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. 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. They are still in all of us.. He often walked through the woods shirtless and shoeless, his trousers rolled up, and he moved with an agile strength built by a lifetime of doing things like lifting calves over fences. He owned 200 cows that grazed on 600 acres. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. DuPont did not tell this to the Tennants at the time." This cow died about twenty, thirty minutes ago, Earl said. At the end of the movie, I had a revelation. In the 1980s, Jim Tennant and his wife, Della, got an offer from DuPont. Two weeks after he filmed the foamy water, Earl aimed the camcorder at one of his cows. 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. 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 . C8 and other long-chain per-fluorinated chemicals are used in a myriad of household, industrial, and commercial products. LinkedIn sets this cookie to store performed actions on the website. This cookie is installed by Google Universal Analytics to restrain request rate and thus limit the collection of data on high traffic sites. Shes poor as a whippoorwill. Earl had come to believe that its water was now poisonedwith what, he did not know. Class Action - Part 1. Dry Run used to flow gin clear. DuPont established a presence along the Ohio River in 1948 with the Washington Works plant near Parkersburg. Somebodys not doing their duty, he said to the camera, to anyone who would listen. We lurched down a rutted dirt road past the old clapboard farmhouse where he grew up. Then one autumn day in 2000, local schoolteacher Joe Kiger . Over the course of that lawsuit, Bilott discovered that DuPont had been using a chemical called PFOA in the production of Teflon for decades, while quietly studying its effects on lab animals and factory workers. working in the garden and around the farm with his grandson . Once this came to light, reports indicate, the Tennants settled their lawsuit against DuPont in August 2000, but the fight wasn't over. But what about the alarming moment when a fire breaks out at the home of Joseph Kigers father, who shares his name? riding horses, milking cows and watching Secretariat win the Triple Crown on TV. 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. Its something I have never run into before., He reached back into the cow and pulled out a liver that looked about right. 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. . DuPont determined that PFOA passed from pregnant employees to their fetuses. Behind him, white-faced Herefords grazed in . Photos by Focus Features and Mike Coppola/Getty Images. 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. Like the movie, Richs article portrays Bilott as an unassuming and understated man driven by an innate sense of decency. Thats Hollywood, I guess. (Bilott has not yet responded to my email and telephone inquiries about whether he has ever enjoyed a celebratory Mai Tai or any other tropical, rum-based cocktail.). One tooth had an abscess so large he reckoned he could stick an ice pick clear under it. After this sale, Tennant's cattle started to become sick and Tennant began to understand that . 1: The Farm. A key component of Teflon was C8, also known as perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). I fed her at least a gallon of grain a day. The company told the family that they wanted to use the land to . "In 1991, DuPont scientists determined an internal safety limit for PFOA concentration in drinking water: one part per billion. Given the fact that the events depicted on the Tennant cattle farm in Parkersburg, West Virginia, are Dark Waters' most important evidence, the filmmakers should have treated them with the utmost authenticity - to their credit, they did for the most part.Wilbur Tennant's brother Jim really was a DuPont employee who got sick with a disease the doctors couldn't diagnose; and the chemical . "The innards was bright green.". In 1999, a farm farmily sued DuPont for the death of their cattle and the ill health of exposed family and farm workers. 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. However, the company didn't tell employees or regulators and ended the study, the Huffington Post reports. Dont understand that at all. DuPont and 3M kept the U.S. EPA in the dark for years, company and government records show. Teflon came into prominence in the 1940s, and with it came DuPont's rise as a chemical giant. By the late 1990s, West Virginia farmer Wilbur Tennant was at his wits end. The first thing Im gonna do is cut this head open, check these teeth.. . A cookie set by YouTube to measure bandwidth that determines whether the user gets the new or old player interface. Wilbur Tennant explained that he and his four siblings had run the cattle farm since their father abandoned them as children. A downstate Illinois native, Hawthorne joined the Tribune in 2004 after covering the environment and state government in Ohio, Illinois and Florida. The pipe flowed out of a collection pond at the low end of a landfill. DuPont bought C8 from 3M and used it to prevent Teflon from clumping during the manufacturing process. In less than two years he had lost at least one hundred calves and more than fifty cows. They had seven cows then. Tennant is convinced that a landfill operated by the DuPont company upstream from his farm is the cause of the continuing maladies suffered by his cattle and his family. LinkedIn sets the lidc cookie to facilitate data center selection. 