As more people join one will get selected. There was r/cars and r/autos for a long time. R/cars won out in the end.

A lot of the NOVEC line is/was manufactured in Belgium. That plant was shut down for several months because high levels of PFAS was found in the surrounding area.

They cleaned it up and restarted the plant, only to announce they’re exiting the business by 2025.

I agree that the regulatory issue was their main motivator for shutting down PFAS manufacturing. Their plants (like Belgium) probably require significant maintenance and improvements, meaning millions in CAPEX. Money they probably don’t want to spend on products that will be globally banned within the decade.

3M announced they were exiting this space, rightfully so and probably a decade late. But I’ve heard rumblings in the industry that the US Govt might require them to continue to produce these awful materials as they are used in defense-related applications. Hope that’s not the case and we can shutdown all other producers (Chemours/DuPont etc) as well.