“PFAS are everywhere” – Fears growing about PFAS in pesticides

By The New Lede | Meg Wilcox | June 28, 2025

Read the full article by Meg Wilcox (The New Lede)

"Vicki Blazer has studied the health of the smallmouth bass in the Chesapeake Bay watershed for more than 20 years. As a research fishery biologist for the United States Geological Survey (USGS), she keeps a close eye on pollutants and other environmental factors that could be causing diseases and die-offs plaguing the popular sportfish.

Increasingly, her findings – and her fears – are focused on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and how pesticides containing types of PFAS chemicals appear to be accumulating in the fish. Just as she has found contaminated fish downstream from military bases, where PFAS-laden firefighting foams have been used, Blazer is detecting PFAS in the blood of fish in waters near agricultural and forested areas.

Blazer suspects that the PFAS pesticides are running off farm fields into waterways, where they may be contributing to a range of parasitic, viral and bacterial infections in fish that signal compromised immune functions."