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Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are industrial products that do not degrade naturally. PFAS accumulate in the environment as well as in humans and are linked to many diseases, including cancer. These chemicals are found in the highest quantities in “fenceline communities,” which are communities near industrial manufacturing sites. Although PFAS pollution is often understood through an environmental injustice framework, epistemic injustice helps explain disparities in the information on PFAS marginalized communities receive, why their testimonies are ignored, and why industry’s biased studies prevail.
Epistemic injustices are a category of injustices focused on how we understand each other as sources of knowledge. The two main types of epistemic injustice are distributive and discriminatory. Distributive epistemic injustice deals with how knowledge is doled out, while discriminatory injustice centers on differences in how we treat people as owners of knowledge. Environmental injustice concerns the unequal distribution of environmental benefits and burdens, including proximity to polluted areas and less say in environmental decisions. Environmental injustice in the case of PFAS can explain the unequal distribution of PFAS exposure in marginalized communities. However, epistemic injustice can explain how environmental injustices persist due to unequal distribution of knowledge and credibility that impacts who can influence policy responses related to PFAS exposure.
In many PFAS pollution cases, affected communities do not know what PFAS chemicals are or the damage they cause until an outside source tells them. For instance, in Parkersburg, WV, citizens experienced increased cancer rates. Cattle were dying with strange mutations, but the citizens could only link the impact to their water. Once lawyers and scientists investigated, they correlated the illnesses to PFOA, a PFAS chemical produced by DuPont. Without background on PFAS pollution, communities experiencing exposure effects have no way to identify the cause. Similarly, in the case of PFAS in Cancer Alley, citizens have experienced increased cancer rates since the 1990s. Yet, they did not know what PFAS chemicals were until 2023 after a study was conducted.
Compounding the issue is local industries that are not keen on sharing information on PFAS chemicals. Information is largely found in private industry documents or scientific journals, as in the DuPont case where PFOA information was only in DuPont’s studies. Although PFAS are becoming more well-known, access to information largely favors people with access to these documents, which are mainly wealthy scientists and industry experts. This lack of access constitutes a distributive epistemic injustice. Information on PFAS is not distributed equally, favoring wealthier communities while disadvantaged and marginalized communities that benefit from PFAS information do not have access. These communities lack the resources to explain the cause of their problems. Here, distributive injustice provides insight into who has access to resources on PFAS chemicals, whereas environmental injustice can only address the fact that the community is disproportionately burdened by environmental harms and a lack of power.
Even when communities affected by PFAS speak out, they are often dismissed. In communities impacted by PFAS, the first signs of contamination are typically higher rates of diseases such as heart disease and forms of cancer. However, it is very difficult to link cause and effect of disease with a specific chemical in the water or air. Massive populations of people with in-depth testing are usually required to make that kind of judgement. This kind of testing is infeasible in marginalized communities experiencing PFAS pollution. All they have is their community-wide health trends. For the larger scientific community, this standard is not enough. Modern Western societies prioritize peer-reviewed scientific information from certain reputable journals as sources of knowledge. The kind of knowledge coming from smaller communities without the resources for large-scale disease studies is collective knowledge of how disease has changed their health. These communities understand how their water or air sources have changed over time and the community-wide effects. Testimonial epistemic injustice occurs when community testimonies are dismissed as hearsay or exaggerations since their knowledge does not conform to scientific standards of knowledge.
A similar form of testimonial injustice is seen through the lead crisis in Flint, Michigan. Citizens repeatedly showed up to government meetings with samples of their water and evidence of lead poisoning, but government officials consistently dismissed them as bringing in fake samples or purposefully contaminating supplies to make lead levels seem high. Without a true scientific study, individual testimonies were dismissed. This discriminatory epistemic injustice is paralleled in PFAS cases like Cancer Alley. Since only scientific evidence is viewed as true knowledge, lower-income communities experiencing the most pollution are not viewed as credible sources of knowledge. Their experiences are not viewed as knowledge, which gives them no opportunity to participate in discussions about environmental policy that directly affects them. The testimonial injustice these communities experience perpetuates their environmental injustice, since their testimonies are not viewed as credible sources of environmental knowledge.
