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00:00Unanswered questions about PFAS, also known as Forever Chemicals.
00:25So, if they're forever, how do we address them?
00:28A collaborative investigation.
00:30Our reporting in Northwest Georgia has brought us before numerous people whose drinking water
00:35is contaminated, whose land is contaminated, whose food is contaminated.
00:39Of the chemicals known as PFAS.
00:42All the onus was on EPA to prove that there was an existing chemical causing a problem
00:48before they could take action.
00:50Once they get into people, their body levels stay high for 3 to 15 years.
00:54And the companies that produced and used them.
00:57These are major employers within these communities, and it is big, big industry.
01:02Now, as part of Frontline's local journalism initiative...
01:06Who should be held accountable is basically a finger-pointing game between the chemical industry,
01:11the carpet industry, and others.
01:13Contaminated, the carpet industry's toxic legacy.
01:18The
01:25K.
01:26In
01:27A.
01:27A.
01:28A.
01:28A.
01:29F.
01:29B.
01:29A.
01:29B.
01:29F.
01:30This is Pine Chapel Road.
01:57It's one of the most beautiful spots in the county.
02:04The rolling hills, the wildlife, vegetation, the water, absolutely stunning.
02:10It's kind of my zen place.
02:27These beautiful rolling hills behind us are used for cattle grazing.
02:52There's nothing about this that doesn't look healthy, right?
02:57And lo and behold, it is absolutely contaminated with the sludge and the PFAS.
03:04It's one of the many fields that are toxic in this county.
03:15It's kind of concerning, isn't it, to see these guys standing in the water?
03:20It's so polluted with PFAS, poor things have no idea what they're standing in.
03:29Polyfluoroalkyl, commonly called PFAS, a contaminant linked to cancer and other illnesses.
03:35Families in northwest Georgia have been living with unanswered questions about PFAS.
03:40Water quality experts are raising alarm bells about a danger...
03:43I think that PFAS is going to eventually be the front and foremost of health problems here.
03:51I moved here around the age of five.
03:54I've basically been here ever since.
03:56That's a good chunk of my life.
03:57I just turned 34 a couple weeks ago, and I feel that's too young to feel how I do physically.
04:04What I've technically been diagnosed with is non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
04:09It's something that affects you from the second you wake up to the second you go to bed.
04:13It makes me feel guilty as a mom, you know, that when my kid's asked to do something and I have to explain to them,
04:19I don't feel well enough to do that.
04:21I feel it's unfair to them, you know.
04:23I mean, we have to be realistic in the fact liver is something you have to have to survive.
04:28And if the damage continues, you eventually have to go on a transplant list.
04:33The transplant list is a long wait.
04:36My husband and I actually were discussing a will last night.
04:40I've discussed it a little bit with my daughter.
04:45You know, it's one of those things that when I do discuss it, you can tell it sets panic off in her for a second.
04:50She needs care more, you know.
05:02She needs young, but just because you're young doesn't mean these things don't scare you.
05:08It doesn't mean that we can't prepare you for the worst.
05:10We can't discuss this.
05:12I love you.
05:14Have a good day.
05:18Morning.
05:20I hope for the best for the future, but right now it's a day at a time.
05:25Dalton is known as the carpet capital of the world.
05:44This is a town that lives and breathes the carpet industry.
05:48There are dozens of carpet mills located there.
05:51And at these carpet mills, there's a dyeing process where they put the color on the carpets.
05:56Well, when they do that, they also add chemicals.
05:59The PFAS was in these chemicals that provide stain resistance.
06:03So PFAS got into the water because when that washes off the carpets,
06:08it ended up going into the drains to the local utility and ultimately ending up in the river water.
06:18For much of the past year, a consortium of journalists from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
06:23the Charleston Post and Courier...
06:25Great to see you again.
06:27...and AL.com in Alabama, along with the Associated Press and Frontline,
06:33have been investigating the carpet industry's use of products that contained chemicals known as PFAS,
06:40even amid warnings of their accumulation in human blood and possible health effects.
06:48We knew already that there was an environmental crisis unfolding in Northwest Georgia.
06:54The story of responsibility and who should be held accountable
06:59is basically a finger-pointing game between the chemical industry, the carpet industry, and others.
07:07There's a couple things I want to check in here. First...
07:09The team reviewed thousands of pages of documents and court depositions...
07:14I really appreciate you taking the time to meet with me.
07:16...and interviewed former regulators and industry insiders, as well as doctors, scientists...
07:22...to extract PFAS from the sample...
07:24...and people who have the kinds of illnesses that researchers have linked
07:28to PFAS contamination.
