From polar bear blood to Mount Everest snow, PFAS are hitchhiking on microplastics across the globe — and courtroom victories may be the only way to hold polluters accountable.
When scientists found microplastics in polar bear blood and at the summit of Mount Everest, it confirmed what has been suspected for years: plastic pollution has no boundaries. But there’s a more troubling reality that most people don’t understand — these tiny plastic fragments aren’t just inert particles floating through our environment. They’re carriers for some of the most persistent chemicals ever created.
As someone who has spent seven years in courtrooms fighting companies that knowingly contaminated our water with PFAS, I’ve seen how these “forever chemicals” hitchhike on microplastics, spreading contamination far beyond their original sources. While communities like Ann Arbor invest millions in water treatment systems, the fundamental problem persists: our patchwork of regulations can’t keep up with the complex ways these contaminants cycle through the environment.
The good news? Legal pressure is finally forcing polluting companies to change how they operate. The $14 billion settlement we secured against PFAS manufacturers proves that corporate accountability, not just regulation, can drive real environmental protection.
Understanding the PFAS-Microplastics Connection
PFAS are man-made chemicals that do exactly what they were designed to do — repel water and oil. That’s why they’re in everything from non-stick pans to firefighting foam to the Gore-Tex jacket in your closet. But here’s what makes them particularly dangerous: they contain a carbon-fluorine bond that’s so strong, these chemicals never break down naturally. Ever.
I’ve spent years reviewing discovery documents showing that companies like 3M knew since the 1950s that lab animals were dying from PFAS exposure, yet they kept marketing these chemicals as safe. Now we understand that once they’re in the environment, they’re there permanently unless we use expensive treatments to remove them.
Through litigation, we’re learning how microplastics make this problem worse. When plastic products containing PFAS break down, whether from weathering, heat or simple wear, they release accumulated PFAS while creating microplastic carriers that can absorb additional PFAS from surrounding water and soil. This creates a contamination multiplier effect.
The plastic bag that ends up in the ocean doesn’t just become microplastics. If it contained PFAS, those chemicals leach out as the plastic degrades, while the resulting microplastic fragments continue collecting more PFAS from the water around them.
Sources and Pathways of Contamination
PFAS contamination happens through multiple pathways that most people never consider. The obvious sources are industrial facilities. 3M alone produced at least 100 million pounds of PFOS from 1951 to 2000. But that’s just the beginning.
Firefighting foam represents one of the most widespread sources. Every military base, airport and fire department that has used AFFF has created a contamination site. The foam works because PFAS repel water — perfect for putting out fuel fires, terrible for everything else. Once it’s used in training or emergency response, those chemicals seep into groundwater and stay there indefinitely.
Then there’s the recontamination cycle that regulations completely miss. When wastewater treatment plants remove PFAS from drinking water, those chemicals concentrate in biosolids that get spread on farmland as fertilizer. Meanwhile, landfills containing decades of PFAS-laden products continue leaching contamination into groundwater as plastic waste breaks down.
When PFAS appeared in Ann Arbor’s drinking water in 2014, they traced it to manufacturing facilities and wastewater discharges upstream on the Huron River. Despite investing in expensive treatment that filters PFAS below detectable levels, the city remains vulnerable because upstream sources keep releasing new contamination.
Regulatory Gaps and Recontamination Risks
The regulatory landscape for PFAS is a mess, and I say that as someone who has to navigate it daily. The EPA recently designated PFOA and PFOS as hazardous substances under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (“CERCLA”), which sounds like progress until you realize there are thousands of PFAS compounds in use, and this covers exactly two of them.
State approaches vary wildly. New York, where I practice, has proposed maximum contaminant levels of 10 parts per trillion for PFOA and PFOS — seven times stricter than the federal guidance of 70 parts per trillion. Meanwhile, other states have no PFAS regulations at all. Contamination that would trigger an immediate response in New York gets ignored completely across state lines.
This creates what I call the remediation paradox. Communities spend millions treating drinking water while contamination continues flowing from unregulated sources. Ann Arbor’s granular activated carbon system effectively removes PFAS from its water supply, but upstream manufacturing and wastewater discharges keep releasing new contamination into the Huron River.
Even worse, current regulations ignore the microplastics connection entirely. There’s no coordinated approach to address PFAS release from degrading plastic infrastructure, consumer products or waste management systems. We’re essentially playing whack-a-mole by treating contamination in one pathway while others remain completely unaddressed.
This regulatory inconsistency is exactly why litigation has become essential for driving real accountability.
The Role of Litigation in Driving Change
When regulations fail, litigation becomes the only tool powerful enough to force corporate accountability. Our $14 billion settlement with PFAS manufacturers compensated public water systems, sure, but what made it a landmark was that it legally required polluting companies to pay the full cost of environmental remediation, not taxpayers.
Legal pressure also drives actual changes in manufacturing. Under threat of massive liability, 3M voluntarily transitioned from C8 PFAS chemicals to C6 alternatives that are significantly less persistent and harmful. While C6 compounds aren’t perfect, this shift demonstrates how litigation can motivate industry transformation in ways that voluntary guidelines never achieve.
We’re now expanding this approach internationally. Last December, we filed suit in the Netherlands representing fishing associations whose livelihoods were destroyed by PFAS contamination in the Scheldt River. Dutch fishermen can no longer sell their catch because a nearby 3M plant contaminated their fishing grounds. The same pattern of corporate negligence, just with different victims.
This global expansion matters because PFAS contamination has no borders. The chemicals found in Mount Everest snow and polar bear blood didn’t respect national sovereignty, and neither should legal accountability. Every successful case strengthens the precedent that corporations cannot externalize environmental costs onto communities.
The litigation model works because it hits companies where regulations cannot — their profit margins and corporate reputation. When billion-dollar settlements become the cost of environmental negligence, boardrooms start paying attention to chemical safety in ways that regulatory warnings never could.
Water treatment alone won’t break the microplastic-PFAS contamination cycle — it requires holding polluters accountable at the source. Environmental professionals need every tool available, and right now, courthouse victories are creating the corporate accountability that regulatory agencies haven’t been able to deliver.
Partner, Napoli Shkolnik
Coral Odiot-Rivera is an experienced environmental and mass tort litigator who leads high-impact litigation on behalf of individuals and communities exposed to PFAS, lead, microplastics, and other hazardous substances affecting air, soil, and water. She plays a pivotal role in the landmark Aqueous Film-Forming Foam (AFFF) multi-district litigation, which has resulted in multi-billion-dollar settlements with corporate polluters including 3M, DuPont, Tyco, and BASF. Ms. Odiot-Rivera also helped file one of the first PFAS lawsuits in Europe, representing the Dutch Fishermen’s Association in a groundbreaking litigation against 3M for contamination of the Scheldt River.