- The main story is about PFAS, a class of chemicals used in various products like Teflon and Gortex.
- These chemicals have been linked to health issues and have a long lifespan.
- Companies like DuPont and 3M knew about the risks but continued to use and release these chemicals.
- The EPA's oversight has been limited and non-enforceable.
- Residents near a DuPont plant and workers exposed to PFAS have experienced higher rates of cancer and other health problems.
- PFAS can accumulate in the body over time and have been found in people's blood worldwide.

- C8, a toxic chemical, is found in the blood of 99.7% of Americans.
- PFAS, the chemical family that C8 belongs to, is used by the military and in many consumer products.
- The McNaughton family in Michigan discovered high levels of PFAS in their water, causing health issues for their son.
- Companies like Wolverine and DuPont have been implicated in the contamination of water sources with PFAS.
- Wolverine has implemented a filtration system for affected homeowners, but this is not a feasible solution for all.
- DuPont has switched from using C8 to a different PFAS called Gen X, which also raises health concerns.
- Many companies are not taking sufficient action to remove PFAS from their products.
- Consumers can check a PFAS map and consider using bottled water or reverse osmosis filters.
- Legislation is needed to limit the use of PFAS and regulate them as a class of chemicals.
- The video suggests providing context in advertisements to highlight the risks of PFAS exposure.

John Oliver discusses PFAS — a class of chemicals linked to an array of health issues — and why their widespread use isn’t as magical as it may seem.

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-♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ Our main story tonight concerns chemicals.

The substances that, along with spaghetti, Heineken, and human arms, should never be kept in a vat in your neighbor's garage.

Specifically, we're gonna be talking about a particular class of chemicals tonight called PFAS, which stand for Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances.

They go by a wide variety of chemical names, like all of these, and they are used by recognizable brands like Gortex and Teflon, among many, many others.

But the main thing they have in common is that they make surfaces that don't get stuff stuck to them, which is something a lot of us care about, although arguably, some more than others.

If you saute scallops in a nonstick pan, they won't stick!

I don't know what nonstick means in Texas, sweetheart, but fuck me!

You know, as tempted as I am to mock Gordon Ramsay, as a British person who's also inexplicably made a career out of shrieking obscenities in Americans and not understanding Texas, game has no choice but to recognize game.

And while I scream, you scream, he screams, we all scream for nonstick pans.

First, these chemicals have been linked to a massive array of health issues.

High exposure to these 2 major PFAS alone have been linked to high cholesterol, ulcerative colitis, pregnancy-induced hypertension, thyroid disease, testicular and kidney cancer, and decreased response to vaccines, which is clearly terrible, although, also shouldn't really be that surprising to you, seeing as the original name for this show was That Thing You Like Is Bad with Sadie Longlegs.

And second, PFAS are what's known as forever chemicals.

Studies have estimated they have lifetimes in the thousands of years.

And that combination of toxicity and longevity is a real problem, as 1 chemical engineer tried to explain to Congress a few years back.

We just passed the baton to our generations of kids.

In fact, If you were to incinerate and cremate me, I would technically be a fluorochemical hazardous source.

The Teflon mesh that's used in my hernia produces a very toxic gas and decomposes to something called devil's piss, which is hydrofluoric acid.

Also, it is hard to believe there's something called Devil's Piss that isn't Gordon Ramsay's very real line of alcoholic sparkling water, Hell's Seltzer, which you can apparently get in flavors such as Mean Green, Berry Inferno, Nicker Twist, and That's Forked.

Hell Seltzer for people who hate water and themselves.

But the thing is, that man is absolutely right, to an extent that you may not currently realize.

The world is basically soaked in the devil's piss right now, and not in a remotely hot way.

So tonight, we thought we'd take a look at just how bad these substances are, how long some of their major manufacturers knew about it, and how hard this will all be to fix.

And let's start by looking at 1 of the most ubiquitous PFAS.

PFOA, also known as C8, because of its 8 carbon molecules.

