Dominique Beaudry, Graduate Student at Duke University
“If you’re from Concord, go get your thyroid checked!” a friend posted on her instagram. After noticing a lump in my neck, I dutifully went to the doctor and sure enough, at 27 I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. My friend’s mother, a former teacher, a neighbor down the block- everyone was having thyroid issues in my town. This started my journey into exploring environmental toxins and the interaction between health and the environment.
My name’s Dominique, and after being a high school teacher in Durham for the past near-decade, I’m studying Public Policy at Duke. My goal is to help all of us in North Carolina better understand the systems shaping our lives- economics, politics, etc. so we can create the change we deserve. I’m passionate about PFAS, and using the tools, like radical imagination, that work for supporting us all making the world we want!
Water filters on our faucets are not enough, we deserve a life where all the water coming from the taps is clean and affordable; where all products we consume are healthy, not harmful; where the farmland and soil is nourishing, not toxic. And where do these water filters go? To landfills, where the filters are toxic waste, leaching poison into the air, soil, and water around the state’s most marginalized communities. In a world where we’ve created art, technology, and transportation beyond our ancestors’ wildest dreams- we cannot let the imagination of what we can accomplish be stopped anywhere short of our wildest dreams of collective health, safety, and ease.
PFAS Cycle Diagram courtesy of Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy
PFAS are not just in the water; they’re in dozens of consumer products- hidden without a label, slowly but surely poisoning our blood with a chemical that no one can effectively destroy. PFAS are in the manufacturing and wastewater discharge, filling our rivers, waterways, and all creatures big and small with life-altering toxins.
PFAS are in the landfills, turning our beautiful earth into toxic waste sites without any hope for remediation. PFAS are in our cattle, hogs, livestock, vegetables, and fruits grown in farms watered with taps and fertilized with sludge – turning the foods that could be nourishing, filled with vitamins and minerals, providing life and health, into the things that could land you in the hospital, fighting cancer and struggling with infertility. With stakes this high, radical imagination is a balm to center our work in the fullest solution possibles, the wellbeing economies that create thriving not just surviving.
So how do we get there? We know that the resolutions being promoted will be ones that cost our individual households and local governments large amounts of money on purpose – profiting off of poison will be replaced with profiting off of our protection. Water filters are just the first step, a tiny bandaid in the gushing issue. None of the solutions on the table address the overarching issue – PFAS being used in our lives, without our consent.
Laws warn us that cigarettes will cause cancer and that lead will harm our children; laws should warn us that PFAS are present and dangerous.
California’s proposition 65 has reduced the amount of harmful toxins that Californians were exposed to through consumer products and and manufacturers made products less toxic in order to keep selling in California without the label “contains carcinogens.” We have a template for what can work and we can build it out even bigger. Banning PFAS? Maine and Minnesota have begun paving the path, and we can join and expand. Allowing PFAS to continue existing stops any incentive to design new replacements that aren’t toxic. We deserve carpeting, floss, pans, shoes, clothing, etc. that doesn’t make us sick. Without the push to ban PFAS as a class of chemicals, we won’t get these items safely. Known PFAS are being replaced with less-known, but likely still dangerous PFAS. What if all chemicals being brought to market have to prove safe before being released into our environment? We can make that rule! We can demand chemicals be proven safe before released, instead of the current “let’s see” approach to chemical regulation.
We deserve a system of sharing, exchanging, and producing goods that enhances our collective wellbeing, not one that creates more problems to sell us more goods for our own protection. Mobsters create violence, then charge you for their protection. Feudalistic kings and nobles created wars, then made peasants work for them in exchange for protection. Our current approach to PFAS is no different- chemical companies can make toxins, then charge us for protection from them. We deserve better, and we can create and design better together.
