May 5, 2026 • 45 mins
Are there harmful chemicals in our drinking water? Climate change and environmental reporter at New Hampshire Public Radio, Mara Hoplamazian, is on a mission to find out. On their new podcast, SAFE TO DRINK, Mara wades through the depths of what PFAS/PFOA Chemicals have been doing to us. Just how much is in our water, and how can we protect ourselves? And how come this same issue keeps repeating again and again across the country?
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Uh, we're recording this early in the morning. When I
woke up today, I did the simple things you probably
did too, right, brush your teeth, turn on the faucet,
do some gargling, splash some water on my face, take
a shower. I don't really think twice about the water
that's coming out of my faucet or my shower. Right. Well,
that's not entirely true. I think about it, but I
think about it such that, like, I'm not afraid to
use it.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Right.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
It's not like I brush my teeth with bottled water,
but for some families in America they do. Just five
hours northeast of me, in southern New Hampshire, surrounded by
tall pines and very very clear, beautiful lakes, is a
place that you wouldn't really think that clean, safe water
would be a problem. This is a lovely town called Merrimac,
(00:43):
and inside of people's faucets in Merrimac is a tasteless,
odorless and invisible chemical called PFOA. In twenty sixteen, when
the world started to end, when people asked Merrimack officials
if the water was safe to drink, the answer they
got was, we don't know.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
And there's this one woman who basically says, you know, regulators, like,
if you don't know what level of these chemicals are safe,
why are you saying it's okay to keep drinking this water.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Mara Hopplamasin is a climate change and environmental reporter for
New Hampshire Public Radio, and when they started digging into
the story of Merrimack's water for a new podcast called
Safe to Drink, they realized this wasn't the first time
this chemical has appeared in people's faucets. It appeared in
the nineteen eighties and it made its way into the
(01:31):
drinking water of Parkersburg, West Virginia, Hoosick Falls, New York,
and Merrimack, New Hampshire. For years, Mara has been asking
if we've known about these chemicals for decades, why haven't
people been protected against them. That's on today's.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Show Here we Go, Agon, Agon Agon.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Hey, I'm Calpen and this is Here we Go Again,
a show that takes today's trends and headlines and asks
why does history keep repeating itself?
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Here we Go? Can you hear me now?
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Hello?
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Fabulous? How are you doing? Nice to speaking? Yeah? Likewise, Yeah,
my name is Mara Hoplamsian and I'm a climate change
and environment reporter at New Hampshire Public Radio, and I
just hosted a podcast called Safe to Drink about PFAS chemicals.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
In my intro, I basically talked about how in New
York City, at least, we don't really take I mean,
we do rather take tap water for granted. Before you
started doing your reporting, did you take your drinking water
for granted? Do you think most people do?
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Oh? Totally. I mean I think I think many of
us take our tap water for granted. I actually started
noticing while I was doing my reporting that, like turning
on the tap is just such a reflex for me,
Like I just you know, I fill the coffee pot,
I turned on the shower, I water my plants, I
mixed my little protein chap with my tap water. And Yeah,
for sure, I took it. I took it for granted.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Can you tell me about how your daily reporting basically
just led you to drinking water in Merrimec. And how
far is Merrimack from you?
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yeah? I live like probably twenty five minutes from Merrimack,
so very close.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
And I joined New Hampshire Public Radio a little bit
more than four years ago, and the first story I
got assigned as a reporter, like a very green reporter,
was about a town that had just reopened one of
its drinking water wells after installing filters to get pfast
chemicals out. I had never heard of PFAS chemicals before.
I had no idea what they were, but I got
really interested in them, and I started talking to people
(03:51):
in communities all over the state who had dealt with
this contamination. And in New Hampshire that's mainly these two communities,
one on our seacoast that was contaminated by you know,
a former air Force base that used firefighting foam that
had PFAS chemicals in it. And then this community Merrimac,
where there was this you know, big manufacturing company that's
(04:14):
connected to that contamination. And I started talking to all
these people, and I just like kept getting the sense
that there was all these unanswered questions, like there's this
huge clean up project, who's going to pay for it?
How long do these chemicals actually stick around? They're called
forever chemicals, Like does that truly mean this community Merrimac
is stuck with this problem forever? And I was talking
(04:37):
to people who, you know, ten years after this all
became public, were still using bottled water to like boil
pasta and like mix their kids baby bottles and like
do all of this stuff. That just seemed totally wild
to me, and so I just really wanted to dig
into it more deeply, and I pitched this podcast.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
And what are what are PFOS chemicals? Is it PFA's
and said diferent than pfoways.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
So there's lots of acronyms. The sort of overarching group.
I call it p FAS. Some people call it p FOSS.
It's PFAS. It's an acronym stands for per and polyfloroalkyl substances.
There are thousands of them. They're man made, so they're
not like naturally occurring like arsenic for example. And the
(05:24):
main thing to know about them is they're totally weird.
Like most of the scientists I talk to you about them,
the thing they wanted me to know is they're chemical weirdos. Like,
for one thing, they're super strong. They're like some of
the strongest bonds in the world. And that's because like
the thing that unites all these chemicals as an overarching
group there's there's thousands of them, is that they have
a bond between a fluorine atom and a carbon atom,
(05:47):
so like that's the single strongest, the strongest single bond
in organic chemistry makes them really difficult to break down,
so they can stick around for a long time in
our bodies and in the environment. And that's also the
thing that's made them so useful. You know, they're in
stuff that we really as humans really like, you know,
nonstick pans, raincoats, dental floss, like stuff that makes our
(06:09):
lives better in one way or another. And that's in
part because they're like really good at what they do,
which is repelling water, repelling oil, and just like staying
really strong under high heat and under like other sorts
of environmental degradation.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Okay, so you start looking to Merrimac and was there
like a singular moment where you realize something is wrong
in this town?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah. So, actually this happened almost exactly ten years ago,
in March of twenty sixteen. New Hampshire state officials called
this meeting in Merrimac. I didn't live I didn't live
in New Hampshire at the time, but I've watched this
meeting like dozens of times now on YouTube, and the
video is really striking. You know, state officials basically are
telling the town there's this chemical in your water. We
(06:52):
don't know very much about it. There's some evidence that
there are health risks associated with this chemical, but we
don't know how much of it is safe to drink
because there's no federal standard and there's no state standard.
But there's no reason to stop drinking the water, so
you can keep drinking the water. And understandably, people were
very confused. You know, like an hour and a half
(07:13):
of this meeting is just person after person asking these
regulators like wait, can my pregnant wife drink this water?
You know, like I'm a hunter? Can I eat the
animals that I've hunted that have been drinking this water?
I'm watering my garden? Like do my plants have this
chemical in them? And like what about showering? And there's
this one woman who basically says, you know, regulators, like,
(07:34):
if you don't know what level of these chemicals are safe,
why are you saying it's okay to keep drinking this water?
And that question has really been like at the core
of all of the efforts at Merrimack to get the
state to regulate this, to get the federal government to
regulate this, and that's the story I've been following. But
in the course of following that, I realized, like, this
is far from the first place that this kind of
(07:56):
town meeting has happened. And you know, these chemicals were
created almost ninety years ago, and so it was really
striking to me that, you know, almost a century after
they were first created, regulators were still saying, you know,
we don't know very much about these chemicals.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Was this created by I was reading a little bit
about this factory, Saint Gobain, the Saint Obain Corporation, what
did they have to do with this in Merrimac.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
From the beginning, sort of all eyes were on this
manufacturing plant in Merrimac, and it's owned by Saint Obain
or this massive French corporation. They make like windshields. You've
probably like ridden in a car with a Saint Cobaine
winshield before. But at this plant in Merrimack, they were
coating fabrics with teflon, So they were basically like dipping
fabrics into this like goopy solution and then baking them
(08:45):
in really hot ovens and then PFOA, which is one
of these Pfast chemicals was getting emitted from that burning
and like floating out over the town, settling into the soil,
settling into the groundwater, contaminating the groundwater. And our reporting
showed that, you know, Saint Obain and state regulators actually
knew that that was happening for years before all of
(09:06):
this became public in twenty sixteen. And you know, to
be fair, sink Obain says there are other sources of
pfast contamination, which is true, you know, firefighting, foam, consumer products,
So it's like we're exposed to these chemicals in lots
of ways. But this company, state regulators said is like
the source of contamination for the water in Merrimac. And
(09:26):
they were still chugging along, like even after this big
meeting in twenty sixteen where this all became public, they
kept operating. But the thing that made me really want
to report like a bigger story about it was that
they announced in twenty twenty three that they were shutting down.
So the plant, you know, over the past few years,
has been demolished. Like I drive past it once in
a while and it's just like a concrete slab, nothing
(09:48):
is there. But all this contamination that they caused is
still you know, in the soil and water of the town.
But yeah, sink obain is. The important thing to know
about them is that they were a customer of the
companies that make these chemicals, like I've heard of like
three M and DuPont and these are sort of like
that's the origin story here. Think Omin was purchasing these chemicals,
(10:11):
using them and then contaminating the water.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
So they're dipping this stuff, they're burning it off. How
did that track into getting into people's everyday lives? And
these chemicals haven't like no smell, no anything, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
No smell, no taste, no color. As these fabrics were
getting baked in these big ovens, the emissions were floating
out on the top of the stacks, floating out around
maryor McK Newhampshire, settling down into the soil and then
you know, it rains gets into the groundwater and that's
the water that people drink. So that's the water that
(10:45):
comes up in a private well or the town uses
and its like public drinking water system. And so this
chemical comes basically from this plant into your tap.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Oh does it? I mean, how does it not spread
to other towns?
