Generally, no, universities classify graduate students as students, not employees. Stanford additionally classifies postdocs as students and charges their funding source a nominal tuition fee.
> A Stanford postdoctoral scholar is a non-matriculated trainee, in graduate student status, in residence at Stanford University pursuing advanced studies beyond the doctoral level in preparation for an independent career.
This makes doing taxes as a postdoc extremely irritating as the stipend is not earned income, which of course benefits Stanford's tax situation considerably.
That's hardly an apples to apples comparison. A typical American has around 100 ng/mL selenium in their blood. By your logic, that's a toxic heavy metal that's ten times as bad as PFAS in terms of concentration. It's actually an essential cofactor in many biological processes. I'm not implying PFAS is harmless, but the dose makes the poison and it depends what biological processes are being interfered with.
If you consider phosgene and HCl to be "benign" based on their half life sure, but this assumes complete combustion. The cloud of visible black smoke emitted shows that clearly didn't happen. Partially combusted vinyl chloride monomer is some horrible mix of carcinogens that will contaminate the area for years.
> A Stanford postdoctoral scholar is a non-matriculated trainee, in graduate student status, in residence at Stanford University pursuing advanced studies beyond the doctoral level in preparation for an independent career.
This makes doing taxes as a postdoc extremely irritating as the stipend is not earned income, which of course benefits Stanford's tax situation considerably.