Transcription
This jacket is made from one of the most poisonous chemicals known to man: PFOA, forever chemicals. Forever chemicals are harmful, forever chemicals are toxic. The inner membrane is made of pretty much pure PFOA in the form of a fluoropolymer compound, and the outer waterproof coating is another toxic PFOA cocktail. PFOA is considered so toxic that just this year, the EPA determined that there is no acceptable level of PFOA in human drinking water—no parts per million or parts per trillion, no acceptable levels at all. Yet, Gore-Tex and other outdoor brands have been making these jackets by the millions, and outdoor enthusiasts like you and I have been buying them.
Now, Gore-Tex claims it's stable. "At Gore, we use a very stable fluoropolymer, expanded PTFE, to make our Gore-Tex membrane that, in their finished form, no PFOA can leak out of or shed off the jacket." But if I'm being honest, I don't trust Gore-Tex. So, I built this. This is my homemade rain chamber; it's just big enough to fit a mannequin I bought off Amazon. You guys remember Fred, right? My plan is to run the water through the system for a full 24 hours. Just in case Fred or any of the components have PFOA in them, I'm going to test the water and then put a brand new Gore-Tex jacket on Fred and run it for another 24 hours and test it again. If PFOA levels go up, Gore-Tex and similar jackets are actively shedding PFOA.
But even if it isn't, even if Gore-Tex is completely stable and the DWR doesn't seep into the environment, the manufacturing of PFOA chemicals certainly does. At 5:30, two major corporations have agreed to a nearly $700 million settlement in water contamination. DuPont and a successor company called Chemours agreed in principle to pay $670 million to more than 3,500 Parkersburg area water customers who claimed that the drinking water was contaminated and made them ill. PFOA is what is known as a forever chemical. It is a man-made compound so strong that it takes a force equivalent to the power of lightning to break it, or thousands of years for it to break down naturally. For all practical purposes, once it gets into the environment, into your bloodstream, into water sources, it never goes away and has been shown to cause some pretty harmful side effects. The chemicals have been linked to some cancers, kidney problems, developmental damage, liver damage, high cholesterol, weakened immune systems, and cancer.
PFOA has been manufactured and used in consumer products since the 1940s. It's most commonly known as Teflon, the non-stick coating on your mom's favorite fry pan, but it's also been used in food packaging, stain-resistant carpets, firefighting foams, makeup, and even dental floss. However, the outdoor industry has primarily used it in rain jackets. This particular rain jacket happens to be PFOA-free, but it is the exception. Most of the jackets that you and I have owned and used have been heavily dependent on PFOA, and this got me wondering if these chemicals really do last forever and if they are as prevalent as they seem. I ought to be able to prove that pretty easily.
So, this is my plan: I'm going to do a variety of tests to see just how prevalent PFOA really is. I'm going to test my blood, my home tap water, the ocean, a major water reservoir, and just to be 100% sure, I'm going to go to the highest, most remote stream I can find to see if it too is contaminated with PFOA. I want to find out if there's anywhere left in the world not contaminated with PFOA, starting with my home tap, because this poses the biggest threat to humanity. Before water pours out of your kitchen sink, it goes on a long journey through pipes, water towers, water treatment facilities, and more, eventually beginning at a place like this. This is the Dillon Reservoir; it is one of the main sources of drinking water for the city of Denver, Colorado. It's basically a dammed-up creek that collects the water before it gets piped over to Denver. If a reservoir like this is contaminated with PFOA, there's not much to keep it out of the drinking water because, until this year, there were no federal regulations requiring water treatment plants to remove PFOA from drinking water. So, water treatment plants simply aren't equipped to do so. For right now, at least, water treatment plants like the one behind me are just hoping that PFOA isn't present in their water sources, which is what I want to find out. How contaminated are the water sources you and I enjoy hiking to, drinking from, and how much is the outdoor industry contaminating these sources? Are you and I part of the problem by taking PFOA-laden gear and clothing to these pristine water sources? Because just about everything we take into the backcountry has been treated with some type of PFOA chemical in the form of DWR, or durable water repellent finish. Our rain jackets, our pants, our tents, even the down in our sleeping bags have been treated with a DWR.
If you think about it, getting wet is one of our biggest fears in the backcountry. We rely on our gear to keep us warm, safe, and dry, and that is part of the problem. PFOA is so good at repelling water, oil, and stains that companies are afraid not to use it because if a competitor has a better-performing product, you're probably going to buy it instead. That's why, despite the fact that we've known since the 1980s that these chemicals are toxic, brands continue to use them. So much so that the brands who have started to make PFOA-free products can't completely guarantee their products are PFOA-free. One of the things you may have noticed, especially if you're a regular viewer of this channel, is that these aren't the typical clothes that I hike in. According to the lab that I've been working with and talking to, it's actually very easy to contaminate your sources with the gear that you're wearing. So, I went looking for all PFOA-free clothing, and something very interesting that I discovered during that search is that brands refuse to say "PFOA-free" because they can't guarantee that it's PFOA-free. Instead, what they say is they are not intentionally using PFOA. The reason why they say that is because it's very easy to contaminate the machinery. So, Fjällräven has said, "We're not intentionally using PFOA, but we can't guarantee that PFOA isn't in our products." It's this cross-contamination that makes me believe our gear is actively shedding PFOA into the environment.
