Contaminated: The Carpet Industry's Toxic Legacy (2026)

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Unanswered questions about PFAS,

also known as forever chemicals.

So if they're forever, how do we address them?

NARRATOR: A collaborative investigation--

Our reporting in Northwest Georgia has brought us before

numerous people whose drinking water is contaminated,

whose land is contaminated, whose food is contaminated.

NARRATOR: Of the chemicals known as PFAS.

All the onus was on EPA to prove that there was an existing

chemical causing a problem before they could take action.

Once they get into people,

their body levels stay high for three to years.

NARRATOR: And the companies that produced and used them.

These are major employers within these communities

and it is big, big industry.

NARRATOR: Now, as part of FRONTLINE's

Local Journalism Initiative--

Who should be held accountable is basically

a finger-pointing game between the chemical industry,

the carpet industry, and others.

NARRATOR: Contaminated: The Carpet Industry's Toxic Legacy.

♪

This is Pine Chapel Road.

One of the most beautiful spots in the county.

The rolling hills, the wildlife, vegetation,

the water, absolutely stunning.

It's kind of my Zen place.

[insects chirping]

[cow lows] [chuckles]

[shutter clicks]

[shutter clicks]

♪

These beautiful rolling hills behind us

are used for cattle grazing.

There's nothing about this that doesn't look healthy,

right?

And lo and behold,

it is absolutely contaminated

with the sludge and the PFAS.

[shutter clicks]

It's one of many fields that are toxic in this county.

It's kind of concerning, isn't it,

to see these guys standing in the water?

It's so polluted with PFAS.

Poor things have no idea what they're standing in.

Polyfluoroalkyl, commonly called PFAS.

A contaminate linked to cancer and other illnesses.

Families in North West Georgia have been living

with unanswered questions about PFAS.

Water quality experts are raising alarm bells about --

I think that PFAS is going to eventually be

the front and foremost of health problems here.

I moved here around the age of five.

I've basically been here ever since.

That's a good chunk of my life.

I just turned a couple weeks ago,

and I feel that's too young to feel how I do physically.

What I technically have been diagnosed with

is non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

It's something that affects you

from the second you wake up to the second you go to bed.

It makes me feel guilty as a mom, you know,

that when my kids ask to do something,

I have to explain to them

I don't feel well enough to do that.

I feel it's unfair to them, you know?

I mean, we have to be realistic

in the fact liver is something you have to have to survive.

And, um, if the damage continues,

you eventually have to go on a transplant list,

and a transplant list is a long wait.

My husband and I actually were discussing a will last night.

I've discussed it a little bit with my daughter.

You 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.

She needs to care more. [chuckles]

You know, um...

She's young.

But just because you're young

doesn't mean these things don't scare you.

It doesn't mean that we can't prepare you for the worst,

we can't discuss this.

I love you-- have a good day. [brakes hiss]

[chuckles]

Morning!

[in interview]: I hope for the best for the future,

but right now, it's a day at a time.

♪

Dalton is known as the carpet capital of the world.

This is a town that lives and breathes the carpet industry.

There are dozens of carpet mills located there.

And at these carpet mills, there's a dyeing process

where they put the color on the carpets.

Well, when they do that, they also add chemicals.

The PFAS was in these chemicals that provide stain resistance.

So PFAS got into the water

because when that washes off the carpets,

it ended up going into the drains

to the local utility

and ultimately ending up in the river water.

NARRATOR: For much of the past year,

a consortium of journalists

from "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution,"

the Charleston "Post and Courier"...

Great to see you again.

NARRATOR: ...and al.com in Alabama,

along with the Associated Press and "Frontline,"

have been investigating the carpet industry's use

of products that contain chemicals

known as PFAS.

Even amid warnings of their accumulation in human blood

and possible health effects.

We knew already that there was an environmental crisis

unfolding in Northwest Georgia.

The story of responsibility

and who should be held accountable

is basically a finger-pointing game

between the chemical industry, the carpet industry, and others.

♪

There's a couple things I want to check in here.

NARRATOR: The team reviewed thousands of pages of documents

and court depositions.

