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 . Seventy years later these chemicals are in our soil, our air, in wildlife. Forever chemicals found in drinking water throughout Illinois: Search the database >>>. He had formerly worked for the Wood County Schools as a bus. The pipe flowed out of a collection pond at the low end of a landfill. The problem had to be Dry Run, he thought. They're in virtually everything we use, including stain-resistant fabric and carpets, nonstick cookware, water-repellent clothing, and firefighting foam. Jim Tennant and his wife, Della, sold DuPont a 66-acre tract of land that became part of the Dry Run Landfill. Tennant Farm, December 1999, from DuPont Cattle Team Report. Thats where theyre supposed to come down here and pull water samples, to see whats in that water. He pointed the camera at a stagnant pool of water flanked by knee-high grass. Wilbur Earl Tennant was a cattle farmer in Parkersburg, Virginia, who was known to his family and friends as Earl. And if it weren't for one West Virginia farmer, Wilbur Tennant, we still might not know much about them. A downstate Illinois native, Hawthorne joined the Tribune in 2004 after covering the environment and state government in Ohio, Illinois and Florida. (Ammonium perfluorooctanoate or C8) wastes near the farm. It dont do you any good to go to the DNR about it. But now it seemed they were ignoring him. He died of cancer in 2009; he was 67. Facebook sets this cookie to show relevant advertisements to users by tracking user behaviour across the web, on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin. She had a calf over there. "I've been dealing with this for . The chemical companies are appealing the decision. Parkersburg is also home to the Tennant family, who, for nearly a century, have worked land that eventually grew to 700-plus acres and raised more than 200 head of cattle. For example, the DuPont executive played by Victor Garber, Phil Donnelly, seems to be a composite, and the scene where he turns on Bilott, hissing at him, Fuck you, hick, appears to be invented. When she returned to work at DuPont, Bailey learned about a study by 3M (the manufacturer of C8) that found similar deformities in unborn rats exposed to the chemical, according to the Huffington Post. 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). DuPont's scientists understood that the landfill drained into the Tennants' remaining property, and they tested the water in Dry Run Creek. So, the couple sold about 60 acres to DuPont. Back in the '90s, Tennant noticed something strange was happening to his cows. Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. They just turn their back and walk on, he told the camera. Patches of missing hair, discolorations in their . The use of these cookies is strictly limited to measuring the site's audience. Deer, birds, fish and other wildlife were turning up dead in and around Dry Run. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. New York, NY 10004. Its surface was matte with a crusty film that wrinkled against the shore. And the man who started it all, Wilbur Tennant, won't see that resolution. Earl had come to believe that its water was now poisonedwith what, he did not know. Turns out his grandmother lived in the same town as the farmer and that's the connection that brought the underdog and the hero together. Because I was feeding her enough feed that she shoulda gained weight instead of losing weight. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. This cookie is installed by Google Universal Analytics to restrain request rate and thus limit the collection of data on high traffic sites. Bilott's grandmother had lived close by, and as a child he had spent a summer on a neighbouring farm, where family members recalled that Bilott had grown up to become an environmental lawyer, and put his name forward to the Tennants. 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. On the other line was Wilbur Tennant (played by Bill Camp), a cattle farmer from Parkersburg, W.V. This cookie is associated with Django web development platform for python. Thank you for helping us continue making science fun for everyone. The campaign coincided with the release of the film "Dark Waters" starring Mark Ruffalo inspired by the true story of Bilott, who discovered a community had been dangerously exposed for decades to deadly chemicals. As a man, he had walked its banks with his wife. 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. Its something I have never run into before., He reached back into the cow and pulled out a liver that looked about right. 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. Foam began appearing in a creek that meandered past the landfill before spilling into the Tennants pasture, he later testified in a court filing. Much like many river cities, Parkersburg's history speaks of a working class, industrial heritage, which saw companies set up shop on the shores of the Ohio River, bringing jobs and economic stability. One person can't always cause a change, but one person can set off a chain of reactions to cause change. At fifty-four, Earl was an . The C8 Science Study (named for DuPonts internal code for PFOA) found a probable link between the chemical and certain diseases in humans, some of which 3M and DuPont had found in animals years, if not decades, earlier. The smell was odd. Wamsley suffered from ulcerative colitis, a condition that can lead to rectal cancer, which, in his case it, did. It smelled rotten. The Taft offices are in Cincinnati, Ohio. None of this information was shared with the public. But two years before 3M announced its phaseout in 2000, the company informed EPA officials for the first time that PFOA and PFOS accumulate in human blood, take years to leave the body and dont break down in the environment. Eight years later 3M paused one of its animal studies after every monkey fed PFOS died. I could find no record of any such incident taking place. Despite internal debate, it declined to make the information public," the magazinenotes. Some states aren't waiting for the feds to act, taking steps to hasten a response to "forever chemicals" through mitigation and regulation, and some of those steps include court action. It turned out 3M also made PFOA and sold it to DuPont, which used the chemical cousin of Scotchgard to keep Teflon from clumping during production. 