The same year, DuPont found that water in one local district contained PFOA levels at three times that figure. PFOA is part of a larger class of PFAS chemicals. DuPont's own instructions specified that it was not to be flushed into surface water or sewers," according to the New York Times Magazine. They are everywhere. Dont understand that at all. The US House of Representatives passed a bill in January 2020 that would require the EPA to deem per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) hazardous and establish a national drinking water standard. DuPont later paid more than $750 million to settle lawsuits filed by Teflon plant neighbors with PFOA-linked diseases, including testicular and kidney cancer, high cholesterol, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease and pregnancy-induced hypertension. Bilotts law firm, Taft Stettinius & Hollister, typically represents corporate clients like DuPont in environmental cases, not people like Tennant. DuPont's Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia. At fifty-four, Earl was an . The edge in his voice was anger. Did they think no one would notice? It's the messy, real story behind Focus Features' Dark Waters movie, starring Mark Ruffalo as Robert Bilott, the corporate lawyer turned environmental activist who led an epic legal fight against chemical titan DuPont. By the 1980s, DuPont had allegedly begun dumping PFOA waste into the Dry Creek Landfill, near the Tennant property. YouTube sets this cookie to store the video preferences of the user using embedded YouTube video. And of course, he knew all about Dry Run Landfill, a DuPont waste site near his farm that largely served the company's chemical plant near Parkersburg. Photos by Focus Features and EPK. We consulted a variety of sources, including Nathaniel Richs 2016 New York Times Magazine feature The Lawyer Who Became DuPonts Worst Nightmare (upon which the movie is based), Bilotts own book, other longform articles, and attorney Harry Deitzler (the personal-injury lawyer played in the movie by Bill Pullman), to help sort out whats true and whats embellished. It kicked and thumped and wallered around there like you wouldnt believe.. du Pont de Nemours and Co, better known as DuPont, on behalf of a West Virginia farmer whose cows were dying. During manufacturing processes, PFAS chemicals are released into the air, soil, and water around industrial facilities, the EPA reports. One person can't always cause a change, but one person can set off a chain of reactions to cause change. The West Virginia-based . The films portrayal of the physical toll that the excruciating, decadeslong legal battle against DuPont seems to have had on Bilotts health is also accurate. Next door to Tennant's farm was a landfill owned by E.I. I dont understand them great big dark red places across there. For example, New Hampshire sued 3M and DuPont, along with a handful of companies that make firefighting foam containing PFAS. "The innards was bright green.". The suit alleges negligence claiming the chemicals contaminated the state's natural resources, according to New Hampshire Public Radio. Bilott had now discovered the cause in the deaths of the cattle on Tennant's farm and had called DuPont regarding this information. His freezer had brimmed with venison, wild turkey, squirrel, and rabbit. The tongue looked normal, but some of the teeth were coal black, interspersed with the white ones like piano keys. It was to be incinerated or sent to chemical-waste facilities. On the other line was Wilbur Tennant (played by Bill Camp), a cattle farmer from Parkersburg, W.V. The spleen was thinner and whiter than any spleen he had come cross. DuPont also discovered that pollution containing PFOA vented from the Washington Works plant affected the surrounding area, allegedly contaminating the local water supply, according to the New York Times Magazine. Thats why they called it Dry Run. Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer's Twenty-Year Battle against DuPont. The Intercept notes that the legal process "uncovered hundreds of internal communications revealing that DuPont employees for many years suspected that C8 was harmful and yet continued to use it, putting the company's workers and the people who lived near its plants at risk.". She had spent the summer in the hollow, drinking out of Dry Run until shed started to act strangely. This cookie is used to detect and defend when a client attempt to replay a cookie.This cookie manages the interaction with online bots and takes the appropriate actions. Bilott soon discovered that Dry Run Creek, the offshoot of the Ohio River that Tennant's livestock drank from, was full of C8, an industry name for perfluorooctanoic acid or PFOA, one of the . The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. As one of Bilotts colleagues told the New York Times, To say that Rob Bilott is understated is an