The ‘forever chemicals’ you probably have inside you

CLIP You’re listening to a Frequency Podcast Network production in association with City News.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings So you’ve probably got chemicals in your body. Yeah, no kidding, you probably think everybody does. And that’s true. And our bodies can get rid of most of them on their own. But not these ones. These ones are here, in you and me forever. They’re in a lot of the things you consume every day. We know that they are harmful. The American Center for Disease Control calls them a public health concern. But hey, there they are. And major companies are still making them every single day. How does this happen? And why? What are these forever chemicals? And how are they different from the ones your body can break down over time? And just what kinds of things are these forever chemicals in anyway? I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. This is the big story. Benji Jones is an environmental reporter at Vox. Hey, Benji.

Benji Jones How’s it going?

Jordan It’s going well, thank you for joining us.

Benji Jones My pleasure to be here.

Jordan It’s always fun to learn about some new terrifying thing that is in my body somehow.

Benji Jones Yes, yes. This is definitely terrifying. Jordan So let’s let’s start from the beginning, then what are forever chemicals? And how do they get into our bodies?

Benji Jones Yeah, so forever. Chemicals are also known as PFAS, which is an acronym that stands for Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl substances. So it’s definitely a mouthful, but PFAs is the kind of common term for it. And these are a very diverse and complex group of chemicals that all share a chemical property. And that property is basically that they all have a chain of carbon and fluorine atoms, and that chain is really difficult to break. And that makes these chemicals really hearty and difficult to break down. And so they last for a really long time in the environment, hence the term forever chemicals.

Jordan And how do they end up inside us?

Benji Jones So many ways. So I think like one of the most important things to know about PFAS, or forever chemicals is that they’re just in so many consumer products, and they’re also in our water system. And so one thing that the industry loves about these chemicals is that the y resist oil and water that is like the value of p FAS for a product like nonstick pans or raincoats or even upholstery. So they have this, this value, which is to be oil and water resistant. But because that’s so valuable, and they’re so widespread, you can find them in all kinds of products. And those products can leach PFAs into the environment. So we can get them into our bodies by eating fast food that’s wrapped in oil resistant wrapper that has p fats in it, or we can get it in our water, especially near sites where there’s higher level of concentration of PFS that’s leached into the groundwater. So they are so pervasive that we can really get them into our body in a variety of different ways. And unfortunately, we know from research that basically all people on at least in the United States have some level of PFAS in their blood.

Jordan What does it mean to have P fasten your blood? Like what does it do to you practically?

Benji Jones This is also a bit complicated. What PFAS can do is essentially mimic other things in your body. So they can kind of latch on to cell membranes, and in doing so trigger different functions in your body. And I was talking to a researcher at Harvard who studies PFAS. And she basically said that the chemicals that are most dangerous are chemicals that can mimic other functions in your body. And I think about it as like, your body is a very complex machine with all kinds of functions. And PFAS kind of go in and start tinkering with things. And that can set off a number of different reactions that are negative. And just to give you a kind of summary of what those are, PFAS in the in the body had been linked to things like decreased fertility, weight gain, or the ability to lose weight, it can affect the immune system of children and make vaccines less likely to take hold. So it’s really just been linked with a lot of different health effects because it is just going into your body. It’s not decaying, it’s building up and then kind of starting to alter various processes.

Jordan So you mentioned that they’re in basically everything. I’m gonna get a little bit deeper on that in a couple of minutes. But first, did we just not know about these complex chemicals when we made this stuff? Like it does seem crazy to me that we would do that knowing the downside.

Benji Jones I mean, that’s a really good question. What I’ve read suggests that we’ve known for decades and by we, I mean, the chemical industry has known for decades that there have been some negative effects. But the distance between knowing that there are effects on the corporate side, and actually taking regulatory action can sometimes be vast. And on top of that, these chemicals are so pervasive that it can be hard to regulate them. And it takes a lot of research to understand just how bad they are. I mean, speaking of research, like we know, too, we know a lot about two specific kinds of PFAS, they’re they’re called P Foss, which i s PFOS, and PFOA. And they’ve been kind of the most commonly used in the past. And so we know a lot about the damaging effects of those PFAS. And often when people talk about PFAS, they’re really just talking about those two chemicals. But we know that there are lots of other chemicals. I mean, there are over 4000 different kinds of forever chemicals. And we don’t have research on on the vast majority of them. So it’s just this is a really big burden from a regulation standpoint,

Jordan Who makes these chemicals? Are they made separately from all the products that they’re in? Is it a byproduct of the way they’re manufactured?