07:30We think it's affecting your liver.
07:32What took it to the next level for us and what drew our attention
07:35is that there were clear lines of accountability for this contamination
07:39and a clear need to really understand why things are the way they are up in Northwest Georgia.
07:46The carpet industry has long insisted it's not to blame for PFAS getting into the environment,
07:52and argued that chemical companies obscured the risks
07:55products and assured them that the products they were supplying were safe.
07:59But the recently reviewed records also show that executives from the two largest carpet companies,
08:05Shaw and Mohawk, were getting warnings about potential harms dating back decades.
08:12And with little regulation until recently, the team found that for years,
08:17both the companies and their suppliers were able to legally switch among stain-resistant products
08:22that contained different types of PFAS.
08:26We can't do this story without industry's perspective.
08:29You want to just update us on where we are with data?
08:32Most of the testing up in Northwest Georgia is completed,
08:34but the rest of the state we still are looking at.
08:36Downstream of Dalton and into Alabama, we've estimated that there's approximately hundreds of thousands,
08:42200-plus thousand people who get their drinking water from the surface waters
08:47that originate with the Conessauga River.
08:53The carpet companies say they stopped using any kind of PFAS in U.S. production in 2019.
09:01But for years, the compounds ended up in the environment,
09:05and take decades or more to break down.
09:08These so-called forever chemicals have routinely tested in the local drinking water
09:14at levels the EPA now considers unsafe.
09:20Today, there are lawsuits against both carpet and chemical companies,
09:25and uncertainty and feelings of betrayal are boiling across the region.
09:30We pay for poison in our water.
09:33Communities are worried about their drinking water,
09:37and local governments say the problem is too vast for them to fix alone.
09:42It really is still a crisis that's not fully understood.
09:53The first signs of trouble began coming to light in the late 1990s.
09:58We'll come up through here, and these suds, or foam on the water, whatever you want to call it,
10:05that's about 18 inches tall hanging out up in there.
10:09I want to show you what happened to this cow's calf.
10:12Right here lays this cow's calf.
10:15It's about like that other calf up yonder.
10:17It's getting to the point now you can start to smell it.
10:19I first learned about it when a farmer from West Virginia called me trying to figure out why his cows were getting sick.
10:26And that phone call back in October 1998 led to what has become several decades of research and work now into this family of chemicals we now call PFAS.
10:42Rob Bellat is a lawyer whose suits over the years have exposed how chemical companies had research showing PFAS was more dangerous than the public knew.
10:53Obviously you've seen a lot of internal company documents through your work.
10:58When did the companies, 3M and DuPont, makers of these chemicals, really start to know themselves about the health and safety?
11:07You know, I think that's probably one of the most disturbing aspects of the whole story on PFAS is how far back the makers of these chemicals understood how dangerous these materials were.
11:20Industry on Parade visits the $2 million home of a department of the DuPont company.
11:25From the 1950s and 60s, you had the manufacturers understanding if this stuff gets out into the world, it's not going to break apart.
11:33And that led to the companies being concerned about what happens to living things that might be exposed.
11:40By the 60s, you know, the companies were getting information through a variety of their own studies and tests showing incredible toxic effects in multiple different animal species.
11:53Mice, rats, rabbits, dogs, guinea pigs, and eventually even monkeys that were dropping dead from exposure to particular types of these chemicals that had eight carbons attached to fluorine.
12:07These original PFAS that they were creating.
12:10As I'm seeing all these documents, all these studies, all of this information that suggested there was a very dangerous, toxic, carcinogenic material, possibly not only in the water these cows in West Virginia were drinking, but possibly getting into the blood of the entire U.S. population, possibly getting into water all over the country and nobody knew about it.
12:35My new cookware is coated with Teflon. Food just slips off. Easy.
12:44PFAS had become virtually ubiquitous.
12:46The Scotchgard Protector water beads up.
12:48From non-stick pans to raincoats to shoes.
12:51I got a little down my neck, but otherwise, great!
12:54We make Scotchgard Fabry Protector. It keeps ordinary spills from becoming extraordinary stains.
13:00Unprized for its ability to protect against stains, which was especially useful in the carpet industry.
13:07Carpet treated with Scotchgard doesn't absorb dirt.
13:11It rejects...
13:12One of the most popular products was 3M Scotchgard.
13:15Look for the Scotchgard label underneath.
13:17PFAS chemicals became basically intertwined with carpet manufacture on a deep level since the 1970s and into the 80s and beyond.
13:27Stephen Ampter is an environmental scientist who has worked with Rob Bilotte on PFAS Law Search.
13:33Here, boy. Come.
