‘I Didn’t Know I Was Sitting in a Pool of Poison’

The source of the pollution was Taconic Plastics, a manufacturer of PTFE (Teflon) and silicone-coated industrial products such as fabrics, tapes and belts. Historically, the company used PFOA—a type of PFAS—in its manufacturing process.

The plant, which was built in 1961 and is still operating, is about a mile southwest of where Monette and her partner, Alan Gaynor, live. With just 1,372 residents, Petersburgh sits on the Empire State’s eastern border with Vermont and Massachusetts. A portion of the Taconic Mountains, a subrange of the Appalachians, cuts through the community, lending the landscape a rugged beauty.

Two years after discovering her drinking water was contaminated, Monette joined a class-action lawsuit against Tonoga Inc., Taconic Plastics’ parent company, which ended in a $23.3 million settlement in 2021. She received a $40,000 settlement plus a $25,000 stipend for serving as a class representative.

Long bothered by the unpleasant odor coming from the factory smokestacks, which Monette likened to the smell of “burning Barbie dolls,” she used the money to purchase a $33,000 heat pump to cool her home so she wouldn’t have to open windows during the summer months and a $2,000 air purifier.

“I would love to have enough money to move somewhere else,” Monette says. “But I don’t.”

PFAS are often called “forever chemicals” because they break down very slowly and persist in the environment for hundreds, even thousands, of years. Their chemical structure makes them unusually durable and able to resist grease, oil, water and heat. PFAS are a large class of over 15,000 synthetic chemicals found in a wide array of everyday items, such as fast-food packaging, stain-resistant carpet, nonstick cookware and firefighting foam. However, research has shown tremendous downsides to these synthetic substances. They accumulate in our bodies and the natural world over time and are linked to numerous health ailments.

For people in communities hard-hit by PFAS pollution, consent agreements and class-action lawsuits have been an effective tool, aiding their recovery from decades of contamination. They’ve yielded multi-million-dollar settlements that have funded new drinking water infrastructure, medical monitoring programs and direct payments to property owners to compensate for damage.

As helpful as these settlements have been, they have limitations. They cannot restore good health or fully assuage the anxieties of those who fear a troubling diagnosis. Nor can they bring back the sense of faith residents once had that their homes and land are safe.

“I hate owning this home and not being able to utilize the water around me,” Monette says. “It’s tragic.”

“[The settlements] sound like a lot of money and they are a lot of money,” says Alissa Cordner, co-director of the PFAS Project Lab at Northeastern University. But “compared to how much it’s going to cost to do all the needed treatment, it’s not nearly enough.”

Pollution from industrial sites is one major source of PFAS contamination. Sewage sludge from wastewater treatment facilities has emerged as another. For decades, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has approved using sludge to fertilize farm fields, but studies have demonstrated it contains PFAS and other dangerous contaminants.

Rural communities are more reliant on private wells for drinking water, making them especially vulnerable. The Federal Safe Drinking Water Act does not regulate private wells that serve fewer than 25 individuals. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends testing wells at least yearly for typical water quality indicators—such as coliforms, nitrates and pH—and checking with the local health department to see if other contaminants have been flagged, however the onus is on the homeowner to get that done and pay for it.

Another challenge for smaller communities is that EPA testing requirements for unregulated contaminants only apply to public water systems serving more than 3,300 people. “There are tons of rural communities that have been left out of systematic drinking water testing,” Cordner says. In 2024, Biden’s EPA set the first-ever limits on six types of PFAS, regulating their concentration limits in public drinking water systems. The Trump administration’s EPA has announced plans to “rescind” and “reconsider” limits on four of the six PFAS covered by the Biden-era rule. Public water systems serving fewer than 3,300 people will have to comply with the drinking water regulation for the two remaining forever chemicals, PFOA and PFOS, but not until 2031, when the compliance deadline kicks in.

In Petersburgh, the push to get residents clean drinking water moved swiftly after high levels of PFOA were discovered in both private wells and the town’s water supply, which serves about 240 people. In May 2016, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation declared the Taconic Plastics factory a Superfund site and announced a consent agreement with the company to install a carbon filtration system for the town water supply. Less than a year later that system was operational.

For residents with PFAS-contaminated wells, the solution was point-of-entry treatment (POET) systems that are installed where the water enters the home, treating all water used indoors. During a visit with Barn Raiser, Monette showed off her POET system, which Taconic Plastics installed and continues to maintain through a private contractor. The system includes two large tanks in her basement and a granular activated carbon filtration system. Yet even with the POET system, she remains wary of her water. She uses it to wash dishes and shower but travels roughly 25 miles to fill jugs with drinking water at a friend’s house.

While grateful for the new filter system at her home, it does not eliminate Monette’s concerns about living so close to the polluter responsible for her situation. “We take phone calls about when they’re going to come do our filters on our POET system,” she says. Along with the continuous health monitoring, it all adds up to “extra stuff” residents must do to live healthy lives in the aftermath of PFAS-contamination.

