A new investigation shows how chemicals used for decades to make carpets stain resistant have contaminated swaths of the South.<\/b>
\nBob Shaw glared at the executives from the chemical giant 3M across the table from him. He held up a carpet sample and pointed at the logo for Scotchgard on the back.
\u201cThat\u2019s not a logo,\u201d fumed Shaw, CEO of the world\u2019s largest carpet company, one attendee later recalled. \u201cThat\u2019s a target.\u201d
Weeks earlier, 3M Company announced it would reformulate its signature stain-resistance brand under pressure from the Environmental Protection Agency because of human health and environmental concerns.
Mills like Shaw\u2019s had been using Scotchgard in carpet production, releasing its chemical ingredients into the environment for decades. And on a massive scale: The shrewd CEO built Shaw Industries from a family firm in Dalton, Georgia, into a globally dominant carpet maker worth billions.
\u201cI got 15 million of these out in the marketplace,\u201d Shaw told his 3M visitors. \u201cWhat am I supposed to do about that?\u201d
A 3M executive replied that he didn\u2019t know. Shaw threw the sample at him and left the room.
The answer to Shaw\u2019s Scotchgard question from that moment in 2000 would be the same as that of the broader industry. Carpet makers kept using closely related chemical alternatives for years, even after scientific studies and regulators warned of their accumulation in human blood and possible health effects. Customers expected stain resistance; nothing worked better than the family of chemicals known as PFAS.
A lack of state and federal regulations allowed carpet companies and their suppliers to legally switch among different versions of these stain-and-soil resistant products. Meanwhile, the local public utility in Dalton responsible for ensuring safe drinking water coordinated with carpet executives in private meetings that would effectively shield their companies from oversight.
Year after year, the chemicals traveled in water discarded during manufacturing from mills across northwest Georgia, eventually reaching a river system that provides drinking water to hundreds of thousands of people in Georgia and eastern Alabama.
The pollution is so bad some researchers have identified the region as one of the nation\u2019s PFAS hot spots. Today, the consequences can be found everywhere. PFAS, often called forever chemicals because they can take decades or more to break down, are in the water and the soil.
They\u2019re in the dust on floors where children crawl, the local fish and wildlife, and as ongoing research has shown, the people.
Doctors have few answers for those like Dolly Baker who live downriver from Dalton\u2019s carpet plants. She recently learned her blood has extraordinarily high PFAS levels.
\u201cI feel like, I don\u2019t know, almost like there\u2019s a blanket over me, smothering me that I can\u2019t get out from under,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s just, you\u2019re trapped.\u201d
An investigation by newsrooms including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Associated Press and FRONTLINE (PBS) has revealed how the economic engine that sustained northwest Georgia contaminated the area and neighboring states, too. Downriver from Dalton, AL.com found cities in Alabama are struggling to remove PFAS from drinking water. And in South Carolina, The Post and Courier traced a local watchdog\u2019s discovery of forever chemicals to a river by a Shaw factory.
The full story of Georgia\u2019s power structures prioritizing a prized industry over public health is only now emerging through dozens of interviews and thousands of pages of court records from lawsuits against the industry and its chemical suppliers. Those records, including testimony from key executives, emails and other internal documents, detail how carpet companies benefited from chemistry and regulatory inaction to keep using forever chemicals.
All the while, the mills still hummed.Pointing fingers in a company town
A sign welcomes Dalton\u2019s visitors to the \u201cCarpet Capital of the World.\u201d
Fleets of semitrucks stamped with company logos rumble out of behemoth warehouses. Textiles have employed generations here, propelling the city from 19th-century cotton mills into a manufacturing hub \u2014 and the region into a supplier of carpet to the globe.
The durability that makes PFAS so good at protecting carpets from spilled tomato sauce and muddy boots lets them survive in the environment. It also makes them dangerous for humans. Because they bind to a protein in human blood and absorb into some organs, PFAS linger.
The blood of nearly all Americans has some amount of the chemicals, which have been used in a variety of consumer products: nonstick cookware, waterproof sunscreen, dental floss, microwave popcorn bags.
Few industries used them as much as carpet did in northwest Georgia. While huge amounts were needed for stain resistance on an industrial scale, minuscule amounts \u2014 the equivalent of less than a drop in an Olympic-sized swimming pool \u2014 can make drinking water a health risk. For certain PFAS, U.S. regulators now say no level is safe to drink.
More than a year before the Scotchgard announcement in 2000, 3M informed Shaw Industries and its biggest competitor, Mohawk Industries Inc., that it was finding Scotchgard\u2019s chemical in human blood and that it stayed in the environment, 3M records show.
Carpet executives have long insisted they are not to blame. They point out that 3M and fellow chemical manufacturer DuPont assured them their products were safe, for decades hiding internal studies that were finding harm to the environment, animals and people.