3M started selling C8 back in 1951 to the chemical giant DuPont, which then used it to make Teflon, which it marketed through ads like this.

I used to be a slave to scraping and scrubbing pots and pans.

Food doesn't stick to Teflon like it does to other things.

I used to be a slave is just not something that should be coming out of a white child's face, unless it's Pinocchio after he becomes a real boy.

And even then, he's still not really free, is he?

He's a slave to society and a prisoner of his own mind, just like the rest of us.

Your nose might not be growing anymore, gnocchi, but make no mistake, you are lying to yourself.

But the thing is, by the time that ad aired, 3M and DuPont already knew that these chemicals accumulated in humans and animals, that they didn't degrade in the environment, and that they could increase the size of the liver in rats, rabbits, and dogs.

So the warning signs were very much there before they had a white child slave claim that Teflon liberated her from the back-breaking labor of scraping muffin trays.

And in the decades that followed, they learned even more.

In 1981, 3M found ingestion of PFAS caused birth defects in rats.

And when they told DuPont about this, and DuPont then tested the children of employees in their Teflon division, they found that of 7 births, 2 had eye defects.

Information that, interestingly, DuPont did not make public.

And by 1991, it had gotten unambiguous warnings that it then spectacularly ignored.

3M told DuPont that under no circumstances should you put it in waterways.

But at the end of the day, they start dumping so much C8 into the water, that they at 1 point lose track of how much they've actually put out there.

Harmful chemicals are just not something you should lose track of.

They're not your car keys or your middle child.

I lose him in a supermarket 1 time and suddenly I'm a bad parent.

It's not like he was gonna run out of food.

2 years after that, in 1993, a DuPont memo shows that for the first time, they had a viable candidate to replace C8, 1 that appeared to be less toxic and stayed in the body for a much shorter duration of time.

But the company decided against it because the risk was too great.

Specifically, the risks of their bottom line and the fact that Teflon products were worth roughly a billion dollars in annual revenue to them, proving, once and for all, corporations truly are people, specifically, sociopaths.

And yet, despite knowing all of that, DuPont kept pushing for Teflon to be used in more and more places.

And in this ad from 1994, they basically present it as being wizardry.

People think of Teflon, they think of frying pans.

Putting Teflon on a surface will stop bugs from crawling up trees.

Teflon as a chain lube is something I've come up with for bicycles.

You can use it in satellites, on fabrics, or leather.

When's the last time you heard about a leather raincoat?

--BOTH LAUGHING --MICROPHONE BEEPS You can let your imagination run wild.

It's not often that you get to make something new in this world.

There's a lot that I don't understand about that ad, including why it was shot by someone who's still testing out the zoom function on their camcorder, or why that incel Santa giggled so menacingly at the idea of a non-stick leather raincoat.

Although I will say, if that's his bar, it does seem pretty easy to make something new in the world.

Leather umbrella, leather flower, leather snake, and leather Elmo.

That is 4 great ideas I just came up with, and I'm not even a PhD in a Cosby sweater.

And if you are wondering where the EPA was in all this, you should know they were more than a little hamstrung here.

Under the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, the EPA can require testing for chemicals only when it's been provided evidence of potential harm.

A setup which largely allows chemical companies to regulate themselves, which is an absolutely terrifying sequence of words right up there with incoming FaceTime from Jeffrey Toobin.

And even when the EPA has taken steps, they've been pretty limited.

For instance, in 2016, they issued a health advisory for 2 of the biggest PFAS, including C8, setting an acceptable level for them in drinking water of 70 parts per trillion, which incidentally, a lot of people still think is too high.

But also, crucially, an EPA health advisory is non-enforceable.

And no 1 is going to respect a rule if it's not enforced.

It's like 1 of those signs that everyone sees but ignores, like, please take 1 on a candy bowl, or please no sculpture fucking at Madame Tussauds.

I'm taking 2 fun-sized snicker bars, and then I'm gonna fuck Wax Michael Buble.