I really appreciate you taking the time...

NARRATOR: And interviewed former regulators

and industry insiders,

as well as doctors,

scientists...

...extract PFAS from the sample...

NARRATOR: ...and people who have the kinds of illnesses

that researchers have linked to PFAS contamination.

We think it's affecting your liver.

What took it to the next level for us

and what drew our attention

is that there were clear lines of accountability

for this contamination

and a clear need to really understand

why things are the way they are up in Northwest Georgia.

NARRATOR: The carpet industry has long insisted

it's not to blame for PFAS getting into the environment,

and argued that chemical companies obscured the risks

and assured them that the products they were supplying

were safe.

But the recently reviewed records also show

that executives from the two largest carpet companies,

Shaw and Mohawk,

were getting warnings about potential harms

dating back decades.

And with little regulation until recently,

the team found that for years,

both the companies and their suppliers

were able to legally switch among stain-resistant products

that contained different types of PFAS.

We can't do this story

without industry's perspective.

You want to just update us on where we are with data.

Most of the testing up in Northwest Georgia is completed,

but the rest of the state we still are looking at.

Downstream of Dalton and into Alabama,

we've estimated that there's approximately

hundreds of thousands, -plus thousand people

who get their drinking water

from the surface waters

that originate with the Conasauga River.

NARRATOR: The carpet companies say

they stopped using any kind of PFAS in U.S. production

in .

But for years the compounds ended up in the environment.

And take decades or more to break down.

These so-called forever chemicals

have routinely tested in the local drinking water at

levels the E.P.A now considers unsafe.

Today, there are lawsuits

against both carpet and chemical companies,

and uncertainty and feelings of betrayal

are boiling across the region.

We pay for poison in our water.

NARRATOR: Communities are worried about their

drinking water and local governments say

the problem is too vast for them to fix alone.

It really is

still a crisis that's not fully understood.

[motor humming]

NARRATOR: The first signs of trouble began coming to light

in the late s.

I'll come up through here,

and these suds, or foam, on the water,

whatever you want to call it,

that's about inches tall, hanging out up in there.

I want to show you what happened to this cow's calf.

Right here lays this cow's calf.

It's about like that other calf up yonder.

It's getting the point now you can start to smell it.

I first learned about it

when a farmer from West Virginia called me

trying to figure out why his cows were getting sick.

And that phone call back in October

led to what has become, uh, several decades

of research and work now

into this family of chemicals we now call PFAS.

NARRATOR: Rob Bilott is a lawyer

whose suits over the years have exposed

how chemical companies had research

showing PFAS was more dangerous than the public knew.

Obviously, you've seen

a lot of internal company documents through your work.

When did the companies, M and DuPont,

makers of these chemicals,

really start to know themselves about the health and safety?

You know, I think that's probably

one of the most disturbing aspect

of the whole story on PFAS,

is how far back the makers of these chemicals

understood how dangerous these materials were.

"Industry on Parade" visits the $ million home

of a department of the DuPont Company.

From the s and 's,

you had the manufacturers understanding

if this stuff gets out into the world,

it's not going to break apart.

And that led to the companies being concerned

about what happens to living things that might be exposed.

By the 's, 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.

Mice, rats, rabbits,

dogs, guinea pigs,

and, eventually, even monkeys

that were dropping dead from exposure

to the particular types of these chemicals

that had eight carbons attached to fluorine,

these original PFAS that they were creating.

As 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.

My new cookware's coated with Teflon.

Food just slips off easy!

NARRATOR: PFAS had become virtually ubiquitous.

With Scotchgard Protector, water beads up and runs off.

NARRATOR: From non-stick pans to raincoats to shoes.

I got a little down my neck, but otherwise, great!

You need Scotchgard Fabric Protector.

It keeps ordinary spills from becoming extraordinary stains.

NARRATOR: And prized for its ability

to protect against stains,

which was especially useful in the carpet industry.

Carpet treated with Scotchgard

doesn't absorb dirt, it rejects...

NARRATOR: One of the most popular products

was M's Scotchgard.

Look for the Scotchgard label underneath.

PFAS chemicals became basically intertwined

with carpet manufacture on a deep level

since the s and into the 's and beyond.

NARRATOR: Steven Amter is an environmental scientist

who has worked with Rob Bilott on PFAS lawsuits.

Here boy, come.

Carpets could be hard to clean and they could stain.

And what these chemicals promised to do

was reduce or eliminate a lot of that,

plus make them last for years.

♪

There's still nothing more dependable...

Scotchgaurd and Stainmaster. ...than Stainmaster carpet.

They 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, how you can keep these things

now clean much easier."

By the 's,

you could buy a house or rent an apartment,

and there was no finished floor except carpet.

And so the demand was created,

and this, the industry exploded in size and scope

to meet that demand.

NARRATOR: It wasn't until the late 's

that M began informing the carpet industry

that the type of PFAS in Scotchgard

might accumulate in people's bodies.

Were there times when the carpet industry

knew or strongly suspected that PFAS

would cause some sort of problems?

It was an evolving process,

and that's very much argued over in, in lawsuits.

Certainly, they were given explicit warnings

by the late s.

They 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.

NARRATOR: In depositions and other court records,

the reporters discovered accounts

of meetings between M and the two main carpet companies

in Northwest Georgia,

Shaw and Mohawk.

We have these meetings between M and Mohawk, Shaw,

where basically M discloses

that they're finding this stuff building up

in the blood of workers and the general public.

Wow.

NARRATOR: In one meeting in January ,

a Shaw executive expressed concerns about getting sued,

according to notes from a M employee.

They met with a couple executives there,

and one said,

"He felt plaintiffs' attorneys would be involved immediately."

Okay.

Which, I mean, they weren't involved immediately,

but they were involved about two decades later, almost.

So one of the major two carpet companies

was, like, "How is this going to affect our bottom line?

We're going to get sued."

Yeah, they were worried about getting sued.

Okay, got it. All the way back then.

NARRATOR: That same day, in a meeting at Mohawk,

officials there seemed far less worried.

"No real sense of Mohawk problem/ responsibility,"

the M employee noted.

"If it's good enough for M, it's good enough for Mohwak."

NARRATOR: M continued to reassure the companies

that Scotchgard was safe to use.

But a year and a half later,

the company and the E.P.A. made a dramatic announcement.

♪

The M Company is phasing out

some Scotchgard stain repellent products

because of concerns about a chemical

used in their production.

The company says the chemical has been detected

at low levels in people and the environment.

NARRATOR: A top E.P.A. official at the time

said there was no "imminent harm" to consumers

during the phaseout,

but 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."

The news didn't go over well at a meeting with Shaw Industries,

the largest carpet company in the country.

Bob Shaw, the C.E.O. of Shaw Industries,

confronted M chemical executives.

So in that meeting, Bob Shaw picked up a carpet square

with a Scotchgard logo on it

and said, "This isn't a logo, this is a target."

"And I got million of these out in the marketplace.

What am I supposed to do about that?"

And then he threw that piece of carpet at them

and stormed out of the meeting.

This chemical on which his company relied,

his billion-dollar company,

billions of dollars in revenue every year,

was now going to be forced

to change a key ingredient of their carpet.

♪

You have to reach out to people

who are reluctant to talk. Yeah.

You know, having a letter to deliver

with your request and your contact information...

You know, "I want you to read it.

Your input to the story is really important to us."

NARRATOR: No one from the chemical or carpet industries

would agree to on-camera interviews.

In statements, both Shaw and Mohawk underscored

that they had been assured that Scotchgard was safe and

they stopped using the chemical in it after M's disclosures.

Shaw said in its statement

that PFAS were for "soil and water resistance"

and have also been used

in "thousands of applications and products."

And a lawyer for Mohawk said they were

"relying on and trusting the chemical manufacturers--

"the inventors of these products--

for their expertise."

M has said it discontinued making products

with any kind of PFAS in .

A successor company to DuPont still uses some PFAS compounds

thought to be less persistent in the body

for products like Teflon.

[insects chirping]

Much of the attention around PFAS in the region

has been about exposure to it in the environment,

especially drinking water,

not carpets themselves.

In Northwest Georgia,

the forever chemicals from the carpet mills

ended up in the local rivers for years.

In , a landmark study at the University of Georgia

found that the PFAS levels in one river

were "among the highest ever recorded in surface water."

♪

[engine starts]

We're really water-rich in Northwest Georgia.

There is a massive network of really special creeks and rivers

that weave throughout the entire region.

They were transportation networks

before we had rail systems and interstates.

The Indigenous populations had enormous civilizations

up and down these rivers before settlers came.

These waterways are critical

for recreation, for anglers, for paddlers.

They're providing hundreds of thousands of people

with drinking water.

It's really hard to overstate the historical impact

of, of how these rivers have shaped the communities

across this region.

NARRATOR: Jesse Demonbreun-Chapman leads

an environmental protection group

that has sued the chemical and carpet companies

over PFAS contamination.

So now these rivers

have taken on a new significance because of PFAS.

It's not a badge of honor to be known

for some of the most contaminated surface water

in the country.

And it's certainly something

that's going to keep us, you know,

very busy for years to come

to try and tease out how to fix this,

how to maintain healthy drinking water systems,

how to remediate the environment where we know we have

contaminated soil and groundwater.

So this issue of PFAS contamination looms large

over the entire region of Northwest Georgia.

♪

You can't see it, you can't smell it,

it doesn't have a taste.

So 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.

♪

Our reporting in Northwest Georgia has brought us

before numerous people whose drinking water is contaminated,

whose land is contaminated,

whose food is contaminated,

yet when they go to the doctor,

or they go to their local officials

or their water district and ask,

"What, what can we do about this?

How can we get this out of our...?"

there's no answers for them.

NARRATOR: It's difficult to definitively connect

people's specific illnesses to the chemicals,

and there are an estimated

, varieties of PFAS.

Little is known about the health effects of most of them.

But 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.

The levels are pretty high in Northwest Georgia.

We've compared them to the general U.S. population,

and, and their values are much higher

than the general U.S. population.

NARRATOR: Dana Barr is an environmental health researcher

who's tested the blood of almost residents

in the region.

You know, % of them had levels

that were above that, that level of, of high risk

of health outcomes,

and, and % were in that moderate-risk area.

And 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.

This is a community that, you know, they just live there.

I mean, they were exposed

because of just the surrounding conditions.

What do we know about the medical effects

PFAS has on the human body?

So 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.

That 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?

Once 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, so it's not eliminated

like a lot of chemicals are.

Is there nothing that can be done

in terms of treating or mitigating

after it's already been found in someone's blood?

There is nothing that has been shown to be effective yet.

We have ideas and we're pursuing those right now.

♪

I reached out to my doctor.

It's, like, silence.

They don't know what to do or how to handle it.

NARRATOR: One of the people in Dana Barr's study

is a hair salon owner named Dolly Baker.

Hey, Dolly. Hi.

I'm Jason. Jason, nice to meet you.

Yeah, Jason's my reporting partner.

Dana from Emory called me,

and she was on her vacation, and said

that she just wanted to talk about my results.

Mine was over ,.

High is , and the next-highest one below me

was -something, I believe.

And she said, you know, "I don't want to alarm you,

but we're just trying to figure out what could be causing this."

Had you ever had any health problems or anything before?

I did have to start taking thyroid medicine last year

for the first time.

But before... But before that...

Nothing. Nothing.

What's it like knowing that you have this

inside your body

and that you can't really do much yet to address that?

I feel like...

I don't know, almost like there's a,

a blanket over me, smothering me,

that I can't get out from under

and that it's just...

You're trapped, I guess,

is the best way to describe it.

♪

NARRATOR: Thyroid issues are among the conditions

linked to PFAS.

Lisa Martin is another one of the study participants

with a thyroid issue.

Hi, Lisa. How are you doing? Hey, Dylan.

NARRATOR: She spent years working at Mohawk

as an inventory manager.

I was very healthy, active, I, perfect bill of health,

and within...

