Break Down

Perceptions Podcast.

Late last year, on a Monday afternoon, a fire broke out a few miles from where I live. It was a huge eight-alarm blaze at a clean-away waste storage facility. It took 80 firefighters, 20 fire. trucks and almost twenty-four hours to put out. This is good news, surely. The fire was out. Yes and no. While firefighters were getting control of the fire, some people local to the area were walking in a nearby nature reserve, Flat Rock.

They found the creek that day was covered by a thick, billowing foam. And shortly after seeing the foam, they saw that the creek was filled with dead fish and eels. It was a mass fish killer. And the suspected cause? The massive fire nearby and the toxin PFAS. PFAS are a family of chemicals known as the forever chemical. But it's better known by its various brand names.

Heflon, Scottguard, Stainmaster, Gore-Tex, PFAS are found in many things we use every day: nonstick cookware, stain-resistant fabric. Rain repellent clothing, firefighting foam, even dental floss and takeout containers. This is the magical chemical that makes nonstick pans nonstick, and stain resistant fabrics repel stains. The chemical was first created in the 1930s by scientists who wanted to make a substance that could resist water, stains, and grease.

And what they created was even more versatile than they had hoped. It seemed that there was nothing a PFAS couldn't do. As a result, there's very little they haven't been used for. These are the chemicals that are sprayed on mattresses and carpets, on our furniture, even on jeans. We line popcorn bags and pizza boxes with them to keep unwanted grease from seeping through.

It's in shampoo and toothpaste and countless cleaners and repellents. But there's a problem with these very helpful chemicals. What makes PFAS are long chains of carbon molecules covered in fluorine atoms. This may not mean much to you. It doesn't to me. I can't quite understand it. But I do understand this. The carbon fluorine bond is one of the strongest found in nature. And it's the strength of this bond that makes it so effective, but also so problematic.

Once created, long chain molecules tend to stick around, they don't break down or degrade. And now they're everywhere, in our air and waterways, in our soil, even in our bodies. And once they're in our body, they can accumulate, harmfully so. These chemicals have been known to elevate cholesterol levels and blood pressure and adversely affect the liver. In high levels, they can be carcinogenic.

Perhaps you know this chemical and you feel a sense of dread or sadness at any mention or description of it. It may anger you, as it does many, that such a chemical was ever invented, and that it was invented without a corresponding remedy. An antivenom, so to speak, a way out. Maybe you're frustrated that we'd advance so blindly without considering the downside. We create things for our gain that can end up harming us. What we devise as medication can turn out to be a poison.

What we pursue in the name of health can end up causing great harm.

It begs the question if the scientists knew then what mess they were making, would they have continued in their creation? And it also begs us to ask a similar question of ourselves. Do we, do any of us, know what we're doing in our pursuit of what we perceive to be our own good? If you feel comfortable, close your eyes or just soften your gaze gently down past your nose, relax your shoulders, and invite a more loving awareness.

There's so much emphasis these days on health, on wellness, on eating well, on doing the most effective exercises for maximum benefit. So much desire for the good life. For clean living, for taking care of our bodies and the planet. For shrinking our footprint while expanding our influence. And yet, even as we can do so many good things, so many helpful things These long chain forever chemicals silently gather and accumulate in the ground, in the water, and in our bodies.

We can't get away from them. The way that journalists write about them, it starts to sound like we're bound by them, imprisoned in their long chains. The way these chemicals can so secretly, silently, insidiously enter us without our knowing, without us even trying, when we're cleaning, when we're eating. They seem to get us coming and going, whether we mean them to or not.

In the United States, there's currently nationwide multi district litigation taking place regarding PFAS, specifically the kind found in firefighting foam. The defendant is the company three M. The plaintiffs number well over three thousand, including thousands of individuals, several water districts, and the states of New York, Ohio, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and New Mexico.

The first of three bellwether cases is due to begin in a few months. The city of Stewart, Florida versus the Three M Company, et al. The hope for the plaintiffs is that this is a first step in securing settlements for people and communities that have been affected by PFAS dispersed in firefighting foam. But settlements are just money. They don't take away the damage that's already been done. We need a solvent for that, a reversal. We need something to undo the knot we're in because of them.

Because there isn't any way to be free of this chemical without breaking the chains of these molecules. And without a way to break these chains, it feels like we'll be bound by them forever.

Dearly beloved brethren, the scripture moveth us in sundry places to acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and wickedness, and that we should not dissemble nor cloak them before the face of Almighty God, our Heavenly Father. But confess them. Sometimes the language used in news articles about these forever chemicals reminds me of a line in the General Confession from the Book of Common Prayer.

