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Speaker 1: Folks.
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Speaker 2: Every so often between the episodes we do, between the segments we do, will have an interview that just needs to be communicated with the world. And in tonight's classic, we're airing an interview segment we had with an absolute legend, a guy named Rob Ballot. Take any stereotypes you've ever heard about lawyers and throw them out the third story window. This guy is the real deal. He spoke truth to power and I was surprised by how personable this guy is.
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Speaker 1: Oh, for sure, for sure, this is a guy that books have been written about him. You can look up The Lawyer who Became DuPont's Worst Nightmare. That is a book by Nathaniel Rich about this gentleman we're talking to. You can watch the movie Dark Waters, as we did in preparation for this discussion. This case out in Parker's Parkersburg or Parker, Yeah, Parkersburg, West Virginia. That's a small town where this takes place. It's a it's an intense story and it's about Forever Chemicals.
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Speaker 2: Right, It's about it's about DuPont, it's about speaking truth to power. As we said, Rob finds a local farmer in West Virginia, a guy named Wilburt Tenant who ask honest questions, why are my livestock dying? Why are authorities ignoring the points I'm bringing up? And this is something that will continue to be relevant now in twenty twenty five as much as it was in twenty nineteen. So we sat down with Rob and we asked him for his first hand experience facing.
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Speaker 3: Due from UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
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Speaker 1: Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noal.
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Speaker 3: They call me Ben.
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Speaker 2: We are joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission Control deck, and most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know now, Matt Noel. As we know, we cover a wide range of topics here on the show, and some topics are things that occurred way back in the day, in the years of your and some topics are things that may occur in the future. And some topics, like today's show, are things where we enter into an ongoing conversation and ongoing debate, and as you know, anytime that we are able to do so, we aim to go toward our primary sources.
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Speaker 1: Right.
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Speaker 2: You want firsthand experience, You want people who have had their boots on the ground, as it were. And that is why today we are immensely fortunate to welcome to the show Rob Blot, who is a corporate defense attorney, or was for eight years, and took on an environmental suit that would ultimately expose a decade long, like multiple decades long history of intense chemical pollution. You may be familiar with Rob from the headline of a New York Times article in twenty sixteen titled the lawyer who became DuPont's worst nightmare. Rob, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
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Speaker 4: Well, thank you for having me.
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Speaker 1: Rob. Let's jump right into this. We got a chance to see the movie Dark Waters that is based on your experience, and I would say much of that film is told through your perspective and really your story, and it is largely, at least according to director Todd Haynes, based on that New York Times magazine article that we mentioned at the top, and the way it gets started. The way the movie gets started, it takes us to nineteen ninety eight. So let's go ahead and just go there. What was your position? It's called Taft Law in the movie. I believe it has a slightly different name. But what was your position there at Taft Law? What kinds of clients were you representing? And what kinds of lawsuits were you fighting at that time?
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Speaker 4: Yeah, the full name of the law firm, it's the shorthand is now referred to as Taft Law, but it's tasted at tinyuson Hollister and I actually started there at a law school nineteen ninety working in the environmental group along with folks like Tom Turp, who you also see in the film. And I was working on environmental matters for primarily our corporate clients, helping them understand and comply with the vast array of federal and state environmental rules, statutes, regulations. And that's primarily what I was doing up until nineteen ninety eight, right about the time I became a partner at the law firm, when I received a call from Wilburtennant.
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Speaker 5: Out of West Virginia and explain to us a little bit of the contents of that call and the problem that was sort of posed to you that you were able to kind of step in to address.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, In nineteen ninety eight, I was contacted by a gentleman who was starting to describe all kinds of problems he was having with cows on his property in West Virginia. And I really wasn't sure why he was content me what this had to do with anything I was working on. And then he mentioned the name of my grandmother and that he had gotten my name through my grandmother, And so I paid a little more attention at that point and found out that he apparently owned property that was right next to land that one of my grandmother's good friends owned, and they apparently had been talking earlier that day and mister Tennant was complaining about cow's dying on his property. Nobody locally there outside of Purpose for West Virginia would really talk to him. He had tried contacting the States, the federal EPA folks at the plant and wasn't getting very far. As was looking for a lawyer who might be able to help him, And so the neighbor had just been talking to my grandmother who had mentioned that I was a environmental lawyer. Up in Cincinnati, and surely I could help him. So he was calling me, and so we agreed to you know, once I heard this from my grandmother, I agreed to sit down and look at what he had.
