“Riveting . . . Blake’s deft chronicle of one of the greatest moral scandals of our time [is] a
book that none of us can afford to miss.”— The Washington Post A gripping investigation of
the chemical industry’s decades-long campaign to hide the dangers of forever chemicals told
through the story of a small town on the frontlines of an epic public health crisis. EDGAR
AWARD NOMINEE • LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN E.O WILSON LITERARY SCIENCE WRITING AWARD A BEST BOOK
OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post Scientific American Booked Up In 2014 after losing
several friends and relatives to cancer an unassuming insurance underwriter in Hoosick Falls
New York began to suspect that the local water supply was polluted. When he tested his tap
water he discovered dangerous levels of forever chemicals. This set off a chain of events that
led to 100 million Americans learning their drinking water was tainted. Although the discovery
came as a shock to most the U.S. government and the manufacturers of these toxic
chemicals—used in everything from lipstick and cookware to children’s clothing—had known about
their hazards for decades. In They Poisoned the World investigative journalist Mariah Blake
tells the astonishing story of this cover-up tracing its roots back to the Manhattan Project
and through the postwar years as industry scientists discovered that these chemicals refused
to break down and were saturating the blood of virtually every human being. By the 1980s
manufacturers were secretly testing their workers and finding links to birth defects cancer
and other serious diseases. At every step the industry’s deceptions were aided by our
government’s appallingly lax regulatory system—a system that has made us all guinea pigs in a
vast uncontrolled chemistry experiment. Drawing on years of on-the-ground reporting and tens
of thousands of documents Blake interweaves the secret history of forever chemicals with the
moving story of how a lone village took on the chemical giants—and won. From the beloved local
doctor to the young mother who took her fight all the way to the nation’s capital citizen
activists in Hoosick Falls and beyond have ignited the most powerful grassroots environmental
movement since Silent Spring . Humane and revelatory this book will provoke outrage—and
hopefully inspire the change we need to protect the health of every American for generations to
come.
