They Poisoned the World

Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals

By: Mariah Blake

Narrated by: Beth Hicks, Mariah Blake

“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.

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.

©2025 Mariah Blake (P)2025 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“A crackling David vs. Goliath story . . . [Blake’s] impressive research provides damning evidence of PFAS manufacturers’ callous indifference. Readers will be outraged.”—Publishers Weekly

“Impeccably researched and outrageous both in the scope of [corporate] malfeasance and the efforts of those who support it, the narrative never strays from its relentless documentation of the generational price paid for our decades of lax regulation. A must-read.”—Booklist, starred review

“A sharp-edged report on the world that toxic chemicals—and their manufacturers—have made.”—Kirkus Reviews

Devastating. If you don't know, you need to.

I'll start by saying my job title is "PFAS Subject Matter Expert" - everything I do focuses on PFAS. The topic is infuriating and devastating and may make you lose faith in much of humanity (certainly anyone tied up in government or with ties to corporate profits). The systems are not built to protect us, the government will not protect us, and corporations will never self regulate appropriately.

If you don't know about the PFAS problem, you need to. You ARE impacted by it; everyone you know is impacted by it. The entire world is impacted by it. this is not hyperbole, this is not overreacting. The title of this book is extremely accurate; they literally poisoned the entire world. and they got away with it.

Right now, there is no happy ending. There probably never will be, but maybe, with increased awareness, more will be done to hold the corporations who poisoned the world responsible for the devastation they caused. For the lives they took away. For the land they ruined.

This book lays out the PFAS story - from their beginning to where we are now. How they started and who was involved, to what is happening now and how few regulations are in place. All the companies and their cover up, all the things they hid and the ways the government helped (or helped by doing nothing). There are probably terrible things that we'll never know about, but this book lays out more than enough to make it completely clear that they knew, they knew early on, they covered it up, and they did it for profit.

This is a book that everyone should read on a topic that we all should be furious about.