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Speaker 1

00:00

-♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ Our main story tonight concerns chemicals. The substances that, along with spaghetti, Heineken, and human arms, should never be kept in a vat in your neighbor's garage. Specifically, we're gonna be talking about a particular class of chemicals tonight called PFAS, which stand for Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances. They go by a wide variety of chemical names, like all of these, and they are used by recognizable brands like Gortex and Teflon, among many, many others.

Speaker 1

00:29

But the main thing they have in common is that they make surfaces that don't get stuff stuck to them, which is something a lot of us care about, although arguably, some more than others.

Speaker 2

00:39

Missy. Yes, Chef?

Speaker 1

00:40

If you saute scallops in a nonstick pan, they won't stick! That's why it's called fucking nonstick! I don't know what nonstick means in Texas, sweetheart, but fuck me!

Speaker 1

00:51

You know, as tempted as I am to mock Gordon Ramsay, as a British person who's also inexplicably made a career out of shrieking obscenities in Americans and not understanding Texas, game has no choice but to recognize game. And while I scream, you scream, he screams, we all scream for nonstick pans. There's just 2 big problems here. First, these chemicals have been linked to a massive array of health issues.

Speaker 1

01:15

High exposure to these 2 major PFAS alone have been linked to high cholesterol, ulcerative colitis, pregnancy-induced hypertension, thyroid disease, testicular and kidney cancer, and decreased response to vaccines, which is clearly terrible, although, also shouldn't really be that surprising to you, seeing as the original name for this show was That Thing You Like Is Bad with Sadie Longlegs. And second, PFAS are what's known as forever chemicals. Studies have estimated they have lifetimes in the thousands of years. And that combination of toxicity and longevity is a real problem, as 1 chemical engineer tried to explain to Congress a few years back.

Speaker 3

01:51

It doesn't go away. This is a man-made chemical. We just passed the baton to our generations of kids.

Speaker 3

01:59

In fact, If you were to incinerate and cremate me, I would technically be a fluorochemical hazardous source. The Teflon mesh that's used in my hernia produces a very toxic gas and decomposes to something called devil's piss, which is hydrofluoric acid. You can't kill this beast. You can only control it.

Speaker 1

02:21

Yeah. That doesn't sound great, does it? Also, it is hard to believe there's something called Devil's Piss that isn't Gordon Ramsay's very real line of alcoholic sparkling water, Hell's Seltzer, which you can apparently get in flavors such as Mean Green, Berry Inferno, Nicker Twist, and That's Forked. Hell Seltzer for people who hate water and themselves.

Speaker 1

02:43

But the thing is, that man is absolutely right, to an extent that you may not currently realize. The world is basically soaked in the devil's piss right now, and not in a remotely hot way. So tonight, we thought we'd take a look at just how bad these substances are, how long some of their major manufacturers knew about it, and how hard this will all be to fix. And let's start by looking at 1 of the most ubiquitous PFAS.

Speaker 1

03:05

PFOA, also known as C8, because of its 8 carbon molecules. 3M started selling C8 back in 1951 to the chemical giant DuPont, which then used it to make Teflon, which it marketed through ads like this.

Speaker 2

03:19

I used to be a slave to scraping and scrubbing pots and pans. But I've been liberated by Teflon. Food doesn't stick to Teflon like it does to other things.

Speaker 2

03:30

See?

Speaker 1

03:31

Okay. I used to be a slave is just not something that should be coming out of a white child's face, unless it's Pinocchio after he becomes a real boy. And even then, he's still not really free, is he? He's a slave to society and a prisoner of his own mind, just like the rest of us.

Speaker 1

03:45

Your nose might not be growing anymore, gnocchi, but make no mistake, you are lying to yourself. But the thing is, by the time that ad aired, 3M and DuPont already knew that these chemicals accumulated in humans and animals, that they didn't degrade in the environment, and that they could increase the size of the liver in rats, rabbits, and dogs. So the warning signs were very much there before they had a white child slave claim that Teflon liberated her from the back-breaking labor of scraping muffin trays. And in the decades that followed, they learned even more.

Speaker 1

04:15

In 1981, 3M found ingestion of PFAS caused birth defects in rats. And when they told DuPont about this, and DuPont then tested the children of employees in their Teflon division, they found that of 7 births, 2 had eye defects. Information that, interestingly, DuPont did not make public. And by 1991, it had gotten unambiguous warnings that it then spectacularly ignored.

Speaker 4

04:39

3M told DuPont that under no circumstances should you put it in waterways. It's right there in the document. Don't put this in the waterways.

Speaker 4

04:50

But at the end of the day, they start dumping so much C8 into the water, that they at 1 point lose track of how much they've actually put out there.

