**Please note that this webinar has passed but you can find the recording here**
Click here to register for this Wednesday, July 24 at 7:00 PM ET US.
Join Beyond Plastics for a discussion with award-winning investigative journalist, Sharon Lerner, and Kris Hansen, a former 3M scientist who inadvertently discovered the presence of the “forever chemicals” PFOS/PFAS in the blood of the general public. In an expose recently published in both ProPublica and the New Yorker, Lerner detailed Hansen’s research, and her realization that the company had buried evidence that the chemical was in everyone's bodies decades earlier.
What is PFOS? How did it get to be present in almost every human’s blood, including newborn babies? What are its impacts on our health and environment? How does this “forever chemical” relate to plastics? And what can you do to protect yourself and prevent future health impacts and environmental harms?
Join us at 7:00 PM ET US on Wednesday, July 24 to hear directly from Lerner and learn more. Register now to reserve your spot.
About Sharon Lerner
Sharon Lerner covers health and the environment. She joined ProPublica in 2022 after seven years as an investigative reporter at The Intercept, where she focused on failures of the environmental regulatory process as well as biosafety and pandemic profiteering.
Lerner has reported extensively on PFAS — a family of chemicals linked to cancer, infertility, developmental harm and immune dysfunction — detailing how manufacturers of the chemicals covered up the danger for decades. She also broke the news that firefighting foam used by the military contained PFAS and that GenX, a PFAS compound that DuPont created to replace the cancer-causing compound PFOA, also causes cancer. With colleagues at The Intercept, Lerner obtained grant materials that revealed that the U.S. had funded risky virus research in Wuhan, China.
Lerner’s work has been honored by the Society of Environmental Journalists ten times, and by the Newswomen’s Club of New York, which named her its journalist of the year in 2021.
About Kris Hansen
Following her undergraduate chemistry degree at Williams College, Kris earned a PhD in chemistry from University of Colorado, Boulder. At both institutes, Kris focused on analyzing and tracking low levels of chemicals in the environment. She started at 3M in 1996 as an Analytical Chemist in 3M's Environmental Lab. Between 1997-2001, Kris led the "discovery" and tracking of 3M's PFAS compounds through the environment, including in the blood of the global human population.
She worked independently as part of a team to develop sensitive and specific analytical methods for PFAS in samples as varied as river water, human blood, polar bear liver, bird eggs and milk curd from rodents. At the suggestion of her boss, Kris left the 3M Environmental Lab in 2001 and worked in other parts of 3M's business until 2022. She is currently a consultant for Savanna Science in Minnesota.