Local Spotlight: The Carpet Capital’s Chemical Problem

0:07Northwest Georgia is a picturesque place with rolling hills and open farmland. Its creeks and rivers have sustained families for generations. On the surface, the environment looks pristine. But within that lush landscape, something toxic lurks that you can't see, smell, or taste. For many years, locals had no clue of its presence. PFAS are a group of synthetic chemicals used to repel water and stains. Many of them don't break down, which is why they're often called forever chemicals. They accumulate in the environment and our bodies over time. PFAS were used for years in the production of carpets in northwest Georgia, and the long-term environmental and human cost in the region is high.

0:50I moved here around the age of five. I've basically been here ever since. That's a good chunk of my life. I just turned 34 a couple weeks ago, and I feel that's too young to feel how I do physically. What I technically have been diagnosed with is non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. It's something that affects you from the second you wake up to the second you go to bed. And it makes me feel guilty as a mom, you know, that when my kid's asked to do something and I have to explain to them, I don't feel well enough to do that. I feel it's unfair to them, you know. I mean, we have to be realistic in the fact liver is something you have to have to survive.

1:27And if the damage continues, you eventually have to go on a transplant list. And a transplant list is a long wait. My husband and I actually were discussing a will last night. That's Stormy Bost. She's featured in the new Frontline documentary, Contaminated, the carpet industry's toxic legacy. It's a collaboration between Frontline and reporters from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Associated Press, AL.com, and the Charleston Post and Courier. We're learning more as part of our local spotlight series where we highlight the work of journalists where you live. And that includes Dylan Jackson.

2:02He's an investigative reporter with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. And Jonathan Sheinberg, producer and director for PBS Frontline. He joins us from NPR Studios in New York City. Both join us after the break to discuss the documentary. I'm Jen White. You're listening to the 1A Podcast. We'll be back with a conversation after a short break.

2:26Dylan, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me. Jonathan, welcome. Thanks so much for having me. And we want to hear from you, too. If you've learned about PFAS where you live, share your story. Email us at 1a at wamu.org. Dylan, when you first started reporting this story, what was already known about carpet mills' effect on the region, and what more did you want to uncover? Yeah, so this began last February. You know, the region is widely known in Georgia as the carpet capital of the world, and we were aware of the contamination already. There was some good local reporting and some good reporting from our own environmental team.

3:02But what we wanted to do is set out and figure out why and how we got to this point in the first place. Now, as you said, Dalton is known as the carpet capital of the world. It produces about three quarters of the carpets and rugs manufactured in the U.S. So we're talking about a big industry. Explain the role carpet mills have played in the local economy and why that's important to understand for this story. Yeah, so Dalton is a carpet town, right? It's a smaller town, but the town is home to some of the largest carpet companies in the country and the world. So that creates this situation where an industry employs the vast majority of the people that live in a region.

3:54And so people like Stormy and others that we spoke to for this story know somebody who works in carpet if they don't themselves. They have a family member. They have a friend. It's sort of all-consuming. It's everywhere you turn. And so, you know, that creates this environment in northwest Georgia where carpet is king. Jonathan, it's important to note that this story isn't just about the carpet mills. There are also the companies that produced the PFAS, the carpet mills used. What are some of the major companies that showed up in your reporting and what role did they play in this story? Yeah, so the two major companies, chemical companies you're referring to, 3M and DuPont, are really the major producers.

4:41There are other chemical companies that do manufacture or make or made PFAS for decades. And they have been using this product or are providing this product to many downstream users like the carpet industry and also many other industries. There are a plethora of products, makeup, microwave popcorn, stain-resistant products used on shoes and all kinds of other apparel. So it's really permeated the industry in many different products. And 3M and DuPont have generally been the main companies providing them. Well, to that point, here's part of your documentary featuring archival commercials. New cookware is coated with Teflon.

5:23Food just slips off. Easy. PFAS had become virtually ubiquitous. from nonstick pans to raincoats to shoes.