Shaw and Mohawk both said they relied on and complied with regulators and stopped using PFAS in U.S. carpet production in 2019.
In an interview, a Shaw executive said the company acted in good faith as it worked hard to exit PFAS as quickly as suitable substitutes could be found.
\u201cHindsight is 20\/20,\u201d said Kellie Ballew, Shaw\u2019s vice president of environmental affairs. \u201cI don\u2019t think that we can call into question our intentions. I think Shaw had every good intention along the way.\u201d
Shaw in a follow-up statement said it complied with its wastewater permits and took guidance from chemical companies, some of which \u201cinstructed Shaw to put spills of product into the public sewer system.\u201d
Mohawk declined an interview request, instead referring to a 2024 filing in its lawsuit against chemical companies: \u201cFor decades, DuPont and 3M sold their carpet treatment products to Mohawk without disclosing the actual or potential presence of PFAS in their products.\u201d
Later, in response to detailed questions, Mohawk attorney Jason Rottner wrote that, \u201cAny PFAS contamination issues in northwest Georgia are a problem of the chemical manufacturers\u2019 making.\u201d
Now, uncertainty and feelings of betrayal are boiling across the region. Communities fear their drinking water is unsafe and local governments say the problem is too vast for them to fix alone.
In Washington, Republicans and Democrats alike have been slow to act. Under President Joe Biden, the Environmental Protection Agency in 2024 established the first PFAS drinking water protections. The Trump administration has announced plans to roll back some and delay enforcement of others.
The agency declined interview requests but in a statement said it is committed to combating PFAS contamination to protect human health and the environment, without causing undue burden to industry.
Georgia\u2019s regulatory system has done little to scrutinize PFAS and depends mostly on industry to self-report chemical spills, imposing modest penalties when companies do. The Georgia Environmental Protection Division, which declined an interview request, said it \u201crelies on the expertise of\u201d the EPA.
Meanwhile, carpet makers still can\u2019t seem to shake PFAS. Just last year, EPA concluded \u201cPFAS have been and continue to be used\u201d by the industry, based on wastewater testing. The agency did not name companies and said it\u2019s unclear whether the chemicals were from current or prior use.
The mess in northwest Georgia has led to a series of lawsuits over the past decade with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake.
Buried in this avalanche of litigation, finger-pointing and politics are the people who live here. They have been forced to navigate a public health and economic crisis of a magnitude still not fully understood.
\u201cThey ought to have to clean this land up,\u201d Faye Jackson said, referring to carpet companies. A former industry worker, she raised her family in a house next to a polluted river and has elevated PFAS levels in her blood. \u201cThey ought to have to pay for it.\u201dThe creek ran blood red
Lisa Martin watched the creek beside the Mohawk Industries mill run red with carpet dye.
It was one of her first days as a planning manager at Mohawk in 2005, and she tried to hide her unease as the dye runoff turned the water into what looked like blood.
The red she saw in Drowning Bear Creek had come from the nearby dyehouse, where carpets got their colors. There, machines whirred as workers sloshed around in rubber boots in ankle-deep dyewater, reminding Martin of fishermen. The acrid odor made her eyes tear up.
A recent California transplant at the time, Martin recalled her initial culture shock.
\u201cAt a gut level, you know it\u2019s not right. And unfortunately, when you try to raise the flag and everybody\u2019s like, \u2018Well, that\u2019s just the way it is,\u2019\u201d Martin said in an interview.
\u201cI became complacent.\u201d
Like Shaw, Mohawk is based in northwest Georgia and is among the largest carpet companies in the world. The industry supported the entire community, employing someone in what seems like every family. Martin realized carpet was in the region\u2019s DNA.
Martin said the chemical runoff was routine during her 20 years at Mohawk, which ended with her 2024 retirement. Sometimes, when the company dyed carpets blue, the water in the creek would be blue, too. One spill that turned the creek purple for a mile downstream killed thousands of fish, records show.
Mohawk\u2019s attorney called such spills \u201crare instances\u201d that were promptly reported and said there is no evidence any spills directly discharged PFAS.
In the dyehouse, what neither Martin nor the workers could detect were the colorless, odorless compounds also included in the wastewater: forever chemicals. Machines bathed the carpets in these soil-and-stain blockers, and what didn\u2019t stick washed away.
For decades, Mohawk\u2019s and Shaw\u2019s mills sent PFAS-polluted wastewater through sewer pipes to the local Dalton Utilities plants for treatment that did not remove the chemicals. Much of the tainted water ended up in the Conasauga River.
Both Shaw and Mohawk said they operated in accordance with permits issued by Dalton Utilities. The utility said it takes direction from federal and state regulators, who have not prohibited PFAS in industrial wastewater.
