0:00

This episode is brought to you by Progressive

0:02

Insurance. Hey listeners, whether you

0:04

love true crime or comedies, celebrity

0:06

interviews, news, or even motivational

0:09

speakers, you call the shots on

0:11

what's in your podcast queue, right? And

0:14

guess what? Now you can call the shots

0:16

on your auto insurance. Enter

0:18

the name your price tool from Progressive.

0:21

The name your price tool puts you in charge

0:23

of your auto insurance by working just the

0:25

way it sounds. You tell Progressive

0:28

how much you want to pay for car insurance. Then

0:30

they'll show you a variety of coverages that fit

0:33

within your budget, giving you

0:35

options. It's easy to start a

0:37

quote. You'll be able to choose the best option for you.

0:39

It's fast. Now that's something you'll want to

0:41

press play on. It's easy to start a

0:44

quote, and you'll be able to choose the best option

0:46

for you. It is just one of many ways

0:48

you can save with Progressive Insurance. Quote

0:51

today at progressive.com to try the

0:53

name your price tool for yourself and join

0:55

the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.

0:58

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Pricing

1:00

coverage match limited by state law. For

1:10

Esme de Pris, it started with

1:12

waterproof mascara. Then there

1:14

was shampoo. Basically,

1:16

once she started looking around for

1:19

chemicals known as PFAS, she

1:21

realized they were everywhere. And

1:24

when I say everywhere, I mean

1:27

everywhere, including

1:31

probably in Esme herself. Researchers

1:34

have found PFAS everywhere. They've thought to

1:36

look, you know, the umbilical cords of

1:39

newborns in Taiwan, the breast

1:42

milk of moms in Sweden, polar

1:44

bears, even air and

1:46

rainwater worldwide. One

1:48

of the researchers told me that the last

1:50

blood bank example to not show

1:52

some level of PFAS dates back to the

1:55

Korean War in the early 1950s. Oh

1:59

my gosh. If you are

2:01

alive today, you have PFAS in you. S.

2:04

May is an investigative reporter. She

2:07

says the problem with PFAS, which

2:09

you might know is forever chemicals, is

2:12

their durability. Once a

2:14

PFAS is made, it doesn't go away. So

2:17

that means that once it gets in your body, once it

2:19

gets in the soil, once it gets in the water, it

2:22

just stays there. And because

2:24

we have so many roots of exposure now

2:26

to PFAS, they just keep piling

2:28

up and piling up. That

2:31

pile up has been linked to all

2:33

sorts of problems, from cancer to infertility

2:35

to high cholesterol. Even

2:38

worse, because these chemicals don't

2:40

decompose, they simply slosh around,

2:43

moving from our stuff to our bodies,

2:45

to the soil and the water, and back

2:47

again. That's why

2:49

last week, the Biden administration took what

2:51

seemed like a big step towards eliminating

2:53

the forever chemical threat. Today

2:56

for the first time ever,

2:58

the Environmental Protection Agency set

3:00

new federal standards on certain

3:02

so-called forever chemicals in drinking

3:04

water. The EPA's new standards

3:07

will require utilities to reduce certain

3:09

forever chemicals to the lowest levels

3:11

they can be reliably measured. And

3:13

officials say this will reduce exposure

3:15

for 100 million people

3:18

and help prevent thousands of illnesses, including certain

3:20

types of cancers. Now advocates praise the... Do

3:22

we want to know how much PFAS is

3:24

all around us, day in and day out?

3:27

Do you want to know? It feels like once

3:30

you know, you can't unknow it. That's

3:32

true. Once you know, you can't unknow it. These

3:36

chemicals got added to so many products

3:38

over the years, and

3:40

there's no or very little requirement

3:43

to disclose that necessarily. And

3:46

that's part of the problem, that opacity. If

3:48

we don't know where these chemicals are, we

3:50

don't know how to avoid them. Once

3:53

we know how saturated the

3:55

world around us is by these chemicals,

3:57

what's supposed to happen next? Yeah,

4:02

I mean, a lot of scientists and researchers

4:04

want the government to take stronger action. I

4:06

mean, there's even a movement underfoot

4:09

to pressure the EPA, for example,

4:11

to just ban PFAS chemicals

4:13

outright. How likely is that to happen? Yeah,

4:16

I mean, I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon.

