By the 90s, Bilott discovered, DuPont understood that PFOA caused cancerous testicular, pancreatic and liver tumors in lab animals. It announced a new threshold: 150 parts per billion. I learned how these companies work, how the laws work, how you defend these claims, he said. 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. Several times, Bilott had even worked on cases with DuPont lawyers. Nevertheless, as a favor to his grandmother, he agreed to meet the farmer. He hoped to become a city manager. By 2003 the average concentration of PFOA in the blood of an adult American was four to five parts per billion. DuPont reacted quickly, requesting a gag order to block Bilott from providing the information he had discovered in the Tennant case to the government. When it concludes, there will be 3,533 cases left to try. There was a gap in the data, Bilott says. The law firm was in the business of representing chemical corporations, not suing them. Bilott joined the two friends for lunch. You could realize how bad that looks. In 2000, 3M ceased production of PFOA. It appeared on no federal or state list of contaminants. But there was nothing. I couldnt blame the Tennants for getting angry.. This case, Winter says, regardless of how hugely successful it ends up, will never in the Taft firms mind replace what theyve lost in the way of legal business over the years., The longer it took for the science panel to conduct its research, the more expensive the case became. can test chemicals only when it has been provided evidence of harm. Images jumped and repeated. About a week after his phone call, Tennant drove from Parkersburg with his wife to Tafts headquarters in downtown Cincinnati. This is what they expect a mans cows to drink on his own property, Wilbur says. Over the decades they steadily acquired land and cattle, until 200 cows roamed more than 600 hilly acres. For many years, Winter was a partner at Spilman, Thomas & Battle one of the firms that represented DuPont in West Virginia though he had left Spilman to start a practice specializing in personal-injury cases. But over the decades that followed, DuPont pumped hundreds of thousands of pounds of PFOA powder through the outfall pipes of the Parkersburg facility into the Ohio River. His colleagues call it Robs Famous Letter. We have confirmed that the chemicals and pollutants released into the environment by DuPont at its Dry Run Landfill and other nearby DuPont-owned facilities may pose an imminent and substantial threat to health or the environment, Bilott wrote. Nothing different than normal, Bilott told them. Two years passed without any findings. It was a great opportunity to use my background for people who really needed it.. Weve taken the cap off something here. In the 1970s, DuPont discovered that there were high concentrations of PFOA in the blood of factory workers at Washington Works. Dozens of boxes containing thousands of unorganized documents began to arrive at Tafts headquarters: private internal correspondence, medical and health reports and confidential studies conducted by DuPont scientists. It was a common occurrence at Washington Works. in leadership positions. But West Virginia endorsed the new standard. Despite internal debate, it declined to make the information public. He didnt show up at our offices looking like a bank vice president, says Thomas Terp, a partner who was Bilotts supervisor. I asked myself, what does DuPont have to do with our drinking water?. How could the class prove it had been harmed by PFOA when the health effects were largely unknown? A year later, they replicated these results in studies with dogs. This means that local water districts are under no obligation to tell customers whether PFOA is in their water. They must have known that there was a small chance of winning. The closest he came to elaborating was after being asked whether, having set out to make a difference in the world, he had any misgivings about the path his career had taken. The blood run out of their noses and out their mouths. Hes extremely stubborn. It had the quality of a horror movie. Of seven births, two had eye defects. The same creek flowed down to a pasture where the Tennants grazed their cows. Still the panel was quiet. Then a fourth, a fifth, a sixth. The team of epidemiologists was flooded with medical data, and there was nothing DuPont could do to stop it. Bilott was proud of the work he did. After 3M shared this information, DuPont tested the children of pregnant employees in their Teflon division. This arrangement, which largely allows chemical companies to regulate themselves, is the reason that the E.P.A. 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. I perceived that there were some What the hell are you doing? responses.. DuPonts scientists understood that the landfill drained into the Tennants remaining property, and they tested the water in Dry Run Creek. Rob is a private person. Bilott decided right away to take the Tennant case. 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. (Darlene asked that he not be named so that he wouldnt be involved in the local politics around the case.) The Tennants settled. 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. No longer. set a provisional limit of 0.4 parts per billion for short-term exposure, but has never finalized that figure. The gap allowed DuPont to claim that it had done nothing wrong. A year earlier, West Virginia had become one of the first states to recognize what is called, in tort law, a medical-monitoring claim. Many of his friends there were idealistic, progressive ideological misfits in Reagans America. This cows done a lot of suffering, he would say, as a blinking eye filled the screen. One: Do I have C8 in my blood? Nothing it hadnt been for years.. Bilott never represented a corporate client again. It was, he says again, the right thing to do. Bilott might have had the practiced look of a corporate lawyer soft-spoken, milk-complected, conservatively attired but the job had not come naturally to him. Price and other details may vary based on product size and color. It just felt like the right thing to do, he says today. The pressure on Bilott at Taft had built since he initiated the class-action suit in 2001. Bilott waited. In response, DuPonts in-house lawyer, Bernard Reilly, informed him that DuPont and the E.P.A. Rob Bilott was a corporate defense attorney for eight years. The five other companies in the world that produce PFOA are also phasing out production. He might have hung up had Tennant not blurted out the name of Bilotts grandmother, Alma Holland White. But his heels were so dug in. 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. They did not tell the E.P.A. DuPont, he said, had found out that PFOA was causing health problems for women and birth defects in children. After viewing product detail pages, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. As a junior, he received a recruitment letter from a tiny liberal-arts school in Sarasota called the New College of Florida, which graded pass/fail and allowed students to design their own curriculums. But its just not DuPont. 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. But Bilott faced a vexing legal problem. If such links existed, DuPont would pay for medical monitoring of the affected group in perpetuity. We were getting frustrated, Bilott said. About nine months earlier, he received a peculiar note from the Lubeck water district. White had lived in Vienna, a northern suburb of Parkersburg, and as a child, Bilott often visited her in the summers. In fact, it was another term of the settlement that DuPont would fund the research without limitation. But it was not a terribly difficult decision for us. 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. If the scientific panel found no link with diseases, wed have to eat it all., Clients called Bilott to say that they had received diagnoses of cancer or that a family member had died. Among those who called was Jim Tennant. 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. Bilott sought help with the Tennant case from a West Virginia lawyer named Larry Winter. Residents of Issaquah, Wash.; Wilmington, Del. 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. In response to Bilotts most recent letter, the E.P.A. What did the insides of their heads look like? As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. 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 was nothing like the corporations he had represented at Taft in the Superfund cases. Within two years, three lawyers regularly used by DuPont were hired by the state D.E.P. Were their internal organs green? I knew nobody who had ever worked at a firm, nobody who knew anything about it. Though PFOA was not classified by the government as a hazardous substance, 3M sent DuPont recommendations on how to dispose of it. Surprising his professors, he chose to attend law school at Ohio State, where his favorite course was environmental law. 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Discussions were held at DuPonts corporate headquarters to discuss switching to the new compound. Among the Madrid scientists recommendations: Enact legislation to require only essential uses of PFASs and Whenever possible, avoid products containing, or manufactured using, PFASs. It was to be incinerated or sent to chemical-waste facilities. They had always been like pets to the Tennants. The scientists designed 12 studies, including one that, using sophisticated environmental modeling technology, determined exactly how much PFOA each individual class member had ingested. It was one thing to pursue a sentimental case on behalf of a few West Virginia cattle farmers and even write a public letter to the E.P.A. The company appeared not to realize what it had handed over. Close-ups follow of the calfs blackened teeth (They say thats due to high concentrations of fluoride in the water that they drink), its liver, heart, stomachs, kidneys and gall bladder. When the strange letter from the water district arrived, Darlene says, I kept thinking back to his clothing, to my hysterectomy. In 1961, DuPont researchers found that the chemical could increase the size of the liver in rats and rabbits. Bilott, for his part, is reluctant to discuss his motivations for taking the case. Many of his clients, including Thiokol and Bee Chemical, disposed of hazardous waste long before the practice became so tightly regulated. Another blast of static is followed by a close-up of a dead black calf lying in the snow, its eye a brilliant, chemical blue. Fortunately they had recently bought 66 acres from a low-level employee at the Washington Works facility that would do perfectly. DuPont declined to disclose this finding. Tennant always zoomed in on his cows eyes. The scientists, freed from the restraints of academic budgets and grants, had hit the epidemiological jackpot: an entire populations personal data and infinite resources available to study them. 