My son was born in late 2019. A few months later, early one morning, I found myself looking into his eyes as he nursed and I wondered if I was doing the right thing. Trying to ignore my nagging worry, I continued nursing him, pushing off the uncertainty until the next feeding.
I am a third-generation resident of Westfield, Massachusetts, a city known for its good school system, robust athletics program, and local continuity — the type of place where you share the same high school German teacher as your parent. Westfield is also known for its contaminated drinking water. It’s a decades-old problem that recent research shows may have an especially harmful impact on developing fetuses and infants: the contamination of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly known as PFAS, or forever chemicals. And in the late summer of 2024, I joined other families in an ongoing lawsuit against the company that manufactured the chemicals, 3M.
I have decades of direct exposure to PFAS, likely making me — and my breastmilk — a reservoir. In 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry found that the residents in my hometown of Westfield, Massachusetts, had four times the national average of certain PFAS in their blood. Numerous times, I considered getting my family’s blood tested, but the high price point of the blood tests kept this just out of my grasp. For months, I pricked my finger and turned in blood samples to a local university as a participant in a volunteer study, but I later found out that the research was shut down when the doctor who oversaw it left. I then tried to get my son’s levels tested, but this also proved to be a dead end.
Westfield first detected PFAS in its drinking wells in 2013, but the contamination stretches back decades, possibly as early as the 1970s, when the local airbase began using aqueous film-forming foam in firefighting trainings. The foam, which contains PFAS, was routinely used at airbases throughout the U.S. to put out jet-fuel fires. And today, in Westfield, the invisible plume of PFAS that sits upon our aquifer, providing water to our wells, is vast and still spreading while the community awaits remediation.
Today, roughly 15,000 different synthetic compounds fall under the umbrella of PFAS, some of which have been associated with thyroid disease, kidney and testicular cancers, immune dysfunctions, and more. In April 2024, the EPA regulated six common PFAS chemicals in drinking water and designated PFOA and PFOS, two types of PFAS that are commonly found in firefighting foam, as “hazardous substances.”
Trying to ignore my nagging worry, I continued nursing him, pushing off the uncertainty until the next feeding.
PFAS are known as forever chemicals because of their environmental persistence, but as a mother, I also see their multigenerational persistence. Once a person is exposed to the toxicants, they bioaccumulate, and future generations will also be affected. Research has shown that the placenta is one of the target organs for PFAS contamination. Studies have also confirmed the presence of PFAS in cord blood and amniotic fluid. Fetal exposure to PFAS has been associated with low birth weights, preterm births, and birth defects.
Suzanne Fenton is the director of North Carolina State University’s Center for Human Health and the Environment and research from her and her colleagues has shown that the chemicals can show up in breastmilk.
Despite such findings, my doctors encouraged me to keep nursing so that my son received my antibodies as protection during the Covid-19 pandemic. I tried to calculate which risk was greater, but it was so uncertain. Then, in 2021, my son turned 2 and was diagnosed with a rare kidney disease — one that is not genetic. His symptoms quickly escalated. While PFAS has been connected to kidney cancer and kidney disease, my son’s specific disease has not yet been studied in relation to PFAS. When I asked his doctors about a possible connection, I was repeatedly given the same answer: The studies on PFAS are still developing, and they are more concerned about how to help my son with his current condition than trying to guess what caused it. His kidney disease is a result of immune interaction with certain proteins in the organs, so I asked Fenton if she thinks there is a correlation. “There is something that happens during development,” she said of the effects of PFAS. “And some people can be more susceptible to certain issues.”
PFAS are known as forever chemicals because of their environmental persistence, but as a mother, I also see their multigenerational persistence.
Each time I nursed, I wondered how much PFAS my son already had and how much more I was giving him. Did I cause this? Are these numbers we can even know?
When I ask Fenton, she says such numbers can be determined with serum-to-milk ratios and mathematical equations. “If the infant drinks this much over this amount of time, they will get this much from mom’s milk,” she said. “Those equations do exist.”
But is there a way to tell if they already were born with PFAS from being in utero? In an email, Fenton explained that some research suggests that mothers and their babies do have similar PFAS levels in their blood. The burden of PFAS in the mother’s body, she added, may be concentrated further in the babies, who “have lower blood volume, so that gets taken into consideration when trying to understand offloading of the body burden.”
It’s unclear how that exposure may affect children over time, but research is underway to find out. In 2016, Megan Romano, an associate professor of epidemiology at Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine, joined a team that had been studying the health effects of environmental contaminants since 2009. For that longitudinal study, which is ongoing, Romano estimates that so far, the team has enrolled 4,500 maternal-infant pairs. Monitoring the health of babies through their early teens has provided a look at what environmental contaminants may be doing to young, developing bodies. Romano has also been studying the connection of PFAS and has noticed changes in infants’ gut microbiomes from PFAS exposure.
“There’s a lot of space for discovery there still in terms of really firming up our understanding of what might be going on,” said Romano. Romano also noted that for most people with more typical PFAS exposure — after all, nearly everyone in the United States has at least some PFAS in their blood — nursing still has important benefits for the infant.
PFAS contamination is not abstract; it is tangible and shows up in the little bodies that we create.
So how long is “forever” when it comes to forever chemicals? I think about this a lot. How much damage has already been done? When I asked Fenton, she told me that the studies were started in adults, but if a developing child is given PFAS, it can result in the same outcome.
I may never know for sure if my exposure to PFAS triggered my son’s health issues, but I also know that I am not the only mother in this situation. PFAS contamination is not abstract; it is tangible and shows up in the little bodies that we create. My son’s health is stable, but his illness is something we will need to navigate for years to come. I will pay attention to the things that can be monitored, such as cholesterol levels and kidney, liver, and thyroid functions, and I will continue to support his immune system. I will also try to make some peace with myself so that my guilt does not crowd out my ability to show love. To my son, this life is normal, and perhaps for all of us living with the effects of PFAS, it is also now our new normal.
UPDATE: An earlier version of this story suggested that Megan Romano had been researching environmental containments with a team since 2009. The study began in 2009; Romano joined the team in 2016. The story has been changed to reflect this.
Nicole Williams is an environmental writer and freelance journalist based out of western Massachusetts. She reports on PFAS contamination and climate change issues.