So this is one of the vernal pools that we have studied quite extensively. There's a lot of mosquitoes. The Hockomock is ground zero for
Eastern Equine Encephalitis, a very rare but fatal disease. This is why the state of Massachusetts does the aerial spraying for mosquitoes. And if the state hadn't been
spraying millions of acres that was contaminated with PFAS, I don't know if our
contamination would be so bad. So for me, the Hockomock swamp, and these vernal pools are
really where it all started. This whole messy story. PFAS are an urgent public health threat. They're toxic, persistent, and being found in the
environment across the country. I personally think the magnitude of the PFAS contamination in
the United States, particularly, is probably our worst
environmental disaster yet. It is impossible to avoid
PFAS because it's in our water. It's in our soil. It's in the rain that's coming out of the sky. PFAS at the moment is
being found in the blood of every human alive. The last blood bank sample that didn't have PFAS in it
came from the Korean War. And nobody is treating this
with the care that it needs to be treated because it is
such a huge, huge problem. The threat of PFAS is
one that emerges over time. It takes a long time to manifest, and therefore it makes it
really hard to be able to protect oneself and understand
the extent of the danger. PFAS stand for Per-and
Polyfluoroalkyl Substances. It's actually an enormous
class of chemicals. There are definitely thousands,
probably even more than 10,000, and they've
been around for decades. They're often called forever chemicals because what they consist of
is a carbon atom connected to a fluorine atom, and that's what makes them
super, super persistent. PFAS chemicals are used
for water-resistance, oil and grease-resistance, stain-resistance. So your Teflon pans, your
non-stick pans that you use, those are coated with PFAS. It makes them really good at
resisting high temperatures. Think firefighting foam. It reduces friction, think brake fluid. They take a long time to degrade. They stick around in the
environment, in our bodies. It's this persistence that
makes them really valuable for lots of products. It's also what makes them so dangerous. Ultimately, I came across Kyla Bennett and this discovery that
she had made that led to this cascade of fallout
regarding PFAS contamination. Don't laugh at my cashews,
please. We buy bulk. We're making vegan yogurt. I used to buy the vegan yogurt
in the store until I realized that the plastic containers
might contain PFAS. So I decided to make my own and I make it in a glass container. Even my Vitamix, I got
rid of the plastic one and got a metal one. My name is Kyla Bennett and I am the science policy advisor for a nonprofit called PEER, which stands for Public Employees for
Environmental Responsibility. I worked at EPA for 10 years, but I actually became a
whistleblower while I was at EPA. I didn't even really know
about PFAS until 2018. I was contacted by an EPA employee who was concerned about PFAS in the town of Ayer, Massachusetts. I started going down the PFAS rabbit-hole and decided to test the water
of two towns: my own town, Easton, which I thought would be clean because we have no
firefighting training facility. We have no industry to speak of. I also tested the town of Sudbury and to my shock, Easton's water was more contaminated
than Sudbury's water. It was a mystery as to why. Easton, Massachusetts
didn't have any of the typical markers of PFAS contamination such as firefighting training
facilities, military bases, chemical plants. So there was no obvious reason
at the time why Easton's water would've had PFAS contamination. But it did. Come on. Chai, come on out. Chai. In May of 2020, I was
diagnosed with a brain tumor, a very rare type of brain tumor. And I had two surgeries. I was in the ICU for a week.
It was very difficult. They ran genetic tests on me. They looked at 84
different genetic markers and said that my brain tumor
was likely from some kind of environmental toxic. Then she started thinking
about the Hockomock swamp. There was a strange cluster of towns in southeastern
Massachusetts, where we are, that had contaminated water. And I couldn't think of
what we all had in common other than the fact that we get sprayed with this pesticide on
an almost yearly basis. Could the reason Easton's
water is contaminated be related to the fact that state
officials in Massachusetts had been using a pesticide
sprayed over the Hockomock and vast other areas around the state to curb a deadly mosquito-borne virus? Could those two things be related? The state of Massachusetts
engages in aerial spraying of a pesticide called Anvil 10 + 10 to try to kill these mosquitoes. So I decided that we
needed to test the Anvil. She procured some jugs
of Anvil 10 plus 10. It's manufactured by a
company called Clarke Mosquito. And we tested Anvil and found PFAS, including one of the most dangerous and most studied PFAS: PFOA
in alarming levels. PFOA. P-F-O-A is a
long-chain PFAS, that is kind of the poster child for long chains. Long chains have this kind
of backbone of carbon atoms of eight or longer, and
that is what makes them so incredibly useful. It makes them so incredibly persistent and so incredibly dangerous. They can take years, if not more than a
thousand years to degrade. Researchers have found PFAS
chemicals in seemingly every place they've thought to look. They've found them in the umbilical cords of newborns in Taiwan. They've found them in the
breast milk of moms in Sweden. They've found them in
the blood of polar bears. Researchers have linked PFAS
exposure to various cancers, infertility, birth defects. The EPA now says that there
is absolutely no safe level of consumption of PFOA. That means that any
amount that you consume increases your risk of cancer. Late 2020, early 2021, the EPA launches an investigation, tries to figure out the answer. They actually went to
