wrote:
Imagine that a small group of people coordinated the intentional manufacture and release of a lethal poison – and imagine they knew this poison had special properties that meant, once released into the world, it would be inevitable that it would make its way into the blood of virtually every person on the planet, even babies in their mother’s womb, and stay there, like a ticking time bomb.[…] And we know exactly who is responsible. For a long time, powerful corporate interests succeeded in keeping this heinous, brazen, and ongoing public health threat hidden from regulators, from scientists, and from the public. But it is now a matter of public record that these people knew the potential for harm and grave threat to human life, and continued anyway.The only reason the world knows anything about this today is because, in 1998, Earl Tennant, a courageous farmer from West Virginia, came to me demanding answers. His cattle were dying in droves and he was certain the trouble stemmed from the white foaming crud defiling his creek where his cattle drank. […] The poison flowing into Earl’s creek was also leaching into the drinking water of 70,000 of his neighbors, but no one was being told a thing. And this was just the tip of the iceberg. In secret, the poison had in fact streamed all across the country, and into the bloodstreams of virtually every American.This man-made poison, called PFOA, brought us the magic of Teflon, the convenience of non-stick, and an array of stain and water-resistant products that revolutionized our homes and our lives forever. Internally, top company scientists had been studying its toxicity for decades. And there had been alarm bells after alarm bells: cancer in lab animals; cancer in exposed workers; birth deformities in offspring of exposed lab animals – even, unconscionably, in babies of exposed workers. The unique properties of PFOA, and its close chemical cousin, PFOS (used in an equally dizzying assortment of products, from Scotchgard to certain firefighting foams) make them incredibly persistent: they last for an unusually long time in our bloodstreams, where they accumulate. And they last virtually forever in our environment. That’s why they are dubbed “forever chemicals”.And the effects of this poison coursing through our veins can be devastating and wide-ranging. Scientists have confirmed links between PFOA exposure and a variety of serious diseases, including kidney cancer, testicular cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, and pregnancy-induced hypertension. And more recent studies are now raising concerns that some of these forever chemicals may negatively impact our endocrine system, our fertility, and our immune system – and possibly even the efficacy of vaccines. Frightening news, indeed, when we are all trying to fight off a worldwide pandemic and need our vaccines to be as effective as possible.[…] So now, as we struggle to live through a once-in-a-century pandemic, there is, in fact, another global public health threat bearing down upon all of us, though few know of it or realize its risk. And this threat, unlike Covid-19, is of a scope and scale without precedent in human history.Those who have learned about this other, still obscure health threat (the poisoning, not the virus) and who comprehend the urgency, all ask me the same question: how is it that almost all of us have this poison in our blood, and it is still not a world-wide story – and how is it possible that the companies who did this are not being held responsible? This is a question I cannot answer.
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