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. Invest in quality science journalism by making a donation to Science Friday. In the meantime, people are drinking these chemicals every day. DuPont initially refused, but a court order ultimately forced them to turn over what amounted to more than 100,000 pages, some dating back 50 years. GRAPHIC CONTENT: An excerpt from Wilbur Earl Tennant's video showing the mysterious wasting disease affecting his cows in the 1990s. are linked to DuPont's landfilling of PFOA. You could poke it with a stick and leave a hole. 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. None of this information was shared with the public. New York, NY 10004. In May 2015, a consortium of scientists across many disciplines released a document called the Madrid Statement. She had spent the summer in the hollow, drinking out of Dry Run until shed started to act strangely. And the money came in handy, too, since Jim, a Washington Works employee, had for years suffered from flu-like symptoms and illnesses that baffled doctors, as outlined in a Delaware Online article from 2016. And if it sounds familiar, it should. DuPont's statement said the film "depict[s] wholly imagined events," calling implications of a cover up "inaccurate," and claimed that it "grossly misrepresents" what happened. Tennant had a problem. "As soon as you cut the skin loose, you get some of the foulest smells you've ever smelled," Jim Tennant told the Huffington Post. (Ammonium perfluorooctanoate or C8) wastes near the farm. Wilbur Tennant shot this video in the late 1990s on his property in West Virginia. 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. Patches of missing hair, discolorations in their . And Im gonna cut her open and find out what caused her to die. 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.". . The chemical companies are appealing the decision. 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. 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. Bilott is currently suing several makers and users of these chemicals on behalf of all Americans with PFAS in their blood. DuPont's response was they would settle with the Tennant's however Bilott was . 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. They were green like the foamy water that ran out of a pipe from the nearby Dry Run Landfill and into the creek from which the Tennant cattle drank. Bilott had now discovered the cause in the deaths of the cattle on Tennant's farm and had called DuPont regarding this information. The Messed Up True Story Behind Dark Waters, Welcome to Beautiful Parkersburg, West Virginia. No one would help him. That day had never come, so he decided he would make them watch a video. The farmer Wilbur Tennant had suspected that the chemical company DuPont was responsible for the death of many of his cows. The farmer, Wilbur Tennant of Parkersburg, W.Va., said that his cows were dying left and right. November 25, 2019 12:03 PM EST. Location of conflict: Little Hocking, City of Belpre, Tuppers Plains, Village of Pomeroy, Lubeck Public Service District, and Mason County Public Service District: . AWSALB is an application load balancer cookie set by Amazon Web Services to map the session to the target. The farmhouse stood at the foot of a sloping meadow that rose into a bald knob. Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet. Her calf, black and white, lay dead on its side in a circle of matted grass. The smell was odd. 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. Tennant and his brother Jim wanted to get to the bottom of it, so they dissected some carcasses. R ob Bilott, a corporate lawyer-turned-environmental crusader, doesn't much care if he's made enemies over the years. Back in the '90s, Tennant noticed something strange was happening to his cows. His pleas for help fell on deaf ears, according to the Huffington Post's article, "Welcome to Beautiful Parkersburg, West Virginia." Bilott is seeking class-action status in the case against several companies, including 3M and Chemours. Wilbur Tennant. 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 . It also helps in fraud preventions. Wilbur Earl Tennant and his siblings took over the land when their father abandoned them in the 1950s, according to the Huffington Post. 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. He hardly ever saw minnows swimming in the creek anymore, except the ones that floated belly up. Its surface was matte with a crusty film that wrinkled against the shore. 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. He had formerly worked for the Wood County Schools as a bus. For decades it had been the backbone of 3Ms Scotchgard brand of stain-resistant products. The following is an excerpt of Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyers Twenty-Year Battle against DuPont by Robert Bilott and Tom Shroder. 