond in a different way.

MIKE EDGERLY: In 1998, when Corrigan was still at 3M, the company was involved in extensive testing about its perfluorinated chemicals. Corrigan says she knew the testing was underway.

SHERYL CORRIGAN: Mike, the information that I had was information that the public had. 3M has been very open about what was on the books and what folks had access to. I had no more information than the public at any given time about what was the occurrence of any particular chemical in any particular place.

MIKE EDGERLY: Right. So those people who lived in Cottage Grove should have known that there were perfluorinated chemicals in the blood supply, even as they were coming to you asking questions about what was going on at this plant here. They should have known that?

SHERYL CORRIGAN: The information that was available was publicly available. And I think it would be a misstatement to say that folks at 3M were in any way, shape, or form keeping information from the public. That wasn't the corporate policy. And it wasn't the corporate practice.

MIKE EDGERLY: Corrigan's appearance before the Cottage Grove City council was in 1998. It would be two years later in 2000 when perfluorinated chemicals would become front page news. We asked Michael Santoro, 3M's director of health safety about Corrigan's answers.

MICHAEL SANTORO: Back in 1998, there was a Cottage Grove City council meeting where Cheryl Corrigan who's now the head of the MPCA was representing 3M in her capacity with the corporation.

MIKE EDGERLY: Did 3M know then about the potential threat posed by PFCs at the plant or by the landfill? And should she have said something to these residents then about the presence of PFCs in the landfill or what was being made at the plant at that time?

MICHAEL SANTORO: Well, that's a good question. I think at that time, the focus of that discussion, and I obviously can't speak for her, was more about what I call conventional types of pollutants. And the understanding we had of site operations of any on site landfill led us to say that there was no off-site concerns associated with the waste materials that were talked about at that particular time.

We knew, I think, that we had disposed of some materials there. I don't think there was as good an understanding as we have today of the nature of these substances from a standpoint of persistence and the fact that they may have an impact.

MIKE EDGERLY: Like any major manufacturer in Minnesota, 3M has many routine dealings with the MPCA. At the 2002 news conference announcing her appointment, Corrigan said she, quote, "knew of no current issues involving 3M and the MPCA that would complicate her new role."

Corrigan's appointment met no opposition in the state Senate. At her confirmation hearing, no Senator asked whether her previous employment at one of Minnesota's largest manufacturers might pose a potential conflict of interest. Corrigan was confirmed in April 2004 after serving in the job for more than a year. The DFL chair of the Senate environment and Natural Resources Committee John Marty says she was judged more on her short track record at the MPCA than her private sector work.

JOHN MARTY: My initial reaction would have been, hey, she's a decent person. I think she's still. I still believe that. I would prefer to have the appointees who are head of the pollution control agency and as people who are going to be strong advocates for protecting the environment and somebody who comes from the industry. That's not saying they can't be that. But the initial reaction was I'm not as likely to expect her to be as aggressive as some environmentalists might be. But again, it's the governor's appointment. And I guess I didn't think we were going to get a lot better than we got with her.

MIKE EDGERLY: Coming up, a clash between one of the MPCA's top researchers and her bosses on what to do about perfluorinated chemicals. You're listening to Toxic Traces, a report about chemicals no longer produced by 3M but which linger in the environment.

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Fardin Oliaei, the scientist who wanted to study perfluorinated chemicals only got one chance to do so after commissioner Corrigan took office in 2003. On a cold November day last year, she and her colleague Joe Julik are taking core samples from a closed public landfill in Washington County in Lake Elmo. It is one of several locations in the area where 3M disposed of waste from its perfluorochemical operations in the late '60s and early '70s.

FARDIN OLIAEI: I think that's good enough, Joe.

MIKE EDGERLY: Oliaei and Julik, a hydrogeologist, are pounding soil samples from collection tubes. The landfill looks like any grass-covered field. There are homes nearby and tracks of deer and other wildlife. But a sharp chemical smell gives away the field's history. Oliaei has selected this landfill because she knows the soil is likely still contaminated with perfluorinated chemicals.

FARDIN OLIAEI: Well, this is soil sample that we are getting to get some idea about the concentration of PFOA in this soil going down to groundwater level.

MIKE EDGERLY: A few months earlier, the Minnesota Department of Health found wells at seven nearby homes contaminated with PFOA, but the water was considered safe to drink. Joe Julik says these old landfills can leak.

