A landmark investigation of the chemical industry's decades-long campaign to hide the devastating effects of "forever chemicals," told through the story of a small town on the frontline of an epic public health crisis

In 2015, after losing his father and several friends to cancer, an unassuming insurance underwriter from Hoosick Falls, New York, began to suspect that the local water supply was polluted. He tested his tap water and discovered dangerous levels of forever chemicals. This set off a chain of events that led to 70 million Americans learning their drinking water was tainted, threatening their health and fertility. What most don’t realize is that the U.S. government and the companies that manufacture these chemicals—used in everything from lipstick and food packaging to children’s clothing—have known about their dangers for decades.

In They Poisoned the World, investigative journalist Mariah Blake tells the astonishing story of this cover-up, tracing its roots back to the Manhattan Project and through the postwar years, as industry scientists discovered that these toxic chemicals refused to break down and were infusing the blood of virtually every person on the planet. By the 1970s, manufacturers like DuPont had begun clandestinely testing animals and workers, and suppressing the links they found to birth defects, immune system damage, cancer, and other serious diseases. At every step, they were aided by our government’s shockingly lax regulatory system, which DuPont itself helped create—a system that has made us all guinea pigs in a massive, uncontrolled chemistry experiment.

Drawing on years of on-the-ground reporting and tens of thousands of documents, Blake interweaves the secret history of forever chemicals with the moving story of how a small village took on the chemical giants—and won. From the local doctor who diagnosed rare, aggressive cancers in his patients (and then himself) to the young mother who took her fight all the way to Capitol Hill, citizen activists in Hoosick Falls and beyond have birthed the most significant grassroots environmental movement since Silent Spring.

Humane and revelatory, this book will provoke outrage—and hopefully inspire the fundamental change we need to protect the health of every American for generations to come.