Speaker 2 (11:00):
There's a lot of complicated math and modeling around like
how far these emissions carry in the wind. And there's
been debate about this in the class action lawsuits that
have been filed, but in places that have like really
profound contamination, they're usually around a manufacturing plant or like
a facility that has used firefighting foam, where like, you know,
(11:23):
the emissions sort of stay in the local area because
of the way the wind is carrying them.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
And what's at risk if people consume water from the pfoas,
Like basically, what are the answers to the questions that
were asked at that community meeting?
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Now that we know things, yeah, I guess I'll say.
One of the first main sources of information we've had
that was public about this came from this thing called
the C eight study. See it is like another acronym
for PFOA, and this was conducted in West Virginia and
the Ohio River Valley after contamination was discovered there. That's
sort of like the first go around on the here
(11:59):
we go again of it all, and it was one
of the largest epidemiological studies in history. That study showed
there's a probable link between PFOA and six different diseases,
so kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, pre eclampsia,
and alterative colitis.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
But there's also lots of other research on the health
effects of these chemicals. You know, they're linked to lower
antibody responses to some vaccines, changes in liver enzyme levels,
decreases in birth weight. And the most well studied of
these chemicals are PFOA and PFOS, so they're sometimes called
like the legacy chemicals. PFOA was the one that was
(12:39):
you know, contaminating merrimac. That's classified as a Group one percinogen,
so that means it's percinogenic to humans. It's in a
group with like tobacco, asbestos, arsenic, but also like processed
meat and alcohol are also in that group. And the
newer pfast chemicals, you know, they're sometimes called like short
chain PFAT. Might know them as gen X. They've been
(13:03):
researched like for a shorter period of time obviously than
the longer running ones. The research shows they can sort
of exit the body more quickly, but there's there's still
evidence that they can cause adverse effects on human health.
And gen X is sort of being used to replace PFOA.
But one of the troubling things I think for many
of the people I've talked to is that basically to
(13:25):
say one thing can cause another, scientists usually want to
see like a randomized clinical trial, but with toxin's it's
like wildly unethical to like randomly exposed people to these
for study. So so epide and then it's fine, Well, yeah,
I mean like epidemiologists are like sort of at a
disadvantage here, like they have to use observational studies which
(13:46):
are messy, and like they make this sort of science
like slower and more uncertain, and so it puts a
lot of people in this tough situation where like they're
living with breast cancer or they're living with a kidney disease,
and they're like, is this because does this company put
a chemical into my water and I drank it for decades?
And there's like not a good answer to that. And
(14:07):
that is a really hard position I think to be
in as someone who lives in a lot of these communities.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
So was that also the case in there's Husick Falls,
New York, there's Parkersburg, West Virginia. What can you tell
us about those two towns, and specifically, I guess let's
start with with Husick Falls, what brought you there to
begin with?
Speaker 2 (14:25):
At some point in my reporting, I started reaching out
to other towns in the US that had befast contamination.
This has happened in like every part of the country,
and I started to feel like all the conversations I
was having were like echoing with each other, like not
exactly blending together, because each of these stories is obviously
(14:46):
like so particular and full of particular pain and frustration.
But I was like literally hearing some of the same
sentences from people about the contamination they were experiencing, And
I started to think of it like there were all
these parallel universes or like different towns, like sort of
putting on the same production of a play where like,
you know, there's a big company and the regulators who
(15:07):
don't know what to do, and the activists who push
for more information and accountability, but like there's always the
same challenges, and the thing that's always missing is like
any national regulation or strategy for addressing this. And who
Sick Falls is one of the first places I saw this.
They dealt with pretty much the same exact thing Merrimack
dealt with a few years earlier, and the story starts
(15:29):
with this guy named Michael Hickey. His parents worked at
a Saint Gobain plant, so they also had a Saint
Gobain plant, sort of like Marrimad who falls in Whosick Falls,
New York. And then his father died really soon after,
he retired of kidney cancer, and Michael took it really hard.
He was like, really stunned, devastated. He told me, like
(15:51):
he couldn't sleep. And one night he was up late
sort of thinking about his dad's death and thinking about
this other person he was close to in town who's
a math teacher who had died young. So he started
googling teflon and cancer because he knew what they were
using at the Sincobaan plant that his dad.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Had worked out.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
He found the Sate study which I mentioned, like the
one that came out at West Virginia. He saw that
the stuff that his dad was working with was connected
to kidney cancer, and he started thinking like, is this
the thing that killed my dad? And basically like and
then he started thinking is my whole town drinking this?
Because that was the case in Parkersburg, West Virginia. You know,
the basis of the sate study is people who were
(16:31):
exposed through their drinking water. So Michael becomes convinced, like,
all right, I think my town is being poisoned basically,
but he has to like convince the mayor of Husick Falls, Yeah,
to look into this. The mayor asked the county. The
county is like, this isn't regulated, We're not under any
requirement to test for it. Don't worry about it. Michael's like,
(16:52):
come on, we gotta figure this out. I want to
get to the bottom of this. So he decides to
test the water himself. He like contract with this company
in Canada. They send him these like little vials. He
like goes into the McDonald's and, like he told me,
it felt like he was James Bond, like he was
like doing a heist sor. He was like, He's like,
you know, I know it's like legal to take water
(17:13):
from a drug star, but like, yeah, I just felt
he was like going around like taking water samples, sends
it out, results come back. There's a ton of PFOA
in the town's water. Like the town's drinking water has
four hundred parts per trillion of PFOA which at that
time it was above the level that the EPA was
saying was okay, it was like above the EPA's health
(17:34):
advisory level.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
I have a very hard time with numbers like this,
Like four hundred, four hundred sounds like a lot, and
then a trillion sounds like I don't even a huge
about it. Yeah, So then I'm like, oh, four hundred
compared to a trillion is nothing.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
One way to picture it, And like the way I've
heard people talk about it most is that it's like
one drop in twenty Olympic sized swimming pools. Oh, it's
like really tiny, like a tiny, tiny amount, but with
PFOA and p fast chemicals, tiny amounts are still harmful.
And that was like one of the hard things I
(18:07):
think for regulators to understand that like even in these tiny, tiny,
tiny amounts, the health effects still exists. The science shows
And now you know, just for some context, the EPA's
regulation in drinking water is four parts per trillion. So
if you think about like four parts petrillion being now
what the EPA says we need to hold ourselves to,
and so that compared to four hundred parts pertrillion is
(18:29):
you know, that's like an order of magnitude.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Another thing to know is that the EPA four PFOA
and PFOS, these two like legacy p fast chemicals, says
if all things were ideal and we could get to zero,
zero is the goal because essentially no level of exposure
is safe, like no level of these chemicals are safe
to drink. And I think that was something that was
(18:52):
really vindicating, maybe for lack of a better word, for
the folks I've talked to in Merrimack who were sort
of like at this meeting and saying like, how can
you be saying that in Marangle level was thirty parts patrillion,
so not as high as falls, but not as low
as the EPA. And they were sort of saying, like,
how can you say this is safe to drink if
we don't even you know, know.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
I'm trying to think through how to visualize the numbers
that you're talking about. Yeah, and the fact that zero
is actually what you're supposed to.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Have both like strive for.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
The EPA is like four is fine because science slash
practicality it sounds.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Like yeah, and like we can't It would be really
really really really really hard to get the last sort
of four parts patrillion out of the water. But another
thing to know about these chemicals is like we can't
excrete them very easily. Oh and so when you are
drinking water, say I'm drinking water with like four parts
(19:48):
pertrillion of be Fast for my whole life, it's like
it builds up.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Where does it build up in the body kidneys?
Speaker 2 (19:54):
It builds up in the blood, which is one of
the reasons that scientists have had trouble sort of like
identify buying exactly what the health impacts are because it
circulates and so it like reaches all of your different organs,
and that's one of the reasons scientists think. It's like
it affects so many different parts of the body because
it can move around in your blood so much. But
(20:15):
when scientists measure the levels of pfat in humans and
we all have this in our blood, I mean, ninety
nine percent of us have this in our blood. We
measure that in parts per billion, So that's like a
thousand times more than a part pert trillion. So the
equation is I just did that. There's a calculator on
the CDC's website where you can plug in, like here's
how much parts per trillion I'm drinking? How much do
(20:36):
I have in my blood? And I did it for
I Where I live, we have like four point nine
parts per trillion in our water according to the latest testing.
And I have like a certain number of parts per
billion in my blood because it builds up that much
over time.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
The original site for all this was Parkersburg, West Virginia, Right,
Can you talk about why that's considered like, oh, this
is the ground zero of people figuring out pfo's first round.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Yeah. Probably the best way to start is like sort
of the history of these chemicals and how they were created, Okay,
because that'll like help you understand why DuPont, this DuPont
Plan in Parkersburg is so important. So these chemicals have
like a really fascinating history. It goes back to World
War Two and it starts with the chemical that we
(21:32):
now know as teflon. Okay, this was invented in nineteen
thirty eight by a chemist at DuPont totally by accident.
He was like working on refrigerants like chlorofluorocarbons, which were
like the thing that room that was on there. He
was like that was his thing. Good track record Yeah,
he accidentally created this stuff, teflon, and it blew people's minds.
