Tracy Lehr runs the water at her home at the Criswell Court mobile home park in Joliet on June 1, 2022. Testing during 2021 found the park's well is contaminated with toxic PFAS chemicals at levels up to 1,800 times higher than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's latest health advisory. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)

Something as simple as drinking tap water is exposing millions of Illinoisans to toxic chemicals that build up in human blood, cause cancer and other diseases and take years to leave the body.

Scientists call the chemicals per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS. They are commonly known as forever chemicals because they don’t break down in the environment.

Despite plenty of warning signs, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency didn’t begin testing the state’s water utilities for PFAS until August 2020. Then state and local officials downplayed the results, burying notices filled with technical jargon on government websites.

Until now the scope of PFAS problems in Illinois remained unknown. More than 8 million people in the state — 6 out of every 10 Illinoisans — get their drinking water from a utility where at least one forever chemical has been detected, according to a Chicago Tribune investigation that included a computerized analysis of test results and a review of court documents, government records and scientific studies.

Tracy Lehr, who has lived at the Criswell Court mobile home park in Joliet for 21 years, said she drinks and cooks with bottled water because the park's well is unreliable. Lehr said she wasn't informed that 2021 testing of the well water found toxic PFAS chemicals at levels up to 1,800 times higher than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's latest health advisory. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)

“It’s disgusting and overwhelming at the same time,” said Ellen Meeks Rendulich, co-director of a grassroots environmental group in Will County, where the state found PFAS in a dozen communities, including the Criswell Court mobile home park in Joliet.

Tracy Lehr remembered that state officials came twice last year to test a well on the property. Lehr, who has lived in Criswell Court for 21 years, said she and her neighbors were never warned their water is contaminated with PFAS at levels up to 1,800 times higher than the latest federal health advisory.

“I’ve never trusted the water here,” Lehr said as she pointed to shrink-wrapped packs of bottled water stacked throughout her trailer.

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Sludge from the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District is dumped and spread on farms field in Will County on June 15, 2022. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)

Farmers on the edges of suburbia are encouraged to spread sludge on their fields by local officials, farm bureaus, university extension agents — even the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

But despite assurances the practice is safe and legal, sewage sludge is contaminating thousands of acres of northeast Illinois farmland with toxic forever chemicals, a Chicago Tribune investigation has found.

During the past six years alone, federal records show, more than 615,000 tons of sludge from the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago has been plowed into 29,000 acres near the nation’s third largest city.

Only the Greater Los Angeles area distributed more sludge to farmers during the period.

Meanwhile, researchers have concluded there is ample evidence that PFAS end up in crops and livestock.

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Farmer Ray Dettmering checks on a sprayer outside his home in Peotone on July 22, 2022. Dettmering said he didn’t know about toxic forever chemicals prior to a conversation with the Tribune. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

During the past six years, federal records show, more than 615,000 tons of sludge from the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago has been plowed into 29,000 acres near the nation’s third largest city. (All of that land combined is roughly the size of west suburban Aurora.)

Researchers and public health advocates are increasingly concerned because some PFAS build up in human blood, take years to leave the body and don’t break down in the environment. Others transform over time into more hazardous compounds, increasing the risk that grains, beans, hay and produce grown in sludge-amended soil could be tainted for years to come.

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Water is pumped from the Harrison-Dever water intake crib in Lake Michigan through a tunnel that runs underneath the lake to the James W. Jardine Water Purification Plant. Worrisome concentrations of PFAS have been found in Chicago, which provides treated Lake Michigan water to more than 5 million people in the city and suburbs. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)

The Tribune identified 1,654 potential sources of PFAS statewide through a national analysis of industry codes that designate the type of products manufactured or used at a particular factory. Only California, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Florida have more facilities on the list of suspected polluters.

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The DuPont Washington Works plant along Ohio River in Parkersburg, West Virginia, is shown in this undated photo. (The Marietta Times/AP)

The chemicals have been added to nonstick cookware, water-repellent clothing, stain-resistant fabrics and carpets, cosmetics, firefighting foams, food packaging and other products that resist grease, oil and water.

PFAS persist in the environment and accumulate in people, animals and aquatic life. These “forever chemicals” are in the blood of nearly every American, including newborn babies.

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DuPont's Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia. (Maddie McGarvey/for the Washington Post)

If Wilbur Earl Tennant’s cows hadn’t died from a mysterious wasting disease during the 1990s, the world might have never learned about the secret history of toxic forever chemicals.

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