JOE JULIK: Unfortunately, where they cited a lot of these were in old gravel pits because there was a hole there. Well, gravel pits have sandy bottoms and so they leak. This Washington County as an example had a sandy bottom. So the leachate that formed from the water moving through the waste leaches down into the groundwater and causes a problem.

MIKE EDGERLY: Julik points in the direction the groundwater flows toward nearby homes, and ultimately the Mississippi River. Oliaei would like to follow this underground trail. As the coordinator of the MPCA's program on emerging contaminants, Oliaei had proposed a series of tests to measure how perfluorinated chemicals are moving from 3M sites out into the environment.

In 2003, she requested $140,000 for PFOA and PFOS research combined with unrelated studies into flame retardants and pharmaceuticals. When her MPCA boss rejected that proposal, she lowered her request to $14,000. That too was rejected.

In 2004, she submitted five more research proposals to her supervisors. All five were rejected. Oliaei says she took her case directly to Commissioner Sheryl Corrigan.

FARDIN OLIAEI: And I went to her with a copy of my proposals that for fiscal 2004. And I told her that I know your priorities is, according to what you say, it is water issues. These are emerging contaminants that regardless of where they are coming from, ultimately, they are going to go in the water and accumulate in the aquatic life and go back again to the human and so forth.

And there is a lot of information about their toxicity and information that there is at least for us as a pollution control agency should do the monitoring of this stuff. And she told me that she will look at those and let me know later, which she never get back to me. But in her conversation with me, she said, Fardin, what do you want me to do?

I said, I want you to support this project. And she told me that, let me tell you, if you like to do scientific work, this agency is not a scientific institution. I strongly suggest you to go somewhere else to do science work. And that was my first maybe and my last conversation with her.

SHERYL CORRIGAN: Dr. Oliaei has done some great work on occurrence, but that's as far as we want to go.

MIKE EDGERLY: Sheryl Corrigan.

SHERYL CORRIGAN: Now we need to start looking at to the other agencies and involved parties around how to fix it. I'm not sure that research scientists belong at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

MIKE EDGERLY: Oliaei's relationship with the agency has been strained in recent years. She's brought two discrimination complaints against the agency. The first one in 1999 resulted in a promotion she'd been seeking. The second one filed in 2004 is still pending.

No one is disputing Oliaei's skill as a scientist. A principal engineer with the MPCA confirmed to us Oliaei is respected by her peers and is considered a very good scientist. An expert in toxic reductions at the federal Environmental Protection Agency office in Chicago described her as a cutting-edge scientist who pushes hard for her work.

But Oliaei could not persuade Corrigan her research should be funded. Corrigan disputes that they ever discussed perfluorinated chemicals specifically. She acknowledges they may be a problem, but she says it's the EPA's job to do the research.

SHERYL CORRIGAN: There are a plethora of challenges for us here at the agency on what's the most important thing to look at. And while fluorochemicals are certainly on the front burner for EPA, that's because EPA has been charged with determining the risk around these. So they're madly working to understand how these chemicals work in the environment.

We have some problems that are right in front of us, right in front of us. There are fine particles in our air today that we need to deal with. There is phosphorous in our waters today that we need to deal with. And there might very well be fluorochemicals in our waters that we need to deal with. But until we have the right science to move forward on that, it doesn't make sense.

MIKE EDGERLY: The EPA has opened a major investigation into perfluorinated chemicals, but not in Minnesota. Lawrence Libelo is a senior environmental engineer with the EPA.

LAWRENCE LIBELO: We're not specifically looking in to the facilities in Minnesota that's being done by the state folks. We're relying on them to do the work in their area.

MIKE EDGERLY: The EPA isn't looking for the chemicals in Minnesota because they're not made here anymore. The EPA investigation is focused on Alabama and West Virginia, two places where PFOA continues to be used. Mary Dominiak coordinates the EPA's investigation of fluorochemicals. She says the most important question the EPA still can't answer is, what threat do the chemicals pose to human health?

MARY DOMINIAK: The jury's still out on that one. We're looking at trying to assemble the information that will let us know whether we're dealing with a risk that exists now or one that might develop over time if these chemicals would continue to be manufactured and used in the quantities that they were in the past.

MIKE EDGERLY: Much of what the EPA knows about these chemicals comes from the manufacturers. 3M's studies tend to focus on male plant workers rather than pregnant women, the children of workers, or the people who live near the plants. In 1981, DuPont found evidence of birth defects in babies born to female workers in West Virginia. DuPont now faces more than $300 million in fines for allegedly not turning over that information to the EPA.