Get over it." And that lax level of oversight, combined with dumping on a scale so high they lose track of it, has had severe consequences.

When epidemiologists studied the medical history of people who lived near a DuPont plant, They found residents with high exposure to drinking water contaminated with C8, had much higher rates of kidney and testicular cancers.

And it was even worse for the people working inside the facilities, as this man, who worked in 1 of DuPont's testing labs, and has since been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and rectal cancer, can attest.

People have handled that product on their job, every day, day in, night out.

And then when we went to 12-hour shifts at 12 hours at a time, We heated it and breathed it.

Ken worked on a four-man team at DuPont's plant, testing C8 between 1974 and 2001.

Look, that is clearly awful, but you don't actually even have to live in a town where PFARs are dumped, or work in a factory that makes them to be affected here.

So if they sink into the groundwater or are released into the air, they can travel and they can bioaccumulate.

Meaning that they build up in your body over time.

And that brings us to a shocking discovery.

Because in the 1970s, DuPont and 3M started testing workers to check the levels of PFAS in their blood.

And 3M wanted a control group with clean blood so that they'd have a baseline.

But as this environmental activist points out, the company quickly realized something truly horrifying.

They tested kids, they tested adults, they went to Asia, they went all over the world, and everywhere they looked, practically, they found their chemicals in people's blood.

Eventually, they did find some clean blood.

It turned out it was the blood that had been taken from army recruits and archived, saved, at the start of the Korean War.

In fact, a CDC study has found that C8 is now in the blood of 99.7% of Americans.

Meaning, at the very least, Vin Diesel and I finally have something in common.

Every single thing about our genetic makeup, general attitude and vocal timbre is dramatically different, but when it comes to toxic chemicals in our blood, it's potato, potato, my friend.

And while DuFont may be a particularly stark example, they are far from the only entity involved here.

The military uses PFAS in foam to extinguish fire, so PFAS have built up around military bases.

And many companies have used a lot of PFAS in a lot of their products.

For instance, a shoe company called Wolverine used PFAS in its waterproof Hush Puppies.

But it was only after local reporting that residents near its factory in Belmont, Michigan knew to get their water tested.

And for 1 family, the McNaughtons, the results were pretty striking.

And before you watch this, remember, the EPA's acceptable level in drinking water is 70 parts per trillion.

They'd lived in their house about 3 years when Tobin learned she was pregnant with their son, Jack.

I wanted that to go really well, so I drank 8 glasses of water a day.

Tests showed almost 2,000 parts per trillion of PFAS in the McNaughton's water.

As soon as they could, Tobin and Seth had Jack's blood tested.

484,000 parts per trillion, More than 100 times the national average.

He's the highest level of PFAS that we know right now of any child in the United States.

He gets sick often and his vaccinations haven't worked.

Usually when your child is the highest in something, your instinct is to brag about it, but good luck finding a bumper sticker with, my child has the highest level of PFAS in the United States on it.

And look, I have to tell you, Wolverine says that it's moved to fix the problem for homeowners in that area.

Although you should know, it is just not a simple thing to go about doing.

This is what I affectionately call Megatron.

These are full of granulated carbon and it goes through them in order and then comes out this 1 and is clean.

So every week they come and test it at the intake and then also at the exit so that we know that the water is empty of that.

All it takes is a four-tank system, affectionately nicknamed Megatron, a spare room large enough to house it, and a weekly visit from a tank technician for the rest of your life.

But clearly, a Megatron in every home is not a viable solution for this, or indeed, any problem.

And maybe because of that, and definitely because of a court-approved settlement, Wolverine has since gone to the trouble and expense of switching that woman from her tainted well water to the municipal water supply.

And yet, many companies are continuing to do the bare minimum here, or even trying to evade responsibility.

DuPont, for instance, settled a class action lawsuit with residents of the town where it was dumping C8, and shortly afterward, agreed to eventually phase out using the chemical, which sounds good.

