Laurene Allen traces her work in environmental health and community advocacy to her background in clinical social work and a systems-based understanding of how environment, policy and health intersect. After PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) contamination linked to emissions from Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics, a manufacturing facility in Merrimack, New Hampshire, was discovered in her community, Allen became a leading voice in local and national efforts for clean water, stronger regulation and corporate accountability. She later co-founded the National PFAS Contamination Coalition to elevate the voices of PFAS-impacted communities and advocate for federal drinking water standards and hazardous substance designation for the most prevalent and well-studied PFAS compounds.

How did your background lead you to environmental health and community advocacy?

I’ve been a clinical social worker for many years, and from a social worker’s perspective, the client in my office does not exist in isolation. The broader community, which is often in need of outreach, is also my client. Social work is very integrative and systemic. It’s a person-in-environment model. My training is biopsychosocial, so if a person is presenting in a certain way, we’re looking at what’s going on biologically, what’s going on systemically and socially, and then the psychological is the last piece, not the first piece.

So that way of thinking grounded in my grad work extends to macro policy, with much of the wellness and emotional health of people related to what’s going on around them—in their family, in their community, in their state, in the nation, in the world. Policy work is a natural extension.

Was there a moment that shaped your commitment to this work?

In the beginning of this, what caught my ear was that the named polluter was the one who broke the news, and I thought, why is that the case? They did not need to report on a tap water sample from our municipal supply when there was no requirement to do so. I believe it allowed them to control the narrative, which they did, and be presented as a “good neighbor.”

Then there was a public meeting. It was massive—standing room only—and our state officials really minimized the scope of the problem. The then New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services assistant commissioner talked about this “good neighbor” and how they were cooperating, and elevating the actions of a corporate polluter that, I discovered, had done the same thing in Bennington, VT and Hoosick Falls, NY. And I’m thinking, what is going on?

People started asking questions and went directly into disclosing health conditions. One person said, “My 14-year-old son had his thyroid removed, my wife died of cancer, I’ve had kidney cancer,” and person after person described health conditions in their households and neighborhoods, which a basic Google search showed as either causal or strongly associated with chronic PFAS exposure.

The answers given to people were not health protective, validating, or supportive. The messaging came off as minimizing and denying what people were reporting. People walked away from that meeting really depleted and broken.

What did you learn as you started questioning this more?

I started looking into the role of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the role of the state, and I learned that New Hampshire doesn’t even do their own permitting for certain industrial discharges and emissions. These companies are really policing themselves. The core mission of the EPA, which is to protect human health and the environment, was not being followed. Authorities under the Clean Air and Clean Water acts were not being applied.

I started seeing all these broken pieces in the system of chemical regulation and government, and then I started saying, “My God, this is a local issue, a state issue, and a federal issue.” And I said, “We can’t be the only place. I think this is going to blow up into a national and international crisis.”

How did your community respond?

I worked to facilitate a unified community where residents stood shoulder to shoulder with our town council and our water department, armed with research, public records, independent testing and information that we had to gather ourselves because it wasn’t initially being given to us.

We convinced 93% of taxpayers in this town—you never get that when you want to spend money—to spend millions of dollars to filter all the water to undetectable levels for all PFAS before either our state or the federal PFAS drinking water standards were even created.

We fought for a seat at the table and our voices to be heard.

What impact has this work had?

Throughout the course of this journey, our community group shut Saint Gobain down by persistently filling in the rest of the story.  Their narrative could no longer hold up, and they finished their last production line in spring of 2024.

We co-founded a national coalition to elevate the voices and knowledge of PFAS-impacted communities and worked on the federal level to attain national water standards and hazardous substance designation for the most prevalent and well-studied PFAS compounds. We have and will continue to approach this immense problem from every possible perspective in a holistic and integrative fashion with source control at the core as well as polluter accountability.