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The Corporate Poisoning of America

Businesses bypass regulations and reap record profits.

Angus Peterson
Edge of Collapse
7 min readDec 31, 2024

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Modern life is built on invisible poisons. From the water-resistant coatings on your rain jacket to the microplastics in your children’s cereal bowls, our world is saturated with chemicals and materials whose long-term consequences we are only beginning to understand. PFAS, the so-called “forever chemicals,” and microplastics are the latest chapters in humanity’s long history of poisoning itself in the name of progress.

The story is tragically familiar. Once, lead was heralded for its utility, baked into our pipes, paints, and gasoline — until its devastating effects on the brain and body became undeniable. Asbestos, too, was a miracle material, celebrated for its fire resistance, until it was exposed as a deadly carcinogen. The pattern repeats with eerie consistency: materials praised for their ingenuity and convenience, only to reveal, years or decades later, an insidious legacy of harm.

PFAS and microplastics follow this same arc. Initially celebrated as marvels of modern chemistry, they now lurk in every corner of the environment and in our bodies, linked to cancer, endocrine disruption, and even neurological damage. Worse, they persist indefinitely, forever contaminating the land, water, and air upon which life depends.

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Edge of Collapse
Edge of Collapse

Published in Edge of Collapse

Becoming collapse aware in the age of the permanent polycrisis.

Angus Peterson
Angus Peterson

Written by Angus Peterson

Becoming collapse aware in the age of the permanent polycrisis. Follow to get all the new stories: https://anguspeterson.medium.com/subscribe

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