The Conasauga watershed is filled with lush green pastures, creeks and tributaries that help fuel the water-hungry industry. The river\u2019s waters emerge out of Georgia\u2019s Blue Ridge Mountains and eventually flow southwest, past Dalton, Calhoun and Rome, and then into Alabama.
Residents downriver from the mills didn\u2019t know about the chemicals running through their towns. But the industry\u2019s top leaders did.
PFAS is a catchall term for a group of thousands of related synthetic compounds also known as fluorochemicals. They have been fundamental to the carpet business since the 1970s, as market demand for stain resistance transformed the industry, and carpet makers began buying millions of pounds. In the mid-1980s, the introduction of DuPont\u2019s Stainmaster, accompanied by a successful marketing blitz, further established these products as essential.
Neither DuPont nor its related chemical companies that supplied PFAS provided comment for this story.
The carpet industry used so much PFAS that Dalton\u2019s mills became the largest combined emitters of the chemicals among 3M\u2019s U.S. customers, according to a 1999 internal 3M study that looked at 38 industrial locations.
Before 3M had pulled Scotchgard, leading to Bob Shaw\u2019s showdown in the spring of 2000, both Shaw Industries and Mohawk had been privy to inside information that PFAS were accumulating in human blood. Bob Shaw did not respond to requests for comment.
In late 1998 and early 1999, 3M held a series of meetings with carpet executives to disclose its blood-study research, according to 3M\u2019s internal meeting notes from court records.
\u201cWhen we started finding the chemical in everybody\u2019s blood, one of the biggest worries was Dalton, because we knew how sloppy they were,\u201d Rich Purdy, a 3M toxicologist who alerted the EPA to his company\u2019s hiding of PFAS\u2019 dangers, said in an interview.
Notes by a 3M employee from a January 1999 meeting said Mohawk executives did not express grave concerns about the revelations. \u201cNo real sense of Mohawk problem\/responsibility,\u201d 3M noted. \u201cIf it\u2019s good enough for 3M, it\u2019s good enough for Mohawk.\u201d Mohawk\u2019s attorney said of the meetings over two decades ago that 3M assured the company its chemicals were safe.
At another meeting that January, Shaw executives were \u201cconcerned but quiet,\u201d with one executive expressing he \u201cfelt plaintiffs\u2019 attorneys would be involved immediately,\u201d according to 3M\u2019s notes. Shaw Industries maintains it learned of the concerns about Scotchgard at the same time everyone else did.
In follow-up letters to top executives with Shaw and Mohawk later that month, 3M noted the company\u2019s efforts were guided by the idea that reducing exposure \u201cto a persistent chemical is the prudent and responsible thing to do\u201d while emphasizing current evidence did not show human health effects.
\u201cWe trust that you appreciate the delicate nature of this information and its potential for misuse,\u201d the letters said. \u201cWe ask that you treat it accordingly.\u201d
3M then asked for access to Shaw and Mohawk mills to see if they were handling the chemicals safely, records show. Those internal reports, produced in 1999, would fault how carpet companies handled PFAS products, exposing workers and the environment, according to court records.
The next year, 3M and EPA announced concerns about Scotchgard.
The day of the announcement, the director of EPA\u2019s Chemical Control Division sent an email to his colleagues and counterparts in other countries calling the key ingredient in Scotchgard an \u201cunacceptable technology\u201d and a \u201ctoxic chemical.\u201d The email said the compound should be eliminated \u201cto protect human health and the environment from potentially severe long-term consequences.\u201d
3M declined an interview request. In a statement, the company said it has stopped all PFAS manufacturing and has invested $1 billion in water treatment at its facilities. \u201c3M has taken, and will continue to take, actions to address PFAS manufactured prior to the phase out,\u201d the company said.
In 2000, the year 3M announced it was pulling Scotchgard, Mohawk logged more than $3.4 billion in net sales. Shaw Industries reported $4.2 billion.
EPA would not issue its first provisional health advisories for nearly another decade. Absent federal guidance, the carpet industry could legally continue to use these products.
Despite accumulating health and environmental concerns, federal law at the time did not let EPA ban any chemical without \u201cenormous evidence\u201d of harm, said Betsy Southerland, a former director of the agency\u2019s water protection division who spent over three decades there.
\u201cSo we were really hamstrung at the time,\u201d said Southerland, who has become a critic of EPA.
At Mohawk, Lisa Martin was not an executive making decisions about PFAS, she said, but her time at the company weighs on her still.
\u201cUnfortunately, I later learned that there are more people that I worked with that were aware of it,\u201d she said. \u201cThey were aware of it and didn\u2019t do the things they should have done.\u201d
Years into her tenure, the athletic and inquisitive Martin began getting sick and feeling lethargic. Her doctor said she\u2019d grown nodules on her thyroid, a gland that is a key part of the immune system and which studies have shown forever chemicals can harm.
