Forever chemicals are not a fresh scandal that the world is only learning about now: in 2019 there was a Hollywood movie about them, based on a true story from the late 1990s. Mark Ruffalo was Rob Bilott, the crusading lawyer arguing that a West Virginia chemicals company was poisoning the locale. The film, Dark Waters, concerned per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (Pfas), synthetic compounds that resist oil, water and heat, and which came into wide usage in the 1930s with the invention of Teflon. Their selling point is that they refuse to break down. The problem with them is that they refuse to break down, and once they’re in soil, groundwater, rivers, food or the air, they get into humans’ bloodstream, from where some Pfas are thought to play a role in causing cancer and other serious health conditions.
Yet it took until February this year for the British government to come up with a plan for how to deal with Pfas, and the documentary In Our Blood: The Forever Chemicals Scandal suggests that, for at least one small town, it’s too late. Cameras arrive in Bentham, North Yorkshire, for what is by now the sadly familiar story of a community in northern England of a few thousand people, generations of whom have been proud and grateful to work at the medium-sized business that dominates the local economy. Years later, the people of the town wonder if the thing they helped to make might be bad for their health.