A study 3M published on American Children in 2004 showed children and adults in the general population have similar levels of perfluorinated chemicals in their blood. 3M concluded that the chemicals are passed from mother to child in utero. According to Rich Purdy, the former 3M eco toxicologist, children have another possible route of exposure.

RICH PURDY: These chemicals are put onto sleepwear, put onto carpets. Well, babies are put onto carpets and sleepwear. And what do they do? They suck on them. They suck on their sleepwear. They put their saliva-covered hands on the carpet. And there are these chemicals are in the carpet. So they can be extracting it. They can get huge amounts there.

MIKE EDGERLY: Purdy says the 1997 discovery that low levels of the chemicals were widespread in the human population prompted 3M to begin amassing a huge base of information.

RICH PURDY: When they found it, then they started doing a lot more testing.

MIKE EDGERLY: Of the workers or--

RICH PURDY: Of everything. Of everything. So we initiated studies with fish. We initiated a study with invertebrate animals. We initiated studies on rats for cancer. Maybe those were started even earlier than that, but they started other studies for human toxicology. They initiated studies for how long it lasts in the atmosphere. Biodegradation, they started those testing. So there's a lot of testing started.

MIKE EDGERLY: Purdy says he found it unsettling when the chemicals were found in baby eagles, birds that had never left the nest. This finding signaled to Purdy the chemicals had entered the food chain. Other tests showed the chemicals were present in fish from the Atlantic Ocean.

RICH PURDY: I calculated how much seals and killer whales that are up the food chain would be exposed to. And it was huge amounts. And they were mounts that were, in my estimation, higher than the concentrations that we knew would affect animals. And so I was concerned about that, and I wanted 3M to report that concern to EPA under the Toxic Substances Control Act. Because if you find something that's hazardous, you need to report it to the Environmental Protection Agency.

MIKE EDGERLY: Purdy says his managers were not ready to report it. 3M Medical director Dr. Larry Zobel says the company had to be satisfied the research was right to the EPA.

LARRY ZOBEL: We certainly were going to report everything that we had set up. And in some ways, we just gather stuff up and send it in on somewhat of a periodic basis to the agency. But the other thing was that we'd get some results in, and they would be initial lab results. And then we would-- at least in-- and I wasn't working with Rich at that time, so I can't speak to the particular circumstance.

But I know that we had a lot of discussions in our department about we need final data. OK, before we send something in, it's going to be final data. It's going to be validated, and we're not going to send anything in until we're sure that this is what we've got.

MIKE EDGERLY: During this time, Rich Purdy says he was pressured not to put his concerns about the findings into writing. He says the company feared lawsuits.

RICH PURDY: There wasn't a memo because they didn't want you to write it down. And they didn't want it write it down because they knew there may be legal discovery coming. And one of my concerns was with one sample I did put it in emails one time, and they're quite concerned about that. And I said, well, there's a reason I put it in the email. This will be open to discovery.

So the management had us stamping anything we wrote down as attorney-client privilege. So it wasn't proper for us to be stamping that, but they wanted everything stamped with that stamp.

LARRY ZOBEL: Actually, I'd forgotten about that. I can remember having a stamp that said "attorney-client privilege" as well for a brief period of time.

MIKE EDGERLY: 3M's Larry Zobel.

LARRY ZOBEL: Quite honestly, we're trying to make decisions, I guess, about the management of information. And I think that it was probably during that time. It obviously didn't have much of an impact. I mean, we always knew everything would be transparent.

MIKE EDGERLY: The stamping practice was short lived. Nevertheless, Rich Purdy decided to leave 3M in February of 2000. He'd been with the company for 19 years and thought it was time to move on.

Three months later in May, 3M announced its phaseout of the original Scotchgard and most other products the company made with PFOA and PFOS. You're listening to Toxic Traces, a report about chemicals no longer produced by 3M, but persistent in the environment. I'm Mike Edgerly.

Rich Purdy now runs a farm in Western Wisconsin, where he breeds draft horses. Because of what he learned at 3M, Purdy says he doesn't have carpets in his house. His farm is all organic.

RICH PURDY: I don't see why you'd fool with chemicals if you don't have to.

MIKE EDGERLY: But he says there's not much you can do to avoid perfluorochemicals in the environment. Purdy isn't bitter toward his former employer. In fact, he speaks with pride about the company's investment in science and ultimately the job it did on these chemicals.

He compares 3M favorably to other companies in the perfluorinated chemicals business. For example, DuPont which continues to make and use PFOA.

