GPB reviews new documentary film about Dalton carpet industry and PFAS
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'How much did the carpet industry know?' New film looks at PFAS contamination in Northwest Georgia
February 4, 2026 3:07 PM
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LISTEN: A new FRONTLINE PBS documentary examines how PFAS chemicals used in carpet manufacturing contaminated drinking water across Northwest Georgia and beyond and what companies and regulators knew about the risks. GPB's Pamela Kirkland speaks with the film's director.
Caption
How did PFAS chemicals once used in popular stain-resistant carpets end up in the water and environment in parts of Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina?
Credit: FRONTLINE PBS
Dalton, Ga., has long been hailed as the “Carpet Capital of the World,” but a new FRONTLINE documentary examines how decades of carpet manufacturing in Northwest Georgia left a lasting environmental footprint.
The film, Contaminated: The Carpet Industry’s Toxic Legacy, is part of a multi-newsroom investigation exploring how PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” spread into drinking water across Whitfield County, Georgia and far beyond.
The investigation, with reporting from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Post and Courier, AL.com, The Associated Press and FRONTLINE (PBS), how chemicals used for decades to make carpets resistant to stains, have been linked to serious health risks and contamination in waterways throughout the South.
GPB’s Pamela Kirkland spoke with the documentary's director Jonathan Schienberg about the film and the communities living with contamination that could last generations.
How did PFAS chemicals once used in popular stain-resistant carpets end up in the water and environment in parts of Georgia and Alabama? An investigation from FRONTLINE in partnership with The Associated Press, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Post and Courier and AL.com.
Credit: FRONTLINE PBS
Transcript:
Pamela Kirkland: It's Morning Edition. I'm Pamela Kirkland. A multi-newsroom investigation is taking a hard look at the carpet industry in Northwest Georgia and how its use of so-called forever chemicals is affecting communities there and hundreds of miles away. Jonathan Scheinberg is the director of the Frontline documentary Contaminated: The Carpet Industry's Toxic Legacy. It examines how PFAS, or forever chemicals, used by the carpet industries have polluted drinking water across Northwest Georgia with health effects that could last generations. Jonathan, thank you so much for being here.
Jonathan Schienberg: Thank you so for having me, Pamela.
Pamela Kirkland: So to start, Dalton proudly touts itself as the carpet capital of the world. Your documentary explores the cost of holding that title. So when you started this project, how did you think about telling that story?
Jonathan Schienberg: Certainly, it was a very interesting element to the story, right? Because carpet is something that is definitely particular. The industry in Northwest Georgia is very concentrated there. There's other industry around the country, but this is really the carpet capital, as you said. But carpet is somebody we can all relate to because we either have all had it at some point in our home or we still do have it. So it's a product that we're all familiar with and are all connected to. So, when we started this film project we wanted to figure out how can we relate this to people generally. And one of the interesting elements of it is it is this product, carpet, but what you come to learn this it's more about industry. You know the product itself and what they're creating is relevant but the exposure to toxic chemicals like PFAS, certain types of PFAS, is not necessarily coming from the carpet itself. That can happen, but it's actually a little bit of a different twist. And so we had to figure out how to navigate that and let that story unfurl.
Pamela Kirkland: One of the through lines in the film is kind of that question of "What did industry know and when did they know it?" What surprised you most about how far back some of that knowledge went?
Jonathan Schienberg: It's a complicated story, when you dive in. I mean, it's not simple. So we really had to dig in deep with, you know, the Atlanta Journal Constitution and our partners at Associated Press and AL.com and the Post and Courier. We all really had to dive in very deeply because there are thousands of these court documents, depositions that were public documents, but most people hadn't, I think, done the deep work to these meetings that had happened earlier on, you know, sort of in the late '90s and early 2000s, in which the chemical industry started to reveal some of the risks associated with PFAS, how it bioaccumulates in the body and gets into people's blood. And they were — started to tell the carpet industry about that. And so I think that was one of the most revealing elements that we uncovered. And then it was sort of dissecting how much did the carpet industry know, in terms of the risks and dangers, and what they decided to do with that information is what the film explores.
Pamela Kirkland: Stormy Bost is someone who had lived in Dalton her whole life and she's dealing with liver disease that her doctors linked directly to PFAS. What did you learn from her and some of the other residents that are in the documentary and that you spoke with about what it's like to see this story finally come to light?
Jonathan Schienberg: Yeah, I think there's a lot of people that I believe they're happy that their voices will be heard. There's a lots of fear and anxiety and concern down there. This is an invisible chemical that is in their drinking water. You can't smell it, you can't taste it, you have no way to identify it. There are efforts underway by the city in different areas to deal with this in both, you know, Calhoun in Georgia and then in Gadsden in Alabama, and other places. It's a very hard chemical to remove. And I think the people there have been dealing with this for quite a while. Like we just started working on this and making this film now, but they've known for several years now that their water has these chemicals in it. And they've learned a lot. They have community groups, Facebook groups, in which there's a lot of information being shared about the risks associated with these chemicals. And people like Stormy, who are dealing with concerning conditions that, you know, have been linked to PFAS. So I think that they are very happy to talk to media and get their story out because there's a tremendous amount of fear and concern around, you know this chemical that's in their water supply.
Pamela Kirkland: And we're talking about contamination that could last a century or more. When you talk to the residents living with this, how do they make sense of a timeline that's generations long when you're talking about PFAS?
Jonathan Schienberg: One of the other things that we learned in the course of the story is that this can be passed down from mother to baby through breast milk. There have been studies that have shown that. So there's a lot of fear and anxiety about how do we come up with solutions to deal with this? Are there ways that science and technology can help to get this out of our water and medicine can help to get us out of out blood? I mean, people are really hoping that, you know, responsibility is taken by the actors who are responsible for this and government to invest time and money in trying to solve a problem because it affects so many people around the country. I mean, you know, just about everybody in the country has this in their blood. Some obviously at more, you, know, higher levels in Northwest Georgia, which are considered hotspots, but it is a growing issue and many people compare it to, you know, the asbestos problem or the lead problem. It's considered a very, you know, serious emerging environmental health crisis.
Pamela Kirkland: For viewers, when they sit down and have a chance to spend time with the documentary, what do you hope that they take away from it?
Jonathan Schienberg: What I saw, and I hope what we, you know, reflect, is this is a microcosm of a situation that the regulatory system doesn't have the information it needs and then, you know, once it does, doesn't act quickly enough. These kinds of, you know, environmental catastrophes unfold. But also that, you know, as one of the subjects in our film, you know, pointedly says, that it's also the responsibility of industry to be responsible and to share information as quickly as possible and to take care of the people in their community and the communities that they operate in because at the end of the day, these are your workers. These are the people that are serving your industry, especially in Northwest Georgia. So I think what I hope people will walk away with is that it's important that we are all paying attention to how the regulatory system works but also that we should be expecting more from industry. We want industry to invent and create because we need that for business and economy and — and you know the improvement of humanity but we also need them to self-regulate
Pamela Kirkland: Jonathan Scheinberg is the director of the Frontline documentary, Contaminated, The Carpet Industry's Toxic Legacy. You can watch it at PBS.org /Frontline or on the PBS app. Jonathan, thank you so much for speaking with me.
Jonathan Schienberg: Thank you so much for having me.
Tags: Georgia Dalton Whitfield County carpet PFAS forever chemicals Frontline PBS GPB News
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Morning Edition host
Pamela brings her deep news knowledge and love of storytelling to the airwaves across Georgia, Monday through Friday mornings on GPB Radio.