✳️ Running Media’s Environmental Blind Spot

On running media's silence over PFAS

Hey pals,

This is one of those stories that seemed too obvious. That I was missing something. Maybe I am and you intelligent lot will tell me all about it. But here we go – running media have not written about one of the biggest environmental stories affecting the industry at all.

That’s kind of a problem.

Hope you have a great weekend,

Matt

I was told this wasn’t a story. The intersection of people who run and would read this is slim. Which is likely true, but before we get to the story, some context.

On a recent perusal of the Outdoor Retailer’s The Daily, I came across a chemical group called Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or as they’re more commonly called, PFAS. They’re a persistent group of chemicals made originally by DuPont that are used on products to make them more waterproof, stain-resistant and breathable. Think Teflon on pans or in our case DWR coatings on coats.

The problem with these chemicals is their persistence and toxicity. They were dubbed ‘Forever Chemicals’ for their ability to live, well, forever on our planet and in our bodies. High concentrations of them in our bodies have been linked to all sorts of immune conditions, kidney diseases and cancer.

For a long time, these chemicals were what made our coats waterproof yet breathable, used in membranes and coatings. They’re the foundational ingredient to what made Gore-Tex so damn effective. However, when governments realised the toxicity of these chemicals, they began banning their production and usage in products. It started in Europe where the EU began banning forms of PFAS in 2009. From January 2025, California is enacting a bill that prohibits the sale, manufacture and distribution of textiles containing PFAS. Maine, Washington, New York, Colorado, Maryland and Vermont have also enacted varying degrees of apparel bans.

As you can now guess, outdoor companies have had a heck of a ride these past few years trying to find alternatives that are as effective as PFAS, but without the toxicity, all whilst selling off their existing inventory before they’re banned. Not all companies have committed to this change. According to research by the Ethical Consumer, 5 out of 27 outdoor companies have stopped using PFAS’, half have made a commitment and 4 didn’t even acknowledge the issue.

That’s the basic context.

Now as you can imagine, outdoor media companies have been covering this narrative for a few years. Not extensively, I’ll add, but they at least have some explainer articles. Running media? Three.

Until this year, out of IRunFar, RUN, Canadian Running Magazine, TrailRunner and Runners World, three articles were written about PFAS. Runner’s World had 2 articles, one of them was about PFAS found in Chipotle Bowls. TrailRunner had the other article with an article about not being scammed by greenwashing.

This year, now that it is a label that has environmental brownie points, each publisher’s product reviews mention whether something is ‘PFC-free’. Oh, the irony.

Here’s the fun bit.

After being somewhat confused and considering maybe I was missing something I went to the editors, past and present, to see whether I’d overlooked anything and ask why they hadn’t covered it.

My first editor’s response was ‘What is PFAS?’.

The second response was ‘There isn’t a story here’.

Zoe Rom, former Editor-in-Chief of TrailRunner, shed some light on the situation “The Venn diagram of runners who know what PFAS are, or who care to read niche environmental policy articles is going to be pretty small – and as niche run outlets become increasingly beholden to audience whims, we’re going to see articles like this become even fewer and far between”.

It’s not like our shoe overlords aren’t bothered about PFAS. Salomon made an ambition in 2022 to be rid of all PFAS in their footwear. On in their extensive annual Impact Report details the progress they are making in ridding their supply chains of PFAS. Smaller labels such as Norda, Wise, Circle, Nnormal and Janji all have focused on being PFAS-free from the beginning.

It’s been one of the biggest environmental stories that has affected the running industry, yet running media decided they didn’t see it that way.

Running journalism isn’t entirely to blame. It’s a failure of running culture to not have been as demanding about the environmental impact as other outdoor sports, to not have been as vocal. To not have clicked on articles about the environment and running.  To see our product choices as separate from the degradation of our planet.

A part of this reluctance to engage with the environmental impact of running comes down to a certain helplessness, a perceived futility to each person’s little actions on the big problem. Simon Kuper in an article in the FT last week equated stories about the climate to stories with a dragon without a dragonslayer to cheer on. The environmental section of newspapers is replete with stories about how the dragon is getting bigger, but there is no singular saviour from it.

Sure, I can wear my shoes out longer until my toes touch the tarmac, but what effect will that have on the polar ice caps melting?

These debates in media always have a chicken and egg scenario – the media won’t write about the environment because the audience doesn’t click on it, but the audience can’t engage with it if there isn’t much written about it. Yet, if there’s one thing anyone who’s spent more than two seconds in running media knows is runners love products. They love to read every single review out there. Agonise over drops, foams, feel, shoe width and all other measurements given to them. So why wouldn’t they care about the environmental impact of the products they’re buying? An educated guess would be that they might not care about a forest fire in Quebec, but heck will they care if the Gore-Tex in their waterproof shoes is potentially poisoning them and the water course around them.

Whilst the bans around PFAS are starting to kick in, this story isn’t over. From a product angle, only Adidas, Salomon, Decathlon and Patagonia have announced target dates for phasing PFAS out, according to Ethical Consumer’s research (there are more brands on the list but these are the most popular for trail running). This is by no means a complete list either, there are plenty more running brands that were not included.

A quick Google would show Gore, the parent company of Gore-Tex, has multiple recent lawsuits against them for allegedly dumping PFAS into the water course causing a ‘cancer cluster …and disease clusters’ in the town of Elkton, Maryland (a similar story was dramatised in the film Dark Waters about DuPont’s dumping of PFOA’s in the watercourse in Parkersburg, West Virginia and the effects it had on the residents).

Pick any varied publication list you want - GQ, Time, TrendHunter and Bloomberg, for example – and most have managed to write something about PFAS in outdoor clothing, but our beloved running media have not.

There are stories to tell about the brands that the same publications are endorsing with their reviews, but therein lies the tension – it is brands that are paying for the adverts that are keeping these publications afloat. The one rule of ad-supported media is do not bite the hand that feeds. It is a cynical take, and one that I don’t fully support, but it’s an easy conclusion to make when you don’t write about the biggest environmental elephant in the industry.

Neglecting these critical issues means that running media outlets may be downplaying one of the most significant environmental stories of our time—and overlooking the impact of running brands in this narrative.