'Forever Chemicals' Ruin Dairies

Food may be the next frontier in research on a wide array of potentially toxic chemicals increasingly showing up in drinking water and groundwater nationally. Art Schaap and Fred Stone milk dairy cows more than 2,000 miles from each other, but right now, neither one of them can sell their milk. Both farmers have been dumping their milk for months, and their cows also might never become beef, depending on how federal agencies determine safe or low-risk levels of chemicals in their cows.Their farms are in limbo because of contamination from a collection of roughly 5,000 chemicals in the environment that were made to use in a broad array of products, ranging from non-stick pans to foam used to fight fires. The family of synthetic chemicals, known as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, collectively known as "PFAS" chemicals, have been around since the 1940s. But only in recent years have they been dubbed as "emerging contaminants" because these fluorochemicals -- also called PFOA or PFOS -- are not only toxic, but they just don't go away. PFAS chemicals will move with water and remain in it. They are sometimes called "forever chemicals."