But, there are some significant asterisks on that.

Because while they did stop using C8, they simply switched to a different kind of PFAS, something called Gen X, spinning the manufacturer of it off into a separate company, Chemours.

Now, did they do that so that any legal liability wouldn't stick to them and instead slide right off them like bugs on a Teflon tree.

What I can say is that while Camorra's claims Gen X is safer, scientists still have significant concerns about its presence in our water supply.

This is, in my view, more of a risk than we should be forced to take.

This compound's a member of a class of compounds that are all thought to be able to make people sick with cancers of various kinds, other kinds of dysfunction.

So with what these scientists do know, we asked them if they think the water is safe enough to drink.

I drink tequila straight, but I won't drink tap water.

If casual Friday scientist over here won't drink the tap water, there might be some cause for alarm.

And while we have just focused on a handful of individual PFAS tonight, there are hundreds, if not thousands of them.

So the problem is, if and when Gen X is eventually found to be harmful, companies can presumably just move on to another 1, then on to another 1, and so on and so on.

And at this point, you might be thinking, holy shit, this is absolutely terrible.

Should I start immediately throwing away all of my pans?

And no, you don't necessarily need to throw away all of your pans.

Experts say that it's very unlikely PFAS will be released if the pans aren't overheated or scraped.

Now, you're under slightly more risk of exposure from clothing that contains PFAS, which is, unfortunately, most stain-proof or waterproof fabrics, including certain items from companies like Lululemon, North Face, and Patagonia, or indeed, from food wrappers that contain PFAS, which are, unfortunately, used by multiple chains, including some of the packaging at Starbucks, Chick-fil-A, and Subway.

And all of these companies insist that they are working to remove PFAS from their products completely in the coming months and years.

And I hope that That is true, but we have heard things like that before, and yet, here we fucking are.

And it is not like it is easy to know which products you're buying do and don't contain PFAS.

It's not like they have to carry labels stating, -"This product contains devil's piss." -$PFAS LAUGHS Although, that's actually a very good idea, and they should absolutely have to do that.

But the bigger issue is, no matter how responsible consumers choose to be, if the factory that makes the chemical does not dispose of its waste properly, it's likely getting into your bloodstream anyway, which is pretty frustrating, as the activist you saw earlier points out.

No 1 said, hey, you know, I'm good with a little Teflon chemical in my baby's blood.

No 1 loves pans so much that they'd be willing to put poison in their baby's blood.

Well, to be honest, 1 person does, but in his defense, the pans don't fucking stick!

Now, if you are worried about what the water is like where you live, you can go to this address, ewg.org slash PFAS map.

And if you don't like what you see, you can consider solutions like drinking bottled water or using a reverse osmosis filter.

But the truth is, it shouldn't just be on us as individuals.

Because PFAS should not be in most consumer products at all.

And as companies seem unlikely to all take them out voluntarily, we badly need legislation limiting their use to only essential items like certain medical devices and protective clothing.

We need to change the way that we regulate PFAS completely.

Instead of regulating them 1 at a time as we do now, we should do it as an entire class of chemicals.

This would enable the EPA to more effectively regulate not just the PFAS already in use, but replacements like Gen X when they are introduced.

And in the meantime, if companies are gonna keep leaning in on the convenience of their products without acknowledging the cost, maybe we can help them by providing their ads with some much-needed context.

People think of Teflon, and they think of frying pans, big hot plates with smooth, long sticks.

It's disease, sickness, and It's fucking everywhere.

You know I'm self-conscious about the mouth.

Putting PFAS on a surface will stop bugs crawling up trees.

They'll contract ulcerative colitis and just fucking die in front of your eyes.

the mouth and the close-up stuff and the spitting.

The same chemicals that are in me are in you.

And when this stuff gets into water, whoa, that's the real bippity boppity magic.

Contamination levels like you've never seen.

When was the last time you heard about a leather raincoat giving you kidney cancer?

It's not often you get to put something toxic in the world.

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