She had no family history of thyroid issues. It was a mystery to her.Cozy relationship
Inside the Dalton headquarters of the Carpet and Rug Institute, industry executives and the local water utility conferred in 2004 about EPA\u2019s growing scrutiny.
For several months, EPA representatives had negotiated with Dalton Utilities and the carpet industry through the institute, its influential trade group, over gaining access to their facilities to test the water. Mohawk and Shaw were using DuPont\u2019s Stainmaster and other products, which also contained forever chemicals akin to Scotchgard\u2019s older formulation.
Still, federal regulators worried these compounds were exhibiting similar harmful properties. Dalton Utilities and the carpet industry were uneasy about welcoming in government officials. Companies could not be guaranteed confidentiality and feared test results could lead to \u201cinaccurate public perceptions and inappropriate media coverage,\u201d records show.
The public utility and the carpet industry chose to resist.
Their close ties went back years. Carpet executives have long sat on Dalton Utilities\u2019 board, appointed by the city\u2019s mayor and city council. Fueled by the growth of the carpet industry, Dalton Utilities\u2019 fortunes rose with the industry\u2019s success.
At the carpet institute\u2019s 2004 annual meeting, officials with carpet and chemical companies convened to discuss the EPA\u2019s increasingly aggressive posture. Shaw\u2019s director of technical services, Carey Mitchell, addressed his colleagues. He was blunt. No company would allow testing.
\u201cDalton Utilities has said not no, but hell no,\u201d Mitchell said, according to notes made by a 3M attendee. Mitchell did not respond to requests for comment.
In response to questions for this story, Dalton Utilities declined an interview request but said it and the carpet industry \u201chave always operated independently of one another\u201d and that the EPA testing request was informal.
The carpet institute declined an interview request, sending a written statement instead.
\u201cThe CRI\u2019s conduct was and continues to be appropriate, lawful, and focused on our customers, communities, and the millions of people who rely on our products every day,\u201d institute President Russ DeLozier said, adding: \u201cToday\u2019s carpet products reflect decades of progress, and The CRI members remain committed to moving forward responsibly.\u201d
The EPA stiff-arm was the latest run-in between Dalton Utilities and federal regulators.
A public water utility\u2019s obligation, above all else, is to ensure clean drinking water. Dalton\u2019s utility had previously gone to criminal lengths to deceive regulators.
In the early 1990s, Dalton Utilities\u2019 staff traced a drop in oxygen levels in its wastewater treatment to stain-resistant chemicals from carpet mills, the utility\u2019s top engineer at the time, Richard Belanger, said in an interview. While the utility didn\u2019t know about PFAS then, something in these chemicals was impacting its ability to process the wastewater, he said. Rather than clamping down on industry, according to Belanger, his bosses ordered him to manipulate pollution figures the utility reported to government regulators.
\u201cI was told, OK, make this work,\u201d Belanger, now retired, said.
In June 1995, EPA investigators interviewed Belanger. He told them Dalton Utilities\u2019 program to clean industrial pollutants was \u201ca sham.\u201d The treatment was so poor, the smell of carpet chemicals carried throughout the utility\u2019s plant, and local creeks were often \u201cpurple and foamy,\u201d according to investigators\u2019 notes from the interview.
Two months later, agents with the FBI and EPA raided Dalton Utilities\u2019 offices.
Federal prosecutors charged the utility with violating the Clean Water Act by falsifying wastewater reports, which concealed the full extent of the carpet industry\u2019s pollution. The case did not address PFAS specifically, which was not yet a pollutant of concern for EPA. Dalton Utilities pleaded guilty in 1999 and was fined $1 million. Its CEO was removed.
The utility was also put under federal monitoring in 2001 to ensure it was making key changes to protect the water supply and agreed to pay a $6 million penalty.
The era of legal troubles with the federal government was pivotal, the utility said, adding it \u201chas remained committed to avoiding the issues that led to those proceedings\u201d and is transparent with regulators.
Around the same time, emerging data showed the fluorochemicals used in carpets caused cancer in rats.
The carpet institute\u2019s then-president, Werner Braun, forwarded the rat study to several carpet and chemical executives in a 2002 email, calling the findings a \u201ctroubling issue,\u201d records show. Braun, now in his 90s, was unable to comment for this story due to his health, his wife said.
In preparing to respond to Braun, a 2002 email shows DuPont officials planned to explain that Stainmaster didn\u2019t contain the type of PFAS that was then EPA\u2019s focus. The next year, DuPont would tell carpet companies the opposite, acknowledging the chemical was indeed in Stainmaster. DuPont maintained in later legal proceedings it wasn\u2019t aware until 2003 that Stainmaster contained the chemical.
Despite its success in fending off EPA testing, the industry faced a mounting challenge, and the carpet institute focused on shoring up its influence and image.
At a meeting in the spring of 2004 attended by top executives, the carpet institute decided to solicit donations from company employees for its political action committee \u201cin an effort to submit friendships, gain access, and say thank you to legislators,\u201d according to meeting notes.
Later that year, PFAS made news in a high-profile legal case involving DuPont. The class-action lawsuit brought by residents in West Virginia claimed their water had been contaminated by a nearby chemical plant that used PFAS. Although DuPont said the settlement did not imply legal liability, it agreed to pay $70 million and to establish a health monitoring panel. Some two decades later, Braun was shown the rat study email during a legal deposition.
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t necessarily call it a red flag but a flag, you know, that you might want to be aware of,\u201d he said.
Only years later did people downstream begin to learn the toll.The river brought the poison
When Marie Jackson\u2019s goats started dying about a year ago, nobody could explain why. Jackson saw it as just another sign something was wrong with her land.
Marie and her mother, Faye Jackson, have lived on their 12 acres near Calhoun for decades. Today they keep mostly to themselves, inseparable, equal parts bickering and loving.
Most days, Marie makes the short drive down a gravel road, Jackson Drive, to her mother\u2019s house to check on her. She tends to Faye\u2019s chickens, mows her grass and drives her to doctor\u2019s appointments. Behind their homes is a rolling stretch of grassy pasture where their cattle graze \u2014 and the goats did as well, she said, until they all died.
Past a curtain of trees on the far end of the pasture lies the Conasauga.
Marie, 50, spent her childhood playing and swimming in the muddy river with rocks on the banks that made a good fishing spot. The Jacksons now know the water that sustains their homestead, about 15 miles downstream from Dalton, is contaminated.
Tests of the river by the AJC found levels of what was once a key ingredient in Scotchgard at more than 30 times the proposed EPA limits for drinking water. Tests of Faye\u2019s drinking water well by the AJC and the city of Calhoun found PFAS just under these federal health limits.
Calhoun city officials used that health standard to guide a program designed to address contaminated wells. A 2024 legal settlement between the city and the Southern Environmental Law Center included a condition to test local water. As of August, 30% of private wells tested had levels above the health limit.
Because Faye\u2019s test was just below the cutoff, she does not qualify to receive a filtration system.
Uncertainty about the chemicals continues to permeate every aspect of the Jacksons\u2019 lives. They fear PFAS are behind their declining health. They fear their drinking water. They fear for the health of the cattle and chickens they raise; and for the health of those who may eat them.
\u201cI know they\u2019ve got it in their systems,\u201d Faye said.
Even Marie\u2019s memories are filled with second-guessing. Idyllic scenes of her childhood are now overshadowed by recollections of foam on the river and dead fish. She blames the mills.
The Jacksons, like generations of northwest Georgians, relied on the carpet industry. Both of Marie\u2019s parents worked in the mills: Faye with yarn machines and her dad in the dyehouse. Marie would end up working in carpet, too.
Everyone suspected the work was dangerous. Faye said she\u2019d get headaches from the strong chemical smells. The hours were long. But with the risk came a steady wage.
\u201cAround here, you have to understand the people, that\u2019s all we know, right? That\u2019s all we\u2019ve ever been around,\u201d Marie said, fidgeting with her plastic water bottle. \u201cIt\u2019s like you don\u2019t think. It\u2019s routine. You go in, you know your job, you do your job, you go home.\u201d
Faye\u2019s failing health eventually forced her to stop working. Today she drinks water she buys from the store.
In 2022, Faye\u2019s husband, Robert, died after struggling with several illnesses. She now wonders whether decades of PFAS exposure was to blame. And Marie has nodules growing on her thyroid.
The Jacksons long suspected they had forever chemicals in their blood. With their consent, the AJC commissioned testing last fall and the mother and daughter finally learned the truth. Their PFAS levels were above the safety threshold outlined by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
\u201cThey\u2019ve poisoned us,\u201d Faye said.Among the highest ever recorded
In 2006, the carpet industry and Dalton Utilities faced a new dilemma.
University of Georgia researchers were testing the Conasauga for PFAS, and early results seen by carpet companies showed high levels. Shaw Industries began conducting its own tests, which confirmed UGA\u2019s results: PFAS coursed through the river.
As Georgia\u2019s scientists worked on their PFAS study, the majority of outside experts on an EPA advisory panel determined the PFAS associated with DuPont\u2019s Stainmaster was \u201c likely to be carcinogenic.\u201d In 2005, the year prior, EPA and DuPont settled a claim that the chemical company failed to report for decades what it knew about the risks. At $10.25 million, it was then the largest penalty ever obtained under a federal environmental law. DuPont did not admit liability.