13:36Carpets could be hard to clean and they could stain.
13:39And what these chemicals promised to do was reduce or eliminate a lot of that, plus make them last for years.
13:46Very more dependable.
13:48Scotchgard and Stainmaster.
13:51Stainmaster carpet.
13:52They had advertisements on television where they poured soil on carpets and they had animals, you know, all kinds of things just to show it's incredible how you can keep these things now clean much easier.
14:05By the 90s, you could buy a house or rent an apartment and there was no finished floor except carpet.
14:13And so the demand was created and the industry exploded in size and scope to meet that demand.
14:25It wasn't until the late 90s that 3M began informing the carpet industry that the type of PFAS in Scotchgard might accumulate in people's bodies.
14:34Were there times when the carpet industry knew or strongly suspected that PFAS would cause some sort of problems?
14:41It was an evolving process and that's very much argued over in lawsuits.
14:47Certainly, they were given explicit warnings by the late 1990s.
14:52They were getting information from the chemical suppliers that were making the chemicals that were then applied to the carpets at carpet mills by the carpet manufacturers.
15:01In depositions and other court records, the reporters discovered accounts of meetings between 3M and the two main carpet companies in Northwest Georgia, Shaw and Mohawk.
15:14We have these meetings between 3M and Mohawk, Shaw, where basically 3M discloses that they're finding this stuff building up in the blood of workers and the general public.
15:26Wow.
15:27In one meeting in January 1999, a Shaw executive expressed concerns about getting sued, according to notes from a 3M employee.
15:39They met with a couple executives there.
15:41And one said, quote, he felt plaintiffs' attorneys would be involved immediately.
15:46Okay.
15:47Which, I mean, they weren't involved immediately, but they were involved about two decades later almost.
15:52So, one of the major two carpet companies was like, how is this going to affect our bottom line? We're going to get sued.
15:59Yeah, they were worried about getting sued.
16:01Okay, got it.
16:02All the way back then.
16:03That same day, in a meeting at Mohawk, officials there seemed far less worried.
16:09No real sense of Mohawk problem slash responsibility, the 3M employee noted.
16:14If it's good enough for 3M, it's good enough for Mohawk.
16:193M continued to reassure the companies that Scotchgard was safe to use.
16:24But a year and a half later, the company and the EPA made a dramatic announcement.
16:32The 3M company is phasing out some Scotchgard stain repellent products because of concerns about a chemical used in their production.
16:40The company says the chemical has been detected at low levels in people and the environment.
16:44A top EPA official at the time said there was no imminent harm to consumers during the phase-out,
16:53but called the chemical compound in the product an unacceptable technology that should be eliminated to protect human health and the environment from potentially severe long-term consequences.
17:08The news didn't go over well at a meeting with Shaw Industries, the largest carpet company in the country.
17:15Bob Shaw, the CEO of Shaw Industries, confronted 3M chemical executives.
17:22So in that meeting, Bob Shaw picked up a carpet square with a Scotchgard logo on it and said,
17:28this isn't a logo, this is a Target.
17:32And I got 15 million of these out in the marketplace. What am I supposed to do about that?
17:37And then he threw that piece of carpet at them and stormed out of the meeting.
17:42This chemical on which his company relied, his billion-dollar company, billions of dollars in revenue every year,
17:49was now going to be forced to change a key ingredient of their carpet.
17:59You have to reach out to people who are reluctant to talk.
18:02Yeah.
18:03You know, having a letter to deliver with your request and your contact information.
18:08You know, I want you to read it. Your input to the story is really important to us.
18:12No one from the chemical or carpet industries would agree to on-camera interviews.
18:17In statements, both Shaw and Mohawk underscored that they had been assured that Scotchgard was safe,
18:24and they stopped using the chemical in it after 3M's disclosures.
18:29Shaw said in its statement that PFAS were for soil and water resistance
18:34and have also been used in thousands of applications and products.
18:39And a lawyer from Mohawk said they were relying on and trusting the chemical manufacturers,
18:44the inventors of these products, for their expertise.
18:493M has said it discontinued making products with any kind of PFAS in 2025.
18:55A successor company to DuPont still uses some PFAS compounds thought to be less persistent in the body for products like Teflon.
19:03Much of the attention around PFAS in the region has been about exposure to it in the environment,
19:18especially drinking water, not carpets themselves.
19:23In northwest Georgia, the forever chemicals from the carpet mills ended up in the local rivers for years.
19:30In 2008, a landmark study at the University of Georgia found that the PFAS levels in one river
19:37were among the highest ever recorded in surface water.
19:53We're really water rich in northwest Georgia.
