Mariah Blake – They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals (in conversation with Ayana Elizabeth Johnson)

Investigative journalist Mariah Blake’s new book is a landmark 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.

Print: A Bookstore and SPACE Gallery present an intimate, thoughtful conversation between Mariah Blake and marine biologist, policy expert, and scientist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, author of the book What If We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures.

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.

Mariah Blake is an investigative journalist whose writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Mother Jones, The New Republic, and other publications. She was a Murrey Marder Nieman Fellow in Watchdog Journalism at Harvard University.

Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist, policy expert, writer, and teacher working to help create the best possible climate future. She is co-founder of Urban Ocean Lab, a think tank for the future of coastal cities, and is currently the Roux Distinguished Scholar at Bowdoin College. She authored the forthcoming book What If We Get it Right?: Visions of Climate Futures, co-edited the bestselling climate anthology All We Can Save, co-founded The All We Can Save Project, and co-created and co-hosted the Spotify/Gimlet climate solutions podcast How to Save a Planet. She is the proud daughter of a teacher/farmer and an architect/potter. Above all: Ayana is in love with climate solutions.

Co-presented by: