Chatt TFP: Carpet Mfr Shaw announces new test to eliminate PFAS from its supply chain
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Shaw Industries invented a new test to eliminate PFAS from its supply chain
12 hours, 57 minutes ago by David Floyd
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Staff Photo by Seth Carpenter / Shaw Industries Plant 47 is seen in Ringgold. The company says it invented a new test to eliminate PFAS from its supply chain.
When describing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — known as "forever chemicals" — Shaw Industries' Kellie Ballew, likes to use apples as an analogy.
"There's a tremendous number of varieties," Ballew, vice president of environmental affairs, said in a video interview. "You've got Galas and Granny Smith and Fuji and Honey Crisp and some are sweet, some are not, some are green, some are red, and they all have these different attributes. But then at the end of the day, they're all an apple."
Similarly, there are thousands of compounds that fall under the broad umbrella of "PFAS" or forever chemicals. Shaw Industries, one of the world's largest carpet manufacturers with more than $6 billion in annual revenue, is facing a series of lawsuits filed by property owners in Northwest Georgia, alleging the company and others are responsible for dumping PFAS into the environment.
Historically, Shaw and other carpet manufacturers have used PFAS in their products as a treatment to repel water, dirt and stains. However, Ballew said Shaw has been taking steps to reduce its reliance on certain types of PFAS since May 2008, and it stopped using the compounds in its U.S. manufacturing operations altogether in January 2019.
Shaw Industries invented a new test to eliminate PFAS from its supply chain
Even then, Ballew said, Shaw noticed PFAS were still unknowingly entering its products via its suppliers, and the company invented a new testing method to identify and eliminate any lingering forever chemicals in its supply chain.
(READ MORE: 3M's PFAS litigation far from over, billions more in settlements likely)
"Shaw is a company of a lot of engineers," Ballew said. "The first thing we do is attack that problem and try to get to the root cause and really dig in and deeply understand that."
SOLUTIONS
A swath of human-made chemicals that were used widely in commercial products for decades because of their stain- and heat-resistant properties, PFAS can take hundreds of years to break down in nature, and they can remain in the human body for years.
Studies have indicated they may increase the risk of certain cancers, cause developmental delays in children and reduce the body's ability to fight infections, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The chemicals are still used in everyday items like soaps, cosmetics, microwave popcorn bags, pizza boxes, dental floss and more, Ballew said.
In 2024, the EPA introduced new drinking water standards that set a limit of four parts per trillion for two common types of PFAS — PFOA and PFOS. Those restrictions may go into effect in 2031. One part per trillion is equivalent to about one drop of water in 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Years before that announcement, Shaw was making changes to how it used these chemicals, Ballew said. In May 2008, Shaw stopped using PFAS compounds with eight carbon atoms in its products, a category that includes PFOA and PFOS, and transitioned to PFAS with six carbon atoms for its soil and stain treatments.
At the time, the EPA was indicating these shorter chain PFAS were preferred, and Shaw wanted to be responsive to the regulatory agency, Ballew said.
PFAS molecules contain a chain of carbon and fluorine atoms, which are strongly bonded together. Those bonds make the molecules difficult to break down, according to the North Carolina PFAS University Research Alliance.
In January 2009, about six months later, the EPA established a provisional health advisory for drinking water that focused exclusively on these longer chain PFAS with eight carbon atoms, setting drinking water guidelines of 200 parts per trillion for PFOS and 400 parts per trillion for PFOA, Ballew said.
In the 2010s, the EPA had a stewardship program that encouraged the use of shorter chain PFAS like the six-carbon compounds, Ballew said, and in 2016, the agency released a health advisory that suggested a combined limit of 70 parts per trillion for PFOA and PFOS in drinking water.
"Shaw had been out of that entire family of chemicals — the C8 — for eight years by the time that additional drinking water level came out," Ballew said.
Then, in January 2019, the company opted to stop using all PFAS in its domestic carpet manufacturing.
These shifts were driven in part by innovations in the industry and customers who were asking Shaw if the company could develop products that didn't contain eight-chain carbon PFAS, Ballew said.