3M and DuPont have argued in court and in public statements that neither chemical is harmful to people at typical levels of exposure. This cookie is native to PHP applications. Ill do something about it.. I fed her at least a gallon of grain a day. This cookie, set by Cloudflare, is used to support Cloudflare Bot Management. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. 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. The farmer, Wilbur Tennant of Parkersburg, W.Va., said that his cows were dying left and right. Trial lawyer Harry Deitzler, whos played by Bill Pullman in the film, told Slate in a telephone interview that while Dark Waters captured Bilotts sense of commitment and general modesty, it was less accurate in its depiction on one particular issue: Robert Bilott has not been known to be an especially big fan of Mai Tais, either in general or on special occasions. C8 is a "surfactant," a chemical compound that reduces surface tension. riding horses, milking cows and watching Secretariat win the Triple Crown on TV. "In 1991, DuPont scientists determined an internal safety limit for PFOA concentration in drinking water: one part per billion. I dont recall him drinking, Deitzler says. The film seems to imply that the fire might have been an arson attempt that hit the wrong house, though it doesnt suggest who might have lit it. In 1999, a farm farmily sued DuPont for the death of their cattle and the ill health of exposed family and farm workers. You could poke it with a stick and leave a hole. He died of cancer in 2009. His mothers grandfather had bought this land, and it was the only home he had ever known. 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. Thats the largest gall I ever saw in my life! Bilott is back in court again. Some of the more surprising moments in the film were in fact real and confirmed by Bilott in his memoir about the case, like when the farmer Wilbur Tennant (Bill Camp), who brought the case to . Attorney Rob Bilott discusses the Fight Forever Chemicals campaign on Nov. 19, 2019. Bilott's connection to Parkersburg dated back to his childhood, when he spent summers there visiting his grandmother, and her friend is the one who suggested to Wilbur Tennant that he call Bilott, an environmental lawyer at Cincinnati firm Taft Stettinius & Hollister, for help. izuku has a rare quirk fanfiction; novello olive oil trader joe's; micah mcfadden parents; qatar airways 787 9 business class; mary holland married; spontaneous novel ending explained VigLink sets this cookie to track the user behaviour and also limit the ads displayed, in order to ensure relevant advertising. Two of seven babies born to Teflon plant employees in 1981 had facial deformities similar to what 3M had found in newborn rats. The herd that had once been nearly three hundred head had dwindled to just about half that. There is something wrong with this water, Tennant says on the videotape. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. Published by Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc. His cattle were dying inexplicably, and in droves. Shes poor as a whippoorwill. The Devil We Know: Directed by Stephanie Soechtig, Jeremy Seifert. June 14, 2022; salem witch trials podcast lore DuPont then really did proceed to turn that plot into a dumping ground for sludge that it knew to be toxic, going so far as to quietly conduct tests for perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, in the nearby river and expressing concern for the health of the Tennants livestock in internal documents nearly a decade before they would be denying culpability and blaming the Tennants in court. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. It stars Mark Ruffalo as Bilott, along with Anne Hathaway, Tim Robbins, Bill Camp, Victor Garber, Mare . just a dukes mix of everything. Until lately, the cattle always fattened up nicely on that, plus the corn he grew to finish them and a grain mix he bought from the feed store. In the 1980s, Jim Tennant and his wife, Della, got an offer from DuPont. 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.). November 25, 2019 12:03 PM EST. . In the 1980s, Jim and his wife, Della, would sell acreage to DuPont for use as a landfill for scrap metal, according to the New York Times Magazine. He wasnt an expert, but the disease seemed clear enough that he bagged the physical evidence and left it in his freezer for the day he could get someone with credentials interested enough to take a look. A group of citizens in West Virginia challenges a powerful corporation to be more environmentally responsible. 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 . Bilott had now discovered the cause in the deaths of the cattle on Tennant's farm and had called DuPont regarding this information. This cookie, set by YouTube, registers a unique ID to store data on what videos from YouTube the user has seen. Bilott, with begrudging support of his firm (Tim Robbins plays his boss), confirms Wilbur's worst fears: the local DuPont plant has been dumping toxic waste on land next to the Tennant farm. The cattle farmer stood at the edge of a creek that cut through a sun-dappled hollow. As Bilott recollected in a panel discussion with the Washington Post, it was Wilburs obstinate refusal to simply take his monetary settlement and walk away that compelled Bilott to keep pursuing new legal avenues to hold DuPont to account. As luck would have it, the company bought 66 acres from one of their employees, Wilbur Tennant. Its head was tipped back at an awkward angle. Tennants Farm Pond Dam is a cultural feature (dam) in Wood County. No one would help him. At fifty-four, Earl was an imposing figure, six feet tall, lean and oxshouldered, with sandpaper hands and a permanent squint. But his first big meeting is interrupted by Wilbur Tennant (Bill Camp, outstanding), a cattle farmer from Parkersburg, W.Va., the rural town where Bilott's grandmother lives and where he used to . Parkersburg is also home to the Tennant family, who, for nearly a century, have worked land that eventually grew to 700-plus acres and raised more than 200 head of cattle. . DuPont detected PFOA in the drinking water of communities near the Teflon plant. DuPont did not tell this to the Tennants at the time." They would nuzzle him as he scratched their heads. Azure sets this cookie for routing production traffic by specifying the production slot. A creek connects the landfill and the fields of Tennant's farm. Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features. The visit to the Grahams' farm was one of his happiest childhood memories. working in the garden and around the farm with his grandson . After the Tennants had been paid and Bilotts law firm collected its fees for representing them, he found himself coming back again and again to the piles of industry documents he had collected, urged on by the persistent Tennant. Now it looked like dirty dishwater. These cookies help provide anonymized information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. Behind him, white-faced Herefords grazed in . As a father, he had watched his little girls splash around in its shallow ripples. Born: March 6, 1942 . "PFASs are extremely persistent in the environment primarily because the chemical bond between the carbon and fluorine atoms is extremely strong and stable," according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Bilotts law firm, Taft Stettinius & Hollister, typically represents corporate clients like DuPont in environmental cases, not people like Tennant. The stream looked like many other streams that flowed through his sprawling farm. That things about . He owned 200 cows that grazed on 600 acres. The muscle looked fine, but a thin, yellow liquid gathered in the cavity where it once beat. How accurately does Dark Waters depict the twists and turns of this maze? LOCATION. ''Rob's letter lifted the curtain on a . Her calf, black and white, lay dead on its side in a circle of matted grass. LinkedIn sets this cookie from LinkedIn share buttons and ad tags to recognize browser ID. 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. During manufacturing processes, PFAS chemicals are released into the air, soil, and water around industrial facilities, the EPA reports. The carcass was starting to smell. Details of what DuPont allegedly knew and when came to light in pages and pages of documents, initially as part of the lawsuit Bilott filed against the company on behalf of Wilbur Tennant and then in more than 3,000 subsequent personal injury suits that have followed in the past two decades. "Mysterious wasting disease" and. Once this came to light, reports indicate, the Tennants settled their lawsuit against DuPont in August 2000, but the fight wasn't over. When he noticed his cows were mysteriously dying, he filmed what was happening on the farm, and the toxic legacy of C8 - DuPont's Teflon chemical - was discovered. Neither Tennant nor Bilott would accept this as the end of the case. Tennant told him that DuPont had bought land from his family that was adjacent to his farm, for what the company had assured him would be a non-hazardous landfill, according to a letter Bilott later filed with the Environmental Protection Agency. Something was killing cattle on his West Virginia farm, but no one wanted to help him prove that frothy, green-colored water coming from a neighboring property . Something is the matter right there. The Post read a statement from DuPont that reiterated the company's commitment to health and safety and protecting the environment: "Although DuPont does not make the chemicals in question, we have announced a series of commitments around our limited use of PFAS and are leading [the] industry in supporting federal legislation and science-based regulatory efforts to address these chemicals." DuPont de Nemours & Co., used to dump chemical waste from the company's . Nearly 70,000 people participated. 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. Attached to it was a gallbladder that didnt. May 15, 2009; Location: Washington, West Virginia; Tribute & Message From The Family. Today, that site is home to Chemours Washington Works, a spinoff of DuPont that employs more than 600 people and produces a variety of products used in construction, aerospace, and household goods. AWSALB is an application load balancer cookie set by Amazon Web Services to map the session to the target. We lurched down a rutted dirt road past the old clapboard farmhouse where he grew up. Created by Bluecadet. Science Friday is produced by the Science Friday Initiative, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. In 1998, corporate lawyer Robert Bilott ( Mark Ruffalo) is approached by Wilbur Tennant ( Bill Camp) a farmer from his hometown of Parkersburg, West Virginia. That calf had died miserable. Todd Haynes new film Dark Waters wades into some of the most complicated topics in public health, chemistry, and the law to dramatize the story of environmental attorney Robert Bilott and his nearly two decades of civil actions against DuPont. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. Whatever had killed this cow appeared to Earl to have eaten her from the inside out. The sometimes contentious tenor of Bilotts relationship with Wilbur Tennant is also true to life. 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. Wilbur Tennant and his family had recently sold part of their farmland to a company and had no idea what would end up coming of it. 