Name: How “forever chemicals” polluted America’s water
Uploaded: 2020-08-05T18:05:04.000Z
Duration: 12 min 6 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

The Cape Fear River runs down the eastern half of North Carolina,

passing by major cities before emptying into the Atlantic Ocean.

Right here, at the bottom of the river basin, is Wilmington – a city known for its iconic

That's where you'll find this sign, describing the importance of this river to the region:

“It flows southeast for 200 miles… has the largest basin in the state, covering more

than 9,000 square miles… [and] drainage from 4 cities and runoff from factories, farms

and homesites in 29 counties flows into it.”

This river system provides water to the entire basin and the Cape Fear is one of Wilmington's

A nationwide test of tap water recently ranked both Wilmington and neighboring Brunswick

County in the top five for high levels of PFAS contamination — a group of chemicals

Anything that has water repellant in it, stain resistance in it, fire retardant, popcorn bags

... popcorn bags and dental floss and pizza boxes...

... pizza boxes, rain gear, sleeping bags, food containers...

Tracing the sources of chemicals in this North Carolina river tells you exactly how the water

got so contaminated...  … and it also tells you how chemical companies

are getting away with polluting our drinking water — not just here, but throughout the

This happens to be ground zero for these chemicals being discharged into the water and the air.

99% of all Americans have this in their blood.

Yet another chemical compound found in the Cape Fear River...

Chemicals used in consumer products like firefighting foam and nonstick products...

... prompting concerns about the drinking water in Southeastern North Carolina.

But it's basically what they call “forever chemicals” — they're long-chain fluorocarbons

designed to withstand any kind of breakdown.

Forever chemicals, or “PFAS”, have strong molecular bonds that repel oil, water, and

stains and can withstand extreme heat, making them almost indestructible.

It was actually invented to coat tanks and military instruments and weaponry to protect

Chemical companies like DuPont have been making PFAS since the 1930s.

All around us are the product of modern chemistry...

Now, there are nearly 5,000 different forever chemicals, and “PFAS” is an umbrella term

One of them, PFOA, was used by DuPont to make Teflon.

Also known as C8, it was the subject of a 2001 class action lawsuit claiming DuPont

contaminated drinking water in Ohio and West Virginia.

PFAS chemicals accumulate in our bodies and that build-up can cause health problems long

You can't see it, and you can't taste it, and the kinds of impacts that occur with it

As a result of the lawsuit, DuPont funded a science panel that, in 2012, found probable

links between C8 exposure and health problems like cancer after testing almost 70,000 people

Five years later, DuPont settled without admitting any wrongdoing, despite evidence that they

had known for decades about the harmful effects of PFAS.

But by then, PFAS contamination had cropped up elsewhere.

The Cape Fear River Basin begins here, near the city of Greensboro.

In water samples taken from lakes in the area, researchers found a forever chemical called

It was coming from here: The Piedmont Triad International Airport.

PFOS is in the firefighting foam... … used during training exercises conducted

at airports like the one here.   … and that runoff flows into the upper river

Farther down on the Haw River—a tributary of the Cape Fear— forever chemicals are

The people that do know about it, they don't drink the water.

There's people considering leaving because they don't feel like their water is safe.

Emily Sutton is a conservationist who tests the Haw River for contamination.

This spot in the Haw is directly impacted by the PFAS load that's coming directly from

Burlington's East Wastewater Treatment Plant.

Filters at the treatment facility are not designed to remove PFAS.

So wastewater coming from nearby industries arrives and leaves containing similar levels

Their effluent from the wastewater treatment plant comes directly into the Haw.

We know that the city of Burlington's wastewater treatment plant is the main source for PFAS,

but they're not necessarily creating the PFAS.

It's all of these different industries that are sending their waste to that wastewater

A few miles downriver,a water sample taken from beneath a bridge crossing the Haw showed

And as the river flows down towards Wilmington, chemicals from other sources accumulate and

push PFAS levels even higher near the city.

But it's not just the levels that start to change.

If you look at the kinds of PFAS in that sample, you'll notice something else in the water.

A newer type of forever chemical called GenX.

It came from here, at the Chemours chemical plant, located between the two sample sites.

The plant released wastewater into the Cape Fear River containing GenX, and also emitted

the chemical into the air — where it settles on nearby land and entered the river as runoff.

70 miles downstream, an intake pipe pulls in river water and supplies it to Wilmington.

The discovery of GenX in Wilmington's drinking water was front page news in 2017…

When we woke up and saw the Star News article that Gen X was in our water, a group of citizens,

we all got together around a dining room table and realized that we needed to address this

Two years later Emily Donovan submitted water samples from Wilmington and Brunswick County

to a nationwide study measuring PFAS levels in tap water.

Her Brunswick County sample came from Belville Elementary School.

I went back to my kids school, because I was curious to see what they were still drinking.

That sample was the highest reported in that study.

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How “forever chemicals” polluted America’s water

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