4:21

Today on the show, the forever

4:23

chemical dilemma and why a

4:25

big step by the EPA feels

4:28

to so many like a half measure.

4:31

I'm Mary Harris. You're listening to What Next? Stick

4:33

around. This

4:48

podcast is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

4:51

Most of you listening right now are

4:54

probably multitasking. Yep, while you're listening, you're

4:56

probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or

4:58

maybe even grocery shopping. But

5:00

if you're not some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you

5:02

can be doing right now. Getting

5:04

an auto quote from Progressive Insurance. It's

5:07

easy and you could save money by doing it right from your

5:09

phone. Drivers who save by

5:11

switching to Progressive save nearly $750 on average and

5:13

auto customers qualify

5:16

for an average of seven discounts. Discounts

5:19

for having multiple vehicles on your policy,

5:21

being a homeowner and more. So

5:23

just like your favorite podcast, Progressive will be with you 24

5:25

seven 365 days a year. So

5:28

you're protected no matter what multitask

5:31

right now, quote your car

5:33

insurance at progressive.com to join over 28

5:35

million drivers who trust Progressive, Progressive

5:38

Casualty Insurance company and affiliates, national

5:40

average 12 months savings of $744 by

5:42

new customers surveyed who

5:45

saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Social

5:49

savings will vary. Discounts not available

5:52

in all states and situations. This

5:54

episode is brought to you by Discover. When

5:56

it comes to your finances, Discover wants you to know they

5:59

are the credit cards. that is always there for you.

6:01

With 24-7 US-based live

6:03

customer service, everyone has

6:06

the option to talk to a real

6:08

person anytime, day or night. Yep,

6:10

that means no more waiting for quote, normal business

6:13

hours just to get a hold of someone. We

6:15

are talking real service from real people whenever

6:18

you need it. Get the

6:20

customer service you deserve with Discover,

6:22

limitations apply. See terms at

6:25

discover.com slash credit card. So

6:29

to start, can you just explain what are

6:31

PFAS? Some people may know

6:34

them as forever chemicals. The

6:36

name PFAS might make you think that

6:38

it's just one chemical, right? But the

6:40

word PFAS is short for per and

6:43

polyfluoroalkyl substances. Now, that's a mouthful, but

6:45

it's an enormous class of many thousands

6:47

of man-made compounds. Like you

6:50

said, they're sometimes called forever chemicals. And

6:52

that's because they don't break down. They

6:54

are incredibly persistent. And that's because they

6:57

are made up of chains of carbon

6:59

atoms bonded to fluorine atoms. And

7:02

those carbon fluorine bonds are super

7:04

strong and super stable. So

7:07

that's what makes them useful. That's why

7:09

PFAS chemicals have become ubiquitous. Because they

7:11

repel water. They repel grease if they're

7:13

in your pan. They repel all sorts of

7:15

things. They make eggs slide off

7:17

your nonstick cookware. They help rain jackets

7:19

and school uniforms and mascara to be waterproof.

7:22

They're in carpets to make them stainproof. They

7:25

can withstand high temperatures. So they're in firefighting

7:27

foams to put out fires. They're

7:29

in dental floss, food packaging, brake fluid, you

7:31

name it. So they really are everywhere. And

7:34

it would be frankly hard to live in

7:36

modern day America and not come across things

7:38

every day with PFAS in them. When

7:41

do these chemicals become so common?

7:44

PFAS have been around since the 1940s, but

7:47

their application really took off

7:49

in the decades that followed as

7:51

companies realized how useful they were. And then

7:53

they invented new versions. And they began adding

7:55

more and more of them to more consumer

7:58

and industrial products throughout the globe. So what

8:01

that means is that PFAS are

8:03

found today throughout modern manufacturing. It's

8:06

not just consumer products. It's also

8:08

things like semiconductors, medical devices, aircraft,

8:10

solar panels. These are

8:12

really a ubiquitous element of the

8:14

modern economy today. When do we start to

8:16

realize they might not be so good for us? Well,

8:19

for decades, most of what was known about

8:21

PFAS was kept secret by the companies that

8:23

made them. That included evidence of

8:25

risks to human health. But

8:27

it's really been in the last decade

8:29

that researchers have begun to research this,

8:32

and the scientific research has really piled up,

8:35

showing that certain PFAS compounds can be

8:37

toxic, and thus that possibly all of

8:39

them may be. In

8:42

recent decades, a number of lawsuits forced

8:44

chemical giants like DuPont and 3M to

8:47

come clean about how they've been using

8:49

forever chemicals. DuPont, for

8:51

example, was the inventor of Teflon,

8:54

a compound that makes pans nonstick,

8:57

and they began producing it en masse starting in the 1950s.