Benji Jones That’s a great question. So they are made by chemical companies that will then sell the PFAS to different companies that produce types of consumer products. When I posed the question of kind of who is to blame for all the PFAS in our environment? A chemist told me that it’s basically three companies 3M, DuPont, and Chemours, which are all chemical manufacturers that are producing these chemicals

Jordan And huge companies.

Benji Jones Oh, yeah, some of the biggest companies in the US. And they kind of each have their own history of of controversy around PFAS, as well.

Jordan Did you ask them about it? Yeah. So I did ask all three of these companies about PFAS. And I was actually pretty surprised how quickly they all responded. Oftentimes, I’ll send out a request for comment and just won’t hear anything back. But in this case, they were all they all seemed very quick to reply. And as if this was a real concern for them. So Dupont, which has been called out for producing PFAS, basically said that it’s no longer the company that used to be and it sold off a lot of its assets, including the company that became key Moors. And so they’ve kin d of offloaded a lot of their liability around PFAS. And then 3M and Chemours as both kind of defended the importance of these chemicals for the use of products and mentioned just kind of how valuable they are for consumer products and so forth, and said that they’re trying to manufacture them more responsibly. But yeah, these companies have not had a lot of positive press around PFAs.

Benji Jones One of the things I think they said to you was the world depends on our products.

Jordan Yeah. So a spokesperson at Chemours has mentioned that the world depends on our products. And we are committed and I’m quoting here to manufacturing these essential chemistries responsibly. Are they essential chemistry is would there be any other way to make some of the things that we take for granted? I’m using your first examples of nonstick pans and raincoats without these things?

Benji Jones I mean, my answer is definitely like I don’t, I think that once we know that there is a chemical that is possibly linked to health effects that are negative, we should very quickly move to something else. I mean, we’re not talking about a chemical that is saving lives every single day, we do know that it can be useful in firefighting foam to put out oil based fires. But in general, like these are, we don’t we’re not going to die if we don’t have nonstick pans, but we might die by ingesting a lot of pee fast. So I would say it has absolutely the burden is on companies to come up with better alternatives. And I think that’s happening to some degree. But I just totally disagree that there is no other alternative that is going to work.

Jordan I’m glad you mentioned firefighting and the foam. Because as I understand it, and do correct me if I’m wrong. That is one of the most pervasive ways these things get spread.

Benji Jones Yeah, so a really important thing to consider is that PFAS are a way bigger problem for people who live in communities that are much more polluted with PFAS. And one of those kinds of communities is essentially communities that are nearby military facilities where they use a very specific kind of firefighting foam called a f f f or a triple F that has a really high concentration of PFS in it. And so for a long time, military bases used a triple F in training exercises to put out purposefully set fires and the foam which is really high and PF basically washed into the groundwater, polluting the water that lots of people in those communities relied on. And there are over 600 of these communities infected by pee fast around the US. So it is very much a problem. And as I mentioned, like when you think about the health effects of PFAs it really matters more for communities that have these higher levels of of exposure.

Jordan How can someone tell and I’m speaking here from a Canadian perspective, our manufacturing and everything is very similar to yours. So I’m assuming that they are here too. How can somebody tell if their community is at risk for this kind of thing? You know, I know we’ve all learned a lot about co2 detection in our house and that kind of stuff, like, how do we test?

Benji Jones Yeah, no, it’s a great question. And really important. So there are organizations out there that are doing really good work to map contamination across the US and other countries Environmental Working Group is one, I would honestly suggest just going into Google and typing PFAS map and just seeing what comes up, because there are very much interactive maps that will help you. So I would say like that is a is the number one thing you can do. There’s also something called the PFAS Project Lab at Northeastern University, which also has a map. So there are these resources out there. And then beyond that, there are steps you can take as an individual to avoid your exposure, like, like filtering water. So that’s like a big one that’s pretty easy to use. If you have the financial means reverse osmosis systems are the best at removing PFAS, and they can remove almost all of them. So literally just putting a filter on your tap water, that helps I definitely do that myself, because it’s such an actionable way to reduce exposure, you can use a Beretta or other similar filters, which will remove most or at least some PFAS. And then I was I was talking to this, this, this chemist at Harvard. And she gave me some other tips, which were basically like, be healthier, eat less fast food, because, again, fast food wrappers can have PFAS in them. So that’s another option. And PFAS is also can be concentrated in dust. So just cleaning your house regularly can help. So basically, like,

Jordan Be a better person.

