By Amudalat Ajasa, Washington Post
ELKTON, Md. — Debbie Blankenship’s wheelchair carved perfect lines in the grass as she rolled into her backyard garden, passing a wooden arch filled with small grapes, a bush with plump blueberries, and yellow crates filled with sprouting potatoes.
She stopped at a dirt patch with a burial marker for her beagle — the latest of her dogs to die of cancer.
“They are all buried back here. It’s like a pet cemetery,” she said, catching her breath from navigating the hilly terrain. Gazing at the burial site, she spoke about her own long battle with cancer.
For decades, Blankenship chalked up her health problems, including losing her right leg to an infection, to bad luck. Then in 2023, she received a phone call from W.L. Gore & Associates, which makes waterproof membranes such as Gore-Tex and a host of other products. Gore wanted to test Blankenship’s well water for PFOA, a highly toxic “forever chemical” that was used to make PTFE, commonly known as Teflon.
“That’s when the light went off,” she said. She and her dogs were the only members of the household to drink the well water. Her husband and children always drank bottled water.
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