[sighs]

...you know, just half a dozen years

of working in the carpet industry,

my health started to decline.

We couldn't figure out why.

I, I ended up having autoimmune disease,

had to have my thyroid removed.

Did you work closely with people

who were applying these PFAS chemicals to carpet?

Did they have any sense of the risks that they faced?

They did not-- they didn't have a clue.

The first plant that I worked at was in Dalton,

and we had a dye house up there.

My first shock came

when we would walk for exercise

around this facility, which is a huge facility.

But as we would walk out back in the waterways,

you could see what color they had been dyeing that day.

It was just accepted.

It was just the culture.

So I became complacent

about what I was seeing,

and I just, I didn't say anything,

which is, it's my fault.

Had you heard of PFAS before?

No.

I was familiar with Scotchgard, that we used it.

I knew that we used it.

I knew that we used stain resistance on our products.

But I did not understand the, the PFAS element

to the degree that I do now.

NARRATOR: Mohawk said in its statement

that they weren't aware of any instance

where PFAS was directly discharged into the environment

and that it has always complied with wastewater regulations.

By the time Martin started at Mohawk in ,

M had pulled Scotchgard from the market,

and the carpet industry was using different products

like Stainmaster, made by DuPont.

Experience a whole new era in style and beauty

for your home.

Stainmaster Carpet.

Always stylish.

Always beautiful.

NARRATOR: According to Shaw and Mohawk,

they received assurances from the chemical companies

that these alternative products didn't contain the types of PFAS

that accumulate in the body

and were not as persistent in the environment.

But still, the carpet makers were worried

about new PFAS research that was starting to emerge.

I have an email between Werner Braun,

the head of the Carpet and Rug Institute,

that lobbying group for the carpet industry.

Yeah.

It says,

"The troubling issue for me in this report

is a determination that this is carcinogenic in rats."

So that's showing that as early as in ,

the carpet industry knew of a animal study

that was showing carcinogenic nature of these chemicals.

NARRATOR: Around , Dupont disclosed that trace amounts

of the chemical that caused cancer in rats

was in fact in their Stainmaster carpet protector.

But Dupont insisted it was an unintentional byproduct

and still safe.

The carpet companies would continue to use Stainmaster

for another five years before dropping the chemical in it too

as part of another E.P.A.-negotiated phaseout.

The Carpet and Rug Institute and its former head,

Werner Braun,

declined to be interviewed.

In a statement,

the group said it evaluates its products to reflect

"science, innovation, and customer expectations,"

and that the carpet industry's conduct was,

and continues to be,

appropriate and lawful.

In their statements, Shaw and Mohawk again pointed the blame

at the manufacturers for misleading them.

Around that time,

the E.P.A. approached the carpet industry,

seeking to test their facilities for PFAS.

The E.P.A. was starting this priority review, and, in ,

one of the things they wanted to do was focus on,

"Let's go get some samples

from the water supply in these areas."

And one of the areas they had targeted

was carpet manufacturing.

NARRATOR: The carpet companies refused

to allow the testing,

citing confidentiality concerns,

and told the E.P.A. to ask the local water authority,

Dalton Utilities,

which also refused,

saying there wasn't an agreed-on,

scientifically sound testing method.

The carpet industry completely declined

to have their wastewater sampled.

And I would also add that Dalton Utilities was asked

if they would allow sampling from them as an alternative

to the carpet companies allowing sampling,

and to quote,

"Dalton Utilities didn't just say no.

They said, 'Hell, no.'"

♪

Dalton Utilities is the agency responsible

for providing drinking water to the people of Dalton,

but it's also responsible for treating the wastewater

that comes from the mills in Dalton.

Dalton is a carpet company town,

and the local utility there,

some , % of the water that it takes,

the wastewater that it takes in,

comes from the carpet industry.

Historically, carpet industry executives

and former executives

have made up a part of its board.

NARRATOR: No one from Dalton Utilities

would agree to an interview.

In a statement, it said its board

was never influenced by carpet executives,

and it didn't know there was PFAS in the wastewater

until .