9:00

At the time, it was made using

9:02

a particularly dangerous kind of

9:05

PFAS called PFOA,

9:07

or PFOA. This is

9:09

a type of PFAS that sickened cows

9:11

on a West Virginia farm downstream of

9:13

a DuPont facility, and

9:15

the cows got so sick that their

9:17

teeth turned black, their organs turned green,

9:20

their mouths frozzed with thick white goo

9:22

before the animals simply got deranged

9:25

and then died. It's also

9:27

what two DuPont employees worked with before

9:29

giving birth to babies with disfigured faces,

9:32

and what lab monkeys were fed before growing so

9:34

ill they had to be euthanized. So

9:36

even trace amounts of

9:38

this one PFAS, PFOA, are so

9:40

dangerous, EPA now says that no

9:43

level in drinking water is safe.

9:46

So this is a type of PFAS

9:48

that had been made for decades, and

9:50

DuPont worked quite hard

9:52

for a long time to

9:55

make sure that that kind of evidence

9:57

of harm wasn't widespread. widely

10:00

known, wasn't publicly known, and thus

10:02

couldn't be acted on by the

10:04

EPA or any other regulatory regime. Eventually,

10:07

the EPA got wise and

10:10

banned PFOA outright. It

10:12

is now one of the few PFAS

10:14

that manufacturers cannot make anymore. But

10:17

remember, these are forever chemicals.

10:20

So the PFOA already in the environment, along

10:22

with all the other kinds of PFAS, that

10:25

is there for good and making its

10:27

way inside our bodies. One

10:30

study found that 97% of Americans registered some

10:34

level of PFAS in their blood. We

10:36

can ingest them, we can inhale them, we can

10:38

dermally absorb them. So they

10:40

continue to accumulate in our blood streams. And

10:43

because PFAS are used in so many applications,

10:45

part of the problem is just

10:48

that we're constantly being exposed in so many

10:50

ways. So you have multiple exposure routes, and

10:53

we have enough long term data to

10:55

link PFAS exposure to really

10:57

bad things like cancers and birth defects

10:59

and infertility. That

11:01

doesn't mean that all PFAS compounds cause

11:04

all of these things. There

11:06

are thousands of these chemicals, and not all

11:08

of them are going to act in the

11:10

exact same ways. But the more

11:12

alarming thing to me is that we just don't know.

11:15

PFAS aren't dangerous in the

11:17

way a hot stove is. You don't

11:20

touch them and they burn you immediately.

11:22

There isn't that immediate evidence of acute

11:24

harm. The harmful effects

11:26

take time to show up. They can

11:28

take years or even decades to manifest.

11:32

So we're in a situation now where PFAS

11:34

have become ubiquitous. They're all around us, but

11:36

we don't know all of the negative

11:38

consequences of that. And the data that we have

11:41

so far is just not reassuring.

11:44

Has that lack of information become a kind

11:46

of shield for the industry?

11:49

Because I imagine if you don't have information

11:51

that something is truly bad, it becomes

11:53

harder for the government to step in and say,

11:55

well, we just can't make this anymore. Absolutely.

11:58

I mean, zooming out. really broadly

12:00

part of the issue here is that

12:02

our environmental laws are based on the presumption

12:04

of innocence. The burden of proof

12:07

is not generally on industry to prove that

12:09

chemicals are safe. That really surprised

12:11

me when I learned that, you know, prior to

12:13

releasing a new drug, pharmaceutical companies,

12:15

for example, they have to conduct clinical trials

12:17

to prove that it's safe and effective. But

12:20

when it comes to chemicals, industry

12:23

is really more like the legal system. I

12:25

mean, it's a presumption of innocence until proven

12:27

guilty. So I heard

12:29

David Michaels, the former head of OSHA talk

12:32

about this concept. He referred to that as the

12:34

body and the morgue method. Like by the time

12:36

you can show a chemical is dangerous, that it's

12:38

killing people, it's too late. You

12:42

wrote a really interesting article laying

12:44

out how hard it is

12:46

to eliminate PFAS from industrial

12:49

processes. You focused on this one

12:51

company, Enhanced Technologies. They'd come

12:54

up with a way to make plastic

12:56

bottles more impermeable using PFAS. Can

12:58

you explain what they did just real quick? Yeah.

