Kōji Yakusho 役所 広司 as Hirayama

Excerpt from this story from The Revelator:

The water flowing from taps in Wilmington, North Carolina, looked clean, tasted normal, and gave no indication that it carried an invisible threat. For decades the Cape Fear River had provided drinking water to hundreds of thousands of residents in the region. But in 2017 tests revealed what many had feared: high levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), chemicals linked to cancer, immune dysfunction, and reproductive issues, coursing through their water supply.

The contamination had been traced to Chemours, a spinoff of DuPont, which had been releasing PFAS chemicals from its Fayetteville Works plant for years.

The discovery sent shockwaves through the community, triggering lawsuits, emergency water-treatment plans, and a reckoning over how corporations and government regulators had failed to protect public health. But even as residents fought to hold polluters accountable, the company responsible for much of the contamination was tightening its grip on the agencies meant to regulate it.

A former DuPont and American Chemistry Council lobbyist, Nancy Beck, now holds a key position at the Environmental Protection Agency, shaping chemical safety policies that will determine how — or if — PFAS pollution is addressed. In the first days of the second Trump administration, the agency withdrew a proposed rule that would have imposed limits on PFAS discharges, a move that watchdog groups say amounts to giving polluters free rein to continue contaminating water supplies.

The crisis in Cape Fear and Bentham reveals the creeping, silent danger of PFAS, which has infiltrated groundwater, rivers, and drinking-water supplies across the world.

And yet, as the Trump administration accelerates its environmental rollbacks, the ability to regulate and mitigate this growing threat in the United States is being systematically dismantled.

HOUSE OF ENID - PEARL COLLECTION 2022

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