Always Trust Your Inner Voice

For decades, 3M and DuPont and the other companies that manufacture “forever chemicals” or per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances or PFAS, have known that their chemicals made people sick and caused birth defects. The US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) has also known a lot for much longer than we have.

Over the past few years, as the public became increasingly aware of the serious health threat caused by exposure to PFAS chemicals in drinking water, USEPA has issued health advisories for only 2 of the more than 12,000 PFAS chemicals known to exist. For example, in 2008 the USEPA advisory for perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) was set at 400 parts per trillion (ppt). Due to immense pressure, USEPA lowered the health advisory to 70 ppt in 2016 for the cancer-causing PFAS chemicals in drinking water and they have yet to pass enforceable limits, likely due to the powerful industry lobby.

Figure 1. Ten states have proactively set stronger drinking water protections while USEPA has not.

Due to the efforts of Attorney Rob Bilott, the largest health study of human health impacts from chemical exposure showed connections to kidney and testicular cancer, pregnancy-induced hypertension, high cholesterol, thyroid issues, and ulcerative colitis. Since, studies have shown connections to reduced vaccine…