4: The neighborly thing to do

Summary

Safe to Drink — Episode 4: The Neighborly Thing To Do

Host: New Hampshire Public Radio (NHPR), Mara Hoplamazian
Date: January 29, 2026

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Overview

In the concluding episode of "Safe to Drink," NHPR explores the aftermath and ongoing impact of PFAS chemical contamination in Merrimack, New Hampshire—a story echoed in towns across the country. The episode focuses on the struggle for answers about health risks, the search for justice and accountability, and how everyday residents—from mothers to activists to neighbors—have taken matters into their own hands, often long before authorities respond. Listeners are brought into personal narratives of despair, resilience, and neighborly action as the community grapples with unclear risks, slow-moving remediation, and the emotional toll of living with “forever chemicals.”

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Everyday Experience of PFAS Contamination

• Imagining a PFAS Molecule's Journey: Mara opens the episode with a vivid depiction of how a PFAS molecule travels from the lab, through manufacturing, into the environment, and ultimately into human bodies.
  • “If a PFOA molecule was sentient, what would it see? … The sensation of moving. The whoosh of a highway. … A faucet. … A glass with a lemon wedge. … Teeth and a tongue.” (03:00)
• How PFAS Differs from Other Contaminants:
  • Megan Romano (Epidemiologist, Dartmouth) explains how PFAS chemicals, unlike others, stick to blood proteins and spread widely through the body rather than staying in fat tissue.
    • “PFAS seem to affect so many different aspects of health because they are able to kind of hang out in the blood.” (04:55)
• The Uncertainty of Health Risks: PFAS’ impact is pervasive but proving direct causation is scientifically and legally challenging.
  • “Doctors usually want to see a randomized clinical trial… it would be wildly unethical to randomly expose people to toxins.” (06:18)

Personal Narratives of Advocacy and Grief

• Lorene Hackett (Hoosick Falls, NY): From Victim to “Pissivist”

  • Lorene’s family had extraordinarily high PFOA blood levels ("in the hundreds of parts per billion" vs. national average of 1.5 ppb).
    • “I'm not an activist, but I was pissed off. So I'm a pissivist… Everything just pissed me off. I was pissed. I was beyond angry knowing that now this was done to us.” (13:02)
  • Her online advocacy became a critical resource and source of solidarity for affected people nationwide.
    • “If you won’t hear us all our yelling, you’re gonna see us.” (14:36)
  • Ongoing frustration with legal standards:
    • "How many studies does it take? I ask the question all the time. I can't get an answer." (16:32)

• Lorene Allen (Merrimack, NH) Organizes Community Science

  • With little official attention, Allen organized a local health survey for affected families.
    • “I'd be like, don’t say that. You don't have to say, yes, that's it. But don’t say, we can’t really say. Just listen.” (18:32)
  • Survey triggered further official studies, which found kidney cancer rates in Merrimack 38% higher than rest of the state, but legal proof remained elusive.

• Wendy Thomas (“Water Warriors”) and Grassroots Political Action

  • Thomas and other women in Merrimack became politically active, running for office to push for PFAS regulations.
    • “I mean, we were evangelical about PFAS… I'd say, ‘Hey, I’m Wendy Thomas, I'm from Merrimack, and do you know about PFAS?’” (23:27)
  • Despite policy wins, the emotional cost remains:
    • “It's a bittersweet win, you know, because all of us, all three of us are sick. … the door prize was, you know, illness.” (26:04)

The Limits of "Victory": Regulations, Remediation, and Ongoing Suffering

• Regulatory Progress & Its Shortcomings

  • NH set strict PFOA limits (12 ppt in 2019), later eclipsed by the EPA’s 4 ppt standard—still, the ideal health-based limit would be zero.
  • Many wells remain contaminated, with the state’s “ring” boundary for remediation omitting many affected families.

• Saint-Gobain and Incomplete Responsibility

  • Despite the factory’s closure and partial cleanup pledges, high levels of PFAS persist in soil and water.
  • Company’s proposed “natural attenuation” (do nothing and wait approach) is seen as inadequate by community members.
  • Saint-Gobain evaded responsibility for medical monitoring in court, leaving residents to self-manage future health concerns.