That's why I've hiked multiple miles to get to a part of the ocean that isn't near civilization. This is about as far from human civilization as I know how to get and still be on a beach in the United States. So, let's go make camp and let's go get a sample. Now, the ocean is such a large body of water, and the sample that I took is so small that the likelihood of PFOA showing up is not very high. But all streams eventually lead to the ocean, which means any PFOA-contaminated water will also end up there. It's not a matter of if the ocean has PFOA; it's a matter of how much. I'm curious to see what the results show, but first, I have one more water source I want to collect.
Okay, I am on my way to one of the higher, more remote streams that I could find. I've hiked in several miles; I'm headed off-trail, up above tree line, to see if I can find a stream that doesn't see very many people. Inevitably, where there's a trail, there are hikers, and where there are hikers, there is PFOA, which is the reason why I'm headed this direction. There are no trails up here; there are no prominent peaks to attract peak baggers. There is a lake, but lakes are a dime a dozen out here, and so there's very little in this remote corner of the mountains to attract people, which means if there is a stream left in the world that doesn't have PFOA, this is as good a candidate as any.
Okay, I am at the location where there should be just the tiniest little stream, but there are so many rocks and boulders that I can't see any streams. I can just hear the faintest sound of water running. One of the reasons why I picked this location specifically is because between this lake and those glaciers, there really isn't anything else. So, this should be our best bet for getting an uncontaminated stream. It is just barely a stream; I think I'm going to have to dig down a little bit just to get to it. Let's see. All right, let's get this back to the lab.
Okay, so I sent the samples off to the lab, and I've got the results right here. Let me try to break this down in a way that isn't going to bore you to death. First, I need to clarify that PFOA is a blanket term used to refer to a group of chemicals that includes more than 15,000 different chemical compounds. To the best of my knowledge, every PFOA chemical that has been studied has been found to cause health concerns, but there are two really big ones: PFOA and PFOS. These two chemicals are considered so toxic that the EPA forced them out of production all the way back in 2002. These are the two chemicals the EPA has said there is no acceptable level in human drinking water, but eliminating the chemicals altogether is viewed as an unrealistic expectation for water treatment plants. So, the EPA has said they are issuing an enforceable standard of less than four parts per trillion. To give you an idea of just how small of an amount this is, four parts per trillion is equal to four drops of water inside not just one, but 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools. So, that small of an amount of PFOA has been shown to cause human health concerns.
But how much is in the samples that I took? Well, my tap water had the most, with five parts per trillion of PFOA and 3.1 parts per trillion of PFOS. The reservoir had the next highest levels at 1.3 parts per trillion of both PFOA and PFOS. The ocean came back with only 75 parts per trillion of PFOA, but again, it's a huge body of water. That's all as interesting as it is concerning, but what really caught my attention is the Gore-Tex jacket test. As I mentioned, I ran water through the system for 24 hours prior to introducing the jacket. This system recirculated the same distilled water for the entire time, and the pre-jacket sample of distilled water was the only sample to come back with no PFOA detected. I then added a brand new Gore-Tex jacket, recirculated the same water for another 24 hours, and tested again. That water came back with five different PFOA chemicals, including 65 parts per trillion of PFOA that should have been phased out in 2016. But the jacket also shed 21 parts per trillion of PFBA; that's by far the highest amount of any PFOA found in any of my samples.
Now, two really interesting and concerning things about PFBA: one, it's not going to be regulated by the EPA, but the EPA has cited studies showing PFBA is likely to cause thyroid, liver, and developmental issues. So, is Gore-Tex shedding toxic chemicals into the environment? Well, based on what I'm seeing, it seems so. But what's even more concerning than that is that the same chemical that shed off the Gore-Tex jacket was the only chemical that I found in the high alpine stream at 4.7 parts per trillion. At first, I thought this is too much of a coincidence—the same chemical that is shedding off a rain jacket is the only chemical at an isolated upstream. But after looking into it some more, it seems that PFBA is one of the most likely chemicals to be found at remote locations because, unlike a lot of PFOA chemicals, it can evaporate with water and fall with snow, helping it spread throughout the water table.
So, are hikers helping to contaminate streams and other pristine water sources by taking PFOA-laden gear to these remote locations? Probably not to the extent that makes a significant difference. PFOA is such a widely used chemical, and the number of backcountry users going to any one location is so small that most of the pollution is probably coming from other sources. But this is an outdoor channel, and I wanted to focus on the part the outdoor industry has played and what we can do about it. The good news is things are starting to change. Both California and New York have passed legislation restricting PFOA in clothing, and REI has announced that they will no longer sell products that contain PFOA. This has put a lot of pressure on many major outdoor brands, including Gore-Tex, to finally stop using PFOA, and Gore-Tex has already started producing and marketing its ePE membrane that is PFOA-free.
This is all good news, but we aren't out of the woods yet. REI only represents about 17% of the outdoor gear sold worldwide, which means there's still a lot of brands and gear being produced and sold potentially containing PFOA. So, what can you do? Well, you can do all the typical things you hear at the end of a video like this. You can write to your representatives, you can write to these brands and tell them that you want to see more PFOA-free gear, you can donate to PFOA awareness charities, and you can share this video so that even more people are aware of these toxic and harmful chemicals that we use every single day.
I hope you appreciate this video; I've been working on it a really, really long time. So, be sure to like, subscribe, and do all those other things. And as always, thanks for watching. If you're concerned about my blood, I did mention that I had it tested; I just didn't have a good place to talk about the results. It came back showing that I've got about a thousand parts per trillion of PFOA going around in my blood, but the lab also tells me that is below the national average of less than 4,000 parts per trillion. So, I'm hoping that it's not a big deal because there's not a lot I can do about it.