The forever book about forever chemicals!
The most important book you’ll read this year. Plus it's absolutely riveting.
Great book!
This is a page-turning tale easy to read. It’s not a scientific tome. While the secrets it reveals are disquieting, it’s important to know them.
This book will shake you to the core. Highly recommend regardless of your current knowledge / view about forever chemicals. Don’t let cultural or political beliefs on environment dictate whether you read this book. It is grounded in years of research from many different sources and sides of the scientific story.
Shocked and appalled don't even begin to cover how I feel after reading this book. If you care about your health, read this book. You need to understand a major cause of our cancer epidemic. Mariah Blake has written a highly researched treatise on the subject of chemicals that never disappear from the earth, and which disrupt our bodies and our health. Take a couple of days and get an in depth seminar on PFAS and TFA. Then ask your best AI engine what the major precursor of TFA is currently. You will find it is R-1234yf, the newest refrigerant in use by the automotive industry with the lowest GWF (global warming factor). R-1234yf is saving the ozone layer but when it leaks or is released from air conditioners, it degrades into a forever chemical which kills human beings. Read this book to understand the roots of the problem.
Deeply researched and beautifully written. A must read for our times.
This is a history of how the existential threat of PFAs and other forever chemicals came to be. How the U.S. government collaborated with Dupont since the 1820s and more recently helped the government hide the damage they did to people's health and the environment so that both Dupont and U.S. government could avoid the financial consequences. No wonder people don't trust the government and voted for extremist politicians who will only make their lives even worse as institutions that protect Americans are being dismantled, such as the EPA, CDC and other health institutions, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and many others.What really got me was when whistleblowers in small towns were shunned by Dupont workers, who say their lawsuit as having the potential to take away their jobs, if Dupont might move their factory elsewhere. I was also struck by how it was DuPont that taught the Tobacco industry how to cast doubt and hide findings of their own scientists that smoking was deadly. So this book will never be out of date because it has the history of how companies that made forever chemicals kept it secret for so long.The book ends with the latest 2025 updates on what has and is happening today with regulations of PFAS:“After many years of negotiation, in 2016, our famously gridlocked Congress voted overwhelmingly to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act, ushering in the most significant environmental legislation in decades. The revised law required the EPA to screen all new chemicals coming onto the market and—more importantly—mandated vetting for existing chemicals. No more grandfathering. The bill owed its success partly to backing from the chemical industry. Facing intense public anxiety over ever-present chemicals like PFAS and phthalates, manufacturers saw federal regulation as the best way to preserve faith in their products and to avoid a cumbersome patchwork of state regulation. In return for their support, industry lobbyists insisted on provisions that would make the process slow and ponderous.What they hadn’t reckoned on was a Donald Trump presidency. Almost as soon as the new administration took office, it began working to gut the legislation entirely. Just weeks before the EPA was due to finalize its rules for implementing the law in June 2017, a former American Chemistry Council lobbyist named Nancy Beck was appointed to the number two spot in the agency’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. Beck pressed agency staff to rewrite the rules along industry-friendly lines. One of her chief demands involved guidelines for picking which chemicals to prioritize for safety testing and possible regulation. The draft called for factoring in various ways people are exposed, since heavier, more widespread exposure can translate into a greater risk. Beck wanted to overhaul the language for “legacy” chemicals like PFOA that had theoretically been phased out. Specifically, she wanted to bar the EPA from considering key routes of exposure—including drinking water.Beck’s colleagues warned that this approach would drastically underestimate the hazards since these chemicals were still ubiquitous in the environment despite dwindling U.S. production. Beck ignored their concerns and took charge of rewriting the rules herself, a highly unusual move at an agency where guidelines are usually drafted by career civil servants with specialized expertise.President Trump, meanwhile, tapped a former Saint-Gobain (another forever chemical maker) lobbyist to head the EPA office that oversees the federal Superfund, one of the programs Hoosick Falls was counting on to compel polluters to pay for cleanup.In July, the president announced his nominee to head the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety. It was none other than Michael Dourson, the industry-funded toxicologist who helped set the dangerously lax standard for PFOA in West Virginia. If confirmed, Dourson would not only oversee implementation of the new chemical-safety law but would also be in charge of vetting some of the very substances whose dangers his group had downplayed while taking money from their manufacturers.”
