Here’s an interview with Rob Bilott, the lawyer at the center of the PFAS fiasco. You know him. He was played by Mark Ruffalo in the movie Dark Waters. He’s written a book, “Exposure,” and been featured in the New York Times as “The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare.” (He used to work for the same chemical companies he ended up suing.)

Interview: Lawyer Rob Bilott On PFAS “Worldwide Public Health Threat” And His Letter To President Biden, The New Lede, 26 April 2022

He says industry has known for decades that PFAS are harmful:

It is critical to keep in mind when considering the PFAS problem that these are completely man-made toxins whose creation and release into our environment — and into all of us — was controlled by a small group of companies who not only knew that this contamination was occurring and would continue to occur, decades ago, but who profited enormously by intentionally covering up the problem. These are the same companies who now refuse to accept financial responsibility for the unprecedented damage they have caused and are even fighting those who dare to try to adopt laws or regulations to combat the problem they created.

I mean, really harmful:

… by the 1990s, 3M’s own scientists had sat down to calculate what a “safe” blood level would be for PFOS. At the time, they knew that the level of PFOS being found in the general US population’s blood was around 30 parts per billion. And when this internal 3M scientist sat down to calculate a safe blood level, the number he calculated was 1.05 parts per billion. Some 30 times lower than the level that was actually being found.

But, for some reason, the EPA just can’t get them regulated. Or get companies to clean up their mess:

How is it that even if we know that these chemicals, PFOA in particular, are incredibly toxic, persistent, bio accumulative, carcinogenic, you even have some of the biggest human health studies ever done confirming direct links with human health effects, including cancers, yet we still can’t seem to manage to get these things fully regulated at a federal level. Why?

When I was a child, I did not drink PFAS. I didn’t eat it. I didn’t wear it. I didn’t breathe it. Today’s children do. Lots of it. And it’s making them (and us) sick.

Bilott: