2025-07-01
26 分钟This is The Guardian.
Today, a trip to Eastern France where forever chemicals have poisoned the drinking water.
So in April this year, on one quiet Saturday night,
Sandra Wiedemann was sitting on her sofa and she was just watching Saturday night TV.
This is Phoebe Weston, an environment reporter at The Guardian.
She's talking about a woman she met recently, Sandra Wiedemann,
who lives with her husband and baby out in the hills of Alsace in eastern France.
And the news came on.
And a story broke.
Which essentially said that the water coming from her own tap could be poisoning her.
It had felt until then like a safe place to raise a child.
Big houses with lovely gardens, backdrops by the wild Jura mountains.
Maybe, maybe you could ignore a report on the TV news.
But then came the letter.
And then three days later,
this letter dropped through her door and it dropped through the door of 60,000 other people living in the communes around Saint-Louis saying that their water was contaminated.
It was from the local authority telling her that chemicals she'd never even heard about before were poisoning her drinking water.
Suddenly, every shower, every baby bath, felt fraught with danger.
Or every time she cleaned her teeth or even washed some salad.
What's happening in this quiet corner of France is a preview of what could happen in a town or a village near you soon.