The Pierce Family: The Neighborly Thing to Do

• Ben and Jen Pierce’s DIY Outreach

  • Upon learning of their own well’s contamination, they hand-delivered letters to neighbors with practical advice for testing and water safety.
    • “We did hear back from a few neighbors… Thank you for giving us that letter. We didn’t know about it.” (35:08)
  • “You can tell I'm a teacher. ... It was tough to find and I sought it out. So I wanted to be very clear. I wanted people to not be shy about [getting their water tested].” —Jen Pierce (34:53)

• Life in the Gray Zone: Anxiety and Acceptance

  • The Pierces describe living in limbo—waiting for filtration, relying on bottled water, and grappling with uncertainty about long-term health effects.
  • Jen expresses the parental worry:
    • “You have to just move forward and not think about those things all the time. But that is my biggest worry, that they, or even us, will be affected 10, 15 years down the road. ... There is no justice for that.” (42:18)
  • The family grapples with how to talk to their kids about it:
    • “Like, I didn’t know I could get cancer.” —Pierce child (43:33)
    • “I think one toothbrushing is probably okay.” (44:44)
  • Ben observes:
    • “Risk management isn’t the hardest part ... It’s the emotional management.” (44:51)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Science and Uncertainty:

  • “As an epidemiologist, I love to say this is associated with that, and I know exactly what I mean… I am neither over nor under interpreting my findings.”
    – Megan Romano (07:53)

• On Community Advocacy:

  • “People don’t accept responsibility when they do harm unless you can prove it and make them. … it’s the legal system that actually delivers that.”
    – Lorene Allen (17:02)

• On Neighborhood Bonds:

  • “It just felt like the neighborly thing to do.”
    – Jen Pierce (35:08)

• On Lived Uncertainty:

  • “It's like slightly embarrassing … when you talk to your family about it and your friends about it, there is a little bit of like ‘Your house is broken’...”
    – Ben Pierce (36:46)
  • “At the end of the day, it’s an inconvenience for us … What we're probably not realistic about is that it is way more than an inconvenience, that it is a legitimate health risk for our children.” – Ben Pierce (42:42)

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Important Timestamps

• 03:00 – Journey of a PFAS Molecule
• 04:55 – PFAS in the Human Body (Megan Romano)
• 06:56 – Limits of Scientific Proof (Megan Romano)
• 13:02 – Lorene Hackett’s Family Blood Test Results & Advocacy
• 16:32 – Struggles with Legal and Scientific Proof (Lorene Hackett)
• 17:02 – The Importance of Legal Accountability (Lorene Allen)
• 18:32 – DIY Community Health Survey and Listening (Lorene Allen)
• 20:50 – Clusters of Illness and “Connecting the Dots” (Wendy Thomas)
• 23:27 – “Water Warriors” Go to the Statehouse (Wendy Thomas)
• 26:04 – The Bittersweet Nature of Advocacy Victories
• 34:12 – Pierce Family’s Neighbor Notification Letter
• 36:41 – The Emotional Weight of Living With Contamination
• 42:18 – Parental Worry About Future Health (Jen Pierce)
• 43:33 – Children Grapple With the Reality
• 44:51 – Emotional Toll of Risk Management (Ben Pierce)

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Episode Tone and Voice

The episode blends investigative rigor, empathy, and an undercurrent of frustration. Mara Hoplamazian’s narration is inquisitive and compassionate, guided by the voices of mothers, neighbors, and scientists facing a problem larger than themselves, and often with no clear solutions.

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Conclusion

“Safe to Drink” closes not with clear answers, but with a portrait of persistence: families, neighbors, and affected residents pushing for transparency, action, and accountability where official channels moved too slowly or offered too little. The practical steps taken—neighborly outreach, health surveys, legislative advocacy—hint at the power of community even as the threat of “forever chemicals” endures. The story of Merrimack is unfinished; the hope is that, by telling it, communities elsewhere might be better equipped to protect each other before the next crisis hits.

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For further resources, community health surveys, and maps, visit:
nhpr.org/safetodrink

Transcript

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[Community Member / Resident]

found out I was going to be a parent I immediately felt a lot of anxiety and worry. So I went on to BetterHelp to try to look for a therapist to

[Mara Hoplamazian]

help me with relationship with my family and with my boyfriend and with myself were suffering. I really needed help.

[Megan Romano]

I was ruminating a lot. Really getting those thoughts out to a therapist and getting feedback was just life changing.

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Discover what BetterHelp online therapy can do for you.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

Visit betterhelp.com today reporting on contaminants has caused me to ask some strange questions over the past few years. Like how Does a mass spectrometer work? And what are the ethical considerations for using zebrafish as test subjects? Or if someone, say a friend of mine, were to use their favorite rice cooker four times a week for about 20 years, how much of the non stick coating might leach into their rice? Here's another thing I started wondering recently. If a PFOA molecule was sentient, what would it see? What would it feel? First, the inside of a lab. Bright fluorescent lights. Next, maybe a vat. Then the sensation of moving. The whoosh of a highway. A man in a uniform carefully transferring liquid into a trough. A woven sheet of fabric. The burn of a 750 degree oven. Suddenly, through a cloud of smoke. Green trees. Gentle wind over a New England town. Grass. Dirt. The soak of a heavy rain. Groundwater. Then some pipes. A faucet. The edges of a Brita filter. A glass with a lemon wedge. A glimpse of a sunny day. Teeth and a tongue. Esophagus. Stomach. Small intestine. Kidney. I talked to Megan Romano, an epidemiologist at Dartmouth, about what happens next, about how these chemicals go from an environmental problem to a human health problem. Megan says generally our bodies have systems to kick out toxic stuff.

[Megan Romano]

It's almost like putting a luggage check on your suitcase at the airport and saying, okay, this one's going out. Kindly discard of this parcel.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

Then we poop or pee or sweat, and those toxins are gone. Sometimes the luggage system doesn't work so well. Chemicals like DDT and PCBs can get stuck in the fat in our organs. But forever, chemicals are different. Megan calls them chemical weirdos. They have unique properties, which is part of why they've been so useful for making so many things and also why they can be so bad for us.

[Megan Romano]

And we think this is part of why PFAS seem to affect so many different aspects of health is because they are able to kind of hang out in the blood. And that allows them to reach many, many target organs and affect many different places in the body as opposed to really congregating in one section or another.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

In other words, PFAS molecules don't get luggage tags, but they do stick to proteins in our blood. And over time, they can really build up. Remember, in water, scientists measure PFAS in parts per trillion. But in blood, they use a unit of measurement that's 1000 times bigger. Parts per billion. The average American nowadays has about one and a half parts per billion of PFOA in our blood. That's 1,500 parts per trillion. And in the years since the C8 study. The more scientists research what these chemicals do as they accumulate in our bodies, the more havoc they seem to uncover. There's evidence that PFAS chemicals could disrupt the signals our bodies send through hormones. They could change the way our genes express themselves. They could suppress our immune systems. They could get into a cell and create particles that bounce around and cause chaos. In other words, it looks like PFAS can interfere with our cellular biology. That interference can lead to rogue cell division, uncontrolled growth, cancer. But to say that one thing is can cause another, like exposure to PFOA can cause kidney cancer. Doctors usually want to see a randomized clinical trial. Megan says that's the gold standard of evidence. The problem is it would be wildly unethical to randomly expose people to toxins.

[Megan Romano]

Sometimes we find ourselves at a disadvantage where we have to use observational studies. We have to look at people who were exposed and understand what's going on and that we observ. We look and follow them and see what's happening over time.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

If different people are exposed to the same things and experience the same symptoms, scientists start to believe it could be causal. But unlike clinical trials, observations are messy. Sometimes studies find something in one population but not another. Scientists can now say with confidence that PFOA is carcinogenic. Studies have connected it to testicular cancer and kidney cancer. But for something like breast cancer, Megan says the evidence isn't as straightforward. For Megan, that kind of uncertainty is okay. It's kind of her whole world.

[Megan Romano]

Like, as an epidemiologist, I love to say this is associated with that, and I know exactly what I mean. That is a very precise, technical meaning to me. And those words mean that I am neither over nor under interpreting my findings.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

This brings us to another strange question I've come across while reporting on PFOA contamination. It was posed during one of the many public meetings I've watched on YouTube by a guy who used to work for a branch of New York State's health department. He said, imagine someone is offering you a plate of cookies. Does it matter to you if they say those cookies cause cancer, those cookies are associated with cancer, or there's a link between those cookies and cancer? He asked, in any of those situations, do you want to eat the cookies? This question about the cookies, it's really the heart of this whole story. Humans are notoriously bad at understanding health risks. So when you've been exposed to something that could harm you and you can't find a clear answer about what might happen next, what do you do? How do you move forward?

[Wendy Thomas]

Yeah, we won, but the door prize was, you know, illness.

[Jen Pierce]

That is my biggest worry that they or even us will be affected 10, 15 years down the road. And what is justice for that? I don't know.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

From the Document Team at New Hampshire welcome to Hampshire Public Radio. I'm Mara Hoplamazian and this is the final episode of Safe to Drink.