The utility is currently suing

the carpet and chemical companies.

In the suit,

it said its wastewater treatment process

cannot screen out PFAS chemicals.

Dating back to the 's,

it has run a system that filters some contaminants

from the carpet companies' wastewater

and then sprays it out over thousands of acres it owns

on the outskirts of Dalton.

♪

The thing that was a light bulb moment for me

was the land application.

That's a big concentration of PFAS for...

Yeah. ...a long time.

I have... And every time it rained,

it just flows off that site into the environment.

Yeah, so this is the L.A.S., the land application system.

The boundaries are in black here.

And then the Conasauga River, you can kind of see,

moves its way down along the western boundary of the L.A.S.

One expert in a lawsuit against carpet and chemical companies

said that the land application system

will be a perpetual source of contamination

for a hundred years, at least.

The L.A.S. is at the center of several lawsuits.

So the utility, through a lawyer, told us

that we would be able to take a tour like normal

that they offer,

but we wouldn't be able to ask any questions on the record.

Going there for the first time was a bit surreal.

Wow, look at that.

Everywhere you look, you can see

some form of transportation of water

from the waste treatment facilities...

...eventually into the sprinkler heads

that spray the forest with the treated wastewater.

And 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.

The problem is that PFAS are chemicals

that do not break down in the environment.

They don't biodegrade for decades.

And you could look at a tree, you could 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, in high quantities.

♪

In the course of our investigation

of Dalton Utility's role in PFAS contamination,

I was told I should talk to Scott Gordon.

Gordon was involved in inspecting issues with

Dalton Utilities land application system

as far back as .

When 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.

There were so many carpet fibers on the spray itself.

And then when, as you're walking around those areas,

it felt like you were walking on shag carpet.

So, shag carpet, like,

on the, on the... On the ground.

Wow. Yeah.

There was, there was that much carpet fibers in,

in the material they were spraying.

And all of those pipes going up

and the sprinkler heads weren't

stabilized at all.

Any limb that came along and knocked them over,

a deer running through the pasture

knocks them over.

So, 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, into the river.

They were putting this wastewater

onto land that was draining directly into the river,

which people used for drinking water?

Correct, and, and this is,

this is a very, fairly large utility,

so they were discharging

between and million gallons a day

to this land application system.

♪

NARRATOR: Dalton's filtering system

has been cited in lawsuits as one of the main sources of

PFAS contamination in the region.

The utility has said it is looking

for new technology that can treat or remove PFAS.

♪

But the so-called forever chemicals

have spread far down the regional riverways,

where, in Alabama,

places like Gadsden have been impacted.

Gadsden is about miles west of Dalton,

of the carpet capital,

and they get their drinking water

from the Coosa River.

Early ,

state officials sent out a memo saying,

"We are concerned about the PFAS levels

in eight water systems."

And Gadsden was one.

And so that really set alarm bells off in Gadsden,

where they said,

"What is this? Where's this coming from?

They were kind of able to conclude

that the PFAS was coming from the carpet companies.

Within a few months, Gadsden decides to sue

chemical manufacturers as well as the carpet companies.

NARRATOR: It was the first time a carpet maker

had been sued over its role in PFAS contamination.

What 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.

Hey, Fred. Hi, how are you?

I'm good, how are you?

Don't get up. I'm well, thank you.

Fred Zackery,

he's a native of Gadsden.

Yeah, it's good to see you. Welcome.

He lived away for many years,

but he returned to Gadsden,

and he started doing a radio show called "Introspection."

Well, 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 poisoned Coosa.

And we're going to be talking about poisoned water.

There is no mistake...

About ten years ago,

when PFAS started to become an issue in Gadsden,

he really rededicated his radio show

to water quality.

The contaminants were not flowing from the county.

They, they came downriver from Dalton, Georgia,

and those carpet plants upriver.

I think part of Fred Zackery'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.

We're in need of leadership in this community,

and you can't keep talking about the,

"Oh, well, they won't let you."

Nobody ever let me do anything.

Mm-hmm. Do it.

Right. Because you see

it needs to be done. Exactly.