5:41Unprized for its ability to protect against stains, which was especially useful in the carpet industry.

5:51One of the most popular products was 3M Scotchgard. underneath. So Jonathan, let's take a step back for a moment. We explained broadly what PFAS are, but help us understand a little more about their chemical makeup and why they stay in the environment in our bodies. Yeah. So PFAS are a group of thousands and thousands of chemicals, but there are two main chemicals that were used earlier on or initially that we focused on. And And those chemicals really provided the stain-resistant soil and water resistance that were used in a lot of these products. And what was known for decades by the chemical companies, specifically 3M and DuPont, was that these would bioaccumulate in the body.

6:45They were getting into people's blood and that they are biopersistent in the environment. They don't break down easily for decades, hundreds, some people even say thousands of years. We don't really know exactly how long. But essentially, this is something that was known and it had a lot of toxic effects on animals. There were a lot of studies that were done of animals, lab studies, very toxic and carcinogenic effects on many of the animals that were studied by these companies as they looked at these chemicals over time. So in your reporting, Dylan, following the documents, including lawsuits, is a really important way to put together the entirety of the story and how PFAS affected the environment and the people who lived near these carpet mills.

7:44Take us behind the scenes of your reporting process. Yeah, so like I said, we knew about this contamination more broadly. But to really get into how we got here, we had to dive into thousands and thousands of pages of court records and lawsuits that have cropped up across the region. And, you know, our collaboration combined did more than 100 interviews with locals and, you know, regulators, carpet industry insiders, you know, all sorts of folks. So, you know, it really took a marshalling of a lot of resources and a lot of time to really get at this because a lot of these decisions were made, you know, more than a decade ago, right?

8:38So we had to really understand where the region was at the time, what these companies were doing at the time, their sort of stature, not just in northwest Georgia, but the world, really. And, you know, it was a big effort to really piece this all together. Well, Jonathan, when you think about the documents, the emails, the lawsuits, you poured over. How much awareness did both the chemical companies and the carpet mills have about the effects of these PFAS, both on the environment but also on the human body? Yeah, so it's a bit of a complicated question and something that's been debated a lot.

9:33And Dylan and other reporting partners really, along with us, dug into these documents and discovered that for at least several years, the chemical companies knew for decades about the, you know, potential toxic and carcinogenic effects, you know, because they had, as I mentioned, studied those on other animals. But they also knew that it was, you know, accumulating in human blood for quite some time. But they communicated some of this information in the late 90s for the first time to both Shaw and Mohawk, the two largest carpet makers in the country. And so you kind of see this evolution of information sharing and how the carpet companies respond.

10:27And I think that's something that Dylan can really get into because they did a lot of great reporting, diving into those documents to see how the carpet companies responded once 3M and DuPont shared information about the dangers of these chemicals. I mean, Dylan, tell us, what did you find? Yeah, so, you know, Jonathan's correct. In the late 90s, it became aware to some of the carpet companies that not only were the Scotchgard chemicals sold by 3M and used to impart stain resistance on carpets, collecting in the blood of workers, but it was collecting in the blood of the general public. and it was not enough to dissuade the carpet companies from using the product until in 2000, this news became essentially public, right?

11:183M and EPA announced that the company would pull Scotchgard off the market, phase it out, and reformulate it because of concerns about the PFAS chemical that was in Scotchgard. Um, it took the EPA a couple more decades to really regulate these chemicals. And in the years after, uh, the carpet companies were able to legally, um, you know, use alternative PFAS chemicals, um, in their carpet productions for many years after, you know, DuPont Stainmaster is, um, you know, a product that a lot of people know about. We're talking with Dylan Jackson of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Also with us, Jonathan Sheinberg of PBS Frontline.

