By the 90s, Bilott discovered, DuPont understood that PFOA caused cancerous testicular, pancreatic and liver tumors in lab animals. He was 7 years old. Rob Bilott on land owned by the Tennants near Parkersburg, W.Va.CreditBryan Schutmaat for The New York Times. A federal court denied it. He asked DuPont to share all documentation related to the substance; DuPont refused. He took depositions from plant employees, perused public records and organized huge amounts of historical data. We are confident that these alternative chemistries can be used safely they are well characterized, and the data has been used to register them with environmental agencies around the world., Every year Rob Bilott writes a letter to the E.P.A. The blood run out of their noses and out their mouths. Hes extremely stubborn. There was a reason why I was interested in helping out the Tennants, he said after a pause. He worked long hours and knew few people in Cincinnati. What the hell is that stuff doing in your water? He sent Kiger information about the Tennant lawsuit. The camera zooms in, revealing a mound of soapy froth. (Darlene asked that he not be named so that he wouldnt be involved in the local politics around the case.) Rob Bilott was a corporate defense attorney for eight years. The property would have been even larger had his brother Jim and Jims wife, Della, not sold 66 acres in the early 80s to DuPont. But he showed signs of being under enormous stress., In 2010, Bilott began suffering strange attacks: His vision would blur, he couldnt put on his socks, his arms felt numb. He believed that the DuPont chemical company, which until recently operated a site in Parkersburg that is more than 35 times the size of the Pentagon, was responsible. When it concludes, there will be 3,533 cases left to try. Not only had Taft recouped its losses, but DuPont was providing clean water to the communities named in the suit. It was a common occurrence at Washington Works. Among those who called was Jim Tennant. But his heels were so dug in. DuPont plans to appeal. Darlenes first husband had been a chemist in DuPonts PFOA lab. Ive taken two dead deer and two dead cattle off this ripple, Tennant says in voice-over. DuPont had for decades been actively trying to conceal their actions. You cant ignore the economic realities of the ways that business is run and the way clients think.
(In a statement, DuPont claimed that it did volunteer health information about PFOA to the E.P.A. When asked for evidence, it forwarded two letters written to West Virginian government agencies from 1982 and 1992, both of which cited internal studies that called into question links between PFOA exposure and human health problems.). The culprit, instead, was poor husbandry: poor nutrition, inadequate veterinary care and lack of fly control. In other words, the Tennants didnt know how to raise cattle; if the cows were dying, it was their own fault. They struck suddenly, without warning, and their effects lasted days. would commission a study of the property, conducted by three veterinarians chosen by DuPont and three chosen by the E.P.A. I started seeing a story, Bilott said. Jim and Della did not want to sell, but Jim had been in poor health for years, mysterious ailments that doctors couldnt diagnose, and they needed the money. I wouldnt be surprised if he got a raise.. In the 1970s, DuPont discovered that there were high concentrations of PFOA in the blood of factory workers at Washington Works. Surprising his professors, he chose to attend law school at Ohio State, where his favorite course was environmental law. As an associate, Bilott was asked to determine which companies contributed which toxins and hazardous wastes in what quantities to which sites. that mentioned a substance at the landfill with a cryptic name: PFOA. In all his years working with chemical companies, Bilott had never heard of PFOA. A year earlier, West Virginia had become one of the first states to recognize what is called, in tort law, a medical-monitoring claim. The doctors asked whether he was under heightened stress at work. When would they get relief?
But the crucial discovery for the Tennant case was this: By the late 1980s, as DuPont became increasingly concerned about the health effects of PFOA waste, it decided it needed to find a landfill for the toxic sludge dumped on company property. Bilott watched the video and looked at photographs for several hours. That was another understatement. But in the back of our minds, we knew that there are cases that go on forever., His colleagues on the case detected a change in Bilott. Rob had a young family, kids growing up, and he was under pressure from his firm. For this reason, Bilott filed the class-action suit in August 2001 in state court, even though four of the six affected water districts lay across the Ohio border. Lets put it that way.. He didnt complain. They hauled cardboard boxes containing videotapes, photographs and documents into the firms glassed-in reception area on the 18th floor, where they sat in gray midcentury-modern couches beneath an oil portrait of one of Tafts founders. DuPont worked for more than a decade, with oversight from regulators, to introduce its alternatives. The farmer was angry and spoke in a heavy Appalachian accent. It did not appear on any list of regulated materials, nor could he find it in Tafts in-house library. The visit to the Grahams farm was one of his happiest childhood memories. can test chemicals only when it has been provided evidence of harm. Two: If I do, is it harmful? I knew nobody who had ever worked at a firm, nobody who knew anything about it. These include many products that are stain-resistant, waterproof or nonstick., When asked about the Madrid Statement, Dan Turner, DuPonts head of global media relations, wrote in an email: DuPont does not believe the Madrid Statement reflects a true consideration of the available data on alternatives to long-chain perfluorochemicals, such as PFOA.
