“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. A
WASHINGTON POST AND SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 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.