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Speaker 1: So let's pull back just a little bit here before we get to deep into the case itself and what you were exploring at the around that time, you know, in nineteen ninety eight, in the nineties, how would you describe DuPont at that time, Like how big of a player were they in the chemical industry, what kind of products were they producing, and ultimately what was their relationship to Parkersburg, West Virginia.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, at that point in time, back in the late nineties, DuPont was one of the world's largest chemical companies. You know, had a sterling reputation. They had an immense amount of scientists within the company that had a good reputation for scientific work over the years on toxicity of chemicals. I knew them fairly well. Run across their lawyers over the years at various super fun cleanup sites where we were representing our other clients, and DuPont was not one of our clients, but their attorneys would be in the same room with US, and we were discussing which companies ought to be cleaning up various sites across the country. So we knew them well. They had a good reputation. They were a very large company, well known in the chemical world, and they happened to own the world's largest tetlon manufacturing facility and it was located in Parkersburg, West Virginia, a long the Ohio River.
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Speaker 1: So we were talking about Wilburtenant. He's he's the farmer that contenty, the man who owned farmland that contacted you and you were talking about that land that was immediately adjacent to his. It was something called the dry Run landfill, I believe, or at least that's what it's referred to in the movie as and what. So you initially sued to pont just to find out at least the ways depict in the movie, just to find out what was inside that landfill that could possibly be contaminating Wilbur's land. Correct, that's right.
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Speaker 4: When we sat down with mister Tennant and looked at videotapes and photographs that he had, what we found out was there was a landfill right next to mister Tennant's property that DuPont was using. It was supposed to be just routine trash and regular non hazardous waste from the plant, and we were trying to figure out why the water coming out of this landfill, the runoffs out of a landfill had white foam, and it appeared that that foam was making the cows that were drinking the water sick, wildlife in the area sick. And so we started digging into what exactly was going into this landfill because what we were seeing in the records and the permits for the landfill from the state weren't weren't revealing any anything that would explain what was happening to the animals and what we were seeing with the white foaming water.
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Speaker 1: So just let's talk in particular what was occurring to the cows. So the evidence that mister Tennant brought to you was a ton of videotapes, right, like a bunch of VHS tapes of him documenting his cattle as they are dying off, and he's showing that they have appear to have enlarged organs and blackened teeth, and he's also noticing that some of the rocks within his creek that's running on his property are bleached or at least appear to be, you know, discolored, discolored. Yeah, So, like, talk to me about how you felt when you saw that, Like what was your reaction to seeing those things and did you immediately think there was something really really bad going on there.
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Speaker 4: Yeah. Mister tim had been ticking videotape of what he was seeing on his property and in the creek for years. He had started seeing problems in the mid to late nineties, around nineteen ninety five or so, and had been trying to get somebody to pay attention, and so he figured he'd start videotaping it and so at least people could see what he was talking about. And so he brought these tapes up to us, and as you indicated, I mean, it was pretty powerful video. It showed animals that were wasting away, you know, just we're skin and bones, that had tumors, that had blackened teeth, their eyes were sunken back in their head or just colored. There were other wildlife in the area, you know, fish and frogs and deer that seemed to be suffering as well. And there were actually portions of those tapes or mister Tennant was cutting into the animals that had died to try to find out what had happened. Did you see misshape and miscolored organs and tumors and blackened teeth in these animals? So it was pretty powerful when we looked at that videotape and you can see these animals standing in water with white foam, that something clearly was wrong, something was very wrong there. So we figured, yes, we would try to help.
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Speaker 2: So this is the pivotal moment right where you decide that, yes, we will take this case. For anyone who's unfamiliar with the way these sorts of investigations involved, like how they evolve over time, what were the next early steps, like as soon as as soon as you decide we will take on this matter. What is the first the first iteration of the investigation? Do we identify the foam? Do we take samples? How does it work?
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Speaker 4: Well? You know, the first things I did was try to go to the state agency that was regulating that landfill that has given the company a permit and pull the permits and find out what types of materials are being disposed there, What are they monitoring for in the water? You know, are we seeing detections of those chemicals above the limits that the state has set. You know, in my world up to that point that I've been dealing with all these different federal state laws, you know, my understanding was if there were toxic or hazardous materials of concern, those are the ones that would be listed in the permits, or those would be the ones that you would have to be monitoring for. So I thