They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals delivers a sweeping, deeply researched exposé on the rise of “forever chemicals” (PFAS) — synthetic compounds originally developed during the Manhattan Project — showing how for decades major chemical corporations and regulators systematically hid evidence that these substances persist in the environment and accumulate in human blood, even as they saturated everyday items from cookware to cosmetics.

The book traces PFAS exposure back to the 1940s, when early tests revealed toxicity and bioaccumulation. By the 1970s and 1980s, internal studies at companies such as DuPont and 3M documented birth defects, cancer, and other serious health outcomes among workers — but the industry chose to bury or suppress those findings.

The narrative becomes personal and human when the author focuses on the small village of Hoosick Falls, New York, where residents discovered PFAS in their tap water, launching a long, painful struggle for clean drinking water and justice — a struggle that ultimately exposed the scale of contamination affecting hundreds of millions of Americans.

What emerges is not just an environmental tragedy but a story of corporate negligence, regulatory failure, and betrayal of public trust — a toxic legacy that turns the built environment into a global “chemistry experiment,” and all of us into unwitting subjects.

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