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[Lynley Dixon]

If you're looking for more stories to inform and inspire action around Forever Chemicals, then check out the Real Organic Podcast. It's the award winning best sustainability, environment and Climate Podcast produced by the Real Organic Project and co hosted by me Lynley Dixon. Recently named one of the best climate podcasts by earth.org, the Real Organic Podcast uncovers the forces reshaping organic food, including the impact of pfas. Each episode features deep conversations with farmers, scientists and journalists fighting to improve the food system. If you're looking for a place to start, check out episode 241 of the Real Organic Podcast called Adam Nordell and Joanna Davis. PFAS Contamination Joanna and Adam built Songbird Farm in Maine with the dream of growing nutrient dense food for their community. After more than a decade of hard work, they discovered their land, water and bodies were contaminated with pfas. Their story is one of heartbreak, betrayal and resilience on how to overcome systemic chemical pollution. So go ahead, follow the Real Organic Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

For a long time, it was hard to get your blood tested for PFAS to get proof this stuff was actually building up in your body. Blood tests were easier to come by if you lived in a place with known contamination like Hoosick Falls. New York state's health department started offering blood tests there in 2016, one person who took them up on it was Lorene Hackett.

[Lorene Hackett]

We got the blood test results back, and my family's levels were extraordinary.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

Remember how the average level of PFOA in human blood these days is about 1 1/2 parts per billion? Lorene's blood and her family's blood were testing in the hundreds of parts per billion.

[Lorene Hackett]

I'm not an activist, but I was pissed off. So I'm a pissivist, you know, that's how I. Everything just pissed me off. I was pissed. I was beyond angry knowing that now this was done to us.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

Like pretty much everyone else I talked to. Lorene hadn't heard of PFAS chemicals before she found out they were in her water and blood. She started reading health studies, the same ones Michael Hickey and Lorene Allen read. In fact, Lorene Allen got some of her research directly from Lorene Hackett. The Lorenes, they have kind of a reputation among PFAS activists, especially Hackett. A couple people told me, you don't mess with Lorene Hackett. When we met up, I got what they were saying. She's got a good hard stare, the kind that makes you squirm a little. She told me she was healing from a hip replacement. By her count, her 16th surgery. Lorene has had a tough medical journey. After she had her second daughter, she had a hysterectomy. She got diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in her 20s and a few other related conditions. She had breast cancer.

[Lorene Hackett]

I could be the walking billboard of this can go wrong, and this can go wrong, and this can go wrong, and sadly, so are my children and my grandchildren.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

After she got her family's blood test results, Lorene started a Twitter account. She took a photo of her grandson holding up a sign with his blood levels on it. She took one of her granddaughter, too. She posted them in black and white.

[Lorene Hackett]

And all I could think of was, well, if you won't hear us all our yelling, you're gonna see us.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

Suddenly, the photos were everywhere. Other people in Hoosick Falls started posting similar ones. With the number of PFOA parts per billion in their blood, the images made it into newspapers. Lorene started hearing from people across the world. With her grandson as a profile photo, Lorene posted news articles and health studies. Her Twitter profile became kind of like an unofficial library on forever chemicals.

[Lorene Hackett]

When there's no answers, you just like, okay, I got just dealt a really bad hand, you know, and then to start finding out through health studies and all that research that, oh, well, this has an effect and this has an effect. And PFOA is linked to these, these, these. And light bulbs start going off. And so I just kept digging.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

Remember the C8 study found probable links to six kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, ulcerative colitis, high cholesterol, and pregnancy induced hypertension. You might also remember that study was part of a major lawsuit settlement and was paid for by DuPont itself. The phrase probable links has meanings that are both scientific and legal. People in the Ohio River Valley with some of those conditions sued Dupont and won. Scientists have studied PFOA's connection to lots of other health outcomes, including some of Lorene Hackett's diagnoses. But there's Nothing like the C8 study that legally defines how much proof would be enough to hold up in court. So Lorene says she's still waiting for the day a lawyer decides to take up a case like hers.

[Lorene Hackett]

How many studies does it take? I ask the question all the time. I can't get an answer. How many studies does it take to

[Mara Hoplamazian]

prove a chemical is linked to a health condition? The Lorenes say proving these links is about more than finding an explanation for suffering. It's also about holding polluters accountable.

[Lorene Allen]

People don't accept responsibility when they do harm unless you can prove it and make them. And how do we do that? We have only one venue. We can raise our voices. We can say all the right things. Everybody can listen and say, oh my God, that's terrible. But that doesn't do a damn thing. It's the legal system that actually delivers that.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

Over in Merrimack, New Hampshire, Lorene Allen began pushing state officials to do a health study. Her hope was that they could start saying with more certainty what Saint Gobain's contamination had done to her community's health. But she says her pushing wasn't very well received.

[Lorene Allen]

And then I said, all right, I'm going to have to do this on my own.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

Remember, Lorene is not a scientist. And she knew she probably wasn't going to be able to prove once and for all that PFOA caused particular health effects. Still, with help from a non profit and other people in the community, she designed a survey. It was low key. A link to an online form on flyers at the library and the town hall. Lorene also organized a team that went door to door in their neighborhoods. She says sometimes when she was door knocking, people asked her the same questions state officials were getting. Am I sick because of the water? Some of the door knockers gave the answer a scientist might. We can't really say. But Lorene took a different approach.

[Lorene Allen]

I'd be like, don't say that. You don't have to say, yes, that's it. But don't say, we can't really say. Just listen. People know what they know, and if they say, I know this and this is my truth, you know, who am I to say otherwise?

[Mara Hoplamazian]

Almost 600 people took the survey. It's only about 2% of Meramec's population. But for Lorene, it was a big deal. Even with the survey's obvious limitations, researchers at the University of Vermont analyzed the results, and they noted some red flags that begged more research, like higher numbers of reproductive, autoimmune and kidney disorders among kids and more health concerns among the people who lived in Merameck longer. Eventually, the state of New Hampshire did start its own health study, and in one way, it seemed to vindicate Lorene and the other activists. The study found evidence that the rate of kidney cancer in Merrimack is higher than in the rest of New Hampshire, 38% higher. But the study couldn't say exactly why. The authors, including Dartmouth epidemiologist Megan Romano, said they'd need to do another, even bigger study to determine that. So more potential evidence, but no solid proof.

[Wendy Thomas]

Can we prove this? I don't know, you know, but again, if it looks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, you know, if it swims like a duck, I think we're looking at a duck here.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

After Wendy Thomas found PFOA in her water, it suddenly seemed like there might be an explanation for the health problems she and her family were having, issues with their joints, cholesterol, and kidneys. Wendy survived breast cancer. There are three small dogs buried in their backyard and a fourth, cremated. They all died of cancer. And it's not just her family. Wendy says she sees it all over her neighborhood.

[Wendy Thomas]

The house across the street, which has a private well, which is also contaminated. The dad in that house died of kidney cancer. Further up the street, they have a private well that's contaminated. The son died of colon cancer. The father died. He had colon cancer, but it was really his bladder cancer that eventually killed him. And then our neighbor next door, the dad currently has prostate cancer that has metastasized to his bones. He seems to be doing pretty well, but, you know, that's a lot of quacking in just one street.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

I've heard this kind of thing from a lot of people in Merrimack. When it seems like everyone around you is sick, it's hard not to see every Illness as a dot to connect. There's this idea that's getting more traction in the United states. Call it TikTok wellness culture or the Make America Healthy Again movement, or the more radical parts of Crunchy Mom Reddit. The idea is that the whole world is full of toxins, and we can't trust government agencies or academic institutions to keep us safe. While working on this story, I have found so many echoes of this feeling. Of course, unlike Forever Chemicals, there is a lot of science backing up the safety of things public health officials tell us to put in our bodies on purpose, like fluoride and vaccines. But to hear your water has been contaminated by a huge corporation, to get confusing information about whether that water is safe to drink, to see people getting sick all around you, and then to be told we don't know if these two things are connected, it's no wonder so many people feel like they need to do their own research, protect themselves. And in many ways, that's exactly what people in Merrimack did.

[Wendy Thomas]

You know, a lot of people ask me, why haven't you left? Why haven't you gone someplace safer? And it's like, if I leave, who is going to be staying here to fight and do the work that's necessary to keep this town safe?

[Mara Hoplamazian]

Pretty soon after Merrimack found out their water was contaminated, Wendy got to work. She connected with a group of women in town. In 2018, three of them decided to run for state office. A reporter called them the Water Warriors. The name stuck, and they won.

[Wendy Thomas]

I mean, we were evangelical about pfas. When we got up to the statehouse, you know, I would introduce myself. I'd say, hey, I'm Wendy Thomas. I'm from Merrimack, and do you know about pfas? And I would just. I mean, they're like, I don't know about pfas, but let me eat my lunch and we can talk about it. And I'd be like, yeah, yeah, eat your lunch and let's. Let's talk.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

Wendy was joining the ranks of PFAS advocates across the country. The Lorenes helped start a group called the National PFAS Contamination Coalition. The casts of all the local productions of this play were starting to organize. From New York and New Hampshire to North Carolina and Washington state, PFAS started to become more of a household name. The need to do something was becoming harder to ignore. So state governments started doing something. In New Hampshire, one of the main things state lawmakers did was to tell regulators to create statewide limits for PFOA and A small group of other PFAS chemicals in drinking water, remember New Hampshire got sued for setting those limits. But eventually they were adopted, and the state became one of a handful with legal enforceable limits for PFAS in drinking water. When New Hampshire adopted those in 2019, they were some of the lowest in the country. 12 parts per trillion for PFOA. It took the feds another five years, but in 2024, the EPA finally announced their drinking water standard for a few PFAS chemicals, the thing Rob Bellott, the lawyer from the West Virginia case, had been asking them to do for more than a decade. For PFOA, the federal limit is now 4 parts per trillion. 4. But federal regulators say if the level was set solely based on health, not taking cost or feasibility into consideration, the limit would be zero. In other words, there is no level of PFOA in water that is safe to drink. In many ways, Wendy says the Water warriors won their battle. Their research and their advocacy made a difference, but it's hard to say how much of a difference.

[Wendy Thomas]

It's a bittersweet win, you know, because all of us, all three of us are sick. We've all got health issues. Our families are suffering. So, yeah, we won. But the door prize was, you know, illness.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

The Water warriors and other PFAS advocates helped prevent future New Hampshire residents from being exposed at high levels. But what about all the people who had already been exposed? And what about the miles of soil and water around Merameck still contaminated with a colorless, odorless chemical? That's next after the break. By the way, if you want to know whether your drinking water has forever chemicals in it, we've put together some resources for you. Find those on the episode four page of our website, nhpr.org safetodrink

[Jason Moon]

hey, I'm Jason Moon. I'm one of the producers of this series. You probably know that documentary podcasts like Safe to Drink take a huge amount of work. Mara didn't just hop into a studio one day and talk into a microphone. Mara has been reporting on PFAS contamination in New Hampshire for years.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

But.

[Jason Moon]

And then we spent another whole year working just on Safe to Drink. We collected and read thousands of pages of documents. We gathered more than 80 hours of raw audio from interviews with more than 30 people traveling hundreds of miles in the process. And then to make sure we got the story right, we hired an independent fact checker to confirm every detail in the script that I'm looking at right now. There's a footnote after almost every single sentence. That lists the sourcing point is making this kind of podcast is expensive. It would have been a lot cheaper if Mara had just hopped into a studio one day. But we think it's worth it to make a series that's rigorously reported, that's accurate, and that you'll actually want to listen to. And here's the we can't do this work without your support, especially now. Federal cuts to nhpr, the station that produces this podcast, have reduced our funding by hundreds of thousands of dollars. You might have heard a few ads while listening to this podcast. Let me be real, they do not come close to covering our costs. Public media is possible because of public support. You can make a gift right now on your phone, with Apple Pay or on the app of your choice. Just hit the link in the show notes and seriously, thank you.

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[Mara Hoplamazian]

as New Hampshire lawmakers were trying to make sure this kind of thing wouldn't happen again, Saint Gobain was chugging along, still coating fabrics in their factory by the Merrimack River. Around 2018, testing showed the plant was emitting much less PFOA than it used to. But 190 different PFAS compounds were still coming out of the stacks. State regulators estimated the plant was releasing more than 850 pounds of forever chemicals per year, a quarter pound every hour. Saint Cobain has always insisted that they're not necessarily responsible for the contamination in meramec. But by 2019, the state of New Hampshire had determined Saint Gobain's emissions did put PFAS chemicals into drinking water, and they were continuing to contribute to the problem. State regulators said they didn't have the legal authority to tell Saint Gobain to shut down the plant altogether. Instead, they were asking the company to install a new device that would limit the pollution, something called a regenerative thermal oxidizer. It took Saint Gobain almost a year and a half to install that device. Which meant with each passing day, more PFAS chemicals kept going into the air.

[Community Member / Resident]

They were still running. They were still running. Just full operations, still making money, still doing their thing.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

You remember Ben Pierce. He found the cases of bottled water in his driveway. When New Hampshire first started investigating the PFOA contamination, they did a lot of testing. Air, soil, public water. They also tested private wells. It was a big undertaking. So they started with wells closest to Saint Gobain. Then they began testing wells further and further out until they reached the town of Londonderry, where the Pearces live. Eventually, Ben and Jen Pierce pieced together that one of the first wells the state tested in their neighborhood was their own. It was tested about a month before they moved into their house in 2019. Now they were getting bottled water from Saint Gobain, but only a handful of other homes in Londonderry got tested around the same time the Pierces did. And they realized a lot of their neighbors, they might not know that their water could be contaminated. They started to feel strangely lucky.

[Community Member / Resident]

At the very least, it was months that we weren't just drinking the water,

[Mara Hoplamazian]

which our neighbors were, you know, at the time, Ben and Jen weren't getting much information from the state or from Saint Gobain. They decided if they wanted their community to know what was happening, they'd have to take things into their own hands. So in the fall of 2019, about a month after their first bottled water delivery, they wrote a letter.

[Community Member / Resident]

Hi, neighbor we live at and our well water tested high for pfas, a chemical pollutant found in air and groundwater. This means our water is not safe to drink, cook with, or brush our teeth. It is supposedly safe to wash dishes, clothes, etc. The Merrimack company responsible for this pollution and contamination, Saint Gobain is providing us with.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

The Pierces also gave their neighbors detailed advice on how to file a request for the state to test their wells. Advice that was hard to find anywhere else.

[Community Member / Resident]

Click on getting your well water tested in the drop down menu. Click on private well testing request form on the side menu. Good luck and be safe.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

The Pierces, Wow.

[Jen Pierce]

You can tell I'm a teacher. I had to put all the directions, but it was tough to find and I sought it out. So I wanted to be very clear. I wanted people to not be shy about.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

They drove around the neighborhood and stopped at every home to drop the letter off. Jen says it just felt like the neighborly thing to do.

[Jen Pierce]

We did hear back from a few neighbors about, hey, we're getting bottled water now. Thank you for giving us that letter. We didn't know about it.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

As the state was testing all these wells, they were also negotiating with Saint Gobain about what to do for people whose wells were contaminated. Eventually, they struck a deal. They drew a big ring on a map with Saint Gobain's Meramec plant in the middle. The company agreed to deliver safe drinking water only to the people with contaminated wells inside that ring, which covers about 65 square miles. As of now, state officials have tested about 4,000 wells inside that ring. When New Hampshire adopts the legal federal limit for pfoafour parts per trillion, about three quarters of those wells within the ring will be over the limit. But the state has also been testing wells outside of the ring. And officials say it's clear that there's contaminated water far beyond this legal border. The boundary of that ring goes right through the Pierces neighborhood.

[Community Member / Resident]

You can see it from here. It's like High Range Road is the boundary and people right on the other side of that street don't get it for free. And they have the same problem.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

Ben says he doesn't talk to their neighbors about the water very much. I think it's.

[Community Member / Resident]

I think people are private about it. I think, like, even though we're all dealing with the same thing, most of us again, like, it's not everybody, but I think they're still like, you know, because when you talk to your, your family about it and your friends about, like, there is A little bit of like your house is broken, you know, like, I don't know, it's like slightly embarrassing.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

It's hard to know when this will all be fixed or even what fixed would look like for homes with contaminated wells. Saint Gobain has agreed to pay for home filtration systems or connections to nearby public water systems. But Ben and Jen and other people in Londonderry are still waiting to see when that might happen.

[Jen Pierce]

We're just stuck in this area that's in limbo right now. So we're just waiting and waiting and waiting.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

There's another thing making the Pierces feel even more uncertain about where this is all going. In the summer of 2023, Saint Gobain announced it would be shutting down the Meramec plant. The company said it was part of a restructuring. More than 160 workers were either transferred to one of dozens of the company's other manufacturing plants or laid off. Saint Gobain demolished their factory. Where the plant used to stand, there's now a bare concrete slab, some trees and soil, a brook that flows into the Meramec River. The groundwater on the site is testing about 1,000 times higher than New Hampshire's drinking water level limit for pfoa. There are also high levels of PFOA in the soil. Saint Gobain has submitted some plans for remediating the site, but according to state regulators, it's a stretch to call what they're proposing remediation. They want to do something called natural attenuation. It's a fancy way of saying don't do anything and let the PFAS disappear on its own. A tough sell for a so called forever chemical. So Saint Gobain is gone from Merrimack. But there are other big questions that aren't going anywhere, like who's paying for all the different parts of this cleanup project? The company is required to find permanent solutions, like connections to public water systems for more than 1,800 homes with private wells. In the meantime, they say they've distributed nearly 500,000 gallons of bottled water. Meanwhile, Merrimack taxpayers spent $14.5 million on a new filtration system for their public water. Saint Gobain agreed to contribute more than $3 million to that project. But the town will have to keep paying to take care of the filters after they fill up with pfas. Meramec's water system is suing Saint Gobain and other companies that used PFAS to try and recoup some of the costs. And over a thousand people who drank the water and who think it made them and their family sick or worry they could get sick in the future. They have a case that's been snaking its way through New Hampshire courts for years. One thing people really wanted the company to pay for is called medical monitoring. Basically, extra careful checkups with doctors for a long time to try and catch any illness early. In other states like New York, Saint Gobain has been forced to help pay for 10 years of medical monitoring. In New Hampshire, the issue went to the state supreme court. Lawyers for Saint Gobain argued exposure to PFOA is different from, say, a car crash. If you get injured because someone rear ended you, you might sue them over that injury. But with PFAS exposure, Saint Gobain argued, there's no way to know if a person is injured. There's just the possibility of an injury at some point down the road. They also said medical monitoring wouldn't be feasible because too many people have been exposed to pfas, or at least it would be really, really expensive. The Saint Gobain lawyer told the judge, you and I have never met a person in southern New Hampshire who wouldn't be part of this class. In the end, New Hampshire's Supreme Court justices sided with Saint Gobain. So in New Hampshire, no matter what a jury decides in their class action case, people will be on their own when it comes to tracking their health. The Pierces only drank their contaminated water for a few months. The chemicals can get into our bodies, through our skin. But all the official guidance says the stuff the Pierces are still using their water, showering, washing dishes, filling up their backyard pool. That should be okay. Still, Jen says sometimes she'll have a night of worry about her kids just full of fear for their future. I tried to ask Jen, how do you live with this?