13:01

So the story began in 2020 when

13:03

an ecologist and an attorney named Kyla

13:06

Bennett made this discovery. There was a

13:08

pesticide that the state was routinely

13:10

spraying over her town in rural

13:12

Massachusetts to prevent this

13:14

rare but lethal mosquito-borne disease.

13:17

And she discovered that the pesticide contained

13:19

a number of PFAS compounds. Now,

13:22

like I said, the vast majority of

13:24

PFAS compounds are virtually unregulated, but some

13:26

of the ones that she found in

13:29

that pesticide were the exception. They were

13:31

considered so dangerous that the EPA had

13:33

effectively banned them and actually

13:35

thought that they were no longer being manufactured at

13:37

all. So the fact that she found them in

13:39

this pesticide was a big deal. And

13:42

then it became even more so when EPA

13:44

scientists pinpointed the source of that

13:46

contamination. It turned out

13:48

the pesticides manufacturer hadn't intentionally

13:51

added the PFAS compounds. The

13:53

PFAS compounds were leaching into the product,

13:55

rather, from the walls of a special type

13:57

of plastic container in which it came. And

14:00

that came from this company called

14:02

Enhanced Technologies. And Enhanced Technologies wasn't

14:04

just making containers

14:07

for pesticides, right? They were making

14:09

containers for all kinds of people

14:11

using this process that created PFAS.

14:15

Absolutely. So the EPA kind of started looking

14:17

into this. They learned of

14:19

this company called Enhanced Technologies. It's based

14:21

in Houston. Most people have never heard

14:23

of it. As I began

14:26

digging, I learned that Enhanced was

14:28

40 years old. It was owned

14:30

by private equity. It makes things crucial

14:32

to our everyday existence from 20 locations

14:34

around the world. And it's

14:36

long held a domestic monopoly on a process

14:39

called post-mold fluorination. So

14:41

this is a special process. It

14:43

strengthens the barrier properties of plastic

14:46

in order to prevent whatever is

14:48

stored inside, like solvents, essential oils,

14:51

other corrosive liquids from leaking or

14:53

leaching out. So

14:55

the problem is that enhanced process

14:57

of fluorination also results in the

15:00

unintentional formation of numerous PFAS

15:02

chemicals. And again, some of the worst

15:04

of the worst ones at that. And

15:06

those compounds can then leach into

15:09

whatever fluid you're storing in the

15:11

fluorinated plastic containers. And what

15:13

my reporting revealed was that this

15:15

problem goes far beyond mosquito spray.

15:18

I mean, that is to say fluorinated plastics

15:20

are used throughout the economy. They

15:22

are used to contain household

15:25

cleaners, weed killers, shampoo, body

15:27

wash, cosmetics, flavors, fragrances, enhanced

15:30

fluorinates, hundreds of millions of items

15:32

a year. It's not

15:35

just consumer companies, you know,

15:37

it's water treatment chemical providers, medical

15:39

disinfectant manufacturers. And

15:41

they've been used by some of

15:43

the world's biggest brands. So Estee

15:45

Lauder, L'Oreal, BMW. Also

15:48

I learned in my reporting that food companies

15:50

and large soda companies have utilized enhanced for

15:52

decades. Yikes. Did

15:55

enhanced even know that it was creating

15:57

this problem but with this fluorination process?

15:59

this? Enhance claims that they did

16:02

not know. You know, some people

16:04

are skeptical of that claim, but Enhance certainly says that they

16:06

did not know. The EPA didn't know.

16:08

They had never even considered plastics to be

16:10

a root of PFAS exposure before. So

16:13

this discovery really led to like

16:15

a cascade of fallout. The

16:18

EPA ordered Enhance to effectively stop

16:20

fluorinated plastic. The government watchdog that

16:22

Kyla Bennett works for sued Enhance.

16:24

The DOJ sued Enhance. The EPA

16:26

said again to Enhance, you must

16:28

stop. So was that that? Did

16:30

it stop? Incredibly, Enhance

16:33

simply said, no, we're not going to

16:35

stop. We've built our entire business

16:37

on this. We're going to change some things.