Speaker 1

04:59

Wow. Harmful chemicals are just not something you should lose track of. They're not your car keys or your middle child. Oh, 0, I'm sorry.

Speaker 1

05:07

I lose him in a supermarket 1 time and suddenly I'm a bad parent. Calm down. It's not like he was gonna run out of food. But wait, it gets even worse.

Speaker 1

05:17

2 years after that, in 1993, a DuPont memo shows that for the first time, they had a viable candidate to replace C8, 1 that appeared to be less toxic and stayed in the body for a much shorter duration of time. But the company decided against it because the risk was too great. Specifically, the risks of their bottom line and the fact that Teflon products were worth roughly a billion dollars in annual revenue to them, proving, once and for all, corporations truly are people, specifically, sociopaths. And yet, despite knowing all of that, DuPont kept pushing for Teflon to be used in more and more places.

Speaker 1

05:51

And in this ad from 1994, they basically present it as being wizardry.

Speaker 5

05:56

Chemistry is the practice of magic. People think of Teflon, they think of frying pans. Teflon is not 1 thing.

Speaker 5

06:04

Putting Teflon on a surface will stop bugs from crawling up trees. They'll fall right off the tree. Teflon as a chain lube is something I've come up with for bicycles. You know, only DuPont makes Teflon.

Speaker 5

06:15

You can use it in satellites, on fabrics, or leather. When's the last time you heard about a leather raincoat? --BOTH LAUGHING --MICROPHONE BEEPS You can let your imagination run wild. It's not often that you get to make something new in this world.

Speaker 1

06:27

Okay. There's a lot that I don't understand about that ad, including why it was shot by someone who's still testing out the zoom function on their camcorder, or why that incel Santa giggled so menacingly at the idea of a non-stick leather raincoat. Although I will say, if that's his bar, it does seem pretty easy to make something new in the world. I'll show you.

Speaker 1

06:45

Leather umbrella, leather flower, leather snake, and leather Elmo. That is 4 great ideas I just came up with, and I'm not even a PhD in a Cosby sweater. And if you are wondering where the EPA was in all this, you should know they were more than a little hamstrung here. Under the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, the EPA can require testing for chemicals only when it's been provided evidence of potential harm.

Speaker 1

07:08

A setup which largely allows chemical companies to regulate themselves, which is an absolutely terrifying sequence of words right up there with incoming FaceTime from Jeffrey Toobin. Nobody wants to hear that! And even when the EPA has taken steps, they've been pretty limited. For instance, in 2016, they issued a health advisory for 2 of the biggest PFAS, including C8, setting an acceptable level for them in drinking water of 70 parts per trillion, which incidentally, a lot of people still think is too high.

Speaker 1

07:39

But also, crucially, an EPA health advisory is non-enforceable. And no 1 is going to respect a rule if it's not enforced. It's like 1 of those signs that everyone sees but ignores, like, please take 1 on a candy bowl, or please no sculpture fucking at Madame Tussauds. I'm doing it.

Speaker 1

07:56

I'm taking 2 fun-sized snicker bars, and then I'm gonna fuck Wax Michael Buble. I'm doing it. It's already done. Get over it." And that lax level of oversight, combined with dumping on a scale so high they lose track of it, has had severe consequences.

Speaker 1

08:12

When epidemiologists studied the medical history of people who lived near a DuPont plant, They found residents with high exposure to drinking water contaminated with C8, had much higher rates of kidney and testicular cancers. And it was even worse for the people working inside the facilities, as this man, who worked in 1 of DuPont's testing labs, and has since been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and rectal cancer, can attest.

Speaker 6

08:35

People have handled that product on their job, every day, day in, night out. And then when we went to 12-hour shifts at 12 hours at a time, We heated it and breathed it. Every day.

Speaker 7

08:48

Ken worked on a four-man team at DuPont's plant, testing C8 between 1974 and 2001. Of the 4, he's the only 1 still alive. The People I loved, they died.

Speaker 7

09:02

And we were like a family.

Speaker 1

09:04

Look, that is clearly awful, but you don't actually even have to live in a town where PFARs are dumped, or work in a factory that makes them to be affected here. Remember, PFARs last a long time. So if they sink into the groundwater or are released into the air, they can travel and they can bioaccumulate.

Speaker 1

09:21

Meaning that they build up in your body over time. And that brings us to a shocking discovery. Because in the 1970s, DuPont and 3M started testing workers to check the levels of PFAS in their blood. And 3M wanted a control group with clean blood so that they'd have a baseline.

Speaker 1

09:37

But as this environmental activist points out, the company quickly realized something truly horrifying.

Speaker 8

09:43

There was no clean blood. They tested kids, they tested adults, they went to Asia, they went all over the world, and everywhere they looked, practically, they found their chemicals in people's blood. Eventually, they did find some clean blood.