claimed that it would announce a lifetime health advisory level for PFOA by early 2016.. I think they were thinking, This guy did O.K., Deitzler says. It would fund a scientific study to determine whether there was a probable link a term that delicately avoided any declaration of causation between PFOA and any diseases. It was the kind of stuff you always heard about happening but you never thought youd see written down.. But when DuPont learned that Bilott was preparing a new lawsuit, it announced that it would re-evaluate that figure. We see a situation, Joe Kiger says, that has gone from Washington Works, to statewide, to the United States, and now its everywhere, its global. It seemed like it would have real-world impact, he said. Especially since, for all those years, DuPont had been saying that we were lying, trying to scare and mislead people. One: Do I have C8 in my blood? If the plaintiff wins, the defendant is required to fund regular medical tests. As in the Tennant case, DuPont formed a team composed of its own scientists and scientists from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection. Bilott sent his entire case file to the E.P.A. When the Grahams heard in 1998 that Wilbur Tennant was looking for legal help, they remembered Bilott, Whites grandson, who had grown up to become an environmental lawyer. The drinking water in Parkersburg itself, whose water district was not included in the original class-action suit and has failed to compel DuPont to pay for a filtration system, is currently tainted with high levels of PFOA. Many of his clients, including Thiokol and Bee Chemical, disposed of hazardous waste long before the practice became so tightly regulated. Bilott spent the weekend riding horses, milking cows and watching Secretariat win the Triple Crown on TV. PFOA was only one of more than 60,000 synthetic chemicals that companies produced and released into the world without regulatory oversight. Discover more about the small businesses partnering with Amazon and Amazons commitment to empowering them. It agreed to install filtration plants in the six affected water districts if they wanted them and pay a cash award of $70 million. It was 972 pages long, including 136 attached exhibits. The company wanted to use the plot for a landfill for waste from its factory near Parkersburg, called Washington Works, where Jim was employed as a laborer. She was a lawyer, too, at another downtown Cincinnati firm, where she defended corporations against workers-compensation claims. Extensive data has been developed, demonstrating that these alternatives are much more rapidly eliminated from the body than PFOA, and have improved health safety profiles. In 1973 she brought him to the cattle farm belonging to the Tennants neighbors, the Grahams, with whom White was friendly. The obvious next step was to file a class-action lawsuit against DuPont on behalf of everyone whose water was tainted by PFOA. Meanwhile the E.P.A., drawing from Bilotts research, began its own investigation into the toxicity of PFOA. I perceived that there were some What the hell are you doing? responses.. They married in 1996. It appeared on no federal or state list of contaminants. Wilbur Tennant explained that he and his four siblings had run the cattle farm since their father abandoned them as children.
DuPont declined to disclose this finding. But tests revealed that six districts, as well as dozens of private wells, were tainted with levels of PFOA higher than DuPonts own internal safety standard. His doctors didnt know what was happening. He became the consummate insider. The note explained that an unregulated chemical named PFOA had been detected in the drinking water in low concentrations, but that it was not a health risk. The legal fees had granted him a reprieve, but as the years passed without resolution, and Bilott continued to spend the firms money and was unable to attract new clients, he found himself in an awkward position. Tennant had tried to seek help locally, he said, but DuPont just about owned the entire town. This point was made to Terp by Bernard Reilly, DuPonts in-house lawyer, according to accounts from Bilotts plaintiffs-lawyer colleagues; they say Reilly called to demand that Bilott back off the case. The chemical site near Parkersburg, W.Va., source of the waste at the center of the DuPont class-action lawsuit. has restricted only five chemicals, out of tens of thousands on the market, in the last 40 years. He had been spurned not only by Parkersburgs lawyers but also by its politicians, journalists, doctors and veterinarians.
One laboratory study suggested possible DNA damage from PFOA exposure, and a study of workers linked exposure with prostate cancer. Thats what we were supposed to do. For three years, Bilott had worked for nothing, costing his firm a fortune. With the trial looming, Bilott stumbled upon a letter DuPont had sent to the E.P.A. But they were so afraid that they were willing to roll the dice.. Top subscription boxes right to your door, 1996-2022, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. At the sight of a Tennant they would amble over, nuzzle and let themselves be milked. I was shocked, he said. How could Bilott claim that 70,000 people had been poisoned if the government didnt recognize PFOA as a toxin if PFOA, legally speaking, was no different than water itself?
In 1984, DuPont became aware that dust vented from factory chimneys settled well beyond the property line and, more disturbing, that PFOA was present in the local water supply. The same year, DuPont found that water in one local district contained PFOA levels at three times that figure. The whole business might have ended right there. By 1990, DuPont had dumped 7,100 tons of PFOA sludge into Dry Run Landfill. ; Colorado Springs; and Nassau County on Long Island are among those whose water has a higher concentration of fluorochemicals than that in some of the districts included in Rob Bilotts class-action suit. After viewing product detail pages, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. DuPont, which is currently negotiating a merger with Dow Chemical, last year severed its chemical businesses: They have been spun off into a new corporation called Chemours. The doctors ultimately hit upon an effective medication. Bilott spent the next few months on the floor of his office, poring over the documents and arranging them in chronological order. It might establish a precedent for suing corporations over unregulated substances and imperil Tafts bottom line.
It was a brief conversation. Bilott joined the two friends for lunch. By 2003 the average concentration of PFOA in the blood of an adult American was four to five parts per billion. Most residents appear not to know this. After 3M shared this information, DuPont tested the children of pregnant employees in their Teflon division. Lifelong friends ignored the Tennants on the streets of Parkersburg and walked out of restaurants when they entered. In response to Bilotts most recent letter, the E.P.A. When people called his secretary, she explained that he was in the office but had not been able to reach the phone in time, because he was trapped on all sides by boxes. The Tennant case put Taft in a highly unusual position. I suppose it wasnt so amazing to my fellow counsel in West Virginia who know the system there. It was assured that the panel would return convincing results. Until the scientific study came back with its results, class members were forbidden from filing personal-injury suits against DuPont. They did not understand, however, that Bilott was not the right kind of environmental lawyer. The E.P.A. He did not have a typical Taft rsum. Now when they saw the farmers, they charged. His specialty was defending chemical companies. If no correlation was found between PFOA and illness, Bilotts clients would be barred under the terms of the agreement from filing any personal-injury cases. Still, Kiger might have forgotten about it had his wife, Darlene, not already spent much of her adulthood thinking about PFOA. Terps team at Taft was a leader in the field. The way that transpired was just amazing to me, Bilott says. Every day that went by with no movement gave him more drive to see it through. In September 2004, DuPont decided to settle the class-action suit. What was it doing to the tens of thousands of people in the areas around Parkersburg who drank it daily from their taps? One hundred fifty-three of these animals Ive lost on this farm, Wilbur says later in the video. One of them was placed in charge of the entire agency. PFOAs peculiar chemical structure made it uncannily resistant to degradation. The footage, shot on a camcorder, was grainy and intercut with static. His taking on the Tennant case, Winter says, given the type of practice Taft had, I found to be inconceivable.. (Terp confirms that Reilly called him but will not disclose the content of the call; Bilott and Reilly decline to speak about it, citing continuing litigation.) Bilott didnt see it that way. DuPont just quietly switches over to the next substance. Every veterinarian that Ive called in Parkersburg, they will not return my phone calls or they dont want to get involved. All told, 70,000 people were drinking poisoned water. We were able to deliver what we had promised to these folks seven years earlier. There are 60,000 unregulated chemicals out there right now. The companys internal health studies, as damning as they were, were limited to factory employees. Taft continued to pay consultants to interpret the new findings and relay them to