—to numerous adverse health outcomes, including cancer, reproductive and developmental harms, immune system damage, and other negative effects.
Businesses and governments would have a chance to respond, and usually do, Polsky said. International law is not legally binding, but the process would"put recipients on the defensive" and provide a platform on which the region's compelling human rights violation narrative is told"to the world at large," Polsky said. That would put tremendous pressure on the government to act, she added.
Researchers first documented pervasive PFAS pollution throughout the area in 2017. Inhabitants of the region are"in disbelief that we are still living with this," said Clean Cape Fear co-founder Emily Donovan, who resides near Wilmington. According to the group's letter to Orellana, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality"are also, through regulatory timidity and enforcement half-measures, responsible for acquiescing in past and ongoing human rights violations."