The Haw River cuts through North Carolina’s Piedmont region from its source in Forsyth County. The river is undeniably beautiful. But per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly abbreviated as PFAS, are not visible to the naked eye. PFAS are chemicals that have been linked to debilitating health effects in high concentrations, and they are now so widespread that they are found in the blood of 97 percent of Americans.
The term PFAS refers to a class of chemicals that includes thousands of substances—as many as 14,000 or 15,000. “Part of the problem is that we can only test for about 70 of these 14,000,” said Kyla Bennett, director of Science Policy at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), in a recent Food & Water Watch webinar. “So, we don’t even know the chemical formulas of the vast number of these PFAS that are out there.”