A major investigative collaboration among five newsrooms shows how chemicals used to make carpets stain-resistant have contaminated swaths of the South.In the mills of northwest Georgia, workers treated carpets with these chemicals starting in the 1970s. Carried in manufacturing wastewater, the chemicals spread into rivers and, ultimately, drinking water.The odorless and colorless compounds — called PFAS by scientists and known colloquially as forever chemicals because they take decades or more to break down — are now everywhere in the region. That includes in people, where PFAS circulate in blood and lodge in some organs.AdvertisementAdvertisementAs the carpet industry grappled with the risks to human health and the environment, its executives coordinated privately with the local public water utility in ways that would effectively shield their companies from oversight. And carpet makers kept using PFAS for years — even as scientific evidence solidified concerns in the 2000s and 2010s about the threats they can pose, including certain cancers and a compromised immune system.Major carpet companies say they have complied with all regulations and have stopped using PFAS. They point out that their suppliers falsely assured them older formulations of the chemicals were safe.The full story of Georgia’s power structures prioritizing a prized industry over public health is emerging through interviews and court records from lawsuits against the industry and its chemical suppliers. The reporting shows how the economic engine that sustained northwest Georgia polluted parts of Alabama and South Carolina, too.Here are takeaways from the investigation’s reporting on the toxic legacy of the South’s carpet empire. Some linked articles may have restrictions.AdvertisementAdvertisement‘Carpet Capital of the World’Carpet making in the U.S. has been centered in northwest Georgia for decades. Fleets of …