(21:54):
It was like extremely slippery. It was like the slipperiest
thing anyone had ever seen, and it was really resistant
to the elements. It was really durable, and the guy
who invented it basically said he couldn't find anything in
his lab that would dissolve it, so like he threw
everything he could at it, and like he couldn't get
it to break down, and DuPont shelved it. It was
like too expensive to manufacture. They couldn't like create it
(22:17):
very easily. But then the US military got really interested
in it, and so they were trying to make atomic bombs.
And it turns out when you're trying to enrich a
lot of uranium, you need something that doesn't break down.
It's like really really strong, And DuPont ramped up their
production of teflon through this relationship with the US military,
(22:42):
and then after World War Two, DuPont started to find
consumer applications for this stuff. So this is like the
rise of teflon pans and cleaning products and raincoats and
like they were putting this on everything basically, and as
all these products were coming out. Another company, three M,
(23:03):
invented a related chemical called PFOA, which is the thing
we've been talking about that turned out to be really
useful for like manufacturing teflon and so many of the
things that teflon is in. PFOA is also part of
because PFOA, you know, helps create teflon. And as they
were creating these chemicals, scientists with DuPont and Threem were
(23:24):
also studying their health effects, so they were testing them
on rats. Some of the rats died, others had like
problems with their eyes and their livers and their testicles
and their kidneys. They tested on dogs. Two beagles got
doses of this chemical and they died within two days.
They tested the blood of their employees and saw that
(23:44):
their employees had this stuff in their blood.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
This is this is DuPont did this testing.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
DuPont and three M. Yeah, okay, And then based on
what DuPont knew about pfoa's effects on pregnant rats, they
actually switched female employe is at this West Virginia factory
out of areas where they were using PFOA. So they
they they were reacting to what they were seeing, which
was that this was potentially harmful. And by the nineteen eighties,
(24:11):
you know, these companies knew that this chemical was toxic
to animals, they knew it was getting into human bodies,
and they knew it was accumulating. Yeah, but they didn't
report those findings to the US EPA or health officials,
even though they were supposed to. And so the first
time all of this really became public was in the
(24:33):
early two thousands in West Virginia.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
And this all starts with a man named Wilburt Tenant.
So he's sort of like the origin story here, and
I imagine him very connected to like some of the
activists I've talked to in Merrimack who repeated his story
in some ways. I actually don't know if he had.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
A mus I feel like a should have as.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Wilbur Yeah, yeah, it's great, it's a great name.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Yeah, very sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
So he lives on this farm near a DuPont plant
in Parkersburg, West Virginia, where they're using tethlon and PFOA.
He has a lot of cows, and he starts noticing
that the creek that like runs through his land into
his cow pasture is really foamy. So there's like looks
like someone porta bottle soap in it. There's like all
this foam and he's like, oh, that's weird. And then
(25:23):
his cows start getting really sick, and he made this
series of videotapes that I watch from my reporting. They're
really hard to watch, and he records these cows that
have died and they just are like totally emaciated. They're
like they look awful, they're super skinny, they're really sick.
And here's there's videos where he's like doing his own
(25:44):
autopsies of these cows, basically like trying to say, like,
I've worked with cows my whole life, I've never seen
internal organs that look like this before. Like these cows
are really really sick, and they're they're sick in a
way that I have never seen. He's really torn up
about it. I mean, he's losing so many cows, and
also like all the fish and other wildlife on his
(26:05):
land are getting sick. And Wilbur becomes convinced like all
of this has something to do with this landfill that's
really closed to his farm, and the landfill is where
DuPont is dumping their stuff. So he's convinced that it
has something to do with DuPont, and he tries to
get state officials involved, but basically he's like, nobody would
touch this issue.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
What year was this kid?
Speaker 2 (26:29):
This is in like the nineties, okay. And then finally
he finds this lawyer, Rob Blot, who's this environmental lawyer
who mainly represents chemical companies. He's not like an environmental
justice lawyer. But Wilburt Tenant convinces him to sue DuPont
in the year nineteen ninety nine, and through that lawsuit,
(26:49):
rob Blot finds all these internal documents from DuPont that
basically document that they knew this chemical could be harmful,
that they had been testing it, that they knew it
was getting into people, and that they knew it was
getting into the drinking water supply in the Ohio Valley.
And so this really kicks off a bunch of lawsuits
and EPA enforcement actions. Rob Blot sends a letter to
(27:12):
the US EPA and basically says, I think you need
to look at this. It was a big deal. There's
a movie made about it. Mark Ruffalo plays Rob Blot,
and honestly, like, after talking to Rob a lot amazing
casting there. But when I talked to Rob a lot
about this, he said one of the hardest things for
him in this whole process was, you know, even after
(27:34):
the lawsuits were over, the EPA didn't do the one
thing he really wanted. And remember this is after the
C eight studies, So this is after scientists have said
there are probable links between this chemical and like these
six illnesses. But the EPA for so long didn't make
enforceable regulations about how much of this stuff could be
in public drinking water, and those are just starting to
(27:56):
be implemented.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Like now, why Because if I'm hearing you right, the
three M and the DuPont tests were in the eighties
and it wasn't until the two thousands that there was
any discussion around regulation. So what accounts for this obscene
gap when people knew. Was it just companies suppressing it?
(28:19):
Or was were there other failures along the way with
checks and balances that should have existed. Why didn't anybody
do anything for two decades or longer?
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Yeah? I think there are there are a few intersecting
reasons here. One of them is these chemicals are really
widely used, and the companies that make them have pushed
back on regulations and argued that, like the science on
their health impacts is still disputed despite you know a
lot of scientific evidence. There's also you know, I talked
(28:51):
to a former EPA regulator who was sort of in
charge of coming up with the regulations for water until
twenty seventeen. Jim's Betsy Southerland. She said essentially like, look,
the EPA really doesn't want to get sued and the
science behind their regulations has to hold up in court.
But there are these industry scientists who will say, you know,
even a thousand studies isn't enough, or like the science
(29:14):
that we have isn't enough to say these should be regulated.
And so that is one thing that really slows down
the process. And because there are so many of these chemicals,
you know, there's more than fifteen thousand of them, the
industry can argue that each of them need to be
studied individually and exhaustively before they can be regulated. And
(29:35):
the EPA takes, like Betsy says, roughly seven years to
study one new chemicals. So if you do the Napkin
math on that, that's like thousands of years YEA to
study all of these chemicals, and you know, other countries
have like different ways of managing this problem, like in
the European Union, chemicals aren't innocent until proven guilty. Like
companies that have to register their chemicals, they have to
(29:56):
submit safety data before they're allowed to be sold. That's
not how it it works in the US. But in
the US, you know, like until the Feds find a
more efficient way to regulate them, or the companies decided
it's not making them, it's really on the states. Like
states are the ones that have these communities like Merrimac
that are really heavily contaminated and they need to be
(30:17):
accountable to their citizens. And to me, it seems to
reinforce the here we go again of it all, Like
there's different communities all across the US dealing with the
same issue and having to resolve it on their own
because there's not federal regulation that allows for this to
have like a uniform solution.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Yeah, so are there any federal regulations? And then what
are some of the state and local regulations around this.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
It's a little complicated. There are federal drinking water regulations
for some PFAS chemicals. The Biden administration created regulations for
PFOA and PFOS, which are those two like legacy long
chain PFAS chemicals, and also for a few others. And
the Biden administration said public water systems across the US
would need to start testing for those chemicals and then
(31:09):
treating the water for them to get those chemicals out
of the water, and that originally was supposed to happen
by twenty twenty nine. Now the timeline for that is unclear.
The Trump administration has been pushing to sort of lengthen
that timeline. Twenty thirty one is the date that has
been sort of floated for compliance.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
This might be a really stupid question, but why is
the regulation on cleaning up the water instead of preventing
these chemicals from being in the water in the first place.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
That is an excellent question, and it is something that
I think a lot of p FAS advocates point to
when they say, you know, one of the slogans is
like stop the source. You know, we need to stop
these chemicals from going into the environment. With PFOA and PFOS,
those aren't really being used very much anymore. They're being
replaced by these like sort of newer PFAZ chemicals. But
(31:58):
because they're you know, quote unquote forever chemicals, they're in
the soil, they're in the water, they're really hard to
break down, and so communities are dealing with like legacy
contamination from these chemicals that even if they're not being
used anymore, it still exists in their water. So that's,
you know, one of the reasons for those legacy chemicals,
and industry will argue there are safe ways to use
(32:21):
these chemicals. They're essential for things like medical devices for
you know, stuff that we need like really durable chemistry
for and there's just been I think more of a
focus on the public health impacts of drinking these chemicals
than there has been on sort of like a wider
regulatory approach to stopping them before they go into the environment.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Wow, in each town that you've researched, there are people
like Wilbert right Calga. How would those everyday citizens' role
have played into creating protections? Like what did they? Basically
what I'm getting at is like I think a lot
of these examples people will read about or listen to
(33:06):
and feel kind of powerless. Right, we don't think we
can necessarily do anything about it. AI is probably the
most recent example, AI companies and tech companies keep lobbying
for no regulations and then they try to convince us
that there are no concerns with AI while people are
losing their jobs. Everybody knows it's bullshit, but we feel
kind of powerless about it. That's often true in the
(33:27):
in the climate space as well. So how have these
people's voices really been driving solutions and regulation?
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Yeah, I think New Hampshire is actually a really good
example of this. So when this started in Merrimack, New
Hamshire had no regulations on p fas and water. There's
a group of women in Merrimac. A reporter before my
time here called them the water Warriors, and the name
sort of like stuck. So they call themselves the water Warriors,
(33:55):
and they decided to get elected to public office. They
ran and won. See it's in New Hampshire's like massive legislature.