the epidemiologists. and the West Virginia D.E.P., urging the regulation of PFOA in drinking water. He hoped to become a city manager. Discussions were held at DuPonts corporate headquarters to discuss switching to the new compound. Then a fourth, a fifth, a sixth. Through the air, through your diet, through your use of nonstick cookware, through your umbilical cord. It was a great opportunity to use my background for people who really needed it.. I couldnt blame the Tennants for getting angry.. The same creek flowed down to a pasture where the Tennants grazed their cows. Im a firm believer that our work on the plaintiffs side makes us better defense lawyers.. The prospect of taking on DuPont did cause us pause, Terp concedes. I just tried to get the best job I could. In December 2011, after seven years, the scientists began to release their findings: there was a probable link between PFOA and kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, pre-eclampsia and ulcerative colitis. In 1981, 3M which continued to serve as the supplier of PFOA to DuPont and other corporations found that ingestion of the substance caused birth defects in rats. It arrived on Halloween day, enclosed in the monthly water bill. It is in your parents blood, your childrens blood, your lovers blood. In these cases, should a plaintiff later become ill, he or she can sue retroactively for damages. Its infuriating., As part of its agreement with the E.P.A., DuPont ceased production and use of PFOA in 2013. But it was not a terribly difficult decision for us. Bilott represented 70,000 people who had been drinking PFOA-laced drinking water for decades. This may have ramifications well beyond Bartletts case: Hers is one of five bellwether cases that will be tried over the course of this year. Then Wilbur Tennant came along. Ten years earlier, Congress passed the legislation known as Superfund, which financed the emergency cleanup of hazardous-waste dumps. He had the technical and regulatory expertise, as he had proved in the Tennant case. DuPont was nothing like the corporations he had represented at Taft in the Superfund cases. He demanded immediate action to regulate PFOA and provide clean water to those living near the factory. At the time, it was the largest civil administrative penalty the E.P.A. Nothing different than normal, Bilott told them. It takes in the surrounding forest, the white ash trees shedding their leaves and the rippling, shallow water, before pausing on what appears to be a snowbank at an elbow in the creek. Each organ is sliced open, and Wilbur points out unusual discolorations some dark, some green and textures. He had not attended college or law school in the Ivy League. Bilott had what he needed. Darlene says the men at the plant called it Teflon flu., In 1976, after Darlene gave birth to their second child, her husband told her that he was not allowed to bring his work clothes home anymore. The Environmental Working Group has found manufactured fluorochemicals present in 94 water districts across 27 states (see sidebar beginning on Page 38). Sometimes her husband came home from work sick fever, nausea, diarrhea, vomiting after working in one of the PFOA storage tanks. But if you are a sentient being reading this article in 2016, you already have PFOA in your blood. This was a completely different scenario. Thats 14 years of this stuff continuing to be used, continuing to be in the drinking water all over the country. The fine represented less than 2 percent of the profits earned by DuPont on PFOA that year.
It was to be incinerated or sent to chemical-waste facilities. If such links existed, DuPont would pay for medical monitoring of the affected group in perpetuity. The five other companies in the world that produce PFOA are also phasing out production. Fortunately they had recently bought 66 acres from a low-level employee at the Washington Works facility that would do perfectly. DuPont decided against it. Three: If its harmful, what are the effects? Bilott and his colleagues realized they could answer all three questions, if only they could test their clients. My first impression was that he was not like other guys, she says. Then he took on an environmental suit that would upend his entire career and expose a brazen, decades-long history of chemical pollution. Bilott waited. But Bilott faced a vexing legal problem. In 2000, 3M ceased production of PFOA. It just felt like the right thing to do, he says today. I asked myself, what does DuPont have to do with our drinking water?. Despite internal debate, it declined to make the information public. Nothing it hadnt been for years.. We were getting frustrated, Bilott said. Like the other 200 lawyers at Taft, a firm founded in 1885 and tied historically to the family of President William Howard Taft, Bilott worked almost exclusively for large corporate clients. We have no idea what were taking., Bilott doesnt regret fighting DuPont for the last 16 years, nor for letting PFOA consume his career.
