I think you are painting past very nicely, ie DuPont has been knowingly contaminating whole world since 80s at least. That's my childhood years, for sure I wasn't aware of anything similar happening. That doesn't mean it wasn't, news reel was setup differently these days. In 3rd world countries this would not raise eyebrows at all, there were (and still are) big issues around exactly this with used cars in Eastern Europe.
People got addicted to ever more shocking news, I guess 9/11 in the west helped with that. Once you burn your receptors and they go back to flatline, the next kick needs to be a bit stronger to keep people engaged, and next one even more so. So just consuming news is a never ending progression of bad, amoral and over time progressively worse stuff.