PFAs and Related
“Resource Rabbit Hole”
This is the path I went down.
“Your mileage may vary”.
Trigger warning: this post is from the perspective of the consumer/exposee side of the house.
Feel free to point me to other resources in the comments section.
I wish I could say I’ve been following PFAs all along, but actually I was talking to a colleague who has been collaborating with me about who might want to contribute to our Visual Chemical Safety initiative, and she said “what about that lady who did the chemicals movie? What was her name?”
That took me to Erin Brockovich’s podcast (water is her main focus, but she covers other topics). I binge listened to all the episodes during my part time 3rd shift “below the cardboard ceiling” job (“my exercise program that they pay me to do and feed me besides”).
One of the later episodes was with Rob Bilott, who litigated both of the original PFOA lawsuits in Parkersburg, WV. That took me to the documentary “The Devil We Know” (which I was able to check out from the online version of my local library at no cost). There’s also a movie “Dark Waters”, but I stuck with the documentary.
Link to The Devil We Know documentary
Which took me to Rob Bilott’s book Exposure, which is a more detailed version of the events in the documentary.
After that, I started tapping into some of the Michigan EGLE Environment Great Lakes Energy resources, starting with the 2021 PFAS Summit online conference. Here’s a link to that conference, but since it was a (nominal charge) paid event, I don’t know if you’ll be able to watch the sessions.
(I also don’t know if you could pay after the fact and get access to the materials, at $50 I thought it was a great value).
If you scroll through the agenda and find something interesting, I’m guessing that if you reached out to the presenters they would be happy to visit with you at more length about it.
And here’s the link to the Michigan EGLE MPARTs web page
I’m guessing other states have similar websites about PFAs but I haven’t had time to check them out yet, and my understanding is that the EGLE Summits present pretty much the state of the art at the moment.
That’s probably enough to get you started….please reach out with comments!
Community Outreach: What other good resources have you found? Different perspectives are welcome!