20:13There is a massive network of really special creeks and rivers that weave throughout the entire region.
20:22They were transportation networks before we had rail systems and interstates.
20:28The indigenous populations had enormous civilizations up and down these rivers before settlers came.
20:34These waterways are critical for recreation, for anglers, for paddlers.
20:41They're providing hundreds of thousands of people with drinking water.
20:45It's really hard to overstate the historical impact of how these rivers have shaped the communities across this region.
20:55Jesse DeMumbrian Chapman leads an environmental protection group that has sued the chemical and carpet companies over PFAS contamination.
21:04So now these rivers have taken on any significance because of PFAS.
21:08It's not a badge of honor to be known for some of the most contaminated surface water in the country.
21:15And it's certainly something that's going to keep us very busy for years to come to try and tease out how to fix this,
21:23how to maintain healthy drinking water systems, how to remediate the environment where we know we have contaminated soil and groundwater.
21:32So this issue of PFAS contamination looms large over the entire region of Northwest Georgia.
21:44You can't see it, you can't smell it, it doesn't have a taste.
21:48So being told that you live in, you know, an area that has contaminated drinking water is a shock to people that came here for an environment that they felt was pristine.
22:01Our reporting in Northwest Georgia has brought us before numerous people whose drinking water is contaminated, whose land is contaminated, whose food is contaminated.
22:18Yet when they go to the doctor or they go to their local officials or their water district and ask, what can we do about this?
22:26How can we get this out of our, there's no answers for them.
22:29It's difficult to definitively connect people's specific illnesses to the chemicals, and there are an estimated 15,000 varieties of PFAS.
22:40Little is known about the health effects of most of them.
22:45But research has been linking high levels of some types of PFAS in the body to cancers, immune disorders, and diseases of the liver and thyroid.
22:56The levels are pretty high in Northwest Georgia.
23:00We compared them to the general U.S. population, and their values are much higher than the general U.S. population.
23:07Dana Barr is an environmental health researcher who's tested the blood of almost 200 residents in the region.
23:13You know, 24% of them had levels that were above that level of high risk of health outcomes, and 74% were in that moderate risk area.
23:24And so what we want to do with these people is try to figure out what, how they're being exposed, how they're being the most exposed, and try to reduce those exposures over time.
23:34This is a community that, you know, they just live there. I mean, they were exposed because of just the surrounding conditions.
23:41What do we know about the medical effects PFAS has on the human body?
23:47So PFAS had been linked to a lot of different diseases, including thyroid hormone disruption, endocrine disruption in general, cancers like kidney and testicular cancer, and then also alterations in lipid content in the blood as well.
24:02That stain resistance, the thing that made them successful as a product for the chemical companies that made them, are the same reason that they're persistent in the environment?
24:14Once they get into people, they actually bind to albumin, which is a protein that's in your blood, and the albumin is reabsorbed in your gut, and so it keeps circulating.
24:24So it's not eliminated like a lot of chemicals are.
24:27Is there nothing that can be done in terms of treating or mitigating after it's already been found in someone's blood?
24:34There is nothing that has been shown to be effective yet. We have ideas and we're pursuing those right now.
24:41I reached out to my doctor. It's like silence. They don't know what to do or how to handle it.
24:58One of the people in Dana Barr's study is a hair salon owner named Dolly Baker.
25:03Hey Dolly, I'm Jason. Jason, nice to meet you. Yeah, Jason's my reporting partner.
25:10Dana from Emory called me, and she was on her vacation, and said that she just wanted to talk about my results.
25:21Mine was over 1,300. High is 20. And the next highest one below me was 200-something, I believe.
25:31And she said, you know, I don't want to alarm you, but we're just trying to figure out what could be causing this.
25:38Had you ever had any health problems or anything before?
25:40I did have to start taking thyroid medicine last year for the first time.
25:44But before? But before that. Nothing. Nothing.
25:47What's it like knowing that you have this inside your body, that you can't really do much yet to address that?
25:54I feel like, I don't know, almost like there's a blanket over me smothering me that I can't get out from under.
26:04And then it's just, you're trapped, I guess, is the best way to describe it.
26:14Thyroid issues are among the conditions linked to PFAS.
26:25Lisa Martin is another one of the study participants with a thyroid issue.
26:29Hi, Lisa. How are you doing?
26:31Hey, Dylan. It's good to see you.
26:32She spent 20 years working at Mohawk as an inventory manager.
26:37I was very healthy, active. I had a perfect bill of health.
26:41And within, you know, just half a dozen years of working in the carpet industry, my health started to decline.
26:50We couldn't figure out why.
