Hello, I'm Amy Westervelt and this is Drilled. Today we're bringing you the first episode of the new

season of the Hazard NJ podcast. Produced by NJ Spotlight News, Hazard NJ is back for a new season,

taking a dive into the toxic world of PFAS, a family of thousands of substances, often called forever chemicals,

because they're so long-lasting. It's their durability that makes them useful for all sorts of

products and that makes them a threat to our health. Enjoy, and we'll be back with a new

episode of Drilled soon.

Deep in a lab in South Jersey, a young chemist and his assistant were conducting research. It was 1938.

Later that year, Superman would make his first appearance in print, and Orson Wells would

convince people that aliens had landed in New Jersey. But on April 6th, the chemist and his assistant

weren't thinking about superheroes or Martian

invasions. Their problem was that their experiments with the new gas weren't going according to

plan. They had opened the valve of one of the canisters that stored the gas, only to discover

it was gone. But the canister was too heavy to be empty.

So they cut open the canister.

What they found was a white powder

that would change the world in unimaginable ways.

This is Hazard NJ.

In our first season, we reported on toxic Superfund sites around the Garden State and how they're impacted by climate change.

This time around, we're taking a look at a different toxic threat, P-FOS.

They're often called forever chemicals, and they're in our toilet paper,

our water, our air, and even our blood. I'm Jordan Gospore, an investigative journalist from Texas.

I promised Michael, the show's producer, that I wouldn't talk about Texas or horror movies. But I would be remiss if I didn't mention the 1973 cult classic The Crazies.

...