A pesticide and PFAS analysis of California's waterways finds contamination in roughly half the state's surface water — including waterways that feed agricultural irrigation systems and drinking water supplies. The finding complicates the assumption that PFAS contamination is primarily a military or industrial site issue.

An interactive database and reporting tool allowing residents to check PFAS contamination levels in their local water systems — using EPA monitoring data. The map makes the scale of drinking water contamination visible at the ZIP code level.

North Carolina researchers identify the contamination sources behind PFAS found in rivers, groundwater, and drinking supplies across the region — tracing pathways from industrial discharge points to downstream exposure communities.

Local government response to private well contamination — a community-level intervention that illustrates both the scale of the problem and the gap between contamination discovery and remediation. Residents received filters; the source contamination remains.

Research finds PFAS-contaminated sewage sludge (biosolids) being applied to agricultural land as fertilizer — creating a direct pathway from industrial and military PFAS discharge through wastewater treatment into food crops. "A risk of contamination of our food."

Legal filings argue the EPA has both the authority and the obligation to protect communities from PFAS contamination via biosolids — particularly where state regulation has not filled the gap left by federal inaction. The biosolids pathway is one of the least-regulated PFAS vectors in current law.

State legislatures across the country are taking up biosolids PFAS regulation in 2026 as federal action remains uncertain — reflecting the same state-vs-federal dynamic playing out in healthcare reform, where ERISA and EPA preemption questions are shaping how far any individual state can reach.

The EPA under the current administration approves a PFAS-based pesticide — the first such approval while simultaneously rolling back drinking water protections. The decision expands the intentional agricultural application of forever chemicals at the moment when biosolids contamination of crops is becoming a documented crisis.

Researchers studying Magellanic penguins in one of the most remote ecosystems on earth find PFAS in the birds' blood and tissues. The finding — from a population that has virtually no direct human contact — demonstrates that PFAS has traveled through global atmospheric and oceanic transport pathways to reach locations far from any industrial source. There is no clean control group left on the planet.

A new study examining PFAS in marine mammals — dolphins and whales — finds contamination at concerning levels across multiple ocean basins. The phrase "no place to hide" echoes the finding from Patagonia: these are animals that live as far from human industry as possible, and they are still being found with PFAS in their tissues.

Scientific findings near US military installations — PFAS detected in all samples tested, across multiple site types and proximity levels. The military base contamination pattern is not isolated to a handful of high-profile sites. It is consistent across the installation network wherever AFFF was used.