Kayla’s Reviews > They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals > Status Update

"One molecule turned out to be particularly abundant--trifluoroacetic acid, or TFA... The researchers found that this chemical alone accounted for 90 percent of forever chemicals detected in Germany... Similarly, when researchers from Emory University measured the levels of various PFAS in tap water from homes in Indiana, they found that TFA accounted for 85 percent of the total."

"Her tiny daughter, who had entered this world just five months earlier, had 75,000 parts per trillion PFOA in her blood--far higher than most people in Hoosick Falls, where the average was about 28,000 parts per trillion. This meant she would be vulnerable to serious health problems for the rest of her life."

"...the forever-chemical saga was following an entirely predictable pattern. Our regulatory system presumes most chemicals are safe and, when problems arise, investigates them one by one. As a result, when companies come under pressure... they usually replace it with unvetted substances that have similar structures... the substitutes often turn out to be just as harmful, though this can take years to establish."

"By the mid-1990s, when the Tennants' cows started dying in droves, the levels had soared to more than eighty times DuPont's internal safety threshold. DuPont even dispatched employees to monitor the creek around the clock and dump anti-foaming agents into the water when black foam appeared."

"Then, around 1980, DuPont approached the couple about buying some acreage abutting their home for a landfill... But Jim had been having health problems, including unexplained fainting spells, and they needed money for medical bills. Plus, the company assured them it would only dispose of nontoxic material... so in 1983 they agreed to sell."

It all makes me just wanna fight someone.

"Up until the 1960s, most Americans saw synthetic materials as an unqualified good--marvelous inventions that enabled rapid social progress. Then in 1962, the naturalist Rachel Carson published Silent Spring."

I know I have a problem at this point that I lose my mind every time Rachel Carson is mentioned xD I fangirl so freaking hard. It's my girl!

"But in the mid-1960s, after a fishing trawler dredged up a barrel, resulting in some embarrassing publicity, DuPont began secretly dumping Teflon sludge into unlined pits around its Parkersburg [West Virginia] plant--and directly into the nearby Ohio River."

I'm pretty sure WV owes a lot of its poverty to practices like this -- chemical dumping and coal leaving. Infuriating...

"What was the mystery substance accumulating in the blood of so many... There were, he discovered, two very different fluorinated substances detectable in people's blood. One was the fluoride ion, which occurs naturally in certain rocks and clay and, thanks largely to Hodge, was being put in a growing share of the nation's drinking water. The other was fluorocarbons, which were almost exclusively man-made."

"...in the hopes of sowing "doubt as to the origin" of the pollution and possibly pining blame on other factories. Hodge and the Public Health Service began an ambitious campaign to persuade communities across the entire country to put fluoride in drinking water, touting the benefits for dental health. Their real goal, though, was to convince the public that fluorine compounds were safe..."

"After touring the orchards, Sadtler concluded that "practically all the vegetation" had been damaged... At a grade school near the plant, he noticed that something had eaten away the surface of the windows... Other pastures in the area were littered with dead chickens and horses. Sadtler also met farmers who were struggling with strange symptoms, including bouts of vomiting and muscle weakness."