[Perspective] EPA Takes Action Against Harmful "Forever Chemicals" in the US Water Supply

By Melissa Suran
JAMA
October 19, 2022
DOI: 10.1001/jama.2022.12678

In the early 2000s, more than 70 000 people from Ohio and West Virginia filed a class-action lawsuit against DuPont de Nemours for contaminating local drinking water with the chemical compound perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), then used to make the company’s Teflon nonstick coating. A lawsuit settlement included provisions for many of the plaintiffs to receive medical monitoring—if an independent panel of epidemiologists could determine that exposure to PFOA was associated with human disease. The panel ultimately concluded that there were “probable links” between PFOA exposure and high cholesterol, kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, ulcerative colitis, and pregnancy-induced hypertension. The lawsuit was among the first well-documented cases of PFOA contamination in community water.

 

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