26:52I ended up having autoimmune disease. I had to have my thyroid removed.
26:58Did you work closely with people who were applying these PFAS chemicals to carpet?
27:03Did they have any sense of the risks that they faced?
27:07They did not. They didn't have a clue.
27:10The first plant that I worked at was in Dalton. And we had a dye house up there.
27:17My first shock came when we would walk for exercise around this facility, which is a huge facility.
27:26But as we would walk out back in the waterways, you could see what color they had been dyeing that day.
27:36It was just accepted. It was just the culture.
27:40So I became complacent about what I was seeing.
27:45And I just, I didn't say anything, which is to my fault.
27:50Had you heard of PFAS before?
27:52No.
27:53I was familiar with Scotchgard, that we used it.
27:56I knew that we used it. I knew that we used stain resistance on our products.
28:00But I did not understand the PFAS element to the degree that I do now.
28:05Mohawk said in its statement that they weren't aware of any instance where PFAS was directly discharged into the environment,
28:14and that it has always complied with wastewater regulations.
28:19By the time Martin started at Mohawk in 2005, 3M had pulled Scotchgard from the market,
28:26and the carpet industry was using different products like StainMaster, made by DuPont.
28:33Experience a whole new era in style and beauty for your home.
28:38StainMaster carpet, always stylish, always beautiful.
28:43According to Shaw and Mohawk, they received assurances from the chemical companies
28:48that these alternative products didn't contain the types of PFAS that accumulate in the body
28:53and were not as persistent in the environment.
28:58But still, the carpet makers were worried about new PFAS research that was starting to emerge.
29:04I have an email between Werner Braun, the head of the Carpet and Rug Institute,
29:11that lobbying group for the carpet industry.
29:14Yeah.
29:15It says, quote,
29:16The troubling issue for me in this report is a determination that this is carcinogenic in rats.
29:22So that's showing that as early as in 2002, the carpet industry knew of an animal study
29:28that was showing carcinogenic nature of these chemicals.
29:32Around 2003, DuPont disclosed that trace amounts of the chemical that caused cancer in rats
29:39was in fact in their StainMaster carpet protector.
29:43But DuPont insisted it was an unintentional byproduct and still safe.
29:49The carpet companies would continue to use StainMaster for another five years,
29:54before dropping the chemical in it, too, as part of another EPA-negotiated phase-out.
30:01The Carpen and Rug Institute and its former head, Werner Braun, declined to be interviewed.
30:08In a statement, the group said it evaluates its products to reflect science, innovation, and customer expectations,
30:17and that the carpet industry's conduct was, and continues to be, appropriate and lawful.
30:25In their statements, Shaw and Mohawk again pointed the blame at the manufacturers for misleading them.
30:35Around that time, the EPA approached the carpet industry seeking to test their facilities for PFAS.
30:44The EPA was starting this priority review, and in 2003, one of the things they wanted to do was focus on,
30:52let's go get some samples from the water supply in these areas.
30:57And one of the areas they had targeted was carpet manufacturing.
31:02The carpet companies refused to allow the testing, citing confidentiality concerns,
31:08and told the EPA to ask the local water authority, Dalton Utilities, which also refused,
31:14saying there wasn't an agreed-on, scientifically-sound testing method.
31:19The carpet industry completely declined to have their wastewater sampled.
31:26And I would also add that Dalton Utilities was asked if they would allow sampling from them as an alternative
31:35to the carpet companies allowing sampling.
31:37And to quote, Dalton Utilities didn't just say no, they said hell no.
31:43Dalton Utilities is the agency responsible for providing drinking water to the people of Dalton,
31:59but it's also responsible for treating the wastewater that comes from the mills in Dalton.
32:04Dalton is a carpet company town, and the local utility there, some 80, 85 percent of the water that it takes,
32:16the wastewater that it takes in, comes from the carpet industry.
32:19Historically, carpet industry executives and former executives have made up a part of its board.
32:25No one from Dalton Utilities would agree to an interview.
32:30In a statement, it said its board was never influenced by carpet executives,
32:35and it didn't know there was PFAS in the wastewater until 2009.
32:40The utility is currently suing the carpet and chemical companies.
32:45In the suit, it said its wastewater treatment process cannot screen out PFAS chemicals.
32:52Dating back to the 80s, it has run a system that filters some contaminants from the carpet company's wastewater,
32:59and then sprays it out over thousands of acres it owns on the outskirts of Dalton.
33:12The thing that was a light bulb moment for me was the land application.
33:16That's a big concentration of PFAS for a long time.
33:21And every time it rains, it just flows off that site into the environment.
33:26Yeah, so this is the LAS, the land application system.
33:30The boundaries are in black here.
33:32And then the Conessauga River, you can kind of see, moves its way down along the western boundary of the LAS.
33:38One expert in a lawsuit against carpet and chemical companies said that the land application system will be a perpetual source of contamination for 100 years at least.
33:48The LAS is at the center of several lawsuits.
33:54So the utility through a lawyer told us that we would be able to take a tour like normal that they offer,
33:59but we wouldn't be able to ask any questions on the record.
34:03Going there for the first time was a bit surreal.
34:08Wow, look at that.
34:12Everywhere you look, you can see some form of transportation of water from the waste treatment facilities.
34:21Eventually into the sprinkler heads that spray the forest with the treated wastewater.
34:26And they rely on the land and the soil to absorb that water and remove many of the remaining contaminants that might still be in the wastewater.
34:36The problem is that PFAS are chemicals that do not break down in the environment.
34:41They don't biodegrade for decades.
34:43And you can look at a tree, you can look at soil, any of the spray heads, and fully expect that if you were to test that for PFAS, it would be there and it would be there in high quantities.
34:56In the course of our investigation of Dalton Utilities' role in PFAS contamination, I was told I should talk to Scott Gordon.
35:15Gordon was involved in inspecting issues with Dalton Utilities' land application system as far back as 2000.
35:22When you got out on site, each one of those risers, pipes, with the sprinkler heads on top, looked like it had a wig on top.
35:31There were so many carpet fibers on the spray itself.
35:34And then as you're walking around those areas, it felt like you were walking on shag carpet.
35:38So shag carpet, like on the...
35:41On the ground.
35:42Wow.
35:43Yeah, there was that much carpet fibers in the material they were spraying.
35:45And all of those pipes going up, and the sprinkler heads, weren't stabilized at all.
35:52Any limb that came along and knocked them over, a deer running through the pasture knocks them over.
35:58So when we got on site, we saw lots of just flowing wastewater going down the sides of the hills, into the creeks, and eventually into the river.
36:06They were putting this wastewater onto land that was draining directly into the river, which people use for drinking water?
36:14Correct. And this is a fairly large utility.
36:18So they were discharging between 20 and 25 million gallons a day to this land application system.
36:23Dalton's filtering system has been cited in lawsuits as one of the main sources of PFAS contamination in the region.
36:38The utility has said it is looking for new technology that can treat or remove PFAS.
36:47But the forever chemicals have spread far down the regional riverways.
36:51Where in Alabama, places like Gadsden have been impacted.
37:02Gadsden is about 100 miles west of Dalton, of the carpet capital, and they get their drinking water from the Coosa River.
37:10Early 2016, state officials sent out a memo saying, we are concerned about the PFAS levels in eight water systems.
37:21And Gadsden was one.
37:23And so that really set alarm bells off in Gadsden, where they said, what is this? Where is this coming from?
37:29And so they were kind of able to conclude that the PFAS was coming from the carpet companies.
37:38Within a few months, Gadsden decides to sue the chemical manufacturers as well as the carpet companies.
37:45It was the first time a carpet maker had been sued over its role in PFAS contamination.
37:58What we learned in our reporting is the lawsuit was sort of what they felt like was the only avenue to get any kind of funds or recourse to address the PFAS problem.
38:10Hi, Fred.
38:11Hi, how are you?
38:12I'm good.
38:13How are you?
38:14I'm good.
38:15How are you?
38:16I'm well, thank you.
38:17Fred Zachary, he's a native of Gadsden.
38:19Hi, good to see you.
38:20Welcome.
38:21He lived away for many years, but he returned to Gadsden and he started doing a radio show called Introspection.
38:30Well, good afternoon, my friends, and welcome again to Introspection. We're coming to you live from the village of Gadsden on the banks of the Poison Coosa. And we're going to be talking about poison water. There is no mistake.
38:44About 10 years ago, when PFAS started to become an issue in Gadsden, he really rededicated his radio show to water quality.
38:52The contaminants were not flowing from the county. They came downriver from Dalton, Georgia, and those carpet plants upriver.
39:02I think part of Fred Zachary's frustration is city government has not moved quickly enough, has not met the moment well enough, and has just left the people of Gadsden to deal with this contamination issue.
39:15We're in need of leadership in this community, and you can't keep talking about the old folks won't let you. Nobody ever let me do anything. Do it, because you see it needs to be done.
39:27Exactly.
39:28Since the lawsuit in 2016, six other drinking water systems in Alabama have sued the carpet and chemical companies, alleging PFAS has contaminated their water supply.