16:39

So the amount of PFAS we generate is

16:41

less, but no, we're not

16:43

going to stop. And they continue to

16:45

fluorinate this day. That seems insane. Yeah.

16:48

I mean, my, I remember kind of discussions

16:50

with my editors and they kind of couldn't believe it either,

16:53

but it's true. Enhance has really

16:55

fought hard in court. And actually just a

16:57

few weeks ago, they scored a big legal victory in the

16:59

fifth circuit, but it does really

17:01

show, I think this whole story, this

17:04

whole case shows how hard it

17:06

is. Even when the EPA

17:08

has this stated mission to

17:11

move to a PFAS free future, and

17:14

they know that a company is

17:16

producing PFAS, it's still

17:18

really hard under the laws

17:20

as written sometimes to get

17:23

a company to stop. When

17:25

we come back, what would it take to

17:28

actually limit the damage from

17:30

PFAS? Hey

17:41

there. Did you know Kroger always gives you savings

17:43

and rewards on top of the benefits on top

17:45

of our lower than low prices. And

17:47

when you download the Kroger app, you'll

17:49

enjoy over $500 in savings every week

17:51

with digital coupons. And don't forget FuelPoints

17:54

to help you save up to $1 per

17:56

gallon at the pump. Want to save even

17:58

more with a boost membership you'll get? get

18:00

double fuel points and free delivery. So shop

18:02

and save big at Kroger today. Kroger,

18:05

fresh for everyone. Savings may

18:07

vary by state. Restrictions apply. See site for

18:09

details. If

18:12

you want to understand what is happening in the

18:14

United States right now, you really need to understand

18:16

what's happening with the courts, the law,

18:19

and the Supreme Court. The battle

18:21

between democracy and whatever this cage match is

18:23

that we're witnessing, it's gonna be won and

18:25

lost at the ballot box, but it's also

18:28

gonna be won and lost in the

18:30

courtrooms. I'm Dahlia Lefkowitz. I

18:32

host Slate's legal podcast, Amicus, and

18:34

we are doubling our output, bringing

18:37

you weekly episodes from here

18:39

on in because how else can

18:41

we keep an eye on the

18:43

many trials of Donald Trump, the

18:45

conservative legal movement's assaults on our

18:47

rights, the Supreme Court's latest slate

18:50

of environmental gutting, gun safety, eviscerating,

18:52

cases on the docket. Follow

18:55

Amicus wherever you get your podcasts.

18:58

New episodes dropping every Saturday morning.

19:05

We talked about how the Biden

19:07

administration issued the

19:09

first national PFAS drinking water

19:12

standards last week. How

19:14

are Biden's new water regulations supposed to work

19:17

exactly? They essentially require local

19:19

utilities to begin testing drinking water for

19:21

a handful of the worst of the

19:23

worst PFAS compounds over the

19:25

next few years. And if they find

19:27

those compounds are present, they will

19:30

have to treat that contaminated water. And

19:32

will treating the water just get rid of the

19:34

PFAS? Because isn't it persistent? There

19:36

are various ways to filter out the PFAS.

19:38

I think it gets harder when you're talking

19:41

about destroying the PFAS, you know, like in

19:43

the filters, but at least you can, there

19:45

are ways to get it out of the

19:48

water. And, you know,

19:51

this new rule by the EPA,

19:53

it's a big deal. When the agency first

19:55

proposed these national limits on drinking water back

19:57

in March of 2022. The

20:01

head of the EPA, Michael Regan,

20:03

said they would prevent thousands of

20:05

deaths and reduce tens of thousands

20:07

of serious PFAS-related illnesses. You

20:11

know, I'm struck by the fact that

20:13

the EPA is only choosing

20:15

to have this drinking water

20:19

requirement for six chemicals when there

20:21

are more than 10,000 PFAS chemicals

20:23

that we know

20:26

about. Is

20:29

the idea to have just

20:31

an indicator, like we only need to test for

20:34

these six because it'll tell us what we need

20:36

to know? Or

20:38

is the agency going to miss something by only

20:40

looking for a few chemicals at a time? These

20:44

tests are definitely going to miss a lot of PFAS. Part

20:48

of the problem is we may

20:50

just not have the science to back

20:52

up, you know, a

20:54

regulation around that chemical because data

20:57

takes a long time to collect on non-harm.