Speaker 8

10:01

It turned out it was the blood that had been taken from army recruits and archived, saved, at the start of the Korean War.

Speaker 1

10:10

Yup, it's true. In fact, a CDC study has found that C8 is now in the blood of 99.7% of Americans. Meaning, at the very least, Vin Diesel and I finally have something in common.

Speaker 1

10:22

Every single thing about our genetic makeup, general attitude and vocal timbre is dramatically different, but when it comes to toxic chemicals in our blood, it's potato, potato, my friend. Or should I say, my family. And while DuFont may be a particularly stark example, they are far from the only entity involved here. The military uses PFAS in foam to extinguish fire, so PFAS have built up around military bases.

Speaker 1

10:46

And many companies have used a lot of PFAS in a lot of their products. For instance, a shoe company called Wolverine used PFAS in its waterproof Hush Puppies. But it was only after local reporting that residents near its factory in Belmont, Michigan knew to get their water tested. And for 1 family, the McNaughtons, the results were pretty striking.

Speaker 1

11:05

And before you watch this, remember, the EPA's acceptable level in drinking water is 70 parts per trillion.

Speaker 9

11:12

They'd lived in their house about 3 years when Tobin learned she was pregnant with their son, Jack.

Speaker 10

11:18

We were really excited. I wanted that to go really well, so I drank 8 glasses of water a day. I kept track.

Speaker 10

11:25

I ate really healthy.

Speaker 9

11:27

In April of 2016, Jack was born.

Speaker 5

11:30

He had an immense appetite for water. He was thirsty all the time.

Speaker 9

11:34

Tests showed almost 2,000 parts per trillion of PFAS in the McNaughton's water. As soon as they could, Tobin and Seth had Jack's blood tested. The results?

Speaker 9

11:45

484,000 parts per trillion, More than 100 times the national average.

Speaker 10

11:51

He's the highest level of PFAS that we know right now of any child in the United States. He gets sick often and his vaccinations haven't worked.

Speaker 1

12:01

Wow. That is incredible. Usually when your child is the highest in something, your instinct is to brag about it, but good luck finding a bumper sticker with, my child has the highest level of PFAS in the United States on it. Nobody wants that shit.

Speaker 1

12:15

And look, I have to tell you, Wolverine says that it's moved to fix the problem for homeowners in that area. Although you should know, it is just not a simple thing to go about doing.

Speaker 11

12:25

This is what I affectionately call Megatron. My whole home filter. This right here.

Speaker 11

12:32

But it goes through each of these tanks. These are full of granulated carbon and it goes through them in order and then comes out this 1 and is clean. So every week they come and test it at the intake and then also at the exit so that we know that the water is empty of that.

Speaker 1

12:53

Oh, great news! You did it, Wolverine! Problem solved!

Speaker 1

12:57

All it takes is a four-tank system, affectionately nicknamed Megatron, a spare room large enough to house it, and a weekly visit from a tank technician for the rest of your life. Water problem? More like, what's your problem? This is a system that fucking works.

Speaker 1

13:11

But clearly, a Megatron in every home is not a viable solution for this, or indeed, any problem. And maybe because of that, and definitely because of a court-approved settlement, Wolverine has since gone to the trouble and expense of switching that woman from her tainted well water to the municipal water supply. And yet, many companies are continuing to do the bare minimum here, or even trying to evade responsibility. DuPont, for instance, settled a class action lawsuit with residents of the town where it was dumping C8, and shortly afterward, agreed to eventually phase out using the chemical, which sounds good.

Speaker 1

13:44

But, there are some significant asterisks on that. Because while they did stop using C8, they simply switched to a different kind of PFAS, something called Gen X, spinning the manufacturer of it off into a separate company, Chemours. Now, did they do that so that any legal liability wouldn't stick to them and instead slide right off them like bugs on a Teflon tree. Who can say?

Speaker 1

14:07

Apparently not me legally. What I can say is that while Camorra's claims Gen X is safer, scientists still have significant concerns about its presence in our water supply.

Speaker 12

14:18

This is, in my view, more of a risk than we should be forced to take. This compound's a member of a class of compounds that are all thought to be able to make people sick with cancers of various kinds, other kinds of dysfunction. We don't know the full extent of it.

Speaker 13

14:34

So with what these scientists do know, we asked them if they think the water is safe enough to drink.

Speaker 12

14:39

Nope. I drink tequila straight, but I won't drink tap water.

Speaker 1

14:43

Well, that doesn't sound good. If casual Friday scientist over here won't drink the tap water, there might be some cause for alarm. And while we have just focused on a handful of individual PFAS tonight, there are hundreds, if not thousands of them.

