If you’ve grown up drinking tap water in the United States, it’s likely that you’ve consumed some amount of per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances at some point in your life. PFAS, sometimes referred to as forever chemicals, are a class of over 5,000 chemicals that are found in a wide range of industry and household products including the nonstick coating on cookware, cling wrap, foods like microwave popcorn, and firefighting foam. And when they enter the human bloodstream, they don’t leave.
Contaminated Drinking Water Is Now a Country-Wide Issue
PFAS first began to proliferate U.S. production lines in the 1940’s. By the late 1950’s and into the early ‘60’s, studies began to emerge about the negative health effects PFAS could have on the human body, and a 2021 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that exposure to PFAS caused a whole host of health issues including increased rates of liver and heart disease, decreased antibody responses to vaccines, cancer, low birth weight in babies, and thyroid problems.
