Maplewood, MN, June 20--Scotchgard is back. The familiar plaid aerosol can never really disappeared from the shelves. But Scotchgard's journey back to the market has been rocky, and the stain repellent is still missing from the furniture upholstery industry. 3M Co.'s line of fabric protectants has been struggling since the Environmental Protection Agency pressed 3M in 2000 to stop using the chemistry behind the spray, according to the Saint Paul Pioneer Press.
3M, which has lost two-thirds of its former $300 million-a-year Scotchgard business, hopes to rebuild it to $500 million by 2008. Finally finished with its phase-out and armed with a new formula it says is safe and better than ever, 3M is launching major Scotchgard replacements this summer, marketing them like new products.
Clothing pretreated with Scotchgard will reappear in stores this summer, along with the debut of the new Scotchgard aerosol spray for consumers. A new ad campaign is slated for this winter. And Scotchgard is headed for places it hasn't been before, in eyeglass lenses and in paint.
For nearly 50 years 3M has marketed Scotchgard. The brand grew to encompass some 100 products--most based on a key chemical known for its remarkable ability to repel nearly anything people threw at it. The chemical breaks down into perfluorooctane sulfonate, or PFOS. It has a chain of eight carbon atoms, or C8.
But PFOS began showing up everywhere: in polar bears, dolphins, baby eagles, tap water and human blood. So did its eight-carbon cousin perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, which 3M sold to other companies such as DuPont for use in products like Teflon.
The two manmade perfluorochemicals don't decompose in nature. They kill laboratory rats at high doses, and there are potential links to tissue problems, developmental delays and some forms of cancer.
3M knew much of this because it had studied the chemicals for decades. It insists that at typical low levels found in Scotchgard and elsewhere the chemicals posed no health or environmental risk.
Yet accounts differ as to whether 3M voluntarily phased out the problematic C8 chemistry or was pressured by the EPA after the company shared its data in late 1999. The EPA concluded PFOS was toxic. Either way, the phase-out was largely completed last December, although 3M still makes small amounts of PFOA for its own use in Germany.
The phase-out went unnoticed by most consumers as 3M rapidly substituted another, less effective spray. But the move stunned industrial clients--the bulk of Scotchgard's business. 3M's chemists scrambled to reformulate Scotchgard for all its markets: the aerosol spray for general consumers, which 3M has fixed twice and is reintroducing this summer; carpet mills, for whom 3M found a substitute right away; the apparel industry, where 3M just introduced a substitute; and the upholstery industry, where Scotchgard remains on hiatus.
The replacement aerosol-can Scotchgard that 3M first distributed to stores didn't work as well as the original. It was based on a nonperfluoro chemistry and worked on water but not grease. Nothing repels like perfluorochemicals, 3M concluded. The challenge was to find safe ones.
3M settled on perfluorobutane sulfonate, or PFBS, a four-carbon cousin of the chemical in the old Scotchgard, as the building block for Scotchgard's new generation. The new C4-based Scotchgard is completely safe, 3M says. The company adds that it has worked closely with the EPA and has performed more than 40 studies, which are confidential. The EPA won't release them.
The EPA gave PFBS clearance for commercialization in 2001, but the agency continues investigating the whole perfluorochemical family for possible toxicity issues.
3M says convincing consumers Scotchgard is safe is not its top challenge; rather it's getting the new Scotchgard out. The brand, 3M maintains, is untarnished.
