One road accident in 1992 is now one of the most disturbing case studies of “forever chemicals” anywhere in the world. In Australia’s Blue Mountains that year, a petrol tanker crashed and caught fire, and firefighters used foam to blanket the burning fuel. The foam contained PFAS, a class of synthetic chemicals that hardly break down in soil and water. More than three decades later, scientists found the local water supply still laced with contamination hundreds of times above what’s considered safe, a preview of how long the problem can simmer before anyone notices.
What really happened in the Blue Mountains
