The curious case of tainted milk from a Maine dairy farm

For Maine dairy farmer Fred Stone, the discovery in 2016 that his cows were producing tainted milk has since brought financial ruin and threatened to shut down a century-old family business.  Now state regulators and health experts are investigating whether the contamination could reflect a much broader problem for farms that used similar methods to fertilize their land.The chemicals on Stone’s farm likely came from biosolids, or nutrient-rich sewage from municipal utilities, that he spread across his fields, according to a report last year by Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). The chemicals are known as perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS – some of which have been linked to cancers, liver damage, low birth weight and other health problems.