The university\u2019s study, eventually published in 2008, made headlines. The UGA researchers reported PFAS levels in the Conasauga were \u201camong the highest ever recorded in surface water\u201d like a river or a lake. Not just in the United States, but worldwide.
Journalists from a local newspaper also began asking questions about the study and the earlier decision by the utility and the industry to deny regulators access for testing.
A Chattanooga Times Free Press reporter was \u201chot on the trail\u201d of a story, wrote Denise Wood, at the time a Mohawk environmental executive and Dalton City Council member, in a February 2008 email to Dalton Utilities CEO Don Cope.
One of the university researchers told the paper that UGA\u2019s test results were \u201cstaggeringly high.\u201d Cope did not respond to requests by the AJC and AP for an interview, and Wood declined to comment.
At the carpet institute, officials rushed to create a crisis management team, internal records and emails show. The industry downplayed the UGA study and broader concerns about PFAS.
\u201cIn our society today, it is absolutely known that you report the presence of some chemical and everybody gets all up and arms,\u201d the institute\u2019s head, Braun, told reporters.
UGA\u2019s study had an impact. The EPA returned in 2009. Unlike before, the agency now had provisional health advisory limits for certain PFAS compounds, offering regulators some enforcement authority.
This new scrutiny would uncover a major source of pollution along the Conasauga.
On the edge of Dalton, the Loopers Bend \u201cland application system\u201d occupies more than 9,600 acres on the river\u2019s banks. The public utility had long hosted hunts for wildlife at the forested site, which is crisscrossed by a network of 19,000 sprinklers that sprayed PFAS-laden wastewater for decades.
For years, the site\u2019s design allowed runoff to leak into the river, according to EPA\u2019s former water programs enforcement chief. The wastewater was so poorly filtered the ground felt like walking on \u201cshag carpet\u201d due to all the fibers, the EPA official, Scott Gordon, said in an interview. He noted gullies cut by wastewater led directly to creeks and the river.
Because Dalton Utilities distributed the treated wastewater over land instead of discharging it into the river directly, it didn\u2019t need a federal Clean Water Act permit. After EPA inspected and saw the conditions, the agency ordered the local utility to apply for one. The state, however, had approval power in Georgia and rejected the application, saying the permit wasn\u2019t necessary.
Today, Loopers Bend remains a significant source of PFAS in the Conasauga.
The EPA worked with Dalton Utilities to upgrade the site starting in 1999, but it would be years before the agency would require testing of the Conasauga\u2019s water.
In 2009, testing reports submitted by Dalton Utilities to EPA confirmed what the UGA research had already shown: Forever chemicals had infiltrated the region. In addition to river and well water, deer and turkey taken from Loopers Bend had PFAS in their muscles and organs.
Dalton Utilities said that levels of PFAS in its wastewater and the compost it provided to enrich soil for farmers and homeowners were not a health risk. PFAS were everywhere and a \u201csocietal problem,\u201d and not one Dalton Utilities could solve, the utility\u2019s lawyer wrote the EPA in 2010.
Nonetheless, the utility agreed to restrict its compost distribution and test wastewater from a quarter of its industrial customers annually.
As later testing showed, the chemicals would persist for years.A health reckoning
Why is the doctor calling? Dolly Baker wondered as she rinsed the hair of a client at her salon \u201cDolled Up\u201d in Calhoun. Dr. Dana Barr\u2019s number had popped up on her cellphone.
Baker had taken part in a 2025 Emory University study of northwest Georgia, where she was one of 177 people who had their blood tested. Now one of the study\u2019s lead scientists was on the phone.
Barr, an analytical chemist with epidemiological experience, had been mailing study participants about the results. When she saw Baker\u2019s test data, she dialed her phone.
Baker, a lifelong Calhoun resident now in her 40s, had PFAS levels hundreds of times above the U.S. average.
\u201cI don\u2019t want to alarm you, but we\u2019re just trying to figure out what can be causing this,\u201d Barr told her, Baker later recalled. \u201cI suggest you talk to your doctor and let them know that there are certain cancers that can come into play later.\u201d
Baker was speechless.
She walked back to her wash station and slowly started rinsing her client\u2019s hair again, quietly processing what this all meant. How did she have such high levels? Her mind raced.
What was she supposed to do about the forever chemicals in her body?
\u201cUnfortunately, there is no easy answer,\u201d Baker said Barr told her.
Emory tested Baker\u2019s water and hair products, but the tests came back low. Almost a year after learning her blood test results, Baker is no closer to knowing why her levels are so high.
She said she\u2019s frustrated by the lack of action and leadership, especially after years of testing and community meetings to discuss the problem.