RICH PURDY: 3M is like somebody who ran a stop sign. Got through the stop sign, oh, my God, and stopped. Well, DuPont didn't stop, didn't care, hit and run, just keeps rolling down the road.

MIKE EDGERLY: DuPont claims no known adverse human health effects have been reported in connection with levels of PFOA measured in workers or the general population. Even though 3M is no longer in the business of making PFOA and PFOS, it faces lawsuits for its past practices.

In 2002, a 3M worker in the Decatur, Alabama plant where Scotchgard was produced sued, alleging the company didn't disclose the health risks of working with the chemicals. That suit is now expanded to include other former and current workers and their children. The case is pending.

Two years later, in September 2004, neighbors of the Decatur plant sued. They claimed chemicals had contaminated their soil and groundwater and lowered their property values. In October 2004, 3M faced a new lawsuit, this time in Minnesota. The suit seeks class action status. Gale Pearson is the attorney bringing the case.

GALE PEARSON: The complaint is alleging that 3M has manufactured a chemical that is dangerous to the community on their plant. And they have not taken steps to protect this chemical from leaking into the groundwater to the community outside of their plant.

MIKE EDGERLY: The Cottage Grove suit claims increased risk of cancer and asthma to people exposed to these chemicals and is seeking environmental cleanup, health monitoring, and monetary damages. According to the company, the lawsuit is without merit. 3M's spokesman Rick Renner says the allegations in the complaint misrepresent extensive scientific research and many other facts.

When asked in an interview about risk to residents near the Cottage Grove plant, 3M's medical director Larry Zobel says, if those with the highest exposure workers aren't sick, the rest of the community probably isn't either.

LARRY ZOBEL: Workers who work directly with precursor materials have much higher exposure and have actually blood levels that were maybe 60 to 100 to 1,000 times more than what is seen in the general population. We've not been able to attribute any health effect in those employees to the presence of these chemicals at those concentrations. And so the combination of what we've seen in employing medical surveillance and monitoring and the laboratory studies give us pretty good assurance that the low levels in the general population, there are no effects to be concerned about.

MIKE EDGERLY: Before the Minnesota lawsuit was filed, the state health department tried to assess the health risk from perfluorinated chemicals at the 3M Cottage Grove plant. The report concluded there was insufficient data to say if the plant was a risk or not.

JIM KELLY: Well, at this point, we can't say a whole lot.

MIKE EDGERLY: Health assessor Jim Kelly was the author of that report. Kelly made a series of recommendations in order to fill these gaps, modeled on the investigation at 3M's Alabama plant.

JIM KELLY: There's been a great deal of effort to investigate 3M's Decatur, Alabama plant and what appeared to me at least, not quite as comparable an effort to investigate 3M's plant in Cottage Grove. And therefore, we recommended that the scope of the investigation that's being proposed for their Decatur plant be applied to this facility as well.

MIKE EDGERLY: Now, almost five years after 3M announced it would quit making PFOA and PFOS, the MPCA, the health department, and 3M are embarking on an open-ended comprehensive plan to test soil, groundwater, and wastewater treatment facilities at the Cottage Grove plant.

Fish and surface water from the Mississippi River will also be tested. 3M is investigating more landfills, where it may have disposed of floral chemical waste. Some of the work is already underway, like the test that turned up the contamination in the Oakdale water supply.

At this point, there is no plan to test the blood of residents. 3M told Minnesota Public Radio the company would be open to biomonitoring if environmental data indicated a significantly greater risk of exposure around the plant. Fardin Oliaei, the MPCA's expert on new chemicals, is not involved with this research. It will be carried out and paid for by 3M.

The very kind of research spelled out in the New work plan is what she proposed doing two years ago and was never given permission to do by her bosses at the MPCA. The agency's deputy commissioner told Minnesota Public Radio Oliaei's research was not turned down for budgetary reasons. As for why the agency didn't start studying 3M's floral chemicals until two years after the phaseout began, Michael Kanner, the head of the MPCA Superfund division, expresses some regret.

MICHAEL KANNER: There was no evil intent. We have good people here, and it's easy to say four years ago, should you have. Hindsight 2020 is always great. And in retrospect, we wish we had probably started earlier. We wish we had more information from EPA, from 3M, from health department on what all the numbers should be in terms of health values, and so on, but we didn't.

MIKE EDGERLY: When the agency did get going on its investigation in 2002, MPCA records show it was Dave Douglas, the Cottage Grove Superfund manager who made it happen. He got the health department to develop safe drinking water standards. He followed a tip from the EPA that led to the discovery of 3M fluorochemical waste at area landfills. And he urged a co-worker in the water quality division to calculate how many pounds of PFOA and PFOS were going into the river.

