Safe to Drink, Episode 1: You don’t know about this?

January 29, 2026·34 min·3 clips

A Merrimack woman whose husband died of prostate cancer asks whether she killed him by giving him tap water for decades.

Taylor begins with a little history. Patient Zero was first imagined as a show that could move through different diseases season by season, but it stayed with Lyme disease. Then Safe to Drink came along. Mara Hoplamazian, Taylor's colleague at NHPR, made a series that felt like the season Patient Zero never got to become. The story starts with contaminated water. A town finds PFAS in its supply, and everything that usually follows starts to grind into motion: science, government, fear, trust. Officials have answers, but only partial ones. In 2016, federal regulators still had no legal limit for PFOA in drinking water, so New Hampshire set its own. They describe the number as cautious. People in Merrimack whose taps test above that limit are told bottled water will be delivered to their homes. Then the questions pile up. A pregnant wife. A garden that feeds children. Fish, hunted animals, ponds, patients, and a normal glass of water all become suspect. The room wants certainty. The people onstage say they are using the best information they have, but the information keeps giving out. We do not know becomes the refrain. That uncertainty is where the episode sits. People still have to make daily decisions while officials are trying to piece together the science. Taylor presents Safe to Drink as a close cousin to Patient Zero: a story about contamination, yes, but also about what happens when a community realizes safety was never as settled as it sounded.

As heard by us

A town's water scare turns into a quiet, uneasy look at uncertainty, mistrust, and unanswered questions.

Safe to Drink starts with a town finding out its water has been contaminated with PFAS, then stays with the mess that follows. Residents and officials are left trying to answer basic questions while the answers are still incomplete.

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Why you'd press play

You want a calm doorway into a contaminated-water story that still feels deeply unsettled.

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