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. 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. Then, in 1998 Bilott received a phone call from Wilbur Tennant who lived on his farm in Parkersburg, West Virginia. The tongue looked normal, but some of the teeth were coal black, interspersed with the white ones like piano keys. 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 . There also are related substances called precursors that transform into PFOA and PFOS in the body or the environment. For example, New Hampshire sued 3M and DuPont, along with a handful of companies that make firefighting foam containing PFAS. Listen to an interview with Bilott about the chemical lawsuits on Science Friday. He was speaking to the camcorder pressed to his eye. Where they should have been smooth, they looked ropy, covered with ridges. This cookie is set by Facebook to display advertisements when either on Facebook or on a digital platform powered by Facebook advertising, after visiting the website. Tennant's farm is close to a newly DuPont-owned landfill. 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. He had stopped feeding his family venison from the deer he shot on his land. He didnt believe it anymore. According to the book, DuPont had commissioned a photographer to take aerial photos of the property as part of its defense. 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. 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 . Babies are born every day with these chemicals. Thats whats so scary about these chemicals, said Jamie DeWitt, a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at East Carolina University who studies PFAS. DuPont's Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia. 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. Wilbur Tennant shot this video in the late 1990s on his property in West Virginia. A load balancing cookie set to ensure requests by a client are sent to the same origin server. The company turned this land into the unlined Dry Run Landfill. DuPont's Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia. 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. He focuses on the froth-covered creek before the tape cuts to a dissected calf with blackened teeth and oddly colored organs. 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. A videotape Tennant shot with a VHS camcorder shows emaciated cows with tumors on their hides. DuPont detected PFOA in the drinking water of communities near the Teflon plant. Wamsley suffered from ulcerative colitis, a condition that can lead to rectal cancer, which, in his case it, did. Earl pulled on white gloves and pried open the cows mouth, probing her gums and teeth. When they bought half of the farm from Wilbur they began to use it for a landfill to store the toxins being . 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. Edit your search or learn more. 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?" Washington, West Virginia. The document, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, called on global scientists, manufacturers, and retailers to work together to limit the use of PFASs and develop safer alternatives. The suit, rather than seeking compensation, requests that the companies fund independent, scientific studies on the health effects of PFAS, according to Time Magazine. They concluded that 'the study was valid' and that 'the observed fetal eye defects were due to C8,' according to internal DuPont documents. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. July 7, 1996 Washington, West Virginia. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. Issued by Microsoft's ASP.NET Application, this cookie stores session data during a user's website visit. It was contaminated with high levels of PFOA. And if it weren't for one West Virginia farmer, Wilbur Tennant, we still might not know much about them. When the cattle on Wilbur Earl Tennants farm began to mysteriously fall ill and die, he suspected it wasnt what the animals were eatingit was what they were drinking. You notice them dark place there, all down through? 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. Despite internal debate, it declined to make the information public," the magazinenotes. But a single letter, sent by a DuPont scientist to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, began unraveling a more alarming story. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". A creek connects the landfill and the fields of Tennant's farm. 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. Thats very unusual. After contacting the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, he felt stonewalled. In November 2019, the Washington Post hosted a podcast with Mark Ruffalo and Robert Bilott to discuss the film and the lawsuit. Attorney Rob Bilott discusses the Fight Forever Chemicals campaign on Nov. 19, 2019. The West Virginia-based farmer was convinced a toxic river that ran into his farmland was to blame, since the animals' strange symptoms began when his brother sold some land to a chemical company to use as a landfill site a .