Safe to Drink

When we’ve been exposed to something that could harm us, what are we supposed to do — as regulators, as doctors, as company executives, or as people just trying to live our lives?
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Former workers at Saint-Gobain’s New Hampshire plant share what they did — and didn’t — know about PFOA and its potential health effects. And how the chemical industry has worked to sow doubt to its own benefit.
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We go back in time to Hoosick Falls, New York where a man looks for answers after his father dies of cancer following his retirement from the local Saint-Gobain plant. What he finds changes the course of this whole story: a remarkable kind of chemical once used to help make the Atom Bomb that manufacturers knew could be dangerous for decades.
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A New Hampshire town finds out its water has been contaminated by a “forever chemical.” The source appears to be the nearby Saint-Gobain plant. Officials say the potential health effects are unclear, but most people can still drink the water. One resident doesn’t buy it and goes down a research rabbit hole. She soon learns all this has happened before.
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A New Hampshire town finds out their water has been contaminated by a chemical. Their most basic question — whether the water is safe to drink — doesn’t have a clear answer. Nobody seems to know much about this so-called forever chemical, which is weird because… this has all happened before.

From the Document team at New Hampshire Public Radio, “Safe to Drink” is a four-part series about the water contamination story that keeps repeating in town after town — and about the people who fought for answers through a maze of chemistry, regulations, and illnesses.
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