\u201cYou know, people go in other countries to help them get clean water,\u201d Baker said, \u201cand do we have clean water?\u201d
Barr, who spent years at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studying environmental toxicants, realized there was too little data to grasp the problem in northwest Georgia. She helped launch Emory\u2019s study to understand the extent of contamination in human blood.
Three out of four residents tested by Emory had PFAS levels that warrant medical screening, according to clinical guidelines from the National Academy of Sciences.
\u201cPeople in Rome and in Calhoun tended to have higher levels of PFAS than most of the people in the U.S. population,\u201d Barr said.
Mohawk and Shaw say they stopped using older fluorochemicals around 2008. These were known by chemists as \u201clong-chain\u201d or C8 because each had eight or more carbon atoms on their molecular chains. Scotchgard, Stainmaster and Daikin\u2019s Unidyne have since been reformulated without these C8 compounds.
Chemical manufacturers made new \u201cshort-chain\u201d or C6 versions with six carbon atoms. Daikin U.S. Corp. said in a statement it \u201cis committed, as it always has been, to regulatory compliance, evolving PFAS science, and global standards.\u201d
Despite the chemical variations, short-chain PFAS had the stain-busting and water-repellant traits of the older chemicals. Scientists in the 2010s also expressed concerns that the newer formulations might carry similar environmental and health risks. Some began calling them \u201cregrettable substitutes.\u201d
After saying it got out of PFAS completely in 2019, Shaw has struggled to remove the chemicals from its facilities. The company said the compounds have so many applications they appear elsewhere in the machines and processes it takes to produce carpet.
\u201cYou can\u2019t just say you stopped using them and you\u2019re done,\u201d said Ballew, Shaw\u2019s vice president for environmental affairs.
She said the company installed filters at some mills and sleuthed out PFAS sources from its supply chain to remove them. Shaw developed a testing technology and shared it with suppliers so they could do the same, offering it as an example of strong corporate citizenry from a company with roots in the region.
\u201cShaw didn\u2019t quit looking, and that\u2019s what I\u2019m really proud of,\u201d Ballew said. \u201cThat\u2019s the story. It\u2019s not how long it took us to get here.\u201dWorries, but few answers
Down the road from Baker\u2019s hair salon, Dr. Katherine Naymick operates a private medical practice. She\u2019s practiced in Calhoun since moving there in 1996.
Naymick\u2019s office sits in a small strip mall off Calhoun\u2019s main road \u2014 a tidy, white-walled office decorated with retro medical equipment. She\u2019s been mystified that many of her young patients\u2019 thyroid glands had just \u201cquit on them.\u201d Similarly, she said her patients also had higher rates of endocrine cancers than the national average.
Doctors have few tools to address patient concerns, as the understanding of these chemicals\u2019 links to health effects is still evolving. One resource is guidance the National Academy published in 2022 for physicians, which cites the \u201calarming\u201d pervasiveness of PFAS contamination.
That guidance recommended doctors offer blood testing to patients who live in high exposure areas. The panel also cautioned the results could raise questions about links to possible health effects that cannot be easily answered.
People like Dolly Baker are at higher risk of kidney or other cancers, and thyroid problems, research shows.
When Naymick started in Calhoun, chemical manufacturers knew about the potential dangers of forever chemicals, but the public did not. The doctor said she did her best to treat her patients while feeling powerless to understand why they were so sick.
Then studies began to emerge in the 2000s showing high levels of forever chemicals in the Conasauga. In the 2010s, the first large health studies tied PFAS to issues with childhood development and the immune system.
Naymick enrolled in environmental medicine training, which focuses on patients\u2019 exposure to contaminants, among other factors. Through study, Naymick gained tools to investigate the area\u2019s heavy industrial footprint she long suspected. She started looking for clues, including blood tests, that might help explain her patients\u2019 problems. Soon she zeroed in on forever chemicals.
In 2025, Dr. Barr\u2019s group at Emory used Dr. Naymick\u2019s clinic to draw blood. Naymick now thinks all her patients should get tested because of their high chance of exposure. But insurers rarely cover PFAS tests, and many of her clients can\u2019t afford the hundreds of dollars they cost.
As they wait, the full extent of the human toll in northwest Georgia remains unknown.The pollution continues
This past June, more than a hundred people crammed into a barn in Chatsworth, about 10 miles east of Dalton.
Law firms operating under the name PFAS Georgia had been testing properties across northwest Georgia.
Nick Jackson, one of the attorneys, stood up to address the crowd, which was eager to hear about the contamination in their midst.
\u201cIf you feel compelled to lift up your test results so that your neighbors could see, please feel free to do so at this time,\u201d he said. At once, people raised signs displaying the levels found on their properties, many substantially above EPA health guidelines.