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He was doing for the Tennants what he would have done for any of his corporate clients pulling permits, studying land deeds and requesting from DuPont all documentation related to Dry Run Landfill but he could find no evidence that explained what was happening to the cattle. Rob Bilott on land owned by the Tennants near Parkersburg, W.Va. Jim Tennant and his wife, Della, sold DuPont a 66-acre tract of land that became part of the Dry Run Landfill. Bilott was proud of the work he did. Still the panel was quiet. Rob is a private person. Bilott spent the following months drafting a public brief against DuPont. Patches of its hair are missing, and its back is humped a result, Wilbur speculates, of a kidney malfunction. White had lived in Vienna, a northern suburb of Parkersburg, and as a child, Bilott often visited her in the summers. But now Taft received a windfall: Bilott and his team of West Virginian plaintiff lawyers received $21.7 million in fees from the settlement. Over the decades they steadily acquired land and cattle, until 200 cows roamed more than 600 hilly acres. Where scientists have tested for the presence of PFOA in the world, they have found it. DuPont, rather than use an alternative compound, built a new factory in Fayetteville, N.C., to manufacture the substance for its own use. I felt a connection to those folks., The connection was not obvious at their first meeting. In the opening shot the camera pans across the creek. Bilott never represented a corporate client again. This is bad, Bilott said to himself. Tennant burly and nearly six feet tall, wearing jeans, a plaid flannel shirt and a baseball cap did not resemble a typical Taft client.
The Lawyer Who Became DuPonts Worst Nightmare, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-became-duponts-worst-nightmare.html. The chemistry expert that he had retained for the case did, however, vaguely recall an article in a trade journal about a similar-sounding compound: PFOS, a soaplike agent used by the technology conglomerate 3M in the fabrication of Scotchgard. In all ways but one, Bilott himself was in the ideal position to file such a suit. DuPont did not make this information public. The team of epidemiologists was flooded with medical data, and there was nothing DuPont could do to stop it. He didnt show up at our offices looking like a bank vice president, says Thomas Terp, a partner who was Bilotts supervisor. Darlene would remember this six years later when, at 36, she had to have an emergency hysterectomy and again eight years later, when she had a second surgery.
When asked about the safety of the new chemicals, Chemours replied in a statement: A significant body of data demonstrates that these alternative chemistries can be used safely., Last May, 200 scientists from a variety of disciplines signed the Madrid Statement, which expresses concern about the production of all fluorochemicals, or PFASs, including those that have replaced PFOA. This means that local water districts are under no obligation to tell customers whether PFOA is in their water. We were incurring a lot of expenses, Bilott says. About nine months earlier, he received a peculiar note from the Lubeck water district.
Kiger had underlined statements that he found particularly baffling, like: DuPont reports that it has toxicological and epidemiological data to support confidence that exposure guidelines established by DuPont are protective of human health. The term support confidence seemed bizarre, as did protective of human health, not to mention the claim that DuPonts own data supported its confidence in its own guidelines. But Bilott was not satisfied. When you worked at DuPont in this town, Darlene says today, you could have everything you wanted. DuPont paid for his education, it secured him a mortgage and it paid him a generous salary. The main part of his job, as he understood it, was to help clients comply with the new regulations. I had the impression that it was extremely tough on him, Winter says. In fact, it was another term of the settlement that DuPont would fund the research without limitation.
is an extraordinary remedy. I dont think I had any clue of what that involved.. Dont care what other people say. PFOA and its replacements are suspected to belong to a large class of artificial compounds called endocrine-disrupting chemicals; these compounds, which include chemicals used in the production of pesticides, plastics and gasoline, interfere with human reproduction and metabolism and cause cancer, thyroid problems and nervous-system disorders. DuPont freaked out when they realized that this guy was onto them, says Ned McWilliams, a young trial lawyer who later joined Bilotts legal team. The new company has replaced PFOA with similar fluorine-based compounds designed to biodegrade more quickly the alternative considered and then discarded by DuPont more than 20 years ago. I dont even like the looks of them, he says. On the court papers Kiger kept seeing the same name: Robert Bilott, of Taft Stettinius & Hollister, in Cincinnati.
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