This is quite the amazing day in the fight against the trespassing and invasion of industry's PFAS chemicals on our bodies.
The defense bill passed by the US House of Representatives today includes provisions that would put a deadline on the military's use of related firefighting foams and address PFAS contamination near military bases across the country.
Action like this usually comes about as the result of litigation or regulatory agency enforcement. However, today it was legislation that mandated this sweeping change in policy.
I'm not sure it has been done this way before. (Perhaps someone can educate me.)
It all comes down to this: I never thought I would see the day when more than a handful of congressmen would educate themselves on this complex public health issue, take a stand against it, and vote to cease the ongoing contamination and clean it up.
I'm astounded.
However, I can tell you why it came to be.
Over the past few years many more communities have come to know that their water, too, was contaminated with these carcinogenic industrial solvents.
At the same time, world class journalists like Mariah Blake and Sharon Lerner began to tell the stories of the communities who found themselves exposed without consent. In telling the stories they empowered the contaminated and concerned.
Community members responded by coming together, educating themselves and each other, and demanding the problems be addressed. Like so many flakes of falling snow, they began to stick together. Their collective snowball got bigger and bigger and it became an avalanche of angry citizens who were no longer willing to tolerate this sickening environmental injustice.
At the very top of the mountain, there was a driving force - someone so completely consumed by the battle that she could not be diverted or stopped. Three years, six thousand emails,
untold bravery in the face of evil, and she pushed.
Thank you to all of the angry citizens who wouldn't stand for it.
Thank you to Rob Bilott for letting the world know the truth.
Thank you to the journalists, the Environmental Working Group, Dr. Arlene Blum, and the Green Science Policy Institute for educating all of us.
And, thank you, Diane Cotter, for being the change you wanted to see in the world. Thank you for pushing the snowball down the mountain.
<3PS - Sure, the threat of a veto looms. Bring it! I'm betting on Diane's side every time.