And this one woman, Wendy Thomas, who I spoke with
for the story, said she basically would hang out in
the cafeteria at the State House and like go up
to people and say like, Hi, I'm Wendy Thomas. Have
you heard about PFAS chemicals? And I think like part
(34:18):
of that is just like people I think get sort
of you hear like an acronym like that, and you're like,
I don't know, I don't know if I want to
start thinking about things like It's just it's hard to
break into and it's hard to wrap your mind around.
But these women spent like a really long time wrapping
their minds around it and doing a bunch of research
and then went to the state House and basically said,
(34:40):
you know, this is a huge problem and we need
to do something about it. And over the course of
a few years, New Hampshire lawmakers adopted one of the
lowest standards for PFOA and pfos at the time in
the whole country, and it was enforceable, and so public
water systems in New Hampshire had to test and treat
(35:01):
their water, look for these chemicals, get them out of
the water if they found it, and they got sued.
New Hampshire got sued by three m for creating that
standard eventually drop a lawsuit. But I talked to a
regulator about this who basically said, you can't be scared
of getting sued. You just have to follow the science.
And that was what I'm sure did We looked into it.
We you know, worked with a toxicologist. We spent a
(35:23):
lot of time looking at this, and we decided the
science shows us these things need to be regulated, and
here's how they need to be regulated, and then they
created a regulation. And I think stories like those can
make this like sort of dense chemistry issue feel more
real for people.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Yeah, it sounds like it. I also, since we're here,
we go again, I want to briefly look into the
future a little bit as we sort of close up.
When you look at this and you're the expert on this,
what's the next for the future of Merrimax water, But
then what does the future look like for communities across
the country who we're close to factories that still exist
that have these chemicals them.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Yeah, So in Merrimac, Saint Cobain is shutdown and the
town has filtered its public water system. They actually voted
to raise the rates like basically to have everyone in
town pay to filter this public water system at like really,
I think they like doubled the cost of the water rates,
(36:23):
and people in town voted for that. They were they
felt so strongly that like, even if we have to
pay for this, we need to filter this water, so
the public water system in Merrimac is filtered.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
Now.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
There are lots of people who have private wells in
New Hampshire who get their water from you know, a
well on their property instead of from like the public
water system, and many of them are still waiting. It's
been a decade now since this became public to get
treatment systems paid for by Saint Gobain or to get
connected to public water systems, and Saint Gobain is supposed
to be sort of coordinating that and paying for those
(36:57):
people who are sort of within a ring that they've
legally decided is like the boundary for where the contamination went.
But even regulators say they know that that's not the boundary.
They know the contamination exists like far beyond the boundary.
So for those people, you know, there's another state program
where they can get help sort of testing their wills
and treating them. And there's still an ongoing class action
(37:19):
lawsuit in New Hampshire that hasn't been settled yet. There's
a lot to get into there, but one of the
major issues has been medical monitoring, which is like the
idea that okay, like you know, I drank pfast for
a certain number of years, I drink PFOA for a
certain number of years, What's going to happen to my body?
I want to get like cancer screenings. I want to
have I want to have like more regular doctor's visits.
(37:41):
And I want the company that put this chemical in
my water to pay for that right. And that was
an issue that went to the New Hampshire Supreme Court.
Companies that like Saint Obain and another company in the
state argued at the New Hampshire Supreme Court that medical
monitoring wouldn't be feasible because so many people have been
exposed to the chemicals, that it would be too expensive
(38:02):
and it would overwhelm the courts. And I was sitting
in the room while this is happening, and one of
Saint Cobain's lawyers said to one of the judges, you
and I have never met someone in Southern New Hampshire
who wouldn't be part of this class. Like, if we
allow medical monitoring, every single person in Southern New Hampshire would.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
And that's the reason not to do it.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
And that's the reason not to do it. And the
and the New Hampshire Supreme Court agreed with the companies,
and so medical monitoring is not allowed in New Hampshire
and people can't make claims for that.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
Is there any criminal liability for the people at these
companies three M, DuPont, et cetera, who knew about this
and didn't say anything like, Okay, great, I'm glad you're
moving your you know, some of your employees into a
different kind of area so that they're not exposed. But
if you've been hiding this from everybody, and you're that
much of a piece of shit, and all these people
(38:54):
are getting sick and dying, why is there no or
is there is? There is in jail? Tell me somebody's
in jail.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
Well, I actually don't know if anybody. I don't think so,
but I don't want to say for sure nobody's But
DuPont got the biggest fine at the time in EP history,
went to DuPont over you know, their non disclosure of
the testing that they had done. And then three M
and DuPont have settled like huge lawsuits and have paid out.
(39:25):
At this point, I think it's billions of dollars.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
I mean, I'm less interested in the I mean, I
guess billions of dollars. It's nice to hear. We just
had that meta YouTube case, the addiction case, where I
think their penalty was only a couple of million dollars,
which is nothing for big tech companies. So I guess
if you're saying a billion with a B that that's reassuring.
But I'm the asshole who wants somebody in jail. Yeah, well,
(39:49):
otherwise nothing's preventative. These companies will always have billions of
dollars to pay a fine. Yeah, so it'll pass it
on to the consumer. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
DuPont and Dream have paid billions of dollars to settle
these these people claims and that money is going to
like remediating water systems.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Oh good.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
And there are still ongoing, like there's this ongoing class
action lawsuit involving Saint Gobain in New Hampshire. Saint Gobain
has settled lawsuits in other places in New England. And
I think the legal arguments around this I find really
fascinating because you know, how do you assign responsibility or
find accountability for something that's everywhere? And these chemicals are everywhere,
(40:29):
and they're in all of us, and there are so
many of them, and I think it's like a big
challenge legally to figure out how to assign responsibility and
accountability and like sort of who pays for this massive
cleanup project if we decide that it should be a
massive cleanup project.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
On the individual side, then for people listening a should
they be worried about their own top water? And then
you know, if I suddenly found pfoas in my drinking water,
like what am I sport? What should I do?
Speaker 2 (41:00):
You? Yeah, people ask me this question all the time,
and I bet it's sort of like how worried to be?
It's like, you know, we all have different risk tolerance,
Like you know, maybe people smoke and like, so we
choose our risk, is what I'm trying to say. So
knowing that you are exposed can help you choose your
(41:20):
risk because I think many of us don't know the
level of the sets in our waters and we don't
get to choose like whether we're drinking it or not.
One way to figure out if it is in your
water is by calling your public water utility. So many
states and many communities have already done testing, either through
something called the Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule, which required like
(41:42):
large water systems to test for these chemicals, but not
to treat for them. Like for example, I live in Conquerd,
New Hampshire. I googled Conquered New Hampshire water test results,
and on my public water utility website there's a report
that shows from twenty twenty three when they tested and
how much PFEST was in my water. Okay, if your
public water system hasn't tested, they likely will be required
(42:05):
to in the coming years based on those new EPA regulations,
so you can find out through that testing. If you're
on a private well, many states have programs to like
help you figure out how to test your own water,
so you can check in with like your environmental regulators
in your state and then reducing your exposure. Also, you know,
it's not just water is one of the main exposure
routes for this, but it's also like in our dental floss.
(42:26):
It's in you know, your teflon pan, It's in a
lot of things. It's in your my raincoat, my raincoat literally,
And there's the ability to sort of like look at
what you are using, yeah, and decide if you want
to keep using those things or if you want to
switch to like cast iron for example, which I did,
(42:46):
and with water in particular, there are ways to filter it,
like all water filters are not created equal when it
comes to forever chemicals, but it does require a little
bit of extra sort of thought.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Okay, so then what's your personal relationship with water? But
then also, you know you mentioned using a cast iron pan.
What's your relationship with these chemicals too?
Speaker 2 (43:07):
Yeah, I I don't know if this is the right approach,
but I try not to think about it too hard
in my personal life, okay, because I have you know,
I looked up what my drinking water has in it,
and I felt like good about the levels that my
drinking water has. It's slightly above the EPA's four parts
(43:29):
of pert trillion, but it's under New Hampshire's standard, and
I felt like spending a ton of money filtering like
the point five extra that's above the EPA's standard wasn't
sort of like I wasn't ready for that. So I felt,
I feel okay about my drinking water. I try to
see like the big picture, which is that like, sure,
we are all exposed to these things in really major ways,
(43:52):
and like it's really empowering to know how much you
are exposed and knowing how much I am exposed has
helped me figure out how to be a little bit
chill about it nice. So I don't know if that's
a good answer, but yeah, that's helpful there.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
Mara Happlamasien is a climate change and environmental reporter for
New Hampshire Public Radio and the host of the documentary
podcast Safe to Drink. To hear more from Mara and
the in depth reporting they did behind the stories we
talked about today, listen to Safe to Drink. Wherever you
get podcasts, Here we go again, as a production of
iHeart Podcasts and Snaffo Media in association with New Metric Media.
(44:33):
Our executive producers are me kalpen ed Helms, Mike Falbo,
Alissa Martino, Andy Kim, Pat Kelly, Chris Kelly, and Dylan Fagan.
Megan tan is our producer and writer. Dave Shumka is
our producer and editor. Our consulting producer is rom And Borsolino.
Tory Smith is our associate producer. Theme music by Chris Kelly,
logo by Matt Gosson, Legal review from Daniel Welsh, Caroline
(44:57):
Johnson and Megan Halson special thanks to Glenn back Listen
Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lane Klein, and everyone at iHeart podcasts,
but especially Will Pearson, Carrie Lieberman and Nikki Etour. Thanks
for listening. Everybody, tell your friends, write a review.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
All of this helps.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
I appreciate you listening, and until we go again, I'm
Kel Penn
Uh, we're recording this early in the morning. When I
woke up today, I did the simple things you probably
did too, right, brush your teeth, turn on the faucet,
do some gargling, splash some water on my face, take
a shower. I don't really think twice about the water
that's coming out of my faucet or my shower. Right. Well,
that's not entirely true. I think about it, but I
think about it such that, like, I'm not afraid to
use it.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Right.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
It's not like I brush my teeth with bottled water,
but for some families in America they do. Just five
hours northeast of me, in southern New Hampshire, surrounded by
tall pines and very very clear, beautiful lakes, is a
place that you wouldn't really think that clean, safe water
would be a problem. This is a lovely town called Merrimac,
(00:43):
and inside of people's faucets in Merrimac is a tasteless,
odorless and invisible chemical called PFOA. In twenty sixteen, when
the world started to end, when people asked Merrimack officials
if the water was safe to drink, the answer they
got was, we don't know.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
And there's this one woman who basically says, you know, regulators, like,
if you don't know what level of these chemicals are safe,
why are you saying it's okay to keep drinking this water.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Mara Hopplamasin is a climate change and environmental reporter for
New Hampshire Public Radio, and when they started digging into
the story of Merrimack's water for a new podcast called
Safe to Drink, they realized this wasn't the first time
this chemical has appeared in people's faucets. It appeared in
the nineteen eighties and it made its way into the
(01:31):
drinking water of Parkersburg, West Virginia, Hoosick Falls, New York,
and Merrimack, New Hampshire. For years, Mara has been asking
if we've known about these chemicals for decades, why haven't
people been protected against them. That's on today's.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Show Here we Go, Agon, Agon Agon.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Hey, I'm Calpen and this is Here we Go Again,
a show that takes today's trends and headlines and asks
why does history keep repeating itself?
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Here we Go? Can you hear me now?
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Hello?
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Fabulous? How are you doing? Nice to speaking? Yeah? Likewise, Yeah,
my name is Mara Hoplamsian and I'm a climate change
and environment reporter at New Hampshire Public Radio, and I
just hosted a podcast called Safe to Drink about PFAS chemicals.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
In my intro, I basically talked about how in New
York City, at least, we don't really take I mean,
we do rather take tap water for granted. Before you
started doing your reporting, did you take your drinking water
for granted? Do you think most people do?
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Oh? Totally. I mean I think I think many of
us take our tap water for granted. I actually started
noticing while I was doing my reporting that, like turning
on the tap is just such a reflex for me,
Like I just you know, I fill the coffee pot,
I turned on the shower, I water my plants, I
mixed my little protein chap with my tap water. And Yeah,
for sure, I took it. I took it for granted.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Can you tell me about how your daily reporting basically
just led you to drinking water in Merrimec. And how
far is Merrimack from you?
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yeah? I live like probably twenty five minutes from Merrimack,
so very close.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
And I joined New Hampshire Public Radio a little bit
more than four years ago, and the first story I
got assigned as a reporter, like a very green reporter,
was about a town that had just reopened one of
its drinking water wells after installing filters to get pfast
chemicals out. I had never heard of PFAS chemicals before.
I had no idea what they were, but I got
really interested in them, and I started talking to people
(03:51):
in communities all over the state who had dealt with
this contamination. And in New Hampshire that's mainly these two communities,
one on our seacoast that was contaminated by you know,
a former air Force base that used firefighting foam that
had PFAS chemicals in it. And then this community Merrimac,
where there was this you know, big manufacturing company that's
(04:14):
connected to that contamination. And I started talking to all
these people, and I just like kept getting the sense
that there was all these unanswered questions, like there's this
huge clean up project, who's going to pay for it?
How long do these chemicals actually stick around? They're called
forever chemicals, Like does that truly mean this community Merrimac
is stuck with this problem forever? And I was talking
(04:37):
to people who, you know, ten years after this all
became public, were still using bottled water to like boil
pasta and like mix their kids baby bottles and like
do all of this stuff. That just seemed totally wild
to me, and so I just really wanted to dig
into it more deeply, and I pitched this podcast.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
And what are what are PFOS chemicals? Is it PFA's
and said diferent than pfoways.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
So there's lots of acronyms. The sort of overarching group.
I call it p FAS. Some people call it p FOSS.
It's PFAS. It's an acronym stands for per and polyfloroalkyl substances.
There are thousands of them. They're man made, so they're
not like naturally occurring like arsenic for example. And the
(05:24):
main thing to know about them is they're totally weird.
Like most of the scientists I talk to you about them,
the thing they wanted me to know is they're chemical weirdos. Like,
for one thing, they're super strong. They're like some of
the strongest bonds in the world. And that's because like
the thing that unites all these chemicals as an overarching
group there's there's thousands of them, is that they have
a bond between a fluorine atom and a carbon atom,
(05:47):
so like that's the single strongest, the strongest single bond
in organic chemistry makes them really difficult to break down,
so they can stick around for a long time in
our bodies and in the environment. And that's also the
thing that's made them so useful. You know, they're in
stuff that we really as humans really like, you know,
nonstick pans, raincoats, dental floss, like stuff that makes our
(06:09):
lives better in one way or another. And that's in
part because they're like really good at what they do,
which is repelling water, repelling oil, and just like staying
really strong under high heat and under like other sorts
of environmental degradation.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Okay, so you start looking to Merrimac and was there
like a singular moment where you realize something is wrong
in this town?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah. So, actually this happened almost exactly ten years ago,
in March of twenty sixteen. New Hampshire state officials called
this meeting in Merrimac. I didn't live I didn't live
in New Hampshire at the time, but I've watched this
meeting like dozens of times now on YouTube, and the
video is really striking. You know, state officials basically are
telling the town there's this chemical in your water. We
(06:52):
don't know very much about it. There's some evidence that
there are health risks associated with this chemical, but we
don't know how much of it is safe to drink
because there's no federal standard and there's no state standard.
But there's no reason to stop drinking the water, so
you can keep drinking the water. And understandably, people were
very confused. You know, like an hour and a half
(07:13):
of this meeting is just person after person asking these
regulators like wait, can my pregnant wife drink this water?
You know, like I'm a hunter? Can I eat the
animals that I've hunted that have been drinking this water?
I'm watering my garden? Like do my plants have this
chemical in them? And like what about showering? And there's
this one woman who basically says, you know, regulators, like,
(07:34):
if you don't know what level of these chemicals are safe,
why are you saying it's okay to keep drinking this water?
And that question has really been like at the core
of all of the efforts at Merrimack to get the
state to regulate this, to get the federal government to
regulate this, and that's the story I've been following. But
in the course of following that, I realized, like, this
is far from the first place that this kind of
(07:56):
town meeting has happened. And you know, these chemicals were
created almost ninety years ago, and so it was really
striking to me that, you know, almost a century after
they were first created, regulators were still saying, you know,
we don't know very much about these chemicals.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Was this created by I was reading a little bit
about this factory, Saint Gobain, the Saint Obain Corporation, what
did they have to do with this in Merrimac.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
From the beginning, sort of all eyes were on this
manufacturing plant in Merrimac, and it's owned by Saint Obain
or this massive French corporation. They make like windshields. You've
probably like ridden in a car with a Saint Cobaine
winshield before. But at this plant in Merrimack, they were
coating fabrics with teflon, So they were basically like dipping
fabrics into this like goopy solution and then baking them
(08:45):
in really hot ovens and then PFOA, which is one
of these Pfast chemicals was getting emitted from that burning
and like floating out over the town, settling into the soil,
settling into the groundwater, contaminating the groundwater. And our reporting
showed that, you know, Saint Obain and state regulators actually
knew that that was happening for years before all of
(09:06):
this became public in twenty sixteen. And you know, to
be fair, sink Obain says there are other sources of
pfast contamination, which is true, you know, firefighting, foam, consumer products,
So it's like we're exposed to these chemicals in lots
of ways. But this company, state regulators said is like
the source of contamination for the water in Merrimac. And
(09:26):
they were still chugging along, like even after this big
meeting in twenty sixteen where this all became public, they
kept operating. But the thing that made me really want
to report like a bigger story about it was that
they announced in twenty twenty three that they were shutting down.
So the plant, you know, over the past few years,
has been demolished. Like I drive past it once in
a while and it's just like a concrete slab, nothing
(09:48):
is there. But all this contamination that they caused is
still you know, in the soil and water of the town.
But yeah, sink obain is. The important thing to know
about them is that they were a customer of the
companies that make these chemicals, like I've heard of like
three M and DuPont and these are sort of like
that's the origin story here. Think Omin was purchasing these chemicals,
(10:11):
using them and then contaminating the water.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
So they're dipping this stuff, they're burning it off. How
did that track into getting into people's everyday lives? And
these chemicals haven't like no smell, no anything, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
No smell, no taste, no color. As these fabrics were
getting baked in these big ovens, the emissions were floating
out on the top of the stacks, floating out around
maryor McK Newhampshire, settling down into the soil and then
you know, it rains gets into the groundwater and that's
the water that people drink. So that's the water that
(10:45):
comes up in a private well or the town uses
and its like public drinking water system. And so this
chemical comes basically from this plant into your tap.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Oh does it? I mean, how does it not spread
to other towns?
