Poison Water

Traces of dangerous “forever chemicals” have been found in many water systems across the country, chemicals that come from many common sources but that could be extremely dangerous to our health. Both state officials and the feds are looking into the situation, but activists feel not enough is being done.

So, today we’re taking a look at efforts to eliminate these "forever" chemicals from our drinking water. They come from substances that have been used in manufacturing many products – Teflon coating, and carpet, for example -- for years, and that are used in foam to fight fires.

The chemicals at issue are per and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or P-FAS, and they have been linked to various cancers, endocrine disruption and other serious and life-threatening health conditions.

Our guest in this episode, Cheryl Cail, is one of the leaders of a national coalition that is pushing the federal government, and her home state of South Carolina, to take immediate steps to set mandatory limits of P-FAS and to clean up our drinking water supplies.

"You just have to know one thing," she says. "This is not something that should be in the water. We should not be consuming it. It needs to be addressed. It needs to not be coming through our tap water. It should not be in the environment so things like using sludge that has high levels of PFAS to put on farm crops, that's going to go into the ground. It's going to go into the food that's grown and by virtue of eating that food, we're going to be ingesting it."

To learn more about this serious issue and what you can do, take a listen.