>> Carrie: I feel like I was doing what I was supposed to do and inadvertently poisoned my child.
>> Narrator: In the late 1980s, Carrie and Craig Miner moved on to Wurtsmith Air Force Base in Oscoda, Michigan.
>> Craig: So I flew B-52s there, and our airplanes were loaded up
with nuclear weapons, ready to go at the behest of the president.
>> Narrator: Unaware of the potential danger. Carrie regularly drank tap water
from the Wurtsmith Air Force Base, as well as while pregnant with Mitchell. Her third child.
>> Carrie: I noticed that he didn't do things the
same time his brother and sister had done things developmentally.
>> Narrator: Eventually, doctors diagnosed Mitchell with microcephaly.
>> Carrie: Microcephaly is a term. It means small heads,
small brain. Your brain does not develop and grow because your head does not grow and develop.
>> Narrator: Doctors told the Minors that Mitchell would be lucky to reach his fifth birthday.
He lived to be 31.
>> Carrie: Well, our family joke is that he's our favorite. His smile would light up a room.
He wasn't verbal. He never walked. He was tube fed. But he brought joy to our lives.
>> Carrie: Mitchell did pass away on January 25th of 2020. I
wouldn't wish him back in that broken body that he had.
>> Narrator: Environmental officials with the state of Michigan first discovered PFAS contamination
at the now closed Wurtsmith Air Force Base in 2010. Today, it is a Superfund site.
>> Craig: Our son’s microcephaly is usually a result of some sort of environmental exposure
to something. And so I started researching what was going on at Wurtsmith and and I was appalled
at what I found. We now understand that somewhere around 30 to 40000 parts per trillion firefighter
foam, the PFAS in firefighter foam was dumped right on the ground outside the fire station,
which was about less than 500 yards from the main wells, supplying all the water to the base.
>> Craig: So it was simply just being dumped there. Routinely, every week. It
went right to those wells and it went right into the water tower distributed base-wide.
>> Narrator: The CDC has linked a host of health effects with long term PFAS exposure, including
increased risk of certain cancers, birth defects, decreased fertility, thyroid disease and more.
Michigan officials have identified more than 230 sites with levels above the EPA's health limit for
groundwater. But they estimate that number could be well over 11,000. Nationally, the EPA believes
there may be 120,000 sites where people were exposed, including hundreds of military bases.
>> Narrator: PFAS chemicals are so widespread that researchers at the National Institute of
Health estimate that 97% of the U.S. population has traces of the forever chemical in their blood.
>> John: What makes PFAS special is that it is fluorinated and the fact that its fluorinated,
that carbon fluorine bond is the strongest bond in organic chemistry.
It is very resistant to heat and degradation. So it has a lot of applications. It can be used
in all sorts of applications like firefighting foam, coatings on skillets like your nonstick
pans. Also, even our food wrappers have PFAS because it is also what they call a surfactant.
>> John: It repels oil.
It has sort of revolutionized modern society, but it has a dark side as well.
>> Narrator: In recent years, several states have established restrictions on PFAS levels
in drinking water, while others have similar limits under consideration.
Some are looking to bans on consumer products that include the PFAS family of chemicals.
>> John: “No, the water. It parted. It parted. It literally parted.”
>> Carrie: Oh, probably something. Yeah. Came back together.
>> Narrator: Now University of Michigan researchers led by Professor John
Foster are working to remove the forever label from PFAS chemicals.
>> John: In their plasma.
>> Narrator: They have developed a technology that breaks the molecules down to harmless elements.
>> Roxanne: So we have a reservoir here where we can fill with deionized water
if we're just doing testing or we can fill it with our contaminated water,
and then it will go through this pump. We can control the flow rate here
and measure it here, and then it will go through the plasma section, which is right here. So we
have our two voltage leads, and then we have the plasma that will form in this section.
>> Roxanne: And then the treated water will recirculate through.
>> John: So what's a plasma? Plasma is an ionized gas. If you’ve seen lightning strikes,
of course we’ve all seen lightning strikes. That's an ionized gas. That's a plasma. Putting plasma in
contact with the PFAS can mineralize it. And what I mean by mineralize, I mean converting
this large long molecule into its constituent pieces like carbon dioxide, water and fluorine.
>> John: And that is the dream goal, right,
to just deconstruct it so that it doesn't bother anybody anymore.
>> John: What makes the plasma technology nice is that it can be at the tip of the spear as
far as doing pump and treat, that is going into these contaminated sites, pumping the water out,
treating them with the plasma, and then re-injected it back into the groundwater.
>> Narrator: It's a technology that is necessary because PFAS
chemicals have been working their way into our environment, bodies and lives since the 1940s.
And new chemicals with uncertain long term impacts continue to arrive.
>> Craig: And you know what's there. And, you know, it's moving and it's contaminating people
and fish and animals and and ecosystems. Then you have to make that a top priority
and just do the right thing. It's a leadership issue. You got to do the right thing and leave
no man behind. It's a very well-known slogan, but it's true here to leave no person behind.
>> Craig: You got to do whatever you can to get that stuff out of there and get rid of it.