Bringing PFAS Contamination to Light: The Story Behind GenX

What would you do if you found out you, your family, and your community were being poisoned?

That was exactly the question that Eli Yetter-Bowman faced nearly a decade ago, when it came to light that the river in his North Carolina hometown was being contaminated with PFAS (aka "forever chemicals") by a chemical corporation behemoth. The revelation led to a years-long investigation by Yettert-Bowman and their filmmaking team at Ethereal Films, where they uncovered an even bigger, farther-reaching story than they could have imagined.

Now, the result of their endeavour is finally ready to reveal on the big screen: GenX , a documentary on forever chemicals and how communities rallied together to demand accountability, is having its West Coast premiere on November 19 at the Whiteside Theatre in Corvallis. This free event is hosted by OEC, and will feature a Q&A with Yetter-Bowman, PFAS scientists and policy experts after the showing. Be sure to RSVP to reserve your spot!

We recently sat with GenX director, Eli Yetter-Bowman, to learn more about their experience coming face-to-face with PFAS in their hometown and how that led to their journey making the film.

How did PFAS first get on your radar, and how did that lead you to making GenX?

In July 2017, a major article revealed that the Cape Fear River in North Carolina - where I grew up drinking the water - had been poisoned for at least 40 years by an upstream chemical facility owned by DuPont and later its spinoff, Chemours. At the time, I had recently moved up to Chapel Hill as a pre-med student taking a lot of chemistry courses. Friends back home peppered me with messages asking if these industrial chemicals in the water were something to worry about, as the scientific jargon made the story hard for people to process.

Going down that rabbit hole, I reviewed articles about these dozens of industrial chemicals we call PFAS, including GenX, which had the easiest name to remember. In tracing the history, I stumbled upon the story of Rob Bilott and a farmer in Parkersburg, West Virginia, who began a massive legal battle against DuPont in the 1990s. I realized this wasn't just a local issue in southeastern North Carolina; two chemical giants had been doing this all over the country since the 1950s, knowing these chemicals were dangerous, stuck around forever in the environment, and built up in people.

When I ran out my professors' expertise, my partner Sammy and I realized a documentary was the best way to make this massive corporate cover-up accessible. Everyone deserves to know if they've been harmed or poisoned without their consent, without needing a specialized degree to understand it.

On a personal level, my mom developed a rare chronic autoimmune disease when I was in middle school that has very few research or treatment options beyond masking symptoms with side effects. Living through that transformed my view on public health - I believe we should actually get at the root causes of illnesses. Connecting this massive pollution to chronic health conditions made this project a full-circle quest to help make our world safer so the next mom doesn't get sick.

What were some of the most surprising things you learned during the filming process?

The most surprising revelation was just how powerful our individual stories can actually be in making a difference. We worked with an advocate throughout filming whose firefighter spouse received a career-ending cancer diagnosis. She took it upon herself to dig deeper into the causes behind the cancer epidemic raging in the fire service - where the World Health Organization considers being a firefighter the same cancer risk as smoking a pack a day.

We followed her journey as she uncovered what she believed was the missing link: PFAS incorporated directly into the personal protective gear firefighters wear daily, exposing them through skin contact, station off-gassing, and dust inhalation.

We focused on that story for a separate project, collaborating with the North American firefighters' labor union. By compiling stories from ordinary advocates, scientists, and firefighters into a clear narrative, we saw laws that had been stalled for years get proposed and passed in a matter of weeks and months. In environmental issues where there is usually a David-and-Goliath power imbalance, it proved that working in community and uplifting one another can truly drive systemic change.

Can you speak to the importance of state-level policy when addressing an issue as far-reaching as PFAS?

The more local initiatives are, the more likely they are to succeed. Local victories create the necessary momentum and precedent that cause bigger ripple effects elsewhere.

State-based change is where we have seen the most direct impact. For a separate advocacy film we did called Burned, we participated in a series of legislative hearings, including one at the Boston State House for a proposed law in Massachusetts. That effort was successful, and a few months later, the bill passed into law, banning the use of PFAS in firefighter gear and multiple other textiles. While national policy can lag, local and state initiatives are currently the best path forward for making real change across the country.

What would you say to folks who don't know anything about PFAS? Why should they see this documentary?

People should care because this is one of the biggest corporate cover-ups in human history. Virtually every person in the U.S. has been unknowingly poisoned by a few chemical companies for the sake of profit, and that information is now being revealed. It is deeply eye-opening for people to understand the seriousness of this situation and its impact on our health.

At the same time, our story is not completely doom and gloom. It is incredibly hopeful and uplifting because it shows what the actual path forward looks like. If you want to understand the impact these companies have had and see how amazingly people can come together to make a big difference, this is a film you don't want to miss.