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DuPont. Here's just a little tidbit:
Monsanto:
These are the kind of companies that inspired the cartoon villains of the 1980s that just dump pollution because.
Monsanto gets so much worse than polluting. They tried (succeeded? Not sure) in hooking farmers to only buying their seeds through genetic modification to grow anything. I remember huge protests, then we all sort of moved on.
Ah the old terminator seeds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_technology
In a similar vein:
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/pepsico-sues-four-indian-farmers-for-using-its-patented-lays-potatoes-idUSKCN1S21E8/
There's at least a chance that PepsiCo's patented potatoes had gotten into the worldwide supply on accident and it really was no fault of these farmers for growing patented food.
Also similarly, varieties of apples are also patented.
Terminator seeds are not GMO, they are regular hybrid seeds. If you've ever grown anything from a seed, you'd know the difference between hybrids and heirlooms.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1142333/
The Bhopal disaster was Union Carbide and then Dow Chemicals baby, but as this paper points out, companies like DuPont learned some particularly evil things from it.
DuPont is also responsible for Teflon, which is what's typically used in "non-stick" cookware. It's unclear what its long-term effects are (I.e. if it's even safe to cook with), and it's also one of those lovely forever chemicals that doesn't break down properly.
Bad bad bad.
I've read a bit about Teflon. My understanding is that the big health hazard is during the application process, primarily for the factory workers - you really don't want to breath aerosolized uncured Teflon, or get it in your eyes. It's not the most hazardous industrial chemical out there, I don't think there's any particular ethical issue with manufacturing products with Teflon as long as workers are provided PPE. If it's a sweatshop product well then there are obviously a lot of ethical issues.
Once it's cured it's chemically inert (which is kind of the whole point) - I'm not aware of any research showing that the human body can absorb any harmful chemicals from cured Teflon - basically your stomach acid and digestive tract bacteria can't do anything to it. You shouldn't worry overmuch about being harmed by cooking in a Teflon-coated pan, it's not a heavy metal or anything like that.
That said, a deteriorating Teflon coating can be a hazard. The material is fairly stiff and again, your digestive system can't break it down. Any small particles should (hopefully) pass through, but larger flakes could get stuck somewhere and then... well your body can't break it down. It's going to be there causing a blockage until something dislodges it, it's not going to bend very much, and it might have sharp enough edges to irritate or damage the surrounding tissue.
And yeah, nothing breaks it down naturally, so it is just going to be in the world forever, gradually eroding into smaller and smaller particles along with all of the other plastic pollution, so yay.
I can't point to any specific sources on this, it's from reading various articles over two decades, I'm definitely not an authority.
This is my concern. I don't know if I'm just being too rough with my cookware, but in my experience, non-stick coating (Teflon included) doesn't tend to last longer than a few months before deteriorating. Which then requires more substantial cleaning to remove stuck-on food, which further damages the coating, and so on and so forth.
Find it's better to just avoid the stuff entirely, but there's a lot of cookware that you can't easily get in a non-non-stick format. Specifically muffin tins and air fryers. I'll stop there before this turns into a rant...!