In 2016, the EPA issued a health advisory limit of 70 parts per trillion for combined concentrations of PFOA and PFOS. The amount of PFOA in Monette’s well exceeded this limit by more than 20 times. In her affidavit, she said it contained PFOA levels as high as 1,500 parts per trillion. “I was horrified,” she says. The class-action settlement with Taconic Plastics included about $4 million for town residents who used municipal water, $4 million for people with contaminated private wells and $8.5 million for a 15-year medical monitoring program. Attorneys’ fees and other costs were deducted from the settlement, as is typical in class-action suits.

“I was grateful for the class-action suit because I felt very violated, but I didn’t have enough money for a lawyer,” Monette says. “This was a way to get some kind of justice. I don’t think me or any of my neighbors could have afforded the litigation.”

In 2014, the revelation that Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics, a French multinational corporation that produces Teflon products, contaminated the drinking water in Hoosick Falls, New York, a small town 10 miles north from Petersburgh, helped propel the issue of PFAS into the national spotlight.

The catalyst of this discovery was Michael Hickey, a lifelong Hoosick Falls resident who began investigating the town’s water after his father and the local math teacher both died of cancer. Looking back, it struck him that over the years a lot of residents had died of cancer.

“What’s a common thread that everybody uses or could tie everything together?” asks Hickey, 46, an insurance underwriter. “It’s water, right? The wells for our community are only 300 yards away from the [Saint-Gobain plant].” A quick Google search led him to research showing a probable link between PFOA and six disease categories, including kidney cancer, which killed his dad.

Alarmed by this news, the community mobilized.

In 2022, three companies involved in handling and manufacturing PFOA at the Hoosick Falls factory—Saint-Gobain, 3M and Honeywell—agreed to pay $65.25 million to settle a class-action lawsuit. (A separate lawsuit against DuPont is expected to go to trial this summer.) The settlement secured cash payments for property owners and created a 10-year medical monitoring program. According to a 2022 update from law firm Weitz & Luxenberg, over 2,300 claims were filed.

Hickey received a $16,000 settlement from the class-action lawsuit that he split with his ex-wife. He says his advocacy was never about the money but instead about doing what was right. For him, the more significant part of the settlement was the medical monitoring program.

“When we found out about my dad’s cancer, it was already in Stage 4,” Hickey says. “People are still going to get sick from the chemicals, and the hope of the medical monitoring is to catch it prior to that.”

Saint-Gobain and Honeywell also agreed to pay for the construction of a 1.25-mile transmission line connecting a new groundwater source for Hoosick Falls to the village’s water treatment plant as part of a $45 million agreement with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. This past March, the community opened the valve on a new water system.

Hoosick Falls inspired nearby Bennington, Vermont, to take a closer look at its water. Testing showed that the town’s water supply was safe, but many private wells were polluted. The source: ChemFab Corporation, a defunct factory in the village of North Bennington.

In 2017, the state of Vermont reached a settlement agreement with Saint-Gobain, which purchased ChemFab in 2000 and closed the factory just two years later. The company agreed to fund water line extensions for 210 homes for about $20 million and install wells or POET systems at properties not served by the line extension. Two years later, the agreement was updated to extend water lines to an additional 244 homes.

The state continues to sample wells, and new areas of contamination have been discovered in Bennington and neighboring Shaftsbury, among other places, according to Richard Spiese, an environmental scientist with the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation.

Jim Sullivan, 64, lives on top of a hill in North Bennington, next to an open field with a sweeping view of Vermont’s Green Mountains. A short drive from the hulking ChemFab facility, it’s also ground zero for PFAS contamination in the community. In 2016, Sullivan learned that his well was contaminated and eventually became lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against Saint-Gobain.

In 2022, Saint-Gobain agreed to a $34 million settlement that provided cash payments to property owners and established a medical monitoring program. Sullivan received $27,000, which he used to build a patio and landscape his backyard.

“If the impact of this contamination was to lower the value of the property, let’s put some money into the property to bring it back up,” says Sullivan, whose home was also connected to the municipal water supply.

Sullivan’s health is good, though he was diagnosed with a tear in his coronary artery about 10 years ago. The condition, called arterial deception, is rare for someone in his demographic, typically afflicting women of childbearing age. “Was it related to PFAS?” Sullivan asks. “There haven’t been any population studies to determine that. Other people in town have died of rare cancers. Were they the result of PFAS pollution?”

Despite all this, Sullivan loves Bennington. “I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else,” he says.

One state that has been at the forefront of addressing the problem of PFAS contamination due to sewage sludge spreading on farms is Maine. In 2022, the state created a fund to assist PFAS-impacted farmers, using a $60 million appropriation from its state legislature. That same year, Maine also banned the land application of sludge on farms. So far, Connecticut is the only other state to have done the same.

