Industrial chemicals are measurable in the bodies of essentially the entire US population, and the burden is not evenly distributed. The clearest case is per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS): the CDC's biomonitoring finds that nearly all people in the United States carry measurable PFAS in their blood, and because the carbon–fluorine bond is among the strongest in organic chemistry, the majority still carry these "forever chemicals" even after production phase-outs.
The exposure is patterned by race and income. A nationally representative study found Black Americans significantly more likely than white Americans to live within a mile of a polluting industrial facility — a disparity that persists after adjusting for income and education. Louisiana's "Cancer Alley" corridor is the acute domestic case: a peer-reviewed 2025 study using measured (not modeled) air concentrations found cancer risks in the corridor well above the EPA's own estimates, and in 2023 the EPA itself found significant evidence of disproportionate impacts on Black residents.
The Institute's reading is that industrial chemical exposure is ubiquitous, persistent, and concentrated among the populations with the least political and economic capacity to interrupt it. That is an advocacy claim about a structural pattern; the honest frame for the underlying science is associational — biomonitoring establishes presence and distribution, not individual causation — and the exact figures, hedges, and their sources are set out in the evidence of record above.