39:42Gadsden's suit ended in 2022 with a confidential settlement.
39:49The city has been trying to reduce the PFAS in the water, including using a carbon filtering system that recently broke ground on a new high-tech treatment plant that is set to open in 2027.
40:02It's sad that it's taken so long for this to materialize.
40:06We shouldn't have had to wait on a settlement to do this. Bond issues. There's a whole lot of ways you could have done this.
40:13So I want to give great credit where it's due, but we are still being poisoned while this is being built.
40:22And nobody's talking about establishing a medical facility where we can do testing of citizens to see what level of PFAS, if any, that they have in their system.
40:35It's just not proactive so far as the citizens are concerned.
40:40In 2025, on average, Gadsden's water contained more than twice the EPA's recommended level of the two key PFAS compounds that had historically been used by the carpet industry.
40:53None of Gadsden's elected officials would be interviewed about the PFAS situation and the frustration people like Fred Zachary have with how the city has responded.
41:08The head of Gadsden's Water Authority, Chad Hare, said they are doing all they can to address residents' concerns.
41:16Do you hear from residents that are still frustrated with the level of PFAS in the water, even with the carbon filters?
41:24As we get phone calls, we answer the questions the best that we can, and we provide every bit of the information that we have.
41:33As far as all of our sampling, all of our monitoring is provided to the public on the website.
41:40Our responsibility is to meet all state and federal regulations.
41:44We're water treatment professionals, and so we take that very seriously.
41:52So the state requires some water systems to test for PFAS.
41:59However, because the EPA has not made their guidelines enforceable, there are not really any limits in Alabama.
42:07So even if they're drinking water tests above these guidelines established by the EPA, they are still not in violation of Alabama's water quality rules because the EPA has not said those guidelines are enforceable.
42:26In 2024, after decades of studying the issue, the EPA finally issued drinking water regulations for some of the PFAS compounds they'd flagged over the years, though they don't take effect until 2031.
42:43In a statement, the agency said it is committed to combating PFAS contamination.
42:49It noted that during the first Trump administration, it issued a nationwide PFAS action plan and said it is now working to help public water systems around the country.
42:59It also said it intends to rescind and re-evaluate restrictions put on some PFAS compounds under the Biden administration and implement a PFAS testing strategy that doesn't create an undue burden for industry and protects human health and the environment.
43:18The EPA can only act as quickly as the law allows them to.
43:24Betsy Sutherland is the former director of the EPA's Water Protection Division and spent more than 30 years at the agency.
43:31She has become a vocal critic.
43:34If the agency knew that there was a concern with toxicity in 2000, can you just help explain to people who are, you know, have this in their bodies or drinking it in their water why the agency takes so long?
43:48At the time, the Toxic Substances Control Act that we were working under at EPA was very weak.
43:55All the onus was on EPA to prove that there was an existing chemical causing a problem before they could take action.
44:04So we were really hamstrung at the time.
44:06That current law did not allow EPA to do bans or restrictions of chemicals unless there was enormous evidence.
44:14Some people we've talked to have said that this was a failure of accountability at every level, from the local utility to the state to EPA.
44:21Do you agree with that?
44:22So I do agree with that, because in this particular case, there were ways we could have been more aggressive at EPA, and again, but because of the limitations of that Toxic Substances Control law,
44:37we could have been more aggressive in offering technical assistance to get the states to do things.
44:43Even today, she says, when there are concerns a chemical might be unsafe, the agency has to go through a seven-year process before it can act as well.
44:51It can't actually impose a ban or restrictions.
44:55In the meantime, the industry can continue using these chemicals?
44:58Absolutely, yes.
45:00What it means for public health is that, again, we're left to our own devices.
45:05We can buy a filter for our drinking water, we can get an HVAC for our house, but we're not going to get helped by the federal government at all.
45:14So unless your state is one of those states that's out there actively working on it, you're just going to continue to be exposed in what you eat, drink, and breathe.
45:28By 2009, after abandoning products containing two prior PFAS compounds, the carpet industry had moved on to yet more formulations of the chemicals.
45:40These, known as short chain PFAS, touted as less persistent in the human body.
45:53Some of them didn't bioaccumulate in animals as much.
45:59Some of them had early data showing less toxicity.
46:03But in all cases, when they were making these moves, they didn't have a great deal of actual data to back it up.
46:10So this was done somewhat with a hope and a prayer.
46:16The carpet industry eventually stopped using products with the short chain PFAS in 2019, amid a growing body of research raising questions about their toxicity.
46:27The carpet industry says regulators from Dalton Utilities all the way up to the EPA never restricted their use of these chemicals.
46:34What do you say to that?
46:36I think that's true.
46:38The regulatory system can be very slow to respond, especially when it doesn't have information.
46:45And basically, the regulatory system did not have any, you know, really usable information on PFAS chemicals until 2000.
46:56Is it fair to expect private industry to act before the government regulators do?
47:03Absolutely.
47:04Because government regulations are not designed to prevent every harm, especially ones it doesn't know about.
47:12They're designed to facilitate, you know, stopping known harms or putting in place a system where industry can make that call.
47:24I mean, that's the basis for so much of environmental regulation that there's industry responsibility.
47:30I would say that the failure really began with a lukewarm federal response and cascaded down from there.
47:43We never had a very robust federal response into the use of these chemicals, how they were allowed to move in the environment, how they were able to be sold in terms of commerce.
47:55And as a result, that was a message that was signaling to states, this isn't a big deal yet.
48:02That's signaling to local communities, this isn't a big deal.
48:06And how do you think Georgia is doing in regulating these chemicals?
48:11I think Georgia, like most states, is terribly behind.
48:16While I understand being reluctant to get too far out ahead of EPA and federal regulations, I think that there was certainly enough information to begin addressing this if lawmakers and leadership within the state of Georgia wanted to address this problem.
48:36Today, the state is grappling with another concern, how the ongoing lawsuits might impact some of its largest employers.
48:45We are now in the posture that we're all going to be suing each other, and when that happens, nobody wins.
48:51State legislator Casey Carpenter, who represents Dalton, has been trying to get support for a bill that would limit lawsuits against the carpet industry.
48:59This legislation is no laughing matter. It's about protecting 50,000 jobs in northwest Georgia and hundreds of thousands across the state.
49:08Critics say it would actually harm residents already coping with the area's PFAS contamination.
49:14The bill you introduced that would have shielded carpet companies and other PFAS receivers who caused PFAS pollution from legal liability.
49:24You know, why did you bring that bill forward?
49:27Because I think that it's important to focus litigation on the people that are at fault.
49:32I tell people all the time, when we found out asbestos caused cancer, nobody sued the home builder that put it in your house.
49:41You went straight to the asbestos manufacturers.
49:43And I see PFAS as being the next asbestos for the United States.
49:49It's important to focus that litigation on the chemical manufacturers who knew it was not safe and who misled everybody that used it.
49:57These lawsuits in particular are a lifeline for a lot of your constituents who are worried about their health.
50:04Why did you propose a bill that, in some ways, would make it harder to get answers?
50:08I don't think so. I think that it just basically said, let's focus on the chemical companies.
50:20Stormy, how are you?
50:21I'm good. Today is okay.
50:23Okay.
50:24I just wanted to start to check all of my patients' levels and follow everybody.
50:31Yes.
50:32We think it's affecting your liver. You were found to have moderate fatty liver disease.
50:39Now, the good thing is that, before we checked these, I already had you on a program of changing your diet, decreasing the amount of meat,
50:47certainly not taking any more fast foods, and filtering your water.
50:52Yes.
50:53There is a new study, and it does talk about fatty liver disease and this relationship to what it's doing to cause hepatic cancer.
51:02I'm going to watch your liver enzymes really closely, and at the first indication that they go up,
51:10hopefully they won't with everything that we're trying to do to prevent it.
51:14We just want to keep an eye on everything.
51:16I would like to see if we can, because, I mean, I just know that it's so new.
51:19We're all just kind of like, what can we do, and can we figure out a solution to mitigate the damage that's been done?
51:25So.
51:35Every single part of the regulatory framework that should have addressed this compound essentially left somebody else to handle it.
51:44And in the end, no one has.
51:48We're left with drastic contamination in this region, and these aren't the only communities that are facing this problem.
52:00I tell everybody that asked me about this, we're in an ultramarathon.
52:04This is not a sprint.
52:06This is going to require immense amount of resources, research and development, and direct leadership at every level to address the extent of this contamination.
52:18To be continued...
52:20Go to pbs.org slash frontline for more reporting from our partners.
52:39It really is still a crisis that's not fully understood.
52:43This chemical on which his company relied was now going to be forced to change a key ingredient.
52:49What is this? Where is this coming from?
52:52And read more about PFAS, the forever chemicals.
52:56Connect with Frontline on Facebook and Instagram and stream anytime on the PBS app, YouTube or pbs.org slash frontline.
53:19For more on this and other Frontline programs, visit our website at pbs.org slash frontline.
53:38Frontline's Contaminated, the carpet industry's toxic legacy, is available on Amazon Prime Video.
54:01Frontline is available on Amazon Prime Video.
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