Different industry, familiar playbook.
More than a decade after the Los Angeles Times helped launch the now debunked #ExxonKnew campaign with a report produced by a Rockefeller-funded Columbia University project, the newspaper is taking another run at American energy and petrochemical companies. This time, the target is plastics – and the supposed smoking gun is a single scientific report and presentation from more than 50 years ago.
There’s just one problem: the Times’ own reporting undercuts its attempt to turn decades-old research into another industry cover-up narrative.
The story comes from Times reporter Susanne Rust – in collaboration with a partisan political get-out-the-vote operation – and takes aim at the American plastics and petrochemical industry for having some type of unique knowledge about the possible dangers of chemicals in those products but sought to keep that information from the public.
The LA Times Has Been Here Before
In 2015, the Times published two articles by Rust – who previously led the Energy Environment Reporting Project at the Columbia School of Journalism – that laid the foundation for the deeply flawed and now debunked “ExxonKnew” campaign and were cited in climate lawsuits against American energy companies.
What the Times failed to tell readers at publication was that the Columbia project received funding from foundations with a record of anti-energy advocacy, including the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Only after Energy In Depth exposed the funding connections did the newspaper finally acknowledge the connection and add a disclosure.
Even the Columbia Journal Review criticized the omission, raising questions about the “appropriate disclosure of the outside funders and their political leanings.”
A 1970s Report and Presentation
Flash ahead to 2026, and Rust builds her story around research presented by German gastroenterologist Gerhard Volkheimer at a 1974 presentation at a New York City meeting. His study focused on how swallowed bits of plastic PVC could leach into various parts of the body.
Rusts reports that industry scientists were in the room for the presentation, which became a constant point of discussion within the companies in the immediate aftermath of the conference and in the years following.
Yet, further down in the story, Rust reports that only one-third of the 289 conference participants were from the plastics and petrochemical industry and that the “rest were from the federal government, labor, academia, scientific societies, nonprofits and consulting firms,” which undercuts any claims that only the industry knew of this research.
In other words, this was not a private industry briefing. Volkheimer’s findings were presented at a scientific meeting attended by a wide range of institutions. The underlying research was also published, and, as Rust herself notes, was cited in a 1975 EPA scientific assessment.
Furthermore, apparently none of those non-industry figures in the room saw the usefulness of the study in that moment, as this was merely one study and presentation in an ever-growing field of research at the time, making it unreasonable for the small number of scientists in the room at the time to accurately determine the validity of the study and then form an industry-wide consensus.
The Times’ Own Experts Undercut Its Narrative
Perhaps the most revealing qualifications come from researchers interviewed for the story itself.
In fact, all of the U.S. government officials that Rust cites in the story don’t even recall Volkheimer’s presentation.
“Philip Landrigan, one of the world’s preeminent microplastic researchers, a pediatrician, and director of Boston College’s Program for Global Public Health and the Common Good, was there. He was 32 and also working at the Center for Disease Control.
He doesn’t remember much from the meeting, other than it drew people from around the world — Japan, Sweden and Romania — and there was an urgency in the air.
He has no memory of Volkheimer’s presentation. Neither does Richard Lemen, also at Emory, and former assistant director of NIOSH. Nor does [former against surgeon general Henry] Falk.” (emphasis added)
If Landrigan can’t even recall the presentation himself, then it would appear unfair for company scientists to take the report as gospel when they heard it 50 years ago.
Another expert goes further. Matthew Campen, a University of New Mexico microplastics researcher, offers an even more significant caveat. As the Times reports, he “suspect[ed] people at the time could not fully understand the implications of the findings”:
“‘Nobody knew that plastic degradation was going to be a problem when he did this work,’ [Campen] said. Volkheimer ‘was literally using this as just a model to show that, yeah, the gut can really take up plastic particles or any kind of particle potentially.’”
This shows that Volkheimer’s study, which was published a half century ago, represents what the knowledge base was at the time, and it’s simply unfair to apply that limited understanding from decades ago to today’s more advanced research.
Rust also reports that much of Volkheimer’s work appeared in German, limiting its reach among English-speaking researchers, which was acknowledged by microplastics researchers today.
“… Woodruff, who was school age at the time of the meeting, went on to serve as senior scientist and policy advisor in the EPA’s Office of Policy between 1994 and 2007, before joining UCSF. Now at Stanford, she said she thinks another reason the research was largely overlooked by public health officials and academic toxicologists for so many decades may have been because most of Volkheimer’s work was published in German.
“‘I think even our systematic review on microplastics … I think we only focused on English-language articles,’ she said, referring to a 2024 report.”
Follow the Advocacy Connections
Rust leans heavily on Woodruff and Landrigan to frame the industry’s actions, but their connections to foundations active in environmental advocacy receive far less attention.
Woodruff previously served as the Alison S. Carlson Endowed Professor at UC San Francisco, a position endowed by the Forsythia Foundation, which has also funded the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Law Institute, and Earthjustice for anti-plastics advocacy.
Landrigan, meanwhile, has extensive partnerships with the Minderoo Foundation, the Australian-based charitable foundation that’s funded by businessman Andrew Forrest, who has financed plastics litigation against American energy and industrial companies as well as pseudo-science Netflix documentaries that fearmongers to couples struggling to conceive.
These relationships are plainly relevant context for readers, yet the article pays no mind to the advocacy networks surrounding the experts it quotes.
A New Collaboration Raises Old Questions
The latest article also includes a disclosure at the end: it was produced in collaboration with Crooked Ideas, the left-leaning voter advocacy group run by former Obama administration officials at Pod Save America.
In September, Semafor reported on the group’s objectives ahead of upcoming elections.
“The nonprofit arm of Pod Save America’s audio empire is hoping to lure younger voters back to the Democratic Party by boosting ideologically aligned social video creators ahead of the 2028 presidential election.
“Crooked Ideas, the issue-focused partner organization of Crooked Media, is launching new programming and brands aimed at reaching younger, politically skeptical audiences alienated by both mainstream parties.” (emphasis added)
A decade ago, Rust’s reporting prompted widespread backlash for her partnership with ideologically motivated groups. It seems like the same story yet again in 2026, with this plastics story receiving significant backing from a group that’s not focused on journalism but boosting political candidates.
Bottom Line: The Times is back at it again, using the same playbook deployed against the oil and gas industry a decade ago to the plastics industry today. But their own reporting undercutting the made of clicks headlines and relies on commentary from researchers who have clearly aligned with anti-industry activist groups.