Speaker 2 (11:00):
There's a lot of complicated math and modeling around like
how far these emissions carry in the wind. And there's
been debate about this in the class action lawsuits that
have been filed, but in places that have like really
profound contamination, they're usually around a manufacturing plant or like
a facility that has used firefighting foam, where like, you know,
(11:23):
the emissions sort of stay in the local area because
of the way the wind is carrying them.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
And what's at risk if people consume water from the pfoas,
Like basically, what are the answers to the questions that
were asked at that community meeting?
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Now that we know things, yeah, I guess I'll say.
One of the first main sources of information we've had
that was public about this came from this thing called
the C eight study. See it is like another acronym
for PFOA, and this was conducted in West Virginia and
the Ohio River Valley after contamination was discovered there. That's
sort of like the first go around on the here
(11:59):
we go again of it all, and it was one
of the largest epidemiological studies in history. That study showed
there's a probable link between PFOA and six different diseases,
so kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, pre eclampsia,
and alterative colitis.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
But there's also lots of other research on the health
effects of these chemicals. You know, they're linked to lower
antibody responses to some vaccines, changes in liver enzyme levels,
decreases in birth weight. And the most well studied of
these chemicals are PFOA and PFOS, so they're sometimes called
like the legacy chemicals. PFOA was the one that was
(12:39):
you know, contaminating merrimac. That's classified as a Group one percinogen,
so that means it's percinogenic to humans. It's in a
group with like tobacco, asbestos, arsenic, but also like processed
meat and alcohol are also in that group. And the
newer pfast chemicals, you know, they're sometimes called like short
chain PFAT. Might know them as gen X. They've been
(13:03):
researched like for a shorter period of time obviously than
the longer running ones. The research shows they can sort
of exit the body more quickly, but there's there's still
evidence that they can cause adverse effects on human health.
And gen X is sort of being used to replace PFOA.
But one of the troubling things I think for many
of the people I've talked to is that basically to
(13:25):
say one thing can cause another, scientists usually want to
see like a randomized clinical trial, but with toxin's it's
like wildly unethical to like randomly exposed people to these
for study. So so epide and then it's fine, Well, yeah,
I mean like epidemiologists are like sort of at a
disadvantage here, like they have to use observational studies which
(13:46):
are messy, and like they make this sort of science
like slower and more uncertain, and so it puts a
lot of people in this tough situation where like they're
living with breast cancer or they're living with a kidney disease,
and they're like, is this because does this company put
a chemical into my water and I drank it for decades?
And there's like not a good answer to that. And
(14:07):
that is a really hard position I think to be
in as someone who lives in a lot of these communities.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
So was that also the case in there's Husick Falls,
New York, there's Parkersburg, West Virginia. What can you tell
us about those two towns, and specifically, I guess let's
start with with Husick Falls, what brought you there to
begin with?
Speaker 2 (14:25):
At some point in my reporting, I started reaching out
to other towns in the US that had befast contamination.
This has happened in like every part of the country,
and I started to feel like all the conversations I
was having were like echoing with each other, like not
exactly blending together, because each of these stories is obviously
(14:46):
like so particular and full of particular pain and frustration.
But I was like literally hearing some of the same
sentences from people about the contamination they were experiencing, And
I started to think of it like there were all
these parallel universes or like different towns, like sort of
putting on the same production of a play where like,
you know, there's a big company and the regulators who
(15:07):
don't know what to do, and the activists who push
for more information and accountability, but like there's always the
same challenges, and the thing that's always missing is like
any national regulation or strategy for addressing this. And who
Sick Falls is one of the first places I saw this.
They dealt with pretty much the same exact thing Merrimack
dealt with a few years earlier, and the story starts
(15:29):
with this guy named Michael Hickey. His parents worked at
a Saint Gobain plant, so they also had a Saint
Gobain plant, sort of like Marrimad who falls in Whosick Falls,
New York. And then his father died really soon after,
he retired of kidney cancer, and Michael took it really hard.
He was like, really stunned, devastated. He told me, like
(15:51):
he couldn't sleep. And one night he was up late
sort of thinking about his dad's death and thinking about
this other person he was close to in town who's
a math teacher who had died young. So he started
googling teflon and cancer because he knew what they were
using at the Sincobaan plant that his dad.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Had worked out.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
He found the Sate study which I mentioned, like the
one that came out at West Virginia. He saw that
the stuff that his dad was working with was connected
to kidney cancer, and he started thinking like, is this
the thing that killed my dad? And basically like and
then he started thinking is my whole town drinking this?
Because that was the case in Parkersburg, West Virginia. You know,
the basis of the sate study is people who were
(16:31):
exposed through their drinking water. So Michael becomes convinced, like,
all right, I think my town is being poisoned basically,
but he has to like convince the mayor of Husick Falls, Yeah,
to look into this. The mayor asked the county. The
county is like, this isn't regulated, We're not under any
requirement to test for it. Don't worry about it. Michael's like,
(16:52):
come on, we gotta figure this out. I want to
get to the bottom of this. So he decides to
test the water himself. He like contract with this company
in Canada. They send him these like little vials. He
like goes into the McDonald's and, like he told me,
it felt like he was James Bond, like he was
like doing a heist sor. He was like, He's like,
you know, I know it's like legal to take water
(17:13):
from a drug star, but like, yeah, I just felt
he was like going around like taking water samples, sends
it out, results come back. There's a ton of PFOA
in the town's water. Like the town's drinking water has
four hundred parts per trillion of PFOA which at that
time it was above the level that the EPA was
saying was okay, it was like above the EPA's health
(17:34):
advisory level.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
I have a very hard time with numbers like this,
Like four hundred, four hundred sounds like a lot, and
then a trillion sounds like I don't even a huge
about it. Yeah, So then I'm like, oh, four hundred
compared to a trillion is nothing.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
One way to picture it, And like the way I've
heard people talk about it most is that it's like
one drop in twenty Olympic sized swimming pools. Oh, it's
like really tiny, like a tiny, tiny amount, but with
PFOA and p fast chemicals, tiny amounts are still harmful.
And that was like one of the hard things I
(18:07):
think for regulators to understand that like even in these tiny, tiny,
tiny amounts, the health effects still exists. The science shows
And now you know, just for some context, the EPA's
regulation in drinking water is four parts per trillion. So
if you think about like four parts petrillion being now
what the EPA says we need to hold ourselves to,
and so that compared to four hundred parts pertrillion is
(18:29):
you know, that's like an order of magnitude.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Another thing to know is that the EPA four PFOA
and PFOS, these two like legacy p fast chemicals, says
if all things were ideal and we could get to zero,
zero is the goal because essentially no level of exposure
is safe, like no level of these chemicals are safe
to drink. And I think that was something that was
(18:52):
really vindicating, maybe for lack of a better word, for
the folks I've talked to in Merrimack who were sort
of like at this meeting and saying like, how can
you be saying that in Marangle level was thirty parts patrillion,
so not as high as falls, but not as low
as the EPA. And they were sort of saying, like,
how can you say this is safe to drink if
we don't even you know, know.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
I'm trying to think through how to visualize the numbers
that you're talking about. Yeah, and the fact that zero
is actually what you're supposed to.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Have both like strive for.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
The EPA is like four is fine because science slash
practicality it sounds.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Like yeah, and like we can't It would be really
really really really really hard to get the last sort
of four parts patrillion out of the water. But another
thing to know about these chemicals is like we can't
excrete them very easily. Oh and so when you are
drinking water, say I'm drinking water with like four parts
(19:48):
pertrillion of be Fast for my whole life, it's like
it builds up.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Where does it build up in the body kidneys?
Speaker 2 (19:54):
It builds up in the blood, which is one of
the reasons that scientists have had trouble sort of like
identify buying exactly what the health impacts are because it
circulates and so it like reaches all of your different organs,
and that's one of the reasons scientists think. It's like
it affects so many different parts of the body because
it can move around in your blood so much. But
(20:15):
when scientists measure the levels of pfat in humans and
we all have this in our blood, I mean, ninety
nine percent of us have this in our blood. We
measure that in parts per billion, So that's like a
thousand times more than a part pert trillion. So the
equation is I just did that. There's a calculator on
the CDC's website where you can plug in, like here's
how much parts per trillion I'm drinking? How much do
(20:36):
I have in my blood? And I did it for
I Where I live, we have like four point nine
parts per trillion in our water according to the latest testing.
And I have like a certain number of parts per
billion in my blood because it builds up that much
over time.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
The original site for all this was Parkersburg, West Virginia, Right,
Can you talk about why that's considered like, oh, this
is the ground zero of people figuring out pfo's first round.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Yeah. Probably the best way to start is like sort
of the history of these chemicals and how they were created, Okay,
because that'll like help you understand why DuPont, this DuPont
Plan in Parkersburg is so important. So these chemicals have
like a really fascinating history. It goes back to World
War Two and it starts with the chemical that we
(21:32):
now know as teflon. Okay, this was invented in nineteen
thirty eight by a chemist at DuPont totally by accident.
He was like working on refrigerants like chlorofluorocarbons, which were
like the thing that room that was on there. He
was like that was his thing. Good track record Yeah,
he accidentally created this stuff, teflon, and it blew people's minds.
(21:54):
It was like extremely slippery. It was like the slipperiest
thing anyone had ever seen, and it was really resistant
to the elements. It was really durable, and the guy
who invented it basically said he couldn't find anything in
his lab that would dissolve it, so like he threw
everything he could at it, and like he couldn't get
it to break down, and DuPont shelved it. It was
like too expensive to manufacture. They couldn't like create it
(22:17):
very easily. But then the US military got really interested
in it, and so they were trying to make atomic bombs.