Officials at Shaw were working from 2008 to 2019 to find a commercially available option that didn't rely on fluorinated chemicals, Ballew said.
"We would always ask for the non-fluorinated solutions," Ballew said. "We would try them, and in most cases, just the performance wasn't there until we were able to scale up to one in the later part of 2018."
'WE FOUND APPLES'
After the company decided to stop using the chemicals altogether, Shaw contractually required all of its suppliers to provide raw materials that didn't contain PFAS. However, through testing and due diligence, Ballew said, officials discovered the chemicals were still getting into some of the company's facilities — hidden in materials Shaw was purchasing — or were persisting in places where they had been historically used.
The company had to disassemble, clean and replace equipment in order to fully eradicate the compounds.
"I'll go back to my apple analogy," Ballew said. "We didn't know we were still buying apples. And our suppliers didn't know that the products they were selling us contained apples. And it was incredibly frustrating because there wasn't a test in the market that allowed us to accurately find out if the materials we were purchasing contained apples, much less what kind of apple because the tests were really about drinking water."
Shaw had to invent an entirely new testing methodology to identify lingering PFAS in all the materials it was purchasing.
"And dang it, we found apples," Ballew said.
The company now has a process for testing every new material that comes into its facilities to see if it contains trace levels of PFAS. If it does, Shaw works with its suppliers to help them determine where the PFAS are coming from, which enables them to in turn eliminate the chemicals from their supply chains.
"The more we peeled back the onion, the bigger the onion was," Ballew said.
The company collaborated with its supply chain to determine where the chemicals were still finding points of entrance.
"Honestly, once other companies start trying to look, I have no doubt that they will find the same thing that we did in our operations and our supply chain," Ballew said.
Shaw has also made its testing methodology publicly available so other companies can follow suit, Ballew said. Until chemical manufacturers stop making PFAS, corporations around the world are going to have to undertake the same exhaustive work, she said.
LAWSUITS
Shaw and another Northwest Georgia flooring maker, Mohawk Industries, are both defendants in a string of lawsuits filed by nearby property owners.
PFAS were produced by the companies 3M, DuPont, Chemours and Invista for products like Scotchgard, Stainmaster and Teflon, according to legal complaints filed by residents. These products were in turn used by Shaw and Mohawk in their manufacturing processes.
"Thanks to Shaw's and Mohawk's recklessness, the chemicals pollute everything around their facilities: air, rain and snow, surface water, soil and dust and groundwater," the complaints allege.
Affected landowners with property near Shaw and Mohawk facilities are "bombarded constantly" by toxic chemicals "from above, from below and from all sides," the lawsuits said. Their soil, groundwater and dust are all heavily polluted and re-polluted with the chemicals, the filings allege. Containing, capturing and destroying PFAS could cost an estimated $1 million per acre.
(READ MORE: PFAS Georgia forges ahead with lawsuits against key regional companies)
Shaw and Mohawk have both previously pushed back against claims that the companies are actively using PFAS-based products. Robert Webb, a spokesperson for Mohawk, has said the company phased out PFOS- and PFOA-based chemicals more than 15 years ago.
Mohawk has also filed a lawsuit against the manufacturers that once provided these treatments "for fraudulently misguiding the company regarding their chemicals," he said. The defendants in
Mohawk's lawsuit include 3M, Chemours, Daikin American and DuPont de Nemours and Co. Mohawk has accused the corporations of concealing the risks of PFAS and making false or misleading assurances about their safety.
Ballew said she couldn't speak to Shaw's litigation plans. She noted the company has not taken the same approach as Mohawk.
"Instead, we're trying to publicly share our journey and publicly share what we've done and how proud we are of what we've accomplished to help address the challenges we were facing," she said.
Contact business reporter David Floyd at dfl...@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6249.
David Floyd is a business reporter for the Chattanooga Times Free Press. He graduated from East Tennessee State University in 2017 and previously worked for the Johnson City Press. He is the second youngest of six siblings. Contact him at 423-757-6249 or dfl...@timesfreepress.com.
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