12:04And as the latest in our local spotlight series, we're talking about their investigation into the use of PFAS at carpet mills in the South. But it's not just carpet mills. We got this email from Heather who says, I live in a beautiful rural community not too far from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. It's testing rural fire department wells across the state for PFAS. and we learned the one near us tested at 1 ,000 plus this week. There's a community meeting about this tonight. Four is what we understand to be safe. The mood here is sober as we await more word and start to organize our diverse rural community in fear of what this means.

12:39If you've learned about PFAS in your community, we'd love to hear your story. Email us at 1a at wamu.org. I'm Jen White. You're listening to 1A. To understand how this contamination spread, the reporting team tracked down people who had been on the ground years earlier. And one of them is Scott Gordon, a former inspector with the EPA who visited sites where wastewater from carpet mills was being disposed of. When you got out on site, each one of those risers, pipes, with the sprinkler ads on top, looked like it had a wig on top. There were so many carpet fibers on the spray itself. And then when, as you're walking around those areas, it felt like you were walking on shag carpet.

13:19There was that much carpet fibers in the material they were spraying. And all of those pipes going up and the sprinkler heads weren't stabilized at all. Any limb that came along and knocked them over, a deer running through the pasture knocks them over. So when we got on site, we saw lots of just flowing wastewater going down the sides of the hills, into the creeks, and eventually into the river. So just to explain a little more, what he's describing is the runoff from the process of dyeing and treating the carpets with the PFAS. And Dylan, it was running, as you said, directly into a source of water for these communities.

14:04What did you learn about the impact PFAS had on the local environment, the land, the rivers, and downstream communities? Yeah, so what Scott Gordon was talking about is the wastewater treatment system used by Dalton Utilities, which is the utility that received a lot of the wastewater from the carpet mills. you know, much of the contamination actually just came, you know, through wastewater and pipes to Dalton Utilities. But Dalton Utilities, you know, runs this, what's called the land application system where they essentially put the wastewater onto a piece of forested land. And because of issues with the system, it then runs off into the Conessauga River, which, you know, whose waters provide drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people downstream.

14:59And the relationship between Dalton Utilities and the carpet industry harkens back a little bit to what we spoke about earlier in the show, where Dalton Utilities for a long time had former members of the carpet industry on its board. The board members were appointed by mayor and city council, which also often had connections to the carpet industry. And, you know, Dalton Utilities had for many years problems. Frankly, they, in the 90s, got raided by the FBI for falsifying wastewater reports, pollution reports. And, you know, over the years, this has all created a situation to where much of the contamination in the river could be traced back to this wastewater treatment system that Dalton Utilities runs.

15:51And, you know, there's lots of lawsuits flying around about how to tackle it. You know, one consultant put a price tag of around$850 million to remediate that tract of land. And, you know, meanwhile, you know, PFAS will continue to enter the Conessauga River and contaminate the surface water, the land that runs along the river, and all sorts of things for years to come. We got this email from Dana. I'm an environmental advocate in Wilmington, North Carolina, and my brother, a firefighter, highly exposed to PFAS, died of brain cancer in 2019. This was two years after we found out about DuPont's and then shemore's contamination of our region and drinking water supplies for the past 45 years.

16:44I worked deeply on engaging the public on this issue for the past eight years and am grateful for journalists, as a journalism grad myself, and the recent work of folks like Dylan, who are now helping the rest of the nation learn about this issue. Thank you. Still to come, what the science says about health impacts, the role of regulators, and what communities are still waiting for today. That's just ahead.

17:11Let's get back to the conversation with another voice from the documentary. Dolly Baker owns a hair salon in Calhoun, Georgia, and as part of a medical study, researcher Dana Barr tested PFAS levels in her blood. Dana from Emory called me, and she was on her vacation, and said that she just wanted to talk about my results. mine was over 1 ,300. High is 20. And the next highest one below me was 200-something, I believe. And she said, you know, I don't want to alarm you, but we're just trying to figure out what could be causing this. I feel like, I don't know, almost like there's a blanket over me, smothering me that I can't get out from under.