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. 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. There was a threat that the firm would suffer financially. When I asked Thomas Terp about Tafts reaction to the Famous Letter, he replied, not quite convincingly, that he didnt recall one. There was a reason why I was interested in helping out the Tennants, he said after a pause. This did not sit well with the Tennants, who began to suffer the consequences of antagonizing Parkersburgs main employer. PFOA was only one of more than 60,000 synthetic chemicals that companies produced and released into the world without regulatory oversight. 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Dont take anything at face value. 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. The main part of his job, as he understood it, was to help clients comply with the new regulations. Bilott had what he needed. There was scant information available about its impact on large populations. In the opening shot the camera pans across the creek. Im not stupid, and the people around me arent stupid, he said. at the time. 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. Two: If I do, is it harmful? I just tried to get the best job I could. I think they were thinking, This guy did O.K., Deitzler says. The sound accelerated and slowed down. This advisory level, if indeed announced, might be a source of comfort to future generations. Im going to start at this head., The video cuts to a calfs bisected head. It was stressful, Bilott says, not to know what the heck was going on.. This is bad, Bilott said to himself. But his father, who late in life enrolled in law school, encouraged Bilott to do the same. With the Famous Letter, Bilott crossed a line. Class members were concerned about three things, Winter says. This was a completely different scenario. As an associate, Bilott was asked to determine which companies contributed which toxins and hazardous wastes in what quantities to which sites. He felt secure enough at Taft for Barlage to quit her job and raise their children full-time. The letter led, four years later, in 2005, to DuPonts reaching a $16.5 million settlement with the E.P.A., which had accused the company of concealing its knowledge of PFOAs toxicity and presence in the environment in violation of the Toxic Substances Control Act. The best metric Bilott had to judge a safe exposure level was DuPonts own internal limit of one part per billion. Since they dont want to get involved, Ill have to dissect this thing myself. We were able to deliver what we had promised to these folks seven years earlier. Bilott was tormented by the thought that we still hadnt been able to hold this company responsible for what they did in time for those people to see it., Taft did not waver in its support of the case, but the strain began to show. It arrived on Halloween day, enclosed in the monthly water bill. They married in 1996. It was 972 pages long, including 136 attached exhibits. 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. 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 doctors asked whether he was under heightened stress at work. It was assured that the panel would return convincing results. It was something you could do to make a difference. When, after graduation, Taft made him an offer, his mentors and friends from New College were aghast. He was exasperated that it was lasting a long time. What if the settlement money could be used to test them? In 1973 she brought him to the cattle farm belonging to the Tennants neighbors, the Grahams, with whom White was friendly. There are 60,000 unregulated chemicals out there right now. Ive taken two dead deer and two dead cattle off this ripple, Tennant says in voice-over. In 2002, the agency released its initial findings: PFOA might pose human health risks not only to those drinking tainted water, but also to the general public anyone, for instance, who cooked with Teflon pans. In August 2000, Bilott called DuPonts lawyer, Bernard Reilly, and explained that he knew what was going on. And in the meantime, they fight everyone who has been injured by it.. DuPonts own instructions specified that it was not to be flushed into surface water or sewers. The way that transpired was just amazing to me, Bilott says. I learned to question everything you read, he said. There were more than 110,000 pages in all, some half a century old. The companys internal health studies, as damning as they were, were limited to factory employees. The farmer, Wilbur Tennant of Parkersburg, W.Va., said that his cows were dying left and right. The fine represented less than 2 percent of the profits earned by DuPont on PFOA that year. It was a brief conversation. In the last five years, however, a new wave of endocrinology research has found that even extremely low doses of such chemicals can create significant health problems. In 1991, DuPont scientists determined an internal safety limit for PFOA concentration in drinking water: one part per billion. He saw cows with stringy tails, malformed hooves, giant lesions protruding from their hides and red, receded eyes; cows suffering constant diarrhea, slobbering white slime the consistency of toothpaste, staggering bowlegged like drunks. To think that youve negotiated in good faith a deal that everybody has abided by and worked on for seven years, you reach a point where certain things were to be resolved but then remain contested, he says. Where scientists have tested for the presence of PFOA in the world, they have found it. Rob Bilott on land owned by the Tennants near Parkersburg, W.Va.CreditBryan Schutmaat for The New York Times. Bilott spent the weekend riding horses, milking cows and watching Secretariat win the Triple Crown on TV. Not long after the sale, Wilbur told Bilott, the cattle began to act deranged. I liked that philosophy. Bilott studied political science and wrote his thesis about the rise and fall of Dayton. I suppose it wasnt so amazing to my fellow counsel in West Virginia who know the system there. A reasonable expectation, at this point, was that the lawyers would move on. They wanted to know why it was taking so long. Bilott hunted through his files for other references to PFOA, which he learned was short for perfluorooctanoic acid. Our partners, he said, are proud of the work that he has done., Bilott, however, worried that corporations doing business with Taft might see things differently. Before that letter, corporations could rely upon the public misperception that if a chemical was dangerous, it was regulated. Under the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, the E.P.A. On March 6, 2001, he sent the letter to the director of every relevant regulatory authority, including Christie Whitman, administrator of the E.P.A., and the United States attorney general, John Ashcroft. Every veterinarian that Ive called in Parkersburg, they will not return my phone calls or they dont want to get involved. Hes much quieter. would commission a study of the property, conducted by three veterinarians chosen by DuPont and three chosen by the E.P.A. By 1990, DuPont had dumped 7,100 tons of PFOA sludge into Dry Run Landfill. DuPont had for decades been actively trying to conceal their actions. In any other class action youve ever read about, Deitzler says, you get your 10 bucks in the mail, the lawyers get paid and the lawsuit goes away. Theyre trying to cover this stuff up. 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. Wilbur Tennant explained that he and his four siblings had run the cattle farm since their father abandoned them as children. DuPont plans to appeal. Good God. Anyone can read what you share. At the rate of four trials a year, DuPont would continue to fight PFOA cases until the year 2890. office finally took his call. 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 these cases, should a plaintiff later become ill, he or she can sue retroactively for damages. In 2009, the E.P.A. His father was a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, and Bilott spent most of his childhood moving among air bases near Albany; Flint, Mich.; Newport Beach, Calif.; and Wiesbaden, West Germany. Robs letter lifted the curtain on a whole new theater, says Harry Deitzler, a plaintiffs lawyer in West Virginia who works with Bilott. At the sight of a Tennant they would amble over, nuzzle and let themselves be milked. is an extraordinary remedy. Bilott could not believe the scale of incriminating material that DuPont had sent him. When would they get relief? Wilbur, who had cancer, had died of a heart attack. That was another understatement. DuPont at last hastened to develop an alternative to PFOA. After that, DuPont may choose to settle with every afflicted class member, using the outcome of the bellwether cases to determine settlement awards. He did not represent plaintiffs or private citizens. What was it doing to the tens of thousands of people in the areas around Parkersburg who drank it daily from their taps? At the time, it was the largest civil administrative penalty the E.P.A. His taking on the Tennant case, Winter says, given the type of practice Taft had, I found to be inconceivable.. Now we had a scientific answer.. Tennant had tried to seek help locally, he said, but DuPont just about owned the entire town. Bilott sent his entire case file to the E.P.A. The story began in 1951, when DuPont started purchasing PFOA (which the company refers to as C8) from 3M for use in the manufacturing of Teflon. Meanwhile the E.P.A., drawing from Bilotts research, began its own investigation into the toxicity of PFOA. That trial begins in March. He understood PFOAs history as well as anyone inside DuPont did. The episodes ceased and their symptoms, apart from an occasional tic, are under control, but he still doesnt have a diagnosis. One of them was placed in charge of the entire agency. It seemed like it would have real-world impact, he said. PFOAs peculiar chemical structure made it uncannily resistant to degradation. We were incurring a lot of expenses, Bilott says. Against DuPonts protests, the order was granted. Their report did not find DuPont responsible for the cattles health problems. I dont even like the looks of them, he says. He had not attended college or law school in the Ivy League. In the fall of 2000, Bilott requested a court order to force them. A colleague on Tafts environmental team, observing that he had little time for a social life, introduced him to a childhood friend named Sarah Barlage. Two years later, Wilburs wife died of cancer. The thought that DuPont could get away with this for this long, Bilott says, his tone landing halfway between wonder and rage, that they could keep making a profit off it, then get the agreement of the governmental agencies to slowly phase it out, only to replace it with an alternative with unknown human effects we told the agencies about this in 2001, and theyve essentially done nothing.

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