Except this is how laypeople perceive chemicals when they react to them as a (possible) threat. They conflate "chemical" with a compound beyond natural complexity. Humans excel at creating compounds that naturally do not naturally occur in abundance for thermodynamic reasons. Chlorofluorocarbons come to mind immediately.

So how is it scaremongering? It is both accurate (PFOAs, etc are indeed chemicals) and of the proper connotation in the common parlance (using "chemical" to mean something manmade rather than naturally occurring).

Your argument holds no water.

By the way, an article in Scientific American isn't scientific literature. It's a magazine intended at lay audiences. You might be confusing it with something like Nature journal.