NARRATOR: Since the lawsuit in ,

six other drinking water systems in Alabama

have sued the carpet and chemical companies,

alleging PFAS has contaminated their water supply.

Gadsden's suit ended in

with a confidential settlement.

The city has been trying to reduce the PFAS in the water,

including using a carbon filtering system.

It recently broke ground

on a new high-tech treatment plant

that is set to open in .

It's sad that it's taken so long for this to materialize.

We shouldn't have had to wait on a settlement

to, to do this-- bond issues.

There's a whole lot of ways you could've done this.

So, um, I want to give great credit where it's due,

but we are still being poisoned

while this is being built,

and nobody's talking about establishing a medical facility

where we can do testing of citizens to see...

Yeah. ...what level of PFAS,

if any, that they have in their system.

It's, it's just not proactive

so far as the citizens are concerned.

NARRATOR: In , on average,

Gadsden's water contained

more than twice the E.P.A.'s recommended level

of the two key PFAS compounds

that had historically been used by the carpet industry.

NARRATOR: None of Gadsden's elected officials

would be interviewed about the PFAS situation

and the frustration people like Fred Zackery have

with how the city has responded.

...parts per trillion for PFOA.

The head of Gadsden's water authority, Chad Hare,

said they're doing all they can

to address residents' concerns.

Do you hear from residents that are

still frustrated with the level of PFAS in the water,

even with the carbon filters?

As we get phone calls, we,

we answer the questions the, the best that we can,

and we provide every,

every bit of the information that we have,

as far as all of our sampling,

all of our monitoring,

um, is provided to the public on the website.

Our responsibility is to meet

all state and federal regulations.

We're water treatment professionals.

And so we take that very seriously.

So, the state requires some water systems

to test for PFAS.

However, because the E.P.A. has not

made their guidelines enforceable,

there are not really any limits in Alabama.

So, even if their drinking water

tests above these guidelines established by the E.P.A.,

they are still not in violation

of Alabama's water quality rules,

because the E.P.A. has not said

those guidelines are enforceable.

♪

NARRATOR: In , after decades of studying the issue,

the E.P.A. finally issued drinking water regulations

for some of the PFAS compounds they'd flagged over the years,

though they don't take effect until .

In a statement, the agency said it is committed

to combatting PFAS contamination.

It 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.

It also said it intends to rescind and reevaluate

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.

E.P.A. can only act as quickly

as the law allows them to,

and so, again...

NARRATOR: Betsy Southerland is the former director

of the E.P.A.'s water protection division,

and spent more than years at the agency.

She has become a vocal critic.

If the agency knew that there was a concern

with toxicity in ,

can you just...

Help explain to people who are,

you know, have this in their bodies,

are drinking it in their water,

why the agency takes so long.

At the time,

the Toxic Substances Control Act

that we were working under at E.P.A.

was very weak.

All the onus was on E.P.A. to prove

that there was an existing chemical causing a problem

before they could take action.

So we were really hamstrung at the time.

That current law did not allow E.P.A.

to do bans or restrictions of chemicals

unless there was enormous evidence.

Some 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 E.P.A.

Do you agree with that?

So, I do agree with that,

because in this particular case,

there, there were ways

we could've been more aggressive at E.P.A.,

and, again, but because of the limitations

of that Toxic Substances Control law,

we could've been more aggressive in offering technical assistance

to get the states to do things.

NARRATOR: Even today, when there are concerns

a chemical might be unsafe,

the agency has to go through a seven-year process

before it can actually impose a ban or restrictions.

In meantime, the industry can continue

using these chemicals? Absolutely, yes.

What it means for public health is that, again,

we're left to our own devices.

We can buy a filter for our drinking water,

we can get an HVAC for our house,

but we're, we're not going to get helped

by the federal government at all.

So, 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.

♪

NARRATOR: By ,

after abandoning products containing

two prior PFAS compounds,

the carpet industry had moved on

to yet more formulations of the chemicals--

these known as short-chain PFAS,

touted as less persistent in the human body.

Some of them didn't bioaccumulate

in animals as much.