In November 2004, just as the MPCA was about to sign off on the environmental monitoring plan with 3M, Douglas was pulled from the case. When Minnesota Public Radio asked why the MPCA official with the most experience on the 3M case was reassigned, Douglas' manager said it was routine.

The fluorochemical issue has been a costly one for 3M. It's spent millions studying the effects of these chemicals. 3M's director of Health Safety Michael Santoro says it's also changed the way the company works.

MIKE SANTORO: We have established new policies in the company to look at persistent materials. So that is something new that and we are able to catch these things, if you will, ahead of time as these new chemicals and new products are developed.

MIKE EDGERLY: 3M's Larry Zobel says the new Scotchgard is safer.

LARRY ZOBEL: First of all, it doesn't stay in the body. It's eliminated from lab animals. And some limited information from people tells us that it leaves the body very quickly. So in terms of safety with regard to health, it's extraordinarily safe.

MIKE EDGERLY: Is it as good as the old stuff?

LARRY ZOBEL: Of course, it is.

MIKE EDGERLY: DuPont continues to produce PFOA at its plant in West Virginia. In Decatur, Alabama, Dyneon, a subsidiary of 3M, reported to the EPA it continues to use small amounts of PFOA in certain products. The Centers for Disease Control has now added PFOS and PFOA to its chemical surveillance list.

The 2007 report will provide more comprehensive data about how much of these substances are in Americans' bodies. The old Cottage Grove concerned citizens group has disbanded. Its leader, Stanley Hale, says he burned his filing cabinet of documents and news clippings seven years ago and moved to Western Wisconsin. His son continues to work for 3M.

The EPA says it doesn't know yet if PFOS and PFOA can cause cancer in humans, but current studies don't rule out the possibility either. The EPA is investigating how the chemicals affect the body, including potential problems with reproduction, the immune system, and the liver.

The general lack of information about the chemicals leads people in Washington County to speculate. Susan Berndt, who grew up near the Woodbury landfill, adds up the health problems on her street.

SUSAN BERNDT: We sat down, and we started counting them up. And it was unbelievable. Steve died of cancer, and he was young. He was younger than I am. Then Happy has cancer right now. Then we go on to Jim and Nancy and then another Nancy and Tony. And then the lady that lives next door here died of breast cancer. And then there's another lady two houses over that died of breast cancer.

And then to the West is a farm, and I know both of the parents of those children died of cancer. Seems like so many people that have had cancer. And it just makes you wonder.

MIKE EDGERLY: Fardin Oliaei attempted to resubmit her research proposals at the MPCA last month, but she says she couldn't get support from her managers. The results of her Washington County landfill samples came back from the lab, and they showed very high levels of PFOS, PFOA, and related chemicals.

The public relations staff at the MPCA wanted to write about Oliaei's perfluorinated chemicals research, but internal emails obtained by Minnesota Public Radio show the staff killed the article because they were, quote, "convinced that the editorial board or other leaders would cut the story at this time," end quote. The publication's coordinator told NPR her bosses suggested she select another contaminant to focus on, one not so controversial within the agency.

Oliaei says she's demoralized, but not defeated. She says someone once joked that she's more persistent than the chemicals she works with. The description pleased her. The bottom line, Oliaei says, is that taxpayers have funded her work at the MPCA and deserve the benefit of all she's learned about these chemicals.

FARDIN OLIAEI: They are in the environment. They are most probably in the blood and serum of any of them and their children or their parents. And they have a right to know about how toxic they are, what is the level of science available in a very, very meaningful manner, not to panic, but awareness.

MIKE EDGERLY: 3M broke no laws producing PFOS and PFOA for more than half a century. 3M's phaseout was voluntary. And to this day, no other company has followed its lead.

The chemicals remain unregulated and circulate through the air, water, and soil. An EPA scientist we spoke with said there are thousands of chemicals like PFOA and PFOS that should be regulated, but probably won't be. It takes years to prove how chemicals behave in the environment and in our bodies.

It's even more difficult to prove that exposure to such chemicals causes human harm. Scientists like Rich Purdy and Fardin Oliaei say it's time to stop looking at chemicals in isolation. PFOA and PFOS have chemical cousins with very similar properties, but no one is studying how widely these other chemicals may have spread through the environment and what harm they may pose. For Minnesota Public Radio and American Radioworks, I'm Mike Edgerly.

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