Conversely, industries often operate in a credibility excess, meaning that industry information is afforded more trustworthiness as a source of information than necessary. While a credibility excess for the industry itself is an epistemic injustice, it is the way that industry utilizes their credibility excess that perpetuates environmental injustice. Industry often conducts scientific studies on PFAS chemicals and their harms, but that information is kept private. Industry-funded studies have often been accused of “manufacturing doubt” about PFAS harms through biased methodological choices. However, scientific presentation and publication cause these studies to receive greater credibility than community testimonies. Furthermore, industry will push back against citizen science, criticizing their results and calling any competing information biased. Because industry operates in a credibility excess as creators of PFAS chemicals, industry information often receives the most consideration in situations of competing information. The credibility excess experienced by industry combines with the credibility deficit of marginalized communities to produce situations where environmental policy favors industry agendas instead of listening to the voices of those impacted by industry practices, perpetuating both epistemic and environmental injustices. The same knowledge practices that cause a credibility deficit in marginalized groups create a credibility excess in industry, creating an epistemic injustice.
Opponents of the epistemic injustice framework applied to PFAS pollution may cite the fact that little is truly known about PFAS chemicals and their long-term effects. Of the approximately 140,000 chemicals actively utilized in society, there are only a few with fully studied toxicity profiles. Information about the toxicity of most chemicals, mixtures, and long-term exposures is nonexistent or inadequate. Because there is so little information, scientific skepticism is applied to all claims. Everybody is in the same situation, lacking knowledge of many PFAS chemicals and their effects. Proving cause and effect takes a long time. The lack of information on PFAS chemicals means all information is taken with skepticism until further research is conducted on that specific substance. However, this argument misses the value of citizen testimonials. Where there is little known information on the effect of chemicals is where testimonials are actually the most important. We live in a reactive society where toxicity information is found mainly through human experience. Learning from humans exposed to chemicals is often the best way to figure out where to start in a toxicity search on chemicals, not a place to dismiss lived experience. The testimonies that humans provide about their experiences with PFAS exposure are valuable as sources of investigational leads, even though they are not scientifically conclusive like an exhaustive research study. When industry fights against the testimonies, prevents studies needed to understand PFAS chemicals, and accuses studies showing the harms of PFAS of being biased, this barrier harms the progress towards knowledge of PFAS pollution. While this situation may not entirely fit the distributive or discriminatory framework, it appears as a deliberate epistemic injustice where the goal is to actively block anyone from obtaining knowledge on PFAS.
PFAS pollution is often viewed as mainly an issue of environmental injustice where marginalized communities are disproportionately impacted by pollution or environmental harms. Applying an epistemic injustice framework to these issues provides further perspective on how PFAS pollution involves unequal access to knowledge and a community-industry credibility deficit-excess situation, which environmental injustice alone cannot explain. The epistemic injustice present in PFAS pollution demonstrates how environmental injustice persists through our knowledge practices.
In the United States, the EPA has expressed a goal to remove PFAS chemicals from drinking water, however current policy under the Trump administration has approved three new herbicides that the OECD considers PFAS chemicals. The EPA has a stricter definition of PFAS, but preliminary studies show that trifludimoxazin, one of the herbicides, has carcinogenic potential. In May, four of the six PFAS chemicals in drinking water that were restricted under the Biden administration were unrestricted. Current PFAS policy in the United States is moving away from regulation and testing, a move that threatens to harm public health, especially in minority and low-income communities most affected by PFAS.
In light of recent restriction rollbacks, some PFAS suppliers aim to approve additional materials. One such supplier, Chemours, claims that their new PFAS chemical should not be evaluated based on generalizations about PFAS as a whole. While industry cites lack of scientific evidence as a reason to permit PFAS use, communities affected by PFAS continue to speak out about their experiences with PFAS pollution. State governments and the EPA need to consider community voices when setting local and federal regulations on PFAS to legislate for those most affected by pollution. Otherwise it can be too late to prevent PFAS and other toxic chemicals from affecting nearby communities.
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