ExxonKnews
September 12, 2023
This is Part 1 of a two-part ExxonKnews series taking a closer look at the companies sponsoring Climate Week NYC.
“I don't know if you've heard, but there's a toxic disaster unfolding next door in Hoosick Falls, NY,” reads an email that I and other students at Bennington College received from a professor in January 2016. The local water supply had been contaminated with a chemical called PFOA, and it was making people sick.
The source of the pollution: the Saint-Gobain plastic manufacturing plant, tucked away on a small residential drive behind the town’s Little League baseball fields.
Documents show Saint-Gobain, a materials manufacturer that was importing and using PFOA, knew the chemical was toxic as early as the 1990s. But the company made a concerted effort to “downplay the potential health risks,” in the words of one executive, while drastically misleading regulators about the amount and concentration of PFOA it was using. The pollution wasn’t just happening in Hoosick Falls — as it turned out, Saint-Gobain contaminated several communities’ public water supplies, including those in Bennington, Vermont, and Merrimack, New Hampshire. Eventually, the polluter was sued by residents and regulators.
