Thread by @leanahosea

11 'new' PFAS found in water near Chemours plant, North Carolina:

there are 10,000 varieties of PFAS. Each new study uncovers some new harm to health linked to PFAS. These studies & court cases brought by people like @RobertBilott & @bennettpeer... 🧵

theguardian.com/environment/20…

...have inched us toward regulation of 6 types of PFAS. Companies agreed to phase these out. But they replaced them with new, "very similar" forms of PFAS "saying you can't prove it's harmful" explains Bilott in our podcast.
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podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the…

"no-one was doing that science. The companies weren't generating the data. They were simply saying, 'you can't prove it's harmful'" Billot adds. "Look how long it took us to get to the point of finally being able to regulate a handful of these."
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podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the…

In North Carolina, the water company wasn't able to detect forever chemicals in the water because they cannot screen for 10,000 possible chemicals that maybe might be in the water.
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theguardian.com/environment/20…

A recent court case in NL found, decades, after DuPont, from which Chemours was created, knew how harmful PFAS are, they were allowing them to leak from broken & cracking pipes at a Dordrecht plant. The NC study suggests lessons not learnt.
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nltimes.nl/2023/09/27/che…

In a recent interview, Oliver Loebel, of EurEau, told us removing PFAS once they have got into water is difficult, expensive & energy intensive, & that the key is tighter regulation of industry to prevent PFAS pollution occurring in the first place.

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theguardian.com/environment/20…