[Jen Pierce]

You have to just move forward and not think about those things all the time. But that is my biggest worry, that they, or even us, will be affected 10, 15 years down the road.

[Wendy Thomas]

And.

[Jen Pierce]

And what is justice for that? I don't know. There is no justice for that. I think if that were to happen, but right now it hasn't happened. So it's hard to live in that space, I guess.

[Community Member / Resident]

Yeah, I think we're probably. I think we're realistic about the fact that it's really. At the end of the day, it's an inconvenience for us at this point. What we're probably not realistic about is that it is way more than an inconvenience, that it is a legitimate health risk for our children. And. At Some point, like there. Yeah. Maybe we'll feel different about the idea of justice. Yeah.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

While we were talking, Ben and Jen and I were standing in their kitchen. Parker and Kinsey were drifting in and out of the room, going off to play when they got bored of my questions. But when their parents started talking about cancer, they both hovered a little closer.

[Community Member / Resident]

Do you guys think about the scariness of our water?

[Child of Pierce Family]

Like, I didn't know I could get cancer.

[Community Member / Resident]

Yeah, that's. That's the worry. I mean, that's why it's not safe to drink.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

We kept chatting. I think I was feeling uncomfortable. I wanted to reassure the kids that their family was following the rules, taking all the precautions. They weren't exposed for nearly as long or at nearly as high levels as other people I've talked to. Parker seemed like he was getting nervous. He was smiling and laughing. But I was an anxious kid. I could tell something was up, I

[Child of Pierce Family]

have to admit, I think, like, a couple weeks ago, it was in the morning, and I was really tired, and I woke up and I got dressed, and then I went to brush my teeth, and I used the tap water.

[Community Member / Resident]

Did you really?

[Child of Pierce Family]

Yeah, just once. Because I was upstairs, and the thing upstairs wasn't filled, and I didn't. And I had nothing up there, and I didn't want to walk all the way down.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

Oh, so you were, like, conscious?

[Community Member / Resident]

Like, I'm gonna live on the edge, ride the lightning.

[Child of Pierce Family]

I was like, it's probably fine. And so I just.

[Community Member / Resident]

I think one toothbrushing is probably okay.

[Child of Pierce Family]

I just wet my toothbrush with it.

[Mara Hoplamazian]

Risk management isn't the hardest part, Ben told me. It's the emotional management. It's trying to find the right amount of fear to have when there's a toxin all around you and all you can do is wait to find out whether something bad is going to happen. SA. Safe to Drink is reported by me, Mara hoplamazian. Additional reporting and production by Jason Moon, who also mixed all of the episodes, drove us all around Vermont and New York, and created all of the music you hear in this podcast. Our editors are Daniela Allee and Katie Colinari. Editing help from Daniel Baric, Rebecca Lavoie, Taylor Quimby, Elena Eberwein, and Lau Guzman. A very special thanks to everyone whose work and support made this project possible, including Lauren Chuljan, Casey McDermott, Kate Dario, Julia Furukawa, Zoe Knox, James Freeman, and my siblings Lena and Leo. And a huge shout out to all of the excellent journalists whose work I relied on while reporting this story. Many of them local reporters just like us at nhpr, including Annie Ro Peak, Mariah Blake, Sharon Lerner, Nathaniel Rich, Howard Weiss Tisman and Brendan J. Lyons. Fact checking by Danya Suleiman Legal Review by Jeremy A.G. singleton Photos by Raquel Zaldivar with the New England News Collaborative. Sarah Plord designed our website nhpr.org safetodrink where you can check out the Merrimack Community Health Survey, maps of New Hampshire's PFAS sampling efforts, the lawsuits we talked about, and a bunch of other photos and documents. Nate Hedge designed our logo, dan Baric is NHPR's news director, Rebecca Lavoy is our director of On Demand Audio and Leah Todd Lin is vice president of Audience strategy. Safe to Drink is a production of the Document Team at New Hampshire Public Radio.

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