Season two of our podcast Hazard NJ, is back this time diving into the crisis of toxic pollution caused by PFAS or forever chemicals.

They originated here decades ago at a South Jersey plant, DuPont's Chamber works and were considered at the time a scientific miracle piece spread into countless products, but also polluted countless places throughout the Garden State and beyond.

As the host of the podcast, Jordan Gass-Poore' puts it, they came with a toxic hidden cost that has only recently become fully understood.

Jordan joins me now in studio.

Jordan, so good to talk to you.

Episode one was great.

I know it took a lot of reporting.

So just briefly explain what are pee fast and what are they primarily used for?

Where do we see them?

Yeah, PFAS, PFAS for us, I struggled with the pronunciation of how to do this for the podcast too, but it is a family of thousands of chemicals.

And so like I said, thousands of chemicals that make up the PFAS family.

And the first chemical was something that we might have used in our childhood, might have heard of, and that is Teflon, and that was created in a lab here in New Jersey.

So this is a very New Jersey centric show and touches the lives of not only of New Jersey folks, but folks all across the world.

Yeah, because there's virtually no one.

Right.

Who's been untouched by it.

So when did the public when did regulatory agencies start to realize there are some harmful side effects to this miracle chemical?

Yeah, so early 21st century really, the news came out that there might be some connections between different health disorders or diseases and PFAS.

So New Jersey, though, I will have to say, is the first state in the nation to impose any sort of enforceable drinking water standards on PFAS.

One of the ways, the most common ways of PFAS exposure is through drinking water.

So New Jersey really led the way prior to the EPA enforcing any sort of drinking water standards.

The EPA actually only didn't start thinking about enforcing drinking water standards until this year and in April decided that they were going to move forward with with doing that all across the country.

Which brings us to a resident you spoke with who's in Salem County, whose family not only worked with DuPont, but has been very intertwined in the hometown there, where really it was a company town, as we learn.

And she herself says that past has affected her long term health outcomes.

Talk to me a little bit about your conversation with the folks who live there and what that's looked like for them being sort of in the legacy of this toxic chemical.

Yeah, I'll take a step back to that.

You know, exposure to PFAS it's nearly you know, it's nearly everyone's blood, including umbilical cord blood.

And so just thinking about that, too, that even in the womb, the exposure to PFAS and coming out and in products ranging from Scotchgard to your rain proof coat.

The great thing about PFAS was or is that they're waterproof, they are fire resistant, they're greaseproof.

So food wrappers, the amount of exposure it is, it is nearly inescapable.

I mean, you even say in there, there's no blood in North America that does not have detectable levels.

Yes.

I mean, that's just what we've been told.

And one fact that I will say before I mention the family that I talk to is that when scientists were looking about how far back they would have to go to find blood without pathos, they went back to the Korean War.

There were blood samples from Korean War veterans that did not have PFAS, but everyone since then sure have had that had their blood tested.

So now that brings you to this family you spoke with and what is life looked like for them?

Yeah, I mean, life.

I mean, they're a very happy, close knit family.

They unfortunately have experienced a wide range of health issues that, yes, that they do firmly believe are connected to previous exposure.

The sad thing is, is that it's really difficult to tie to fast exposure like any sort of chemical exposure to health issues and ask what we know about them and the health impacts which we get into deeper in other episodes of Hazard New Jersey is a range of kidney, liver, other types of cancers, thyroid issues, endocrine issues, resistance to vaccines, and the list keeps going on and on and members of this family have experienced different diagnoses that they're not genetic on, that they firmly believe and they really do think that people has something to do with it.

So, okay, you gave us a little snippet there.

What can we expect for the rest of the podcast?

Yeah, I mean, an episode that I'm really looking forward to is the last episode, and that's just not because the podcast will be be over at that point.

It's though looking ahead and at the future of destroying PFAS Can we destroy chemicals that are called forever, chemicals that break down extremely slow.

And so talking to folks who are on the ground right now here in New Jersey and across the country on how are we going to to get rid of these these pervasive chemicals.

Yeah, bring it full circle as I know you're hoping to do.

Jordan, Great job.

Episode one, of course, drops today, and there will be four episodes that we will drop for Hazard.

NJ You can of course download it wherever you get your podcast.

Jordan, thanks so much.

Thank you very much.