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 . These included a polluted river . Not even buzzards and scavengers would eat them. In the flames, a calf lay broadside, burning. Photo illustration by Slate. He had stopped feeding his family venison from the deer he shot on his land. They just turn their back and walk on. Wilbur Tennant passed away on May 15, 2009 at the age of 67 in Washington, West Virginia. Taking on the case of Wilbur Tennant (played by Bill Camp in the film), a West Virginian farmer whose land is contaminated from toxic run-off dumped near his premises by DuPont Company, Bilott (Ruffalo) quickly encounters the gargantuan machine of corporate disinformation, negligence, cover-up, and strong-arm tactics that allow the company to . DuPont settled the Tennant case for an undisclosed amount. But a single letter, sent by a DuPont scientist to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, began unraveling a more alarming story. Wilbur Tennant shot this video on his property between 1995 and 1997. Wilbur's brother, Jim, was also . Photo illustration by Slate. 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 contained an extraordinarily high concentration of PFOA. The same year, DuPont found that water in one local district contained PFOA levels at three times that figure. The cookie is used to store and identify a users' unique session ID for the purpose of managing user session on the website. That looks a little bit like cancer to me.. The TiPMix cookie is set by Azure to determine which web server the users must be directed to. He requested all documents that DuPont had related to PFOA. apples, bread, green beans and ground beef. He couldnt quite place it. Wilbur Tennant shot this video in the late 1990s on his property in West Virginia. death of 260 cattle in West Virginia. PFOA and PFOS are among more than 9,000 versions of synthetic chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS. He was 7 years old. 'Dark Waters' is slated to release on November 22, 2019, and has Mark Ruffalo playing the role of a tenacious attorney, who takes the fight to a big chemical company. The goal of the merger was to combine two businesses that dabbled in . Around here, that economic engine was DuPont, known for innovations like nylon, Tyvek, and Teflon. The campaign coincided with the release of the film "Dark Waters" starring Mark Ruffalo inspired by the true story of Bilott, who discovered a community had been dangerously exposed for decades to deadly chemicals. Deitzler suggests it would have been a historic first for no partners at a firm of Tafts size and corporate client base to express qualms about a class-action suit of this kind. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. Tennant had a problem. Late in the film, a disillusioned Bilott (Mark Ruffalo), up against a wall, imagines that the multinational corporation, the likes of which he once defended, might be setting him up to be a cautionary tale for all their would-be litigants: Look, everybody, even he cant crack the maze, Bilott says, and hes helped build it.. The Tennants were initially reluctant, especially because of its intended use, but DuPont promised it would house only nonhazardous waste, like scrap metal and ash, according to the Huffington Post. Wilbur Tennant is one farmer in a community who sees DuPont as something more than an employer. 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. This cookie is managed by Amazon Web Services and is used for load balancing. He started the legal process in 1999 against DuPont by filing motions compelling it to turn over documents pertaining to hazardous materials used at the Washington Works plant near Parkersburg. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Now, he was feeding them twice as much and watching them waste away. Dark Waters tells the true story of American farmer Wilbur Tennant who calls on lawyer Rob Bilott (Mark Ruffalo) to help him sue a chemical company Credit: Focus Features. People who didnt know him very well called him Wilbur, but friends and family called him Earl. The cookie is a session cookies and is deleted when all the browser windows are closed. . As he does in the film, the real Bilott did begin to experience strange symptoms in 2010 similar to the strokelike transient ischemic attack seen in the movie. Tennant and his brother Jim wanted to get to the bottom of it, so they dissected some carcasses. 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. His earlier efforts had all revealed unpleasant surprises: tumors, abnormal organs, unnatural smells. 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. The Tennants had sold some of their property to DuPont years earlier. Did they think no one would notice? While the character of the hand-wringing Taft lawyer James Ross, portrayed by The Good Places William Jackson Harper, seems to have been invented, along with the scene where Ross suggests that Bilotts class-action suit might read to the public as nothing more than a shakedown of an iconic American company, Bilott did tell the New York Times that he perceived that there were some What the hell are you doing? responses within the firm. Anyone could see that something was terribly wrong, not only with the landfill itself but with the agencies responsible for monitoring it. 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. But that's just the start. He suspected one of his town's largest employers was up to no good, allegedly dumping chemicals and contaminating his farm's water supply, and the result was hundreds of sickened and dead cattle. He walked there every day to count heads and check fences. In Minnesota, 3M paid an $850 million settlement after the states attorney general used the industry documents in a lawsuit demanding clean drinking water for communities near one of its manufacturing plants outside Minneapolis. "Hold on to something," Jim Tennant warned as he fired up his tractor. As Bilott details in Exposure, the April 23, 2001, incident was eventually confirmed between his legal team and DuPonts. Ill do something about it.. Excerpt from Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyers Twenty-Year Battle against DuPont. Its just like that other calf up yonder, he said, panning over the matted grass. He panned the camera a few degrees. Photos by Focus Features and Mike Coppola/Getty Images.