Some of them had early data showing less toxicity.

But in all cases,

when they were making these moves,

they didn't have a great deal of actual data to back it up.

So, this was done somewhat

with a hope and a prayer.

NARRATOR: The carpet industry eventually

stopped using products with the short-chain PFAS in

amid a growing body of research

raising questions about their toxicity.

The carpet industry says

regulators from Dalton Utilities all the way up to the E.P.A.

never restricted their use of these chemicals.

What do you say to that?

I think that's true.

It's, uh, the...

The, the regulatory system can be very slow to respond,

especially when it doesn't have information.

And basically, the regulatory system

did not have any, you know,

really usable information on PFAS chemicals

until .

Is it fair to expect private industry

to act before the government regulators do?

Absolutely, because government regulations

are not designed to prevent every harm,

especially ones it doesn't know about.

They're designed to facilitate,

you know, stopping known harms

or putting in place a system,

um, where industry

can make that call.

I mean, that's the basis for so much

of environmental regulation,

that there's industry responsibility.

♪

I would say that the failure really began

with a lukewarm federal response,

and cascaded down from there.

We 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.

And as a result, that, that was a, a message

that was signaling to states, "This isn't a big deal yet,"

that's signaling to local communities,

"This isn't a big deal."

And how do you think Georgia is doing

in regulating these chemicals?

I think Georgia, like most states,

is terribly behind.

While I understand

being reluctant to get too far out ahead

of E.P.A. and federal regulations,

I think that there was

certainly enough information to begin addressing this

if lawmakers and, um, leadership within the State of Georgia

wanted to address this problem.

NARRATOR: Today, the state is grappling

with another concern:

how the ongoing lawsuits might impact

some of its largest employers.

We are now in the posture

that we're all going to be suing each other,

and when that happens, nobody wins.

NARRATOR: State legislator Kasey Carpenter,

who represents Dalton,

has been trying to get support for a bill

that would limit lawsuits against the carpet industry.

This legislation is no laughing matter.

It's about protecting , jobs in Northwest Georgia

and hundreds of thousands across the state.

NARRATOR: Critics say it would actually harm residents

already coping with the area's PFAS contamination.

The bill you introduced

that would have shielded carpet companies

and other PFAS receivers

who caused PFAS pollution

from legal liability, you know,

why did you bring that bill forward?

Because I think that it's important to focus litigation

on the people that are at fault.

I, I tell people all the time,

when we found out asbestos caused cancer,

nobody sued the home builder that put it in your house.

You went straight

to the asbestos manufacturers.

And that's, I see PFAS

as being the next, uh,

asbestos for, for the United States.

It's important to focus that litigation

on the chemical manufacturers who knew it was not safe

and who misled everybody that used it.

These lawsuits in particular

are a lifeline for a lot of your constituents

who are worried about their health.

Why did you propose a bill that, in some ways,

would make it harder to get answers?

I don't think so.

I think that it just basically said,

"Let's focus on the chemical companies."

[car alarm chirps]

Stormy, how are you?

I'm good. Today is okay. Okay.

I just wanted to start to check

all of my patients' levels,

and follow everybody.

Yes.

We think it's affecting your liver.

You were found to have moderate fatty liver disease.

Now, 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... Yes.

...certainly not taking any more fast foods,

and filtering your water. Yes.

There is a new study,

and it does talk about fatty liver disease

and this relationship to what it's doing

to cause hepatic cancer.

I'm going to watch your liver enzymes really closely,

and at the first indication

that they go up--

hopefully they won't,

with everything that we're trying to do to prevent it.

We just want to keep an eye on everything.

I would like to see if we can, 'cause, I mean,

I just know that it's so new, we'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?

♪

Every single part of the regulatory framework

that should have addressed this compound

essentially left somebody else to handle it.

In the end, no one has.

We're left with drastic contamination

in this region,

and these aren't the only communities

that are facing this problem.

I tell everybody that asks me about this,

"We're in an ultramarathon-- this is not a sprint."

This is going to require immense amount of resources,

research and development,

and direct leadership at every level

to address the extent of this contamination.

♪