Of course, the prayer book doesn't mention long chain fluorocarbons, but it does mention another predicament we're in. It's summed up in this line. There is no health in us. The context of the line is the first half of the prayer, and it goes like this. Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against thy holy laws.

We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us. According to the instructions in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the general confession is to be said both morning and evening, at the beginning and the end of the day. Coming and going, a chain of words linked morning and evening, acknowledging the chains that hold us fast.

George Herbert's poem Sins Round is another example of this idea, exploring sin as a kind of PFAS of the heart, a long chain forever predicament. The form of the poem takes a round, which means every stanza ends with a line that is repeated as the first line of the next stanza, and the poem itself begins and ends with the same line. By doing this, each stanza is linked, as is the beginning and the end, making a chain of sorts out of words.

The poem begins and ends with this line Sorry I am, my God, sorry I am. The line begins and ends with the same words, sorry, I am. There are chains and there are chains within chains. The poem moves from an infection of thoughts and words and breath and hands and actions until the illness expands and consumes everything. There is no health in us, he seems to be saying. By these chains we are bound, or as Auden might say, the errors bred in the bone.

It is a desire for a breaking out from this bondage, some reversal, no matter how violent, that's also in the poetry of John Dunn. Batter my heart, three person God, for you as yet but not breathe shine and seek to mend, that I may rise and stand, O'er throw me, and bend your force to break, blow, to burn and make me new. In the poem, the speaker is a captive, he's been usurped, and the thing that the speaker's been usurped by, held captive by, is what he calls God's enemy. Sin.

That I may rise and stand or throw me, break. Blow, burn and make me new, divorce me, untie or break that knot again. In the poem, Dunn describes it in much the same way that we can describe the long chain forever chemicals, something that we've made that now binds us, that we can't get free of. And in order to be freed, something someone must break the chains.

I don't know if you feel the same way, but when I read about the Forever Chemical, I'm saddened. I'm sad that they're already everywhere, that they're impossible to avoid, that this chemical is in me, accumulating. Do I feel a similar sadness at the idea of my own sin? Or do I just explain it away? I think I'm very good at justifying myself to myself and others. Perhaps I'm too good at it.

Is there any way out from under its hold? I wonder this about forever chemicals, but also, somewhat relatedly, about sin as well. A few months ago, I was scrolling through the news when I found an article that stopped my fingers in their tracks. The article I found was in the New York Times, but I soon found others just like it from outlets all around the globe. Forever Chemicals No More, the title read. PFAS are destroyed with new technique.

Was it possible that the long chains of these forever chemicals had finally been broken? Was there a cure, after all? Scientists had been looking for an affordable and safe way to break them down for years, without success. And here it was. a readily available solvent, dimethyl sulfoxide, or DMSO, mixed with the Forever chemicals, and brought to a boil. It was simpler than any one thought possible. And it works even better when an ingredient in lye is added to the mixture. Soap.

The process removes the head from the molecular chain, and with the head of it removed, these unbreakable bonds in the forever chain all fall apart into harmless molecules. The forever chemical dies. Wash me with hyssop, the poet writes in Psalm fifty one, and I shall be clean. This is a major breakthrough in the fight against PFAS and sounds a note of hope in what up till now has seemed an irreversible and very bleak situation.

A breakthrough that never would have been made without first recognizing the problem these chemicals are. It is this knowledge of the problem that led the Environmental Protection Agency in New South Wales to monitor the water quality of Flat Rock Creek following the mass fish kill. They don't yet know what it was that turned a small creek into a foaming stream.

And they don't know if it was or wasn't PFAS that caused the fish kill event. They know there is a problem. They're investigating the cause. And each week, they take a sample of the water from Flat Rock Creek and test it. The acknowledgement of the problem and the harm it's doing is the first step towards any remedy. or as Herbert would say, Sorry I am, my God. Sorry I am.

In a way, this is the approach taken in the prayer I mentioned before, the general confession. It turns at its midpoint with the admission that there's no health in us. And once the problem is admitted, the remedy comes. The last half of the prayer is this. But thou, O Lord, have mercy on us, miserable offenders. Spare thou those, O God, who confess their fault. Restore thou those who are penitent, according to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And grant, O most merciful Father for His sake, that we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life to the glory of thy holy name. The long chains of sin have been broken, the confession may as well say. The head of sin has been crushed. and all the molecules that worm their way within us break away into nothing, and the only solvent capable of doing it. Or as the prayer calls him, Christ Jesus our Lord, our remedy.