a series of Camcorder videos showing "soapy froth" in a creek running through DuPont's landfill property and into Tennant's farm. (Maddie McGarvey/for the Washington Post) If Wilbur Earl Tennant's cows hadn't died from a mysterious wasting disease during the . His earlier efforts had all revealed unpleasant surprises: tumors, abnormal organs, unnatural smells. It dont do you any good to go to the DNR about it. The Teflon Toxin, Part 2: Wilbur Tennant vs. DuPontNot Yet Rated. The chemical companies are appealing the decision. There is something wrong with this water, Tennant says on the videotape. Lawyers in Parkersburg, West Virginia, turned him down when he urged them to sue DuPont, then one of areas biggest employers. No one believed him when he told them about the things he saw happening to his land. W. Earl Tennant Wilbur Earl Tennant, 67 of New England passed away suddenly at his residence May 15, 2009. . I could find no record of any such incident taking place. 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. DuPont's Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Rob Bilott's Exposure is a real-life whodunit, a page-turning courtroom drama, a David-and-Goliath story of one man against an industrial colossus and a shocking expos of America's utterly broken environmental policy.You should also take this book personally - because the "exposure" of the title is yours. Something is the matter right there. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. NID cookie, set by Google, is used for advertising purposes; to limit the number of times the user sees an ad, to mute unwanted ads, and to measure the effectiveness of ads. In October 2018, he filed a lawsuit on behalf of a firefighter, who used fire suppression foam and equipment containing PFAS for 40 years. Dozens began dramatically losing weight, dying even after Tennant doubled their feed on the advice of veterinarians who couldnt determine what was killing the animals. 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. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. In 2005, DuPont agreed to phase out its use of C8 (PFOA) by 2015, according to The Intercept. DuPont and 3M kept the U.S. EPA in the dark for years, company and government records show. 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. Despite internal debate, it declined to make the information public," the magazinenotes. The company told the family that they wanted to use the land to . 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. She had spent the summer in the hollow, drinking out of Dry Run until shed started to act strangely. Dry spells shrank it to a necklace of pools that winked with silver minnows. "If that's what it takes to get people the information they need and to protect people, we're willing to do it.". See how thats all wallered down? The West Virginia-based . The calf was engulfed in a black, humming mist. About 600 are in use today, according to the EPA. He sliced open the chest cavity, pulled out a lung, and turned the camera back on. Patches of missing hair, discolorations in their . Thank you for helping us continue making science fun for everyone. Born: March 6, 1942 . He walked there every day to count heads and check fences. It begs the question: How many cancers and other health effects are we willing to accept?, Read the investigation: Tribune finds more than 8 million Illinoisans get drinking water from a utility where forever chemicals have been detected >>>. It looked, at most, a few days old. The pipe flowed out of a collection pond at the low end of a landfill. He had carried a rifle as he went about the farm, always ready to shoot dinner. Bill Pullman was portraying me, and hes taller and younger, and everyone appeared to be drinking. It wasnt his first. The farm spread roughly 600 acres, and had a total of 200 cattle roaming around. 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. In 1998, cattle farmer Wilbur Tennant of Parkersburg, West Virginia, contacted Bilott and claimed that his livestock was dying because the runoff from a DuPont landfill had contaminated a creek on . They are everywhere. And theyre going to find out one of these days that somebodys tired of it.. Flies. He died of a heart attack in 2009 at age 67. death of 260 cattle in West Virginia. Photos by Focus Features and EPK. And of course, he knew all about Dry Run Landfill, a DuPont waste site near his farm that largely served the company's chemical plant near Parkersburg. They just turn their back and walk on. Whatever had killed this cow appeared to Earl to have eaten her from the inside out. They're in virtually everything we use, including stain-resistant fabric and carpets, nonstick cookware, water-repellent clothing, and firefighting foam. In April 2000, after 3M conducted tests and studies on a similar, sister chemical to C8 (PFOA) called PFOS, the company notified the Environmental Protection Agency it found that "even modest exposure could have devastating health effects" and started to phase out PFOS use, as well as PFOA, according to the Huffington Post. C8 is a "surfactant," a chemical compound that reduces surface tension. Bilott had now discovered the cause in the deaths of the cattle on Tennant's farm and had called DuPont regarding this information. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. When they bought half of the farm from Wilbur they began to use it for a landfill to store the toxins being . working in the garden and around the farm with his grandson . Bilott is seeking class-action status in the case against several companies, including 3M and Chemours. In a statement to Time, DuPont said it does not produce PFAS but does use them and defended the company's environmental and safety record, noting it has "announced a series of commitments around our limited use of PFAS, including the [sic] eliminating the use of all PFAS-based firefighting foams from our facilities." PFOA (C8) and PFOS were the long-chain, more commonly used substances in a larger group of more than 4,000 man-made chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). 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.). The underdog was a farmer whose family worked the land for generations, building it from a small operation to a thriving livelihood. DuPont named this sight Dry Run Landfill after the creek that ran onto the Tennant farm. The local employer wanted to buy some of their property for a landfill for its Washington Works plant nearby, where it produces, among other things, Teflon, which contains the chemical C8. Azure sets this cookie for routing production traffic by specifying the production slot. I fed her at least a gallon of grain a day. Ill do something about it.. Issued by Microsoft's ASP.NET Application, this cookie stores session data during a user's website visit. Thing was, time was running out. It wasnt just his cattle dying. These cookies do not allow the tracking of navigation on other websites and the data collected is not combined or shared with third parties. