They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals

Mariah Blake. They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals. New York: Crown, 2025. Pp 296. Endnotes, index. Cloth, $30.

Investigative journalist Mariah Blake’s They Poisoned the World is a compelling review of the history of so-called “forever chemicals,” per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which are now virtually everywhere on Earth.  Her narrative goes back and forth, chapter by chapter, between stories of people who came to recognize that their communities had been contaminated by PFAS, causing high incidences of strange and excruciating diseases and health irregularities, and stories of how the chemicals came into being, the uses that companies found for them, and the efforts of the companies to hide from the public and from regulators the harmful effects that PFAS cause in humans and other animals.

There are many PFAS chemicals having various combinations of fluorine and carbon atoms and other elements, such as oxygen and sulfur.  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) lists almost 15,000 distinct PFAS chemicals in its toxicity database, and other organizations list several million known PFAS chemicals.  The first PFAS chemical, now called Teflon, was developed by DuPont in 1938.  One of its early uses was on equipment for uranium enrichment at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, as part of the Manhattan Project, the United States’ secret program to develop the atomic bomb during World War II.  That application helped shroud much of the early research about Teflon and other PFAS chemicals in secrecy, a pattern of secrecy that remained in the ensuing decades.  DuPont developed a plant at Parkersburg, West Virginia, to manufacture Teflon.  A French engineer found in the 1950s that Teflon applied to cookware created non-stick surfaces, and sales of non-stick pans took off in the U.S. in 1961.  Other uses for PFAS chemicals followed, including waterproof and fire-resistant clothing, firefighting foam, cosmetics, feminine hygiene products, food packaging, wall paint, furniture, and adhesives.

They Poisoned the World begins by introducing Michael Hickey and his family in Hoosick Falls, New York.  Hickey was a soft-spoken and shy insurance salesman in 2010 when his father developed cancer and soon died.  As Hickey noticed other odd cancers in his town, he and his family’s doctor learned that the community’s water supply was contaminated with PFOA (a type of PFAS used in making Teflon).  They became reluctant activists, tried to get the local government to provide the community with safe water, and tried to get Saint-Gobain (a French company that manufactured PFOA in Hoosick Falls) to pay for the necessary clean-water infrastructure and to compensate residents who had fallen ill.  As Hickey tenaciously researched PFOA and the hidden knowledge of its health effects, he began to learn of other communities, like North Bennington, Vermont, and Parkersburg, that were fighting against PFAS chemicals and trying to get the PFAS companies to take responsibility for the lives they were destroying.

Another central character in They Poisoned the World is Robert Billot, an attorney in Cincinnati who spent the first several years of his legal career defending chemical companies.  In 1998, at the request of his grandmother, who lived in Parkersburg, he agreed to represent the Tennant family, whose cattle had been killed by exposure to PFOA that DuPont had disposed in a dump next to the Tennants’ farm.  As Bilott learned more about DuPont knew of the harmful effects of PFOA, his advocacy on behalf of residents in Parkersburg expanded.  In the 2010s he filed a class action suit against DuPont and other manufacturers of PFAS chemicals, including 3M.  (Bilott is portrayed by Mark Ruffalo in the 2019 film, Dark Waters, about the Parkersburg case; Blake does not mention the film in her book.)

Blake interviewed and portrays numerous activists in communities impacted by PFAS.  With the exception of Bilott, who is a skilled attorney, they are regular small-town people who have no legal expertise nor expertise in industrial chemistry or environmental science.  One of the most powerful features of They Poisoned the World is following their development as highly effective advocates for their communities in the face of vast corporate power.

The other important aspect of the book is Blake’s account of the corruption of our regulatory systems wrought by corporate power.  In her research, she has found considerable documentation showing the secret in-house studies the corporations had done on their workers.  The companies knew their workers carried high concentrations of PFAS chemicals, and they knew PFAS was linked to birth defects, cancer, and other diseases, but the power of the profit motive was stronger than any concern for the well-being of humans.  As corporate researchers learned more about the harmful effects of PFAS chemicals, top corporate executives continued to insist that the research be kept confidential.  Even more disturbing is the evidence of corporate influence on regulatory agencies, pressuring regulators to set limits on PFAS chemicals in drinking water much higher than the research showed would be safe.

Folks in our area (Minnesota) wanting to read about 3M’s manufacture of PFAS chemicals and contamination of ground water will be only partially satisfied.  Blake briefly mentions 3M’s participation in founding organizations to lobby regulators to ease pressure on industry and to prepare studies appearing to show chemicals were not as harmful as the EPA and other studies showed they were.  Another poignant reference to 3M involves a DuPont worker at Parkersburg who in 1980 gave birth to son with only a partial nose and a slit in a lower eyelid that extended down to his cheek.  After the birth, the distraught mother received a “routine” call from a DuPont physician who asked about the deformities.  After she returned to work at DuPont, the mother, by happenstance, found a company memo referring to a 3M study from a few years earlier showing that exposure to PFOA was associated with “birth defects in the eyes of unborn rats.”  Thereafter, 3M avoided doing follow-up research and prepared a study for the EPA apparently contradicting the earlier finding about birth defects in rats.  It was about that time that 3M made another disturbing discovery: PFOA does not ever break down in the environment.

Blake has a section on 3M research in 1998 in which the company sought to understand how widespread PFOA was in people.  3M was worried about its potential liability, because the company was the leading manufacturer of PFOA.  The company tested 645 blood samples taken from donors around the U.S. by the American Red Cross, finding that every one of the samples had PFOA or PFOS.  3M then tested archived samples from the U.S., Sweden, and China, going back as far as 1952, finding that almost all the samples also carried PFOA or PFOS.  Knowing that university researchers would soon be able to conduct the blood-sample analyses that 3M could do, the company planned a strategy to gradually release the study results before other researchers did, doing so in a way that could make it appear that the levels found in humans’ blood should not cause safety concerns.  Blake names Rich Purdy, a 3M ecotoxicologist who in 1999 resigned in disgust over the plan, sending a copy of his resignation email to the EPA.

The book’s epilog summarizes how quickly the world is phasing out the manufacture and use of PFAS chemicals.  The European Commission banned the manufacture and use of PFAS in 2023.  That same year, the Minnesota legislature passed a near-total ban on uses of PFAS chemical in the state.  The legislation is called Amara’s Law, after Amara Strande, who grew up in the Twin Cities East Metro unknowingly drinking water contaminated with PFAS dumped near a 3M plant.  At age fifteen she developed a rare liver cancer and spent the latter part of her life advocating for the legislation.  Amara Strande gets only brief mention in the epilog, but the stories Blake tells about other activists in other communities are inspirational.  They Poisoned the World is an excellent account of the corporate greed that brought the world to be contaminated with PFAS chemicals, and it is a moving recounting of some of the people who have fought to bring the reality of that contamination to light and who continue to fight for corporate accountability.

Fredric L. Quivik