Speaker 1

14:57

So the problem is, if and when Gen X is eventually found to be harmful, companies can presumably just move on to another 1, then on to another 1, and so on and so on. And at this point, you might be thinking, holy shit, this is absolutely terrible. Should I start immediately throwing away all of my pans? Well, I will start with the good news.

Speaker 1

15:15

Meghan McCain is no longer on The View. This rock looks like Cookie Monster. And no, you don't necessarily need to throw away all of your pans. Experts say that it's very unlikely PFAS will be released if the pans aren't overheated or scraped.

Speaker 1

15:30

Now, you're under slightly more risk of exposure from clothing that contains PFAS, which is, unfortunately, most stain-proof or waterproof fabrics, including certain items from companies like Lululemon, North Face, and Patagonia, or indeed, from food wrappers that contain PFAS, which are, unfortunately, used by multiple chains, including some of the packaging at Starbucks, Chick-fil-A, and Subway. And all of these companies insist that they are working to remove PFAS from their products completely in the coming months and years. And I hope that That is true, but we have heard things like that before, and yet, here we fucking are. And it is not like it is easy to know which products you're buying do and don't contain PFAS.

Speaker 1

16:10

It's not like they have to carry labels stating, -"This product contains devil's piss." -$PFAS LAUGHS Although, that's actually a very good idea, and they should absolutely have to do that. But the bigger issue is, no matter how responsible consumers choose to be, if the factory that makes the chemical does not dispose of its waste properly, it's likely getting into your bloodstream anyway, which is pretty frustrating, as the activist you saw earlier points out.

Speaker 8

16:34

No 1 said, hey, you know, I'm good with a little Teflon chemical in my baby's blood. No 1 said that. They said, I love these pans.

Speaker 1

16:43

Exactly. No 1 loves pans so much that they'd be willing to put poison in their baby's blood. Well, to be honest, 1 person does, but in his defense, the pans don't fucking stick! Now, if you are worried about what the water is like where you live, you can go to this address, ewg.org slash PFAS map.

Speaker 1

17:03

And if you don't like what you see, you can consider solutions like drinking bottled water or using a reverse osmosis filter. But the truth is, it shouldn't just be on us as individuals. Because PFAS should not be in most consumer products at all. And as companies seem unlikely to all take them out voluntarily, we badly need legislation limiting their use to only essential items like certain medical devices and protective clothing.

Speaker 1

17:27

But not just that. We need to change the way that we regulate PFAS completely. Instead of regulating them 1 at a time as we do now, we should do it as an entire class of chemicals. This would enable the EPA to more effectively regulate not just the PFAS already in use, but replacements like Gen X when they are introduced.

Speaker 1

17:46

And in the meantime, if companies are gonna keep leaning in on the convenience of their products without acknowledging the cost, maybe we can help them by providing their ads with some much-needed context.

Speaker 14

17:58

Chemistry is the practice of magic. Like abracadabra, zonks and wizards. All chemistry.

Speaker 14

18:05

People think of Teflon, and they think of frying pans, big hot plates with smooth, long sticks.

Speaker 4

18:11

Teflon is not 1 thing.

Speaker 14

18:12

It's disease, sickness, and It's fucking everywhere. That's DuPont magic. Ta-da!

Speaker 14

18:19

It's not close to my mouth, right?

Speaker 4

18:21

You know I'm self-conscious about the mouth. You know about that.

Speaker 14

18:24

Did you say yes or no? Putting PFAS on a surface will stop bugs crawling up trees. I'll tell you how.

Speaker 14

18:32

They'll contract ulcerative colitis and just fucking die in front of your eyes.

Speaker 6

18:37

Eek, eek, eek, eek, eek. That's a little bug right in

Speaker 14

18:40

front of your eyes. Dying. You know I'm self-conscious.

Speaker 14

18:43

You know I'm self-conscious about

Speaker 4

18:44

the mouth and the close-up stuff and the spitting.

Speaker 14

18:46

You said it's gonna be a normal shoot. No focusing on... No...

Speaker 14

18:50

Nothing like that. Nothing like that. I put PFAS in a bicycle chain. Why?

Speaker 14

18:55

Because I suffer from chronic insomnia. Probably got it from PFAS. And they're everywhere. The same chemicals that are in me are in you.

Speaker 14

19:04

And even in your child. I put something in your child. And when this stuff gets into water, whoa, that's the real bippity boppity magic. Bippity boppity magic.

Speaker 14

19:16

Bippity boppity magic. Contamination levels like you've never seen. It's incredible. When was the last time you heard about a leather raincoat giving you kidney cancer?

Speaker 14

19:26

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. You can let your imagination run wild. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Mine's running right now.

Speaker 14

19:33

It's not often you get to put something toxic in the world.

Speaker 1

19:41

That's our show. Thank you so much for watching. We'll see you next week.

Speaker 1

19:44

Good night.