the manufacturer, Clarke. And they tested the pesticide
right out of the machinery and that didn't have PFAS. So they realized that it was probably leaching from the
plastic containers that Clarke used to store their
pesticide and sell it in. The PFAS were being
generated by the process of fluorinating the plastic. And then they were leaching
into the pesticide as a result. Now, this pesticide Anvil 10
+ 10 was stored in what's called a fluorinated container. It's a special type of plastic
that undergoes a process in which it's exposed to fluorine gas in order to strengthen it. And this is a very useful type of plastic that is used not just
by pesticide companies, but it turns out throughout the economy. My name is Graham Peaslee and I'm a professor at the
University of Notre Dame. My background is in nuclear chemistry or nuclear science in general. 315 goes to 2.96 KEV. And then the 6.4 KEV
is iron going to be 679. I measured fluorine using a technique that people hadn't used before and began a long, now 10 year journey into where is PFAS, where does it go and how do we measure more
quickly and more accurately? I met Kyla Bennett virtually
during the Covid Pandemic and Kyla and I, we got hold
of a fluorinated container that was sold as such, and we got hold of a non-fluorinated container of the same company. And we designed a study where we would see if we could reproduce
the EPA early results of what they saw in a plastic container. And then they also put
some ketchup and mayonnaise and olive oil and things in
them and tested those as well. If somebody used it for food, could it directly enter the food? And the answer is yes, it could. I wasn't shocked, but I was horrified. I was, I think I cried. Ultimately, the EPA determined that just one company
in the US is responsible for fluorinated plastic and specifically a process called post-mold fluorinated plastic. And that company is Inhance Technologies. Inhance Technologies is based in Houston, was started in 1983 by two guys. Neither the EPA nor Inhance has disclosed
Inhance's customers. But I was able to get my hand
on some internal Inhance documents to understand just how pervasive fluorinated plastics were, where in the economy they were used and what types of
companies were using them. They're used by some of the most recognizable consumer brands. Estée Lauder, L'Oréal, BMW. They're used to hold fluids
that you have in your home that you see in store shelves
every day: weed killers, household cleaners,
cosmetics, shampoo, body wash. Fluorinated plastics are pervasive throughout the US economy. So once EPA realized that the PFAS in Anvil was coming from the plastic containers,
they came down hard on Clarke and they made Clarke pull back
all of their existing stock and change their packaging. Clarke almost immediately
launched a recall costing them millions of dollars. Ultimately, the EPA issues
what's called a Notice of Violation to Inhance. This was in March of 2022. The production of these long-chain PFAS through fluorination is illegal. You shouldn't be doing
it and you must stop. Incredibly, Inhance says
no, we're not going to stop. They do say, we're going to
try to change the process to limit the amount of PFAS we generate, but ultimately we're
just not going to stop. Inhance submitted thousands of pages of documents saying, yeah, okay, we're creating these PFAS,
but it's really no big deal. Ultimately, the Department
of Justice gets involved, later that year, with a lawsuit
against Inhance saying, you are violating US Chemical law and asks the court to
find it in violation. Now Inhance in response, their legal argument essentially
boils down to two points. One, the EPA doesn't have
the authority to regulate existing uses of these types of chemicals. And the second argument
that Inhance is making is that the amount of PFAS it's generating through fluorination is so small that it's effectively not a problem. When Clarke Mosquito had to recall its Anvil 10 +
10 housed in fluorinated containers, they had to
figure out where to go next. The ultimate answer was a
company called BP Polymers. So remember the, the main
like three peaks? Right. This one peak right here. So the blue sample is
the one with Kortrax. Kortrax it's, the technical term
is called polyamide, which is the fancy way of saying nylon. Kortrax is different than fluorination in that Kortrax, being a
nylon, it actually part of the container itself,
it's added to the plastic, and then during the
extrusion process, binds with the plastic and becomes
part of the container. Because Kortrax is
included into the manufacturing of the bottle, it
doesn't require this post fluorination treatment. It's not exposed to fluorine gas. I am optimistic that over
time those manufacturers who are currently using
fluorinated HDPE or using the fluorination process, I think they will continue
to transition away from that. Inhance continues to fluorinate
plastics to this day, despite the EPAs demand that it stop, despite the lawsuit from the Justice Department. Kyla Bennett and other
people will tell you that this incident and what the EPA has and hasn't done raises
really tough questions about whether the EPA is able and willing to hold polluters accountable, to really crack down when necessary. I believe there are two reasons that EPA is not on top of this. One is it's really a huge can of worms, and I think that they don't even know how to begin to approach this. I think they don't want to start a panic. I think they don't know
how or who to go after. I'm not optimistic. I, I can't sleep. For years, I used one of the shampoos that Inhance fluorinates the containers of. And the
skin on your scalp is the thinnest skin in your body. And I can't help but think, is that what gave me my brain tumor? I have very little hope on this. Very little hope, but
I can't stop fighting. I just, it's not in my
nature to stop fighting.
