In a quiet Maryland town, a trusted local company is now at the center of a painful discovery, according to the Washington Post. What seemed like an ordinary part of daily life has left residents asking hard questions about what they’ve been drinking for decades.
What’s happening?
In Elkton, Maryland, longtime resident Debbie Blankenship has battled cancer for years while mourning a string of pets lost to the same disease. For decades, she chalked it up to bad luck. That was, until 2023, when a local company, W.L. Gore & Associates, asked to test her private well water for PFOA, a toxic PFAS or “forever chemical” used in manufacturing.
“That’s when the light went off,” Blankenship said, according to the Washington Post. She realized she and her dogs — unlike her husband and children, who drank bottled water — had been the only ones in the family consuming well water.Tests revealed concentrations of PFOA, one of thousands of chemicals in the PFAS family, known to persist indefinitely in the environment and human body, as the American Cancer Society explained.
Other nearby wells showed far higher levels: up to 1,800 parts per trillion, far above the Environmental Protection Agency’s new maximum contaminant level of four parts per trillion. The lawsuits that followed alleged Gore knew of the risks for decades but concealed them, though the company denies wrongdoing.
Why is PFAS contamination concerning?
PFAS exposure has been linked to cancers, high cholesterol, infertility, cardiovascular disease, and developmental delays.
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