December 2020

A Michigan-based environmental group has found many nonstick pans are coated with a chemical from the PFAS family.

“We suspected that a lot of pans that say nonstick would be coated with PTFE without saying so on their packaging. And that was one of the findings of this investigation. That Teflon-type coatings, the same polymer, are very common on nonstick cookware. But, it’s very hard to tell from the packaging you see in the store,” said Gillian Miller, senior scientist with the Ecology Center in Ann Arbor. Read more…

In 2000, Julia Roberts won the Oscar for best actress for portraying a scrappy young lawyer who fought water contamination and corporate greed.

Twenty years later, Erin Brockovich—the real woman who inspired the film—is broadening her battle to water pollution around the world.

Her efforts now center on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a group of chemicals linked to cancer and other health effects. Read more…

A group of manmade substances that can cause serious health problems in humans and animals is increasingly threatening U.S. drinking water systems, experts say. Scientists are working hard to better understand per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances — or PFAS — and develop technologies to minimize harm from these extraordinarily durable pollutants. Read more…

Republican lawmakers have blocked the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources from enforcing new regulations designed to keep some “forever chemicals” out of the environment. Read more…

State and federal pollution regulators are investigating 3M Co.’s reporting on next-generation “forever chemicals” discharged from its Cottage Grove plant into the Mississippi River, even as Minnesota struggles to address ever-growing contamination from the original versions the manufacturer no longer makes. Read more…

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. Read more…

Environmental activists are hopeful that President-elect Joe Biden’s administration will take a stronger stand against the family of chemicals that includes the compound contaminating private wells in Cumberland and Bladen counties. Read more…

A public health expert urged people not to jump to conclusions about any links between COVID-19 and PFAS “forever chemicals” even though federal authorities are looking into whether newly available vaccines for the deadly virus are made less effective by the toxic chemicals in the bloodstream. Read more…

Tom Kennedy learned about the long-term contamination of his family’s drinking water about two months after he was told that his breast cancer had metastasized to his brain and was terminal. Read more…

The state Department of Natural Resources on Wednesday sent a plan to Gov. Tony Evers for addressing the “forever chemicals” present across the state. Read more…