21:01

There are definitely people that will say that

21:03

these rules don't go far enough. If

21:05

there are 10,000 or 15,000 types

21:08

of PFAS chemicals out there and these new

21:10

water rules are aimed at regulating

21:12

six of them, like that's a laughable

21:14

drop in the bucket, right? There

21:17

are plenty of people, again, pushing the

21:19

EPA to ban PFAS outright, as in

21:21

ban the entire cost of chemicals. So

21:24

we simply don't keep contributing to

21:26

this existing and already enormous environmental

21:28

load, but I'm not sure

21:30

anyone is optimistic about that happening anytime in

21:32

the U.S. Yeah. I

21:35

kind of wonder hearing the story of

21:37

what happened with enhanced technologies, whether

21:40

creating drinking water standards is

21:44

a way to get around chemical

21:46

companies like Enhance slow walking their

21:48

own accountability here. So

21:51

I actually spoke with Kyla Bennett yesterday about this.

21:54

I mean, what she'll

21:56

tell you is that, and she

21:58

used to work at the EPA. Kyla

22:02

Bennett thinks of it as the agency kind

22:04

of doing one thing with the

22:06

right hand and another with the left hand. I mean, she

22:09

finds these new water regulations really

22:11

hard to reconcile. The water

22:13

rules say, for example, there is absolutely no

22:15

safe level of consumption of PFLA. For

22:18

example, that's that one really super

22:20

toxic poster child PFAS. And

22:22

yet when it comes to the presence of

22:25

that same chemical in fluorinated plastic, the

22:27

EPA wasn't taken as drastic

22:29

of an action as it could. So

22:31

to make a long story short, it's very frustrating

22:33

for people like Kyla who watch

22:36

this happen and say, you know, great,

22:38

we're thrilled about the water regulations, but

22:40

can you please act

22:42

harder and faster on other

22:44

routes of PFAS exposure so we don't

22:47

even have them in our water to

22:49

begin with? Do

22:52

you ever imagine like a world without PFAS

22:54

and what it would look like? Because

22:57

we've talked about how it's used

22:59

in essential things and it's become so ubiquitous,

23:01

like this class of chemicals is just in

23:04

everything. It's keeping your couch from getting

23:06

stained. It's like keeping

23:08

your pants crisp

23:10

and, you know, not getting

23:13

rumbled or stained. Is

23:15

there something that would be lost in a world without PFAS? I

23:19

mean, the world would definitely be a

23:21

different place without PFAS. Obviously,

23:23

there are plenty of scientists

23:25

and researchers that say it would be a better

23:27

place, but PFAS have been around for decades. It's

23:30

become this slow moving disaster that's really

23:32

wonky and scientific, but it's really important.

23:36

So as I began poking around, I soon

23:38

became came across an article published

23:40

in a scientific journal and the single sentence

23:42

just jumped out at me as if it

23:45

was flashing in like bold red text on

23:47

my screen. It said, quote,

23:49

PFAS in consumer products often are

23:51

relatively easy to replace. And

23:54

quote, whoa. So I sat there

23:56

and I said, wait, what alternatives

23:58

to PFAS exist? no idea. It's

24:00

just... So alternatives to PFAS exist,

24:03

yes. It's just that companies aren't using

24:05

them. So we have an already enormous

24:07

PFAS problem and companies are just continuing

24:09

to voluntarily add to it. The answer

24:11

is yes. But it seems

24:13

like that's the opposite of what a company who's

24:16

making these chemicals would say. They'd

24:18

say like, we need this to make your

24:22

firefighting foam, to make like your

24:24

waterproof jacket, to make your pan, to

24:26

make your mask, like all kinds of

24:29

things, but especially essential things, like things

24:31

that keep you safe, things like medical

24:33

devices. Yeah. So certainly some companies

24:35

are trying to move away from PFAS. Some

24:37

companies are still sticking to

24:40

them. They often will deny the

24:42

science. That's a common tactic

24:44

of denying or downplaying

24:46

the science, saying it can't be as bad as

24:49

it is. Obviously, if a company is using PFAS

24:51

for any toxic chemical and they don't have a

24:54

legal or regulatory reason not to, and

24:57

they're continuing to make many, there's your answer.