understatement. Its also true that Bilott did not have the same Ivy League pedigree of many of his colleagues at Taft, having been raised on Air Force bases across the continental United States and West Germany, and it was through these working-class connections that he was introduced to the Tennant family farm case. Shorty after that, DuPont started to medically monitor female workers at the Washington Works plant to, as the company's medical director noted, "answer a single question does C8 cause abnormal children?" Wilbur Tennant shot this video on his property between 1995 and 1997. Tennant had a problem. His hand shook as he pressed the zoom button, zeroing in on a stagnant pool. Flies. There also are related substances called precursors that transform into PFOA and PFOS in the body or the environment. This cookie is installed by Google Universal Analytics to restrain request rate and thus limit the collection of data on high traffic sites. DuPont's response was they would settle with the Tennant's however Bilott was . ''Rob's letter lifted the curtain on a . Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. If Wilbur Earl Tennants cows hadnt died from a mysterious wasting disease during the 1990s, the world might have never learned about the secret history of toxic forever chemicals. How accurately does Dark Waters depict the twists and turns of this maze? During the course of the litigation, we have confirmed that the chemicals and pollutants released into the environment by DuPont may pose an imminent and substantial threat to health and the environment, Bilott wrote at the beginning of his March 6, 2001, letter. If you do not allow these cookies we will not know when you have visited our site, and will not be able to monitor its performance. Now it looked like dirty dishwater. As in the movie, these events really did lead to a large class-action suit that triggered a massive epidemiological study that, after a yearslong wait, showed there really was a probable link between PFOA and certain conditions, including high cholesterol, kidney cancer, and testicular cancer, though the movie depicts one scientist going so far as to tell Bilott that the results are irrefutable. (DuPont has continued to deny that it did anything wrong.). Then, in 1998 Bilott received a phone call from Wilbur Tennant who lived on his farm in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Similarly, DuPonts presence in the Ohio and West Virginia Chemical Valley regions really did resemble the company town vibe portrayed in Dark Waters, with citizens frequently too enthralled by the multinationals economic benefits to question its impact on their health and safety. Recently, the cows had started charging, trying to kick him and butt him with their heads, as this one had before she died. It flowed through a corner of the three-hundred-acre farm, in a place Earl called the holler. A small valley cut between hillsides, the holler was where he moved the herd to graze throughout the summer. Dry Run was less than a miles walk from the home place, across Lee Creek, through an open field, and along a pair of tire tracks. DuPont determined that PFOA passed from pregnant employees to their fetuses. The EPA on its own only recently started to take steps to study, monitor, and regulate the use of PFAS and released an update to its action plan programin February 2020. He zoomed out and panned over to an industrial pipe spewing froth into the creek. This cookie is native to PHP applications. Because I was feeding her enough feed that she shoulda gained weight instead of losing weight. It wasnt just his cattle dying. He panned the camera a few degrees. Excerpt from Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyers Twenty-Year Battle against DuPont. And the man who started it all, Wilbur Tennant, won't see that resolution. When they bought half of the farm from Wilbur they began to use it for a landfill to store the toxins being . It smelled rotten. While DuPont did also conduct walk-throughs and physical searches of the Tennants belongings, deeply alienating some of the familys renters, the movie depicts some of Tennants evidence going mysteriously missing. . The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. The same year, the EPA fined DuPont more than $10 million for "failing to report 'substantial risk of injury to human health' from C8 (PFOA)," according to The Intercept. Like the movie, Richs article portrays Bilott as an unassuming and understated man driven by an innate sense of decency. Vacillating Wildly From Dispiriting to Exhilarating, A New Biopic Reduces One of Historys Greatest Writers to a Cottagecore Emo Girl, How Steven Spielbergs Autobiographical New Movie Rewrites His Story, The Lawyer Who Became DuPonts Worst Nightmare, He knew his neighbors and his community was being poisoned, commissioned a photographer to take aerial photos. But you just give me time. And if it sounds familiar, it should. Yes, the household name used as a cookware coating agent that is advertised to make food not stick and is known for its durability in . But you just give me time. Edit your search or learn more. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". May 15, 2009; Location: Washington, West Virginia; Tribute & Message From The Family. Wilbur Tennant is on Facebook. He sued DuPont again on behalf of thousands of people who lived near the Teflon plant and for decades had been exposed to PFOA through drinking water and air pollution. He was speaking to the camcorder pressed to his eye. Wilbur's brother, Jim, was also . Wilbur Tennant, a cattle farmer in Parkersburg, W.Va., the site of a huge DuPont plant, had over many years gradually built up his herd. Joseph and Darlene Kiger in Park City, Utah, in 2018. These chemicals are most harmful when ingested and consequently bioaccumulate, meaning they build up over time in the body (just as they build up in the environment). Bilott tries to communicate to Tennant that he "isn't that kind of environmental lawyer," yet Tennant's exasperated resilience strikes a chord with the compassionate . . He zoomed in. working in the garden and around the farm with his grandson . By the late 1990s, West Virginia farmer Wilbur Tennant was at his wits end. . Their quest for justice wound its way through the American judicial system for nearly two decades, unearthing long-hidden deeds which, some reports say, are akin to those perpetrated by big tobacco on the public. In the flames, a calf lay broadside, burning. He was born at New England, a son of the late Blaine Tennant and Lydia (Wildman) Tennant. He was certain that DuPont was fouling the waters that his cattle drank, and he'd already lost more than half of his herd to bizarre illnesses. Where they should have been smooth, they looked ropy, covered with ridges. It also helps in fraud preventions. Wilbur Tennant, played by Bill Camp in the film, showed Bilott videos and pictures he had taken of his cows foaming at the mouth and staggering in ways they hadn't before, with lesions covering . Thunderstorms occasionally swelled the creek so much that he couldnt wade across it. Birds sang through the white-hot humidity as he panned the camcorder across the creek. Robert Bilott is a partner at Taft, Stettinius & Hollister LLP in Cincinnati, Ohio. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. And after Bilott watched and listened, he took action. Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better experience for the visitors. Tennant stated that . About 600 are in use today, according to the EPA. On the other side of his property line, Dry Run Landfill was filling up the little valley that had once belonged to his family. Did they think no one would notice? The saga began for Bilott when Wilbur Tennant, a cattle farmer from Parkersburg, West Virginia, called Bilott a few months before he made partner at a white-shoe Cincinnati law firm. Wilbur Tennant passed away on May 15, 2009 at the age of 67 in Washington, West Virginia. When the cattle on Wilbur Earl Tennant's farm began to mysteriously fall ill and die, he suspected it wasn't what the animals were eatingit was what they were drinking. The JSESSIONID cookie is used by New Relic to store a session identifier so that New Relic can monitor session counts for an application. When DuPont settled that lawsuit in 2004, the company agreed to finance a study of PFOAs health effects. C8 and other long-chain per-fluorinated chemicals are used in a myriad of household, industrial, and commercial products. Bilott helped companies comply with new environmental regulations established by the Superfund legislation and became an expert at the chemistry of pollutants, according to the New York Times Magazine. In 2005, the company agreed to fund studies on the health effects of C8. Even though the Tennant case had already settled, Bilott pushed on, building a larger case against DuPont on behalf of residents in a Parkersburg-area water district. Bilott tries to communicate to Tennant that he "isn't that kind of environmental lawyer," yet Tennant's exasperated resilience strikes a chord with the compassionate . We'll assume you're okay with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. The story started in Parkersburg, West Virginia, home to about 32,000 people and about a three-hour drive due east of Cincinnati. Thats very unusual. As unbelievable as it may sound, DuPont really did, in the 1960s, offer some of its staff Teflon-laced cigarettes as a human experiment into the potential side effects of the PFOA-produced nonstick material, as the movie recounts. Twitter sets this cookie to integrate and share features for social media and also store information about how the user uses the website, for tracking and targeting. In May 2015, a consortium of scientists across many disciplines released a document called the Madrid Statement. Somebodys not doing their duty, he said to the camera, to anyone who would listen. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. The Teflon Toxin, Part 2: Wilbur Tennant vs. DuPontNot Yet Rated. That's just some of the video footage Wilbur showed lawyer Robert Bilott, according to an excerpt from Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer's Twenty-Year Battle against DuPont. In 1970, a company that purchased 3Ms PFOS-based firefighting foam abruptly halted a demonstration after it killed fish in a nearby stream. Robert Bilott (born August 2, 1965) is an American environmental attorney from Cincinnati, Ohio.Bilott is known for the lawsuits against DuPont on behalf of plaintiffs injured by waste dumped in rural communities in West Virginia. All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. Then he wrote a 19-page letter, attached some of the industry documents and mailed the package to officials at the EPA and the Department of Justice. Its surface was matte with a crusty film that wrinkled against the shore. They would nuzzle him as he scratched their heads. Jim Tennant and his wife, Della, sold DuPont a 66-acre tract of land that became part of the Dry Run Landfill. It was small and ephemeral, fed by the rains that gathered in the creases of the ancient mountains that rumpled West Virginia and gave it those misty blue, almost-heaven vistas. This cookie is set by the provider Akamai Bot Manager. The June 23, 2000, letter listed something in the landfill that didnt appear in the other documents or in Tafts chemical dictionaries. In 2000, Bilott found notations on an internal DuPont document that referred to a chemical called perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), also known as C8, in Dry Run Creek. Earl pulled on white gloves and pried open the cows mouth, probing her gums and teeth. Bilott is currently suing several makers and users of these chemicals on behalf of all Americans with PFAS in their blood. He died of . The problem had to be Dry Run, he thought. In short, I was playing for the opposite team, Bilott recalled in his memoir about the lawsuit he ended up filing against DuPont and the explosive aftermath. . But friends knew the grandson of one of their neighbors had become an environmental lawyer in Cincinnati. Dark Waters tells a story that in many ways is still being written, and itwill likely take years for this latest lawsuit to be resolved. It does not store any personal data. The federal agency notes that it has made significant progress in addressing the public health concerns "from issuing groundwater cleanup guidance to proposing a positive regulatory determination for both PFOA and PFOS, EPA has made progress under every aspect of the Action Plan.". Rob Bilott's Exposure is a real-life whodunit, a page-turning courtroom drama, a David-and-Goliath story of one man against an industrial colossus and a shocking expos of America's utterly broken environmental policy.You should also take this book personally - because the "exposure" of the title is yours. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". Maps, Driving Directions & Local Area Information It had paid for the 150 acres of land his great-grandfather had bought and for the two-story, four-room farmhouse pieced together from trees felled in the woods, dragged across fields, and raised by hand. Call him, they suggested. wilbur tennant farm location . Wilbur Tennant shot this video on his property in the 1990's. Tennant was a farmer who sold part of his land in Parkersburg, West Virginia, to DuPont, for what the company had assured him would be a non-hazardous landfill. They concluded that 'the study was valid' and that 'the observed fetal eye defects were due to C8,' according to internal DuPont documents. GRAPHIC CONTENT: An excerpt from Wilbur Earl Tennant's video showing the mysterious wasting disease affecting his cows in the 1990s. Among the files, many mentions of the chemical PFOA, also known as C8, a slippery surfactant, that was first produced by DuPont in 1938, appeared. New York, NY 10004. Robert Bilott isn't done. The sp_landing is set by Spotify to implement audio content from Spotify on the website and also registers information on user interaction related to the audio content. June 14, 2022. Behind him, white-faced Herefords grazed in rolling meadows. Born: March 6, 1942 . Sometimes the cattle watered at a spring-fed bathtub trough at the farthest end of the field, but mostly they drank from Dry Run. The calf was engulfed in a black, humming mist. That things about . The herd that had once been nearly three hundred head had dwindled to just about half that. The cattle farmer stood at the edge of a creek that cut through a sun-dappled hollow. Despite internal debate, it declined to make the information public," the magazinenotes. wilbur tennant farm location. It dont do you any good to