Free Event: A Conversation with Mariah Blake

Hello everyone,

On Thursday, October 23 at 6:30 p.m., I’ll be moderating a conversation at the American Museum of Tort Law in Winsted, Connecticut with investigative journalist Mariah Blake.

Her remarkable new book, They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals, exposes how PFAS—so-called “forever chemicals”—were invented, manufactured, used in countless products, and then quietly spread into the water, soil, and bloodstreams of communities and people across America. All while health risks were downplayed and covered-up by large chemical manufacturers.

Blake’s book details how citizens in Hoosick Falls, New York and Parkersburg, West Virginia—faced with unexplained cancers and other illnesses—took on politicians, corporate giants like 3M and DuPont, and their own fears to advance a ban on PFAS chemicals, far more stringent drinking-water regulations, and PFAS chemical clean-ups.

It also chronicles years of effort that led to legal victories that delivered substantial monetary compensation and lifelong health monitoring for those impacted.

The Uncertainty Machine: A Story of PCBs, Cancer, and Doubt

Concerned about PCB exposure and cancer, in January 2021, members of the Pittsfield City Council asked the Massachusetts Department of Public Health for an updated cancer-incidence study. After more than four years, they’re still waiting. But when results are finally released, will they even matter?

The Berkshire ArgusBill Shein

Blake’s decade of research and reporting, which included more than six hundred interviews, uncovers a story that mirrors, in many ways, the one we know so well in the Berkshires: the contamination of Pittsfield and the Housatonic River with PCBs and the decades of health concerns, community organizing, legal action, and frustration with regulators and public-health officials that followed—and that continues.

This event is free and in person. I hope you’ll come to what promises to be a compelling, urgent, and hopeful discussion.

Register free: www.tortmuseum.org
Location: American Museum of Tort Law, 654 Main Street, Winsted, Connecticut
Questions/event info: (860) 379-0505 or tortmail@tortmuseum.org

—Bill

P.S. For related Argus coverage, check out a profile of the Tort Museum, this year’s deep dive into the history of PCBs and health concerns in Pittsfield, and listen to Ralph Nader explain the importance of citizen action and the role of litigation in a Berkshire Argus Podcast interview.

AUDIO: A conversation with Ralph Nader

Now ninety years old, Ralph Nader discusses his American Museum of Tort Law, the power of organized citizens to make a difference, and lessons he learned growing up in a small, working-class town a stone’s throw from the Berkshires.

The Berkshire ArgusBill Shein