Among other things, the PFAS fund has helped impacted farmers test for PFAS contamination, receive income replacement and buy new land. It also assists with business transition plans. “The state’s response has been really helpful in building a great knowledge base about this issue and allowing farmers to continue farming,” says Tricia Rouleau, Farm Network Director for Maine Farmland Trust. “Maine’s local food system is really robust and transparent and so our agricultural community has been in a good position to navigate this issue and make sure that farmers and customers are safe.”

Rouleau estimates that roughly 100 Maine farmers have identified some level of PFAS contamination and worked with the state to address the problem. Of Maine’s 7,000 farms, five have gone out business because of PFAS, she says.

Lawrence and Penny Higgins have lived at their home in Fairfield, Maine, for over 30 years. Five years ago, they learned from a neighbor that some of the wells in town were contaminated with PFAS from sludge spreading at a dairy farm. The problem was widespread: By 2021, nearly 200 tainted wells had been identified in Fairfield, including the one on the Higgins’ property.

The state provided the couple with a new water filtration system, but the disruption to their lives is ongoing.

About a year ago, the Higginses got rid of their alpacas, mini-horse, mini-donkey and mini-mule. They still have chickens and ducks, but don’t eat the eggs because they contain unhealthy levels of PFAS. They’ve also stopped hunting deer and gardening.

Before the PFAS were discovered, the Higginses built a new home to retire in on their land, along with a new barn, investing well over $200,000. “We were just throwing money out the window,” Penny Higgins says.

The Higginses hope a lawsuit they’ve filed against a paper mill and three chemical companies will give them enough money to move. Still, there are limits to what litigation can accomplish. “It won’t make us whole,” Penny Higgins says.

Residents of Bennington, Petersburgh and Hoosick Falls who qualify for medical monitoring go to Southwestern Vermont Medical Center in Bennington once a year for free screenings and tests.

PFAS are endocrine disrupters and have a wide range of health effects as a result, says Erin Bell, dean of the College of Integrated Health Sciences at the University at Albany, based in New York’s capital city. “They impact the endocrine system,” she says. “That’s our hormonal system—it’s how we function.”

Bell co-leads the Multi-State PFAS Health Study, a federally funded project looking at the impact PFAS have on health in communities exposed to water contaminated by forever chemicals. Her study has 526 participants, split between Hoosick Falls and Petersburgh and the Hudson Valley city of Newburgh.

The Multi-State PFAS Health Study has found that PFOA, PFOS and other members of the PFAS family tend to be associated with a variety of negative health outcomes, including high cholesterol, elevated blood pressure, thyroid conditions and changes in thyroid hormones in both adults and children and some cancers, including testicular, breast and kidney. The chemicals also suppress the immune system, which, among other things, reduces the effectiveness of vaccines, especially in children.

Though PFOA and PFOS are no longer manufactured in the U.S., some imported goods still contain the chemicals. Meanwhile, sewage treatment plants accidentally make PFOA and PFOS from the PFAS precursors used by some companies to evade PFAS regulations. (Research has found that more PFAS leave the treatment plant than enter it because of such precursor transformations.) U.S. factories have largely shifted to using precursor PFAS—chemicals that, unlike PFOA and PFOS do break down over time. But the degradation is only partial, and PFOA and PFOS are both end products of PFAS transformation. Efforts have been made to replace PFOA and other long-chain PFAS, but the alternatives, though sometimes less persistent in the environment, show what Bell describes as “some similar health associations.”

It takes between three to six years for half of some kinds of PFAS in a human body to be excreted, Bell says, such as through breastfeeding and menstruation. When Hoosick Falls residents were tested in 2016, the average resident had about 43 micrograms per liter of PFOA in their blood; by 2023, that figure had dropped to 19.84 micrograms per liter. According to Bell, the average American has 1.42 micrograms per liter of PFOA in their blood.

According to a 2022 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, people with PFAS blood levels above 20 micrograms per liter face a higher risk of adverse health effects and should receive screenings for high cholesterol, thyroid function, kidney and testicular cancer and ulcerative colitis. For patients with PFAS levels in blood serum between 2 and 20 micrograms, adverse health effects are also a possibility. These patients should prioritize health screenings that are already part of routine preventive care.

One lesson to take from this guidance is to limit PFAS exposure whenever possible. In 2016, Monette had 224 micrograms per liter of PFOA in her blood. Her most recent round of blood testing earlier this year showed that her PFOA level has fallen to 33 micrograms per liter.

“That sounds good,” Monette says. “But it’s still very high.”

Sara FossMore by this author →

Sara Foss is a freelance journalist with experience writing for newspapers and other publications including the Adirondack Explorer and New York State School Boards Association. She lives in Albany with her husband, son and two cats and enjoys hiking, swimming and exploring the outdoors.