go to the DNR about it. Dark Waters is a 2019 American legal thriller film directed by Todd Haynes and written by Mario Correa and Matthew Michael Carnahan.The story dramatizes Robert Bilott's case against the chemical manufacturing corporation DuPont after they contaminated a town with unregulated chemicals. Did they think he would just sit by? LinkedIn sets this cookie from LinkedIn share buttons and ad tags to recognize browser ID. Dry spells shrank it to a necklace of pools that winked with silver minnows. These "forever chemicals" are an emerging global health and environmental issue. are linked to DuPont's landfilling of PFOA. He especially enjoyed hunting, working in the garden and around the farm with his grandson Josh and . In 1998, cattle farmer Wilbur Tennant of Parkersburg, West Virginia, contacted Bilott and claimed that his livestock was dying because the runoff from a DuPont landfill had contaminated a creek on . As luck would have it, the company bought 66 acres from one of their employees, Wilbur Tennant. People who didnt know him very well called him Wilbur, but friends and family called him Earl. Back in the '90s, Tennant noticed something strange was happening to his cows. DuPont's scientists understood that the landfill drained into the Tennants' remaining property, and they tested the water in Dry Run Creek. Yet to this day the companies deny responsibility, Bilott said in an interview. Listen to an interview with Bilott about the chemical lawsuits on Science Friday. Photo illustration by Slate. ATSDR/CDC also notes that more studies need to be done in the area of health effects, particularly on shorter-chain substances. Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. Her calf, black and white, lay dead on its side in a circle of matted grass. When the Grahams heard in 1998 that Wilbur Tennant was looking for legal help, they remembered Bilott, White's grandson, who had grown up to become an environmental . Anne Hathaway as Sarah Bilott and the real-life Sarah Bilott. In the 1990s Wilbur began to notice weird deformities in his cows and some of them were even dying. Forever chemicals found in drinking water throughout Illinois: Search the database >>>. Bilott, whose story was chronicled in an engrossing and detailed 2016 New York Times story by Nathaniel Rich, goes from a 1999 lawsuit on behalf of Tennant to a 2001 class action involving several . In 1999, a farm farmily sued DuPont for the death of their cattle and the ill health of exposed family and farm workers. Bilott did marry a fellow lawyer, Sarah Barlage, who left her career defending corporations against workers compensation claims to raise their sons. Tennants Farm Pond Dam, Wood County, West Virginia. One tooth had an abscess so large he reckoned he could stick an ice pick clear under it. LinkedIn sets this cookie for LinkedIn Ads ID syncing. GRAPHIC CONTENT: An excerpt from Wilbur Earl Tennant's video showing the mysterious wasting disease affecting his cows in the 1990s. The local employer wanted to buy some of their property for a landfill for its Washington Works plant nearby, where it produces, among other things, Teflon, which contains the chemical C8. "Though PFOA was not classified by the government as a hazardous substance, 3M sent DuPont recommendations on how to dispose of it. Deer, birds, fish and other wildlife were turning up dead in and around Dry Run. It looked, at most, a few days old. For decades it had been the backbone of 3Ms Scotchgard brand of stain-resistant products. This cookie is used for storing country code selected from country selector. The Taft offices are in Cincinnati, Ohio. Black smoke curled into the daylight. Bilott created a timeline that showed what DuPont and 3M knew about the chemicals. The pattern element in the name contains the unique identity number of the account or website it relates to. This cookie, set by YouTube, registers a unique ID to store data on what videos from YouTube the user has seen. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. In real life as in the film, Bilotts earliest professional experiences after law school were working on behalf of chemical companies for his employer, Taft Stettinius & Hollister, providing the firms corporate clients with guidance on how best to comply with the so-called Superfund law passed by Congress in 1980 to regulate sites tainted with hazardous substances. Shes poor as a whippoorwill. Whatever had killed this cow appeared to Earl to have eaten her from the inside out. And, based on Centers for Disease Control data, PFAS chemicals were found the blood of 98 percent of people studied. A group of citizens in West Virginia challenges a powerful corporation to be more environmentally responsible. See how thats all wallered down? The TiPMix cookie is set by Azure to determine which web server the users must be directed to.
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