18:01and then it's just, you're trapped. Dylan, how did PFAS levels in residents of Northwest Georgia compare with the U.S. population at large? Yeah, so, you know, frankly, there has been little done broadly in terms of exploring the health effects in Northwest Georgia. And one of the first, you know, sort of looks at it was by Dr. Dana Barr at Emory. And, you know, she would say that the levels of many folks in northwest Georgia are high compared to the rest of the U.S. population, but there's still a lot of work to be done there. You know, they surveyed about 177 folks, and, you know, there is, you know, much more to do in terms of figuring out the extent of the contamination of people.

18:55But Jonathan, I think it's important to note that the use of PFAS was ubiquitous. So it wasn't just carpets. It was also in pans that we cooked in. And so why is it important for us to understand this story and the health implications, not just for people in northwest Georgia, but for the country at large? Yeah, I think, I mean, as you mentioned, it is ubiquitous used in a lot of products, as we discussed. You have callers calling and talking about firefighters. Firefighting foam is one of the biggest uses. So I think this is, as we saw it in the film, a microcosm, because there are a lot of downstream industries that use these from the chemical companies all over the country.

19:45And, you know, there was a recent study put out that close to 50 million people have drinking water systems impacted by PFAS. So this is a emerging environmental, I think, you know, contaminant that is catastrophic potentially. And, you know, you could compare it to something like asbestos or lead and people have compared it to that. So this is a very serious issue that is going to affect the nation and is already affecting the nation quite widely. Well, you all spoke to people not just who were exposed to PFAS in their communities, but people who also worked inside the carpet factories. This is Lisa Martin.

20:28I was very healthy, active, had a perfect bill of health. And within, you know, just half a dozen years of working in the carpet industry, my health started to decline. We couldn't figure out why. I ended up having autoimmune disease. I had to have my thyroid removed. When we would walk for exercise around this facility, which is a huge facility, but as we would walk out back, in the waterways, you could see what color they had been dying that day. It was just accepted. It was just the culture. So I became complacent about what I was seeing. And I just, I didn't say anything, which is to my fault.

21:22Jonathan, what kinds of diseases are linked to PFAS exposure? How much do we know? So there have been a number of studies done over the last decade or so that show numerous types of cancer, kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid cancers, endocrine-disrupting diseases, thyroid diseases, a number of these conditions, liver. And so there are a number of different conditions that are very serious from the toxicity and carcinogenic impacts of these chemicals that have been linked to some very concerning health impacts. Daniel in Kennesaw, Georgia writes, I was in the Marines at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and drank the toxic water there.

22:16I then moved to Georgia and was in the Marine Corps Reserve in Rome, Georgia, where I drank the water downstream from the Dalton carpet mills. I'm grateful to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for publishing this story. And then another who calls themselves a child of Dalton, Georgia. Generations of my family have lived in the carpet capital, and the industry is intertwined with so many lives throughout northwest Georgia. I'm heartbroken and furious about how careless those with power have been about this issue. I hope and pray that there will be accountability for those who knew about the PFAS problems and chose to do nothing about it.

22:47There are no interviews in this documentary with the companies at the center of this story, 3M and Shaw and Mohawk Industries. Jonathan, what effort did you make to reach out to them, and what, if anything, did they say? Yeah, so we reached out to all of them. We did get statements, but none of them wanted to go on camera. You know, we didn't actually get statements from the chemical companies. We did get statements from Sean Mohawk, who regularly and often pointed the finger at the chemical companies, saying that they were told that this is something that they were told was safe and that they weren't informed of the risks or dangers, and that once they were, that they stopped using the chemicals.

23:34Obviously, what our investigation shows is that they didn't stop using it immediately in all situations. But generally, they pointed the finger at the chemical companies for misleading them. I will say Dylan and his team did get a chance to talk to the folks at Shaw, and I don't know if he wants to elaborate on that a bit. Dylan, go ahead. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, we spoke to a vice president at Shaw in an interview, and she reiterated some of the same things. And Shaw noted that at the time, they're still struggling with ensuring that PFAS is out of their facilities. They say that in a sort of detective story, they found out that PFAS is still in a lot of the machinery, unbeknownst to them, that they use.