PFAS Georgia has filed numerous lawsuits against chemical manufacturers and carpet makers since last June. Today the group represents dozens of residents and farmers in northwest Georgia who allege their properties are contaminated with PFAS from the carpet industry. The wave of litigation is the latest development in a legal saga that began a decade ago.
In 2016, the eastern Alabama town of Gadsden filed the first of a series of municipal drinking water lawsuits against the carpet industry, accusing the mills upriver of contaminating its drinking water more than 100 miles away.
Three years later, Rome filed its own lawsuit against the carpet industry, chemical companies and Dalton Utilities. The city\u2019s water, drawn downriver from Dalton, had tested at over one-and-a-half times the EPA\u2019s health advisories at the time. Rome estimated a new water treatment plant would cost $100 million, to be paid for by a series of steep rate increases.
After several years of bitter litigation, Rome reached a series of settlements with carpet and chemical companies and the utility for roughly $280 million. None admitted liability.
For many, the lack of state and federal PFAS regulations means the courts are their only chance for accountability.
Georgia environmental officials have done little to regulate forever chemicals beyond drafting drinking water limits on two types of PFAS, deferring to their federal counterparts. The Trump administration\u2019s EPA has said it intends to remove drinking water limits finalized by the Biden administration for some forever chemicals and is delaying limits on others until 2031.
EPA said it is working on better PFAS detection methods. \u201cEPA is actively working to support water systems who are working to reduce PFAS in drinking water,\u201d an agency spokesperson said in a statement.
In a statement, Georgia EPD pointed to testing it has done throughout the state. If PFAS is found above health advisory levels, the agency said it works to ensure safe drinking water is available.
Last year, several northwest Georgia legislators proposed a state bill that would have shielded carpet companies from PFAS lawsuits. The lead sponsor, state Rep. Kasey Carpenter, R-Dalton, said legal action should target chemical makers, not carpet companies. The bill failed.
Carpenter said he was not aware of the evidence showing the carpet industry knew of PFAS\u2019 potential health risks and will consider it when he reintroduces the bill this year. He said, ultimately, he wants EPA to fix the contamination.
\u201cThere needs to be some kind of federal deal where money\u2019s dumped in for cleanup. That, to me, is a solution,\u201d Carpenter said.
The pollution continues. Dalton Utilities, in its own recent lawsuit against carpet and chemical companies, said PFAS applied long ago at the sprawling Loopers Bend land application system will continue to spread for the \u201cforeseeable future.\u201d The suit estimated PFAS contamination cleanup would likely exceed hundreds of millions of dollars.
\u201cThe contamination that exists today is the result of the carpet industry\u2019s use and application of PFAS and PFAS-containing products, purchased from chemical suppliers,\u201d the utility said.
Sludge spread by local municipalities to fertilize farms and yards over decades has pushed the crisis past the banks of the river and has heightened fears among some people over contamination in the local food supply.
PFAS Georgia said it has collected more than 2,600 samples of dust, soil and water from hundreds of properties. The group said it has detected PFAS at levels exceeding EPA limits in over half of its water samples. No such limits exist for dust or soil, but the sampling has found the compounds at high levels in both, particularly in the dust inside people\u2019s homes.
\u201cThere\u2019s nothing like northwest Georgia,\u201d the group\u2019s testing expert, Bob Bowcock, said. \u201cI don\u2019t know how we\u2019re going to begin to tackle it.\u201d
Last year, Lisa Martin, the retired Mohawk manager, received her results from the Emory study. Her blood tested higher than most Americans for a type of PFAS used by the carpet industry.
After she moved to Calhoun decades ago to work in carpet, Martin\u2019s health declined. She has struggled with a suppressed immune system and long COVID. There were the nodules on her thyroid. She began to suspect PFAS.
\u201cWhat are the odds with my health that I\u2019m going to live to old age?\u201d said Martin, 64.
Martin said she struggles with guilt from years of silence when she worked at Mohawk. Like many of her neighbors, she also wrestles with a sense of betrayal.
\u201cHow many people have lost their health,\u201d she asked, \u201cbecause somebody made a decision not to do anything?\u201d
Contributing reporting were Tony Bartelme of The Post and Courier; Margaret Kates of AL.com; Michael Phillis and Helen Wieffering of AP; and Dana Miller Ervin, Kate McCormick and Jala Everett of FRONTLINE. The MuckRock Sunlight Research Desk \u2019s Audrey Nielsen, Michael Nolan and Seraphina Harris-Feron provided research.
Watch the documentary \u201cContaminated: The Carpet Industry\u2019s Toxic Legacy\u201d at pbs.org\/frontline and in the PBS App, on FRONTLINE\u2019s YouTube channel or on the PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel.<\/p>\n