24:59

But that brings up a point

25:04

about this idea of essential use. So

25:06

it is impossible to undo the

25:09

decades of human environmental exposure to

25:11

PFAS, but it's also not too

25:13

late to stop making the problem worse. And

25:15

that's worth dwelling on for a moment. One

25:18

way to do that is to

25:21

categorize how essential various PFAS uses

25:23

are and to identify

25:25

alternatives. So that's actually what researchers have begun

25:27

to do. One recent study,

25:29

for example, looked at the

25:32

use of PFAS in the production of

25:34

semiconductors and they decided that that was

25:36

currently essential, given the absence

25:38

of suitable alternatives. But

25:41

then you talk about the use of

25:43

PFAS in bicycle lubricants or household cleaning

25:45

products or waterproof mascara. Is

25:48

that essential? No, because non-fluorinated

25:50

alternatives exist and they're just

25:52

as effective. So given

25:54

their ubiquity, our exposure to PFAS

25:56

today is inevitable. That

25:59

doesn't have to be true. forward. You

26:01

know as part of your reporting you've

26:04

mentioned this woman Kyla Bennett

26:06

who you spent some time with. She's

26:08

a scientist and attorney in Massachusetts. She

26:12

worries that PFAS has made her sick, right? Correct.

26:17

She's totally upended her life to

26:20

try to avoid chemicals at this point, which

26:23

is so interesting to me. Like you talk about she

26:26

makes her own vegan yogurt so

26:28

that her food doesn't touch plastic.

26:31

Like she doesn't have carpets or

26:33

curtains. She's agonizing over buying a

26:35

new brand of butter because

26:37

she didn't know if the paper around the

26:39

butter somehow had PFAS in

26:41

it. How

26:43

did you leave your encounter with this

26:46

woman? Because to me

26:48

it's almost like she knows too much, you

26:51

know? But also she's

26:53

not wrong. Yeah

26:55

and Kyla would freely admit that

26:58

some people are going to hear that and

27:00

think she sounds totally crazy and sometimes she

27:02

feels totally crazy. So after

27:04

I left her house, I mean I

27:06

did change some things in my everyday life and

27:09

maybe they're small and meaningless but it at least

27:11

makes me feel a little bit better. You know

27:14

for example you know I use shampoo

27:16

bars now instead of

27:18

like a bottle of shampoo and

27:20

the benefit of that is I mean

27:22

first of all there's an environmental benefit. I mean it's

27:24

a lower footprint because it doesn't have the water

27:26

and the packaging but more importantly

27:29

the packaging. It's really hard to know if

27:31

a package of shampoo is

27:33

going to be made of fluorinated

27:35

plastic or not and so if I use a

27:37

bar of shampoo I just don't

27:39

have to you know worry about

27:41

it as much. I could

27:43

also see how it would make you mad that you have

27:46

to be your own personal EPA.

27:48

Yeah I mean there

27:51

definitely is I think

27:54

a wide misconception not just because things

27:56

are legal it means they're safe and

27:59

that's definitely Definitely not true. And

28:03

so people really have to do their homework. It

28:06

does really put a lot of

28:08

the burden of protecting ourselves on

28:11

us as opposed to, you know, government

28:13

authorities or regulatory agencies to protect

28:17

us for us. As

28:21

may, I'm really grateful for your time and for your reporting.

28:23

Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you

28:25

so much. Esme de

28:27

Pris is an independent investigative journalist.

28:30

You can find more of her work at

28:32

Esme de Pris dot com. And

28:38

that's the show. What next is produced

28:40

by Paige Osborne, Elena Schwartz, Rob Gunther,

28:42

Madeline Ducharm, and Anna Phillips. We

28:44

are led by Alicia Montgomery with a little boost

28:47

from Susan Matthews. Ben Richmond is

28:49

the senior director of podcast operations here at

28:51

Slate. And I'm Mary Harris. Thanks

28:54

for listening. Catch you back here. Esme.

29:10

Without the ones like you who work

29:12

tirelessly to keep things running, everything would

29:14

suddenly stop. Hospitals, factories, schools

29:17

and power plants, they all depend

29:19

on you. No matter the weather,

29:21

emergency or time of day, you're

29:23

the ones who get it done.

29:25

At Grainger, we're here for you

29:27

with professional grade industrial supplies. Count

29:29

on real-time product availability and fast

29:32

delivery. Call, click grainger.com or just

29:34

stop by Grainger for

29:36

the ones who get it done.