24:27despite, you know, they say they stopped using PFAS in carpet manufacturing in 2019. And so that just goes to the sort of ubiquity we spoke to earlier about these products. I mean, they're used in so many things. And I will say, too, for us at the AJC, me and my reporting partner, associate press reporter Jason Deeren, we did everything we could to get industry's perspective, right? We door knocked. If they didn't answer their door, we left a letter in their mailbox. You know, for us, it's very important to try to get the full scope of the story, not just, you know, one side. So we did our best to really try to get at not just reaching out to the companies, but individuals, executives that were naming in the story or not naming the story, frankly, that we read depositions of and got information for the story from.

25:25So, you know, it's important to not to all of us to really, you know, try to track down and get industry perspective. And it just didn't work out all the time. Well, we're getting lots of questions about accountability. This email came in. Why aren't DuPont and 3M being held accountable for knowingly creating this environmental and public health disaster? Until corporate officials start going to prison, nothing will change. And Sam emails, can individuals sue 3M and other manufacturers for contamination in their blood, soil, water, fisheries, etc.? Dylan, what can you tell us? Yeah, I mean, 3M and DuPont, frankly, have been the subject of many lawsuits, not just from class actions, but from attorneys generals in other states.

26:11Not Georgia, but in many other states, they've gotten hundreds of millions of dollars from these companies. And going back to sort of what makes Georgia a microcosm is that this is one of the biggest examples of a downstream user being sued, not just the major chemical company. So, you know, we might see that proliferate across the country because there's only so much that you can extract from these chemical suppliers, right? And they have been the, you know, there's a major multi-billion dollar class action that settled fairly recently with a couple of chemical suppliers. And there will continue to be some in the future.

27:00A lot of the lawsuits in northwest Georgia that named the carpet companies also named the chemical suppliers. So around here, it's sort of, you know, they sort of lump them together. There's part of the story that's connected to regulation of these industries. Your team spoke with Betsy Sutherland. She spent more than 30 years at the Environmental Protection Agency, including in its water protection division. And she criticized the federal government's lack of action on this issue. What it means for public health is that, again, we're left to our own devices. We can buy a filter for our drinking water.

27:35We can get an HVAC for our house. but we're not going to get helped by the federal government at all. So unless your state is one of those states that's out there actively working on it, you're just going to continue to be exposed in what you eat, drink, and breathe. Jonathan, as evidence mounted about the dangers of PFAS, what role did the EPA play? So I think, you know, obviously the EPA didn't have a lot of information for a number of years because chemical companies did not provide that information in terms of the risk. But as it mounted, EPA started taking some actions, but it was quite slow to move as these bureaucratic entities often are.

28:21And technically, they put in place some measures to try to get rid of some of the chemicals that were known to be toxic or carcinogenic, but they generally didn't do much in the way of enforcement. Even today, you know, in 2024, there were some limits placed on two of the original PFAS chemicals, the ones that we'd been referring to that the carbon industry use and other industries have used for stain and soil resistance. But ultimately, those are still not enforceable yet because the EPA has said that we need to wait until 2029, and now it looks like it's going to be pushed to 2031 for the water systems to be able to reduce these two specific chemicals in water supplies around the country.

29:15So really what you're looking at is over two decades in which the EPA had information or has had information, and they've been very slow to move to regulate these chemicals in any serious way. So Dylan, where does that leave residents of Dalton, Georgia and the region if they're not getting state-level or federal remediation? Is it just up to them to figure out how to address this issue? I mean, frankly, that's why we're seeing a lot of the litigation that we're seeing now. You know, a lot of folks up there believe that's their only recourse, right? Georgia typically follows the EPA's lead and doesn't go beyond them like other states do.