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. Join Facebook to connect with Wilbur Tennant and others you may know. The problem had to be Dry Run, he thought. One person can't always cause a change, but one person can set off a chain of reactions to cause change. The Taft offices are in Cincinnati, Ohio. When the Grahams heard in 1998 that Wilbur Tennant was looking for legal help, they remembered Bilott, White's grandson, who had grown up to become an environmental . 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?" 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. But you just give me time. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". Ill do something about it.. This cookie, set by Cloudflare, is used to support Cloudflare Bot Management. 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. People who didn't know him very well called him Wilbur, but friends and family called him Earl. How would you like for your livestock to have to drink something like that? he asked his imagined audience. "We have always and will continue to work with those in the scientific, not-for-profit and policy communities who demonstrate a serious and sincere desire to improve our health, our communities, and our planet.". He sued DuPont again on behalf of thousands of people who lived near the Teflon plant and for decades had been exposed to PFOA through drinking water and air pollution. Wamsley suffered from ulcerative colitis, a condition that can lead to rectal cancer, which, in his case it, did. The films portrayal of the physical toll that the excruciating, decadeslong legal battle against DuPont seems to have had on Bilotts health is also accurate. Bilotts law firm, Taft Stettinius & Hollister, typically represents corporate clients like DuPont in environmental cases, not people like Tennant. They are still in all of us.. Hard labor was his birthright. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. But that's just the start. Records obtained by Bilott showed DuPont had determined in 1961 that PFOA is toxic in animals. DuPont and the family settled the lawsuit soon after Bilott shared that information with one of the companys lawyers, who had referred to PFOA in an email as the material 3M sells us that we poop into the river and into drinking water.. Location of conflict: Little Hocking, City of Belpre, Tuppers Plains, Village of Pomeroy, Lubeck Public Service District, and Mason County Public Service District: . Jim Tennant and his wife, Della, sold DuPont a 66-acre tract of land that became part of the Dry Run Landfill. riding horses, milking cows and watching Secretariat win the Triple Crown on TV. 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. Editors note: In 1999, Robert Bilott sued E.I. . LOCATION. This cookie is set by the provider Akamai Bot Manager. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. The federal agency notes that it has made significant progress in addressing the public health concerns "from issuing groundwater cleanup guidance to proposing a positive regulatory determination for both PFOA and PFOS, EPA has made progress under every aspect of the Action Plan.". The cattle farmer stood at the edge of a creek that cut through a sun-dappled hollow. There also are related substances called precursors that transform into PFOA and PFOS in the body or the environment. As one of Bilotts colleagues told the New York Times, To say that Rob Bilott is understated is an understatement. Its also true that Bilott did not have the same Ivy League pedigree of many of his colleagues at Taft, having been raised on Air Force bases across the continental United States and West Germany, and it was through these working-class connections that he was introduced to the Tennant family farm case. DuPont's Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia. 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. . Invest in quality science journalism by making a donation to Science Friday. 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 . He panned again: a bonfire on a grassy slope, a pyre of logs as fat as garbage cans. . When he cut out the other lung, he noted dark purple splotches where they should have been fluffy and pink. Two of seven babies born to Teflon plant employees in 1981 had facial deformities similar to what 3M had found in newborn rats. Isnt that lovely?. Tennant had a problem. The test_cookie is set by doubleclick.net and is used to determine if the user's browser supports cookies. A videotape Tennant shot with a VHS camcorder shows emaciated cows with tumors on their hides. No matter how much he fed them, they always looked to be wasting away, and some even bled from their mouth as they bellowed, according to the New York Times Magazine. A downstate Illinois native, Hawthorne joined the Tribune in 2004 after covering the environment and state government in Ohio, Illinois and Florida. He zoomed out and panned over to an industrial pipe spewing froth into the creek. 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 . A creek connects the landfill and the fields of Tennant's farm. Bilott, whose story was chronicled in an engrossing and detailed 2016 New York Times story by Nathaniel Rich, goes from a 1999 lawsuit on behalf of Tennant to a 2001 class action involving several . . In less than two years he had lost at least one hundred calves and more than fifty cows. Earl retired from the WV Department of Highways as an equipment operator. The first thing Im gonna do is cut this head open, check these teeth.. DuPonts lawyers had a different perspective on the incident, however, writing in an email, It is a federal offense to threaten violence against an aircraft carrying passengers and Please be advised that the helicopter pilot has indicated that he will pursue todays incident with federal authorities.. It smelled rotten. Both companies denied any wrongdoing. Standing walleyed in an open field was a polled Hereford red with a white face and floppy ears. Cows that drank from the creek had been healthy. The problem, he thought, was not what they were eating but what they were drinking. We lurched down a rutted dirt road past the old clapboard farmhouse where he grew up. DuPont's own instructions specified that it was not to be flushed into surface water or sewers," according to the New York Times Magazine. Bilott tries to communicate to Tennant that he "isn't that kind of environmental lawyer," yet Tennant's exasperated resilience strikes a chord with the compassionate . Earl had come to believe that its water was now poisonedwith what, he did not know. 1: The Farm. The farmhouse stood at the foot of a sloping meadow that rose into a bald knob. "Though PFOA was not classified by the government as a hazardous substance, 3M sent DuPont recommendations on how to dispose of it. DuPont detected PFOA in the drinking water of communities near the Teflon plant. C8 and other long-chain per-fluorinated chemicals are used in a myriad of household, industrial, and commercial products. PFOA is part of a larger class of PFAS chemicals. (Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call). Back in the '90s, Tennant noticed something strange was happening to his cows. Thunderstorms occasionally swelled the creek so much that he couldnt wade across it. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Revelations by another chemical company gave Bilott leverage to go back into court and request more records from DuPont.