And it turns out when you're trying to enrich a
lot of uranium, you need something that doesn't break down.
It's like really really strong, And DuPont ramped up their
production of teflon through this relationship with the US military,
(22:42):
and then after World War Two, DuPont started to find
consumer applications for this stuff. So this is like the
rise of teflon pans and cleaning products and raincoats and
like they were putting this on everything basically, and as
all these products were coming out. Another company, three M,
(23:03):
invented a related chemical called PFOA, which is the thing
we've been talking about that turned out to be really
useful for like manufacturing teflon and so many of the
things that teflon is in. PFOA is also part of
because PFOA, you know, helps create teflon. And as they
were creating these chemicals, scientists with DuPont and Threem were
(23:24):
also studying their health effects, so they were testing them
on rats. Some of the rats died, others had like
problems with their eyes and their livers and their testicles
and their kidneys. They tested on dogs. Two beagles got
doses of this chemical and they died within two days.
They tested the blood of their employees and saw that
(23:44):
their employees had this stuff in their blood.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
This is this is DuPont did this testing.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
DuPont and three M. Yeah, okay, And then based on
what DuPont knew about pfoa's effects on pregnant rats, they
actually switched female employe is at this West Virginia factory
out of areas where they were using PFOA. So they
they they were reacting to what they were seeing, which
was that this was potentially harmful. And by the nineteen eighties,
(24:11):
you know, these companies knew that this chemical was toxic
to animals, they knew it was getting into human bodies,
and they knew it was accumulating. Yeah, but they didn't
report those findings to the US EPA or health officials,
even though they were supposed to. And so the first
time all of this really became public was in the
(24:33):
early two thousands in West Virginia.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
And this all starts with a man named Wilburt Tenant.
So he's sort of like the origin story here, and
I imagine him very connected to like some of the
activists I've talked to in Merrimack who repeated his story
in some ways. I actually don't know if he had.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
A mus I feel like a should have as.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Wilbur Yeah, yeah, it's great, it's a great name.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Yeah, very sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
So he lives on this farm near a DuPont plant
in Parkersburg, West Virginia, where they're using tethlon and PFOA.
He has a lot of cows, and he starts noticing
that the creek that like runs through his land into
his cow pasture is really foamy. So there's like looks
like someone porta bottle soap in it. There's like all
this foam and he's like, oh, that's weird. And then
(25:23):
his cows start getting really sick, and he made this
series of videotapes that I watch from my reporting. They're
really hard to watch, and he records these cows that
have died and they just are like totally emaciated. They're
like they look awful, they're super skinny, they're really sick.
And here's there's videos where he's like doing his own
(25:44):
autopsies of these cows, basically like trying to say, like,
I've worked with cows my whole life, I've never seen
internal organs that look like this before. Like these cows
are really really sick, and they're they're sick in a
way that I have never seen. He's really torn up
about it. I mean, he's losing so many cows, and
also like all the fish and other wildlife on his
(26:05):
land are getting sick. And Wilbur becomes convinced like all
of this has something to do with this landfill that's
really closed to his farm, and the landfill is where
DuPont is dumping their stuff. So he's convinced that it
has something to do with DuPont, and he tries to
get state officials involved, but basically he's like, nobody would
touch this issue.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
What year was this kid?
Speaker 2 (26:29):
This is in like the nineties, okay. And then finally
he finds this lawyer, Rob Blot, who's this environmental lawyer
who mainly represents chemical companies. He's not like an environmental
justice lawyer. But Wilburt Tenant convinces him to sue DuPont
in the year nineteen ninety nine, and through that lawsuit,
(26:49):
rob Blot finds all these internal documents from DuPont that
basically document that they knew this chemical could be harmful,
that they had been testing it, that they knew it
was getting into people, and that they knew it was
getting into the drinking water supply in the Ohio Valley.
And so this really kicks off a bunch of lawsuits
and EPA enforcement actions. Rob Blot sends a letter to
(27:12):
the US EPA and basically says, I think you need
to look at this. It was a big deal. There's
a movie made about it. Mark Ruffalo plays Rob Blot,
and honestly, like, after talking to Rob a lot amazing
casting there. But when I talked to Rob a lot
about this, he said one of the hardest things for
him in this whole process was, you know, even after
(27:34):
the lawsuits were over, the EPA didn't do the one
thing he really wanted. And remember this is after the
C eight studies, So this is after scientists have said
there are probable links between this chemical and like these
six illnesses. But the EPA for so long didn't make
enforceable regulations about how much of this stuff could be
in public drinking water, and those are just starting to
(27:56):
be implemented.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Like now, why Because if I'm hearing you right, the
three M and the DuPont tests were in the eighties
and it wasn't until the two thousands that there was
any discussion around regulation. So what accounts for this obscene
gap when people knew. Was it just companies suppressing it?
(28:19):
Or was were there other failures along the way with
checks and balances that should have existed. Why didn't anybody
do anything for two decades or longer?
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Yeah? I think there are there are a few intersecting
reasons here. One of them is these chemicals are really
widely used, and the companies that make them have pushed
back on regulations and argued that, like the science on
their health impacts is still disputed despite you know a
lot of scientific evidence. There's also you know, I talked
(28:51):
to a former EPA regulator who was sort of in
charge of coming up with the regulations for water until
twenty seventeen. Jim's Betsy Southerland. She said essentially like, look,
the EPA really doesn't want to get sued and the
science behind their regulations has to hold up in court.
But there are these industry scientists who will say, you know,
even a thousand studies isn't enough, or like the science
(29:14):
that we have isn't enough to say these should be regulated.
And so that is one thing that really slows down
the process. And because there are so many of these chemicals,
you know, there's more than fifteen thousand of them, the
industry can argue that each of them need to be
studied individually and exhaustively before they can be regulated. And
(29:35):
the EPA takes, like Betsy says, roughly seven years to
study one new chemicals. So if you do the Napkin
math on that, that's like thousands of years YEA to
study all of these chemicals, and you know, other countries
have like different ways of managing this problem, like in
the European Union, chemicals aren't innocent until proven guilty. Like
companies that have to register their chemicals, they have to
(29:56):
submit safety data before they're allowed to be sold. That's
not how it it works in the US. But in
the US, you know, like until the Feds find a
more efficient way to regulate them, or the companies decided
it's not making them, it's really on the states. Like
states are the ones that have these communities like Merrimac
that are really heavily contaminated and they need to be
(30:17):
accountable to their citizens. And to me, it seems to
reinforce the here we go again of it all, Like
there's different communities all across the US dealing with the
same issue and having to resolve it on their own
because there's not federal regulation that allows for this to
have like a uniform solution.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Yeah, so are there any federal regulations? And then what
are some of the state and local regulations around this.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
It's a little complicated. There are federal drinking water regulations
for some PFAS chemicals. The Biden administration created regulations for
PFOA and PFOS, which are those two like legacy long
chain PFAS chemicals, and also for a few others. And
the Biden administration said public water systems across the US
would need to start testing for those chemicals and then
(31:09):
treating the water for them to get those chemicals out
of the water, and that originally was supposed to happen
by twenty twenty nine. Now the timeline for that is unclear.
The Trump administration has been pushing to sort of lengthen
that timeline. Twenty thirty one is the date that has
been sort of floated for compliance.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
This might be a really stupid question, but why is
the regulation on cleaning up the water instead of preventing
these chemicals from being in the water in the first place.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
That is an excellent question, and it is something that
I think a lot of p FAS advocates point to
when they say, you know, one of the slogans is
like stop the source. You know, we need to stop
these chemicals from going into the environment. With PFOA and PFOS,
those aren't really being used very much anymore. They're being
replaced by these like sort of newer PFAZ chemicals. But
(31:58):
because they're you know, quote unquote forever chemicals, they're in
the soil, they're in the water, they're really hard to
break down, and so communities are dealing with like legacy
contamination from these chemicals that even if they're not being
used anymore, it still exists in their water. So that's,
you know, one of the reasons for those legacy chemicals,
and industry will argue there are safe ways to use
(32:21):
these chemicals. They're essential for things like medical devices for
you know, stuff that we need like really durable chemistry
for and there's just been I think more of a
focus on the public health impacts of drinking these chemicals
than there has been on sort of like a wider
regulatory approach to stopping them before they go into the environment.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Wow, in each town that you've researched, there are people
like Wilbert right Calga. How would those everyday citizens' role
have played into creating protections? Like what did they? Basically
what I'm getting at is like I think a lot
of these examples people will read about or listen to
(33:06):
and feel kind of powerless. Right, we don't think we
can necessarily do anything about it. AI is probably the
most recent example, AI companies and tech companies keep lobbying
for no regulations and then they try to convince us
that there are no concerns with AI while people are
losing their jobs. Everybody knows it's bullshit, but we feel
kind of powerless about it. That's often true in the
(33:27):
in the climate space as well. So how have these
people's voices really been driving solutions and regulation?
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Yeah, I think New Hampshire is actually a really good
example of this. So when this started in Merrimack, New
Hamshire had no regulations on p fas and water. There's
a group of women in Merrimac. A reporter before my
time here called them the water Warriors, and the name
sort of like stuck. So they call themselves the water Warriors,
(33:55):
and they decided to get elected to public office. They
ran and won. See it's in New Hampshire's like massive legislature.
