A new study has found that US communities exposed to drinking water contaminated with 'forever chemicals' have up to 33 percent higher rates of certain cancers.

Scientists have good reason to believe a number of compounds referred to as PFAS (per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances) are linked to cancer: they've already been implicated in kidney, breast, and testicular cancer, with at least one of the chemicals, PFOA, labeled as a carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.

Illustration of the distribution of PFAS in drinking water and annual average cancer incidence between 2016 and 2021. (Li et al., Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology, 2025)