Forever chemicals is perhaps not what you had in mind for a light summer read, but seriously--do queue this up next! I could not put the book down. It's a stunning chronicle of the bottomless greed and recklessness of the American chemical industry, smartly woven together with a deeply personal narrative of a small town in NY, paying a devastating price.Both threads of the alternating narrative are packed with characters in full-color, which makes it an engaging page-turner. The author shifts between well-researched history of the development of the American chemical industry and U.S. government involvement on the one hand, and on the other, the evolving story of people in a small-town community, suffering horrific illnesses and eventually organizing to fight back.The legal fight is playing out just as the book is published, and--spoiler-alert--so far (July 2025) the small town is winning. That is, if there's such a thing, after suffering from horrific consequences, lives and land ruined.While you are at it, go throw out that old teflon pan lingering in your kitchen. Also, heads-up that your relationship with your waterproof winter jacket will turn complicated after reading this book. A really important and well-written book, highly recommend it.
A fantastic, wrenching book that investigates the intersection of corporate power, environmental damage, and the power of human beings to persist -- beautifully written, empathetic in every way, and shocking, really, in the details it brings to light. Purchase and read. Audio book is beautifully produced.
This book is an excellent representation of the chemical industry's choice to ignore serious health issues related to toxic and extremely long-lived heavily fluorinated chemicals. As an environmental chemist, I knew of some of the issues but not the extent to which industry players downplayed dangers of these chemicals and for how long. The chemical industry is as guilty as the tobacco and fossil fuel industries in endangering the lives of people and creatures around the world. Mariah Blake does an excellent job laying it out.
I experienced so many emotions when I read this book. Anger, anxiety, shame, disappointment, sadness , compassion and pride in the persistence of people in my community to whom I will forever be grateful.Mariah writes in a way that keeps you engaged through the whole book . This book is factual and she stopped at nothing to get to the truth . I thank her for taking interest in our town andwriting such an informative and meaningful account of greed over doing the right thing for the better of our world for generations to come .It makes you think and wonder just who you can Trust !!
Excellent and timely read about the corruption that leaves toxic forever chemicals contaminating our drinking water, air, and consumer products.
Anyone who has concerns about PFAS and other forever chemicals need to read this book. It not only discusses actual human interest stories and the people who actually lived around these poisoned communities , it has case law in the footnotes. It's a real eye opener. Very well researched. It explains how forever chemicals have found their way into our homes. I highly recommend this book.
This book documented the poor behavior of 3M and Dupont. The industry did many great things, the author covers how Dupont made PTFE to help with the separation of U235 for the Little Boy Bomb in WW2. This work left the Chambers Works Dupont site a mess. And even the corporation saw the toll of working with these chemicals took on their own employees. The author identified briefly the use of PFOA as a surfactant to polymerization teflon in a reactor. She did not give details on how it was released and what could have been done to stop it.She documents the horrible toll these chemicals took on local people living near sites where these chemicals were used. It is hard to read and not be upset. Everyone should read this. PTFE is a great material, with many uses in our society. But we paid a price for this. Also, aspiring scientists paid a price because Dupont is only a shadow of what it once was, and likely it could have been prevented.
Excellent and heartbreaking book that indicts not only the chemical companies for their raw profit motive, but the system that protects them and allows them to hide their weapons of mass destruction behind “proprietary” trade secrets. Ask yourself why these chemical companies have been allowed to poison people and every other creature on the planet for their own need for money. Ask yourself why their billions should not be used to fund national healthcare.
Wonderfully written. The lack of integrity and honesty by large corporations, amend government agencies, was eye opening and appalling. Thank you for writing this book. Thanks to those who take risks to make a difference. One person can make a difference.
Sad truth.Well written and kept my interest throughoutIf greed had not been the driving desire, filters could have avoided at least some of the damage.
This book gives the timeline and process of the chemical takeover of the world.
This book is simply remarkable.Blake has woven together the deeply personal with the stark science. This book is both moving and informative in a way that deeply touches the heart and soul, sparks so much thought and reflection, and merges sadness with a sense of agency.I find myself enraged by the corporations and simply flummoxed by the individuals who can stand behind their actions. And ironically, also hopeful-- despite the uncertainties of this moment, there are leaders in politics who have finally had a pedestal to publicly decry the use of chemicals in our foods, water and products. Perhaps this is an opportunity for something like the ideas from the inspiring epilogue to finally address the forever chemicals that have permeated our world.
