America's PFAS Problem

摘要

SANDY WYNN-STELT AND HER HUSBAND, JOEL, bought their house near Rockford, Michigan (population 6,000), in 1992 because of the quaint rural setting: Christmas tree farms nearby and wild turkeys in the front yard. They lived there happily until March 2016, when Joel died suddenly of liver cancer. A year later, Michigan's environmental agency showed up on the doorstep to test Wynn-Stelt's well water. That's when the still-grieving Wynn-Stelt learned that her house sat across the street from an old dump site of a now-defunct leather tannery. The tannery had used PFAS to waterproof its shoes, and the chemicals had been seeping into the area's groundwater for years. PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a group of over 5,000 synthetic chemicals that have been manufactured in the United States for decades by a trio of corporations: 3M, DuPont, and DuPont's subsidiary Chemours. Nicknamed "forever chemicals," PFAS don't biodegrade—in fact, the only known way to destroy them is to incinerate them at 2,000℉.