Benji Jones Exactly. And I’m like, Well, it’s kind of hard, I’m not going to stop eating fast food. But that does alarm me. You can also look for labels on products that say things like PFAS free or chemical free or something like that. One other thing is that if you’re using cosmetics or personal care products, they tend to have like active ingredient lists. And you can look for ingredients that have the word fluro, like fluro something in it. And if you see that, just avoid it, because it might be PFAS, or a derivative of PFAS. So that’s another another step that you can take,

Jordan Given that we all probably have some level of these things inside us. And they’re in our environment. You mentioned at the beginning, you know, one of the reasons they call them forever chemicals is because they are very difficult to break them down. Can we break them down? And what does it take?

Benji Jones So until recently, I would say it’s very hard to break them down. Because again, that carbon fluorine bond is just very, very strong. But there was a really promising study that came out actually just this summer that showed a pretty cheap and effective way to destroy PFAS. And you basically can can mix these forever chemicals with a compound that’s relatively inexpensive, and seems to break it down if you bring it to a boil. And so it looks like there might actually be a pretty good way to break them down. Now, that was something that happened in a lab and not in the real world. So the next step would be to how to, like, bring this to a commercial level. But it looks like we are making progress and figuring out ways to break these chemicals down. So they are not actually in the environment forever.

Jordan As an environmental reporter, which I mean, tough job right now. How surprised were you to learn about this stuff? This is not something many people know about. And yet it seems incredibly pervasive.

Benji Jones Yeah, I mean, I’m a pretty cynical person at this point. And just assume like, everything is toxic, because I feel like I do read a fair amount about these kinds of problems. So I would say, not super surprised. But for a long time, I had avoided learning about PFAs, just because it’s like it’s an acronym. It’s technical. It’s a little bit on the on the periphery of my of my beat as a journalist, but I have seen it come up time and time again in the news just in the last couple of years. And I finally took the plunge. And I will say that what was surprising to me was just how pervasive these chemicals are, and just how big of a threat they pose to human health.

Jordan I’ll ask one more question. And I don’t expect the answer to be great. But what is being done about this from a regulation standpoint, now that we’ve we’re learning this over the past few years? Has there been any movement by any governments? I guess, the US in particular, because that’s where these corporations exist?

Benji Jones Yeah. So there actually has been a fair amount of government movement. The government knows that this is a problem. The Environmental Protection Agency knows this is the problem. And actually, just in August, the EPA announced plans to designate two of the most common PFAS again portfolio and PFOSS as, quote, hazardous substances under the Superfund Act and that’s a pretty significant announcement because if they are hazardous under Superfund it basically will require companies to report any large releases of these PFAS into the environment and potentially also have to pay for cleanup. So that could be a pretty strong mechanism for accountability in the US. And the EPA also has advisories that basically say what amount of pee fast and the water is dangerous. The issue is that that level that they say, which is harmful is so low, that it’s basically like any water is going to have that in it. So it’s hard to know, like what to actually do with that information. And then I was looking at some other countries earlier today and Canada, I believe prohibits some of the main P fas as well through regulations. And I’m not super surprised that they seem a little bit farther ahead than the US in terms of regulating these substances. And you’re up is as well, at least for the most common for the most common PFS chemicals.

Jordan Is this just a losing battle, though, are we all it feels like with so many of these stories, and you just mentioned it as an environmental reporter, you know, that it can feel like everything is toxic? And you know, there’s no way I can avoid X, Y, Zed, etc. And so like, why should I care?

Benji Jones You know, I think what’s saddest for me is that these types of harmful chemicals and pollutants harm poor people more so like I can afford to filter my water, I can afford to not buy fast food. And I have that choice because of my financial position. And that’s not the case for other folks. And you often will see factories that are emitting these chemicals as well in poor communities. And so I think that like to me, that is like, that’s where regulations should focus on on this as an environmental justice issue, because they don’t affect everyone equally. So in terms of like, what to care about, I think like there’s a lot of low hanging fruit still, and it’s in those in those poor and more vulnerable communities.

Jordan Benji, thank you so much for this really appreciate your time and also appreciate the ambient sounds of Brooklyn in the background.

Benji Jones Sorry about that. But it was a pleasure to be here.

Jordan Benji Jones, from Vox. That was the big story. For more from us. You know the drill by now head to the big story podcast.ca You have to two days left to fill out our listener survey before we cut it off and start handing out tote bags. So click on the survey link at the top of the page. If you’d like you can talk to us on Twitter at the big story F p n you can reach us with email for feedback at Hello at the big story podcast.ca And as you know this podcast can be found in every single podcast player. All you got to do is search for it. Hit Play hit subscribe, hit like hit follow hit rate hit review hit every single button, but you find that thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.