And this one woman, Wendy Thomas, who I spoke with
for the story, said she basically would hang out in
the cafeteria at the State House and like go up
to people and say like, Hi, I'm Wendy Thomas. Have
you heard about PFAS chemicals? And I think like part
(34:18):
of that is just like people I think get sort
of you hear like an acronym like that, and you're like,
I don't know, I don't know if I want to
start thinking about things like It's just it's hard to
break into and it's hard to wrap your mind around.
But these women spent like a really long time wrapping
their minds around it and doing a bunch of research
and then went to the state House and basically said,
(34:40):
you know, this is a huge problem and we need
to do something about it. And over the course of
a few years, New Hampshire lawmakers adopted one of the
lowest standards for PFOA and pfos at the time in
the whole country, and it was enforceable, and so public
water systems in New Hampshire had to test and treat
(35:01):
their water, look for these chemicals, get them out of
the water if they found it, and they got sued.
New Hampshire got sued by three m for creating that
standard eventually drop a lawsuit. But I talked to a
regulator about this who basically said, you can't be scared
of getting sued. You just have to follow the science.
And that was what I'm sure did We looked into it.
We you know, worked with a toxicologist. We spent a
(35:23):
lot of time looking at this, and we decided the
science shows us these things need to be regulated, and
here's how they need to be regulated, and then they
created a regulation. And I think stories like those can
make this like sort of dense chemistry issue feel more
real for people.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Yeah, it sounds like it. I also, since we're here,
we go again, I want to briefly look into the
future a little bit as we sort of close up.
When you look at this and you're the expert on this,
what's the next for the future of Merrimax water, But
then what does the future look like for communities across
the country who we're close to factories that still exist
that have these chemicals them.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Yeah, So in Merrimac, Saint Cobain is shutdown and the
town has filtered its public water system. They actually voted
to raise the rates like basically to have everyone in
town pay to filter this public water system at like really,
I think they like doubled the cost of the water rates,
(36:23):
and people in town voted for that. They were they
felt so strongly that like, even if we have to
pay for this, we need to filter this water, so
the public water system in Merrimac is filtered.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
Now.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
There are lots of people who have private wells in
New Hampshire who get their water from you know, a
well on their property instead of from like the public
water system, and many of them are still waiting. It's
been a decade now since this became public to get
treatment systems paid for by Saint Gobain or to get
connected to public water systems, and Saint Gobain is supposed
to be sort of coordinating that and paying for those
(36:57):
people who are sort of within a ring that they've
legally decided is like the boundary for where the contamination went.
But even regulators say they know that that's not the boundary.
They know the contamination exists like far beyond the boundary.
So for those people, you know, there's another state program
where they can get help sort of testing their wills
and treating them. And there's still an ongoing class action
(37:19):
lawsuit in New Hampshire that hasn't been settled yet. There's
a lot to get into there, but one of the
major issues has been medical monitoring, which is like the
idea that okay, like you know, I drank pfast for
a certain number of years, I drink PFOA for a
certain number of years, What's going to happen to my body?
I want to get like cancer screenings. I want to
have I want to have like more regular doctor's visits.
(37:41):
And I want the company that put this chemical in
my water to pay for that right. And that was
an issue that went to the New Hampshire Supreme Court.
Companies that like Saint Obain and another company in the
state argued at the New Hampshire Supreme Court that medical
monitoring wouldn't be feasible because so many people have been
exposed to the chemicals, that it would be too expensive
(38:02):
and it would overwhelm the courts. And I was sitting
in the room while this is happening, and one of
Saint Cobain's lawyers said to one of the judges, you
and I have never met someone in Southern New Hampshire
who wouldn't be part of this class. Like, if we
allow medical monitoring, every single person in Southern New Hampshire would.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
And that's the reason not to do it.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
And that's the reason not to do it. And the
and the New Hampshire Supreme Court agreed with the companies,
and so medical monitoring is not allowed in New Hampshire
and people can't make claims for that.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
Is there any criminal liability for the people at these
companies three M, DuPont, et cetera, who knew about this
and didn't say anything like, Okay, great, I'm glad you're
moving your you know, some of your employees into a
different kind of area so that they're not exposed. But
if you've been hiding this from everybody, and you're that
much of a piece of shit, and all these people
(38:54):
are getting sick and dying, why is there no or
is there is? There is in jail? Tell me somebody's
in jail.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
Well, I actually don't know if anybody. I don't think so,
but I don't want to say for sure nobody's But
DuPont got the biggest fine at the time in EP history,
went to DuPont over you know, their non disclosure of
the testing that they had done. And then three M
and DuPont have settled like huge lawsuits and have paid out.
(39:25):
At this point, I think it's billions of dollars.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
I mean, I'm less interested in the I mean, I
guess billions of dollars. It's nice to hear. We just
had that meta YouTube case, the addiction case, where I
think their penalty was only a couple of million dollars,
which is nothing for big tech companies. So I guess
if you're saying a billion with a B that that's reassuring.
But I'm the asshole who wants somebody in jail. Yeah, well,
(39:49):
otherwise nothing's preventative. These companies will always have billions of
dollars to pay a fine. Yeah, so it'll pass it
on to the consumer. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
DuPont and Dream have paid billions of dollars to settle
these these people claims and that money is going to
like remediating water systems.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Oh good.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
And there are still ongoing, like there's this ongoing class
action lawsuit involving Saint Gobain in New Hampshire. Saint Gobain
has settled lawsuits in other places in New England. And
I think the legal arguments around this I find really
fascinating because you know, how do you assign responsibility or
find accountability for something that's everywhere? And these chemicals are everywhere,
(40:29):
and they're in all of us, and there are so
many of them, and I think it's like a big
challenge legally to figure out how to assign responsibility and
accountability and like sort of who pays for this massive
cleanup project if we decide that it should be a
massive cleanup project.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
On the individual side, then for people listening a should
they be worried about their own top water? And then
you know, if I suddenly found pfoas in my drinking water,
like what am I sport? What should I do?
Speaker 2 (41:00):
You? Yeah, people ask me this question all the time,
and I bet it's sort of like how worried to be?
It's like, you know, we all have different risk tolerance,
Like you know, maybe people smoke and like, so we
choose our risk, is what I'm trying to say. So
knowing that you are exposed can help you choose your
(41:20):
risk because I think many of us don't know the
level of the sets in our waters and we don't
get to choose like whether we're drinking it or not.
One way to figure out if it is in your
water is by calling your public water utility. So many
states and many communities have already done testing, either through
something called the Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule, which required like
(41:42):
large water systems to test for these chemicals, but not
to treat for them. Like for example, I live in Conquerd,
New Hampshire. I googled Conquered New Hampshire water test results,
and on my public water utility website there's a report
that shows from twenty twenty three when they tested and
how much PFEST was in my water. Okay, if your
public water system hasn't tested, they likely will be required
(42:05):
to in the coming years based on those new EPA regulations,
so you can find out through that testing. If you're
on a private well, many states have programs to like
help you figure out how to test your own water,
so you can check in with like your environmental regulators
in your state and then reducing your exposure. Also, you know,
it's not just water is one of the main exposure
routes for this, but it's also like in our dental floss.
(42:26):
It's in you know, your teflon pan, It's in a
lot of things. It's in your my raincoat, my raincoat literally,
And there's the ability to sort of like look at
what you are using, yeah, and decide if you want
to keep using those things or if you want to
switch to like cast iron for example, which I did,
(42:46):
and with water in particular, there are ways to filter it,
like all water filters are not created equal when it
comes to forever chemicals, but it does require a little
bit of extra sort of thought.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Okay, so then what's your personal relationship with water? But
then also, you know you mentioned using a cast iron pan.
What's your relationship with these chemicals too?
Speaker 2 (43:07):
Yeah, I I don't know if this is the right approach,
but I try not to think about it too hard
in my personal life, okay, because I have you know,
I looked up what my drinking water has in it,
and I felt like good about the levels that my
drinking water has. It's slightly above the EPA's four parts
(43:29):
of pert trillion, but it's under New Hampshire's standard, and
I felt like spending a ton of money filtering like
the point five extra that's above the EPA's standard wasn't
sort of like I wasn't ready for that. So I felt,
I feel okay about my drinking water. I try to
see like the big picture, which is that like, sure,
we are all exposed to these things in really major ways,
(43:52):
and like it's really empowering to know how much you
are exposed and knowing how much I am exposed has
helped me figure out how to be a little bit
chill about it nice. So I don't know if that's
a good answer, but yeah, that's helpful there.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
Mara Happlamasien is a climate change and environmental reporter for
New Hampshire Public Radio and the host of the documentary
podcast Safe to Drink. To hear more from Mara and
the in depth reporting they did behind the stories we
talked about today, listen to Safe to Drink. Wherever you
get podcasts, Here we go again, as a production of
iHeart Podcasts and Snaffo Media in association with New Metric Media.
(44:33):
Our executive producers are me kalpen ed Helms, Mike Falbo,
Alissa Martino, Andy Kim, Pat Kelly, Chris Kelly, and Dylan Fagan.
Megan tan is our producer and writer. Dave Shumka is
our producer and editor. Our consulting producer is rom And Borsolino.
Tory Smith is our associate producer. Theme music by Chris Kelly,
logo by Matt Gosson, Legal review from Daniel Welsh, Caroline
(44:57):
Johnson and Megan Halson special thanks to Glenn back Listen
Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lane Klein, and everyone at iHeart podcasts,
but especially Will Pearson, Carrie Lieberman and Nikki Etour. Thanks
for listening. Everybody, tell your friends, write a review.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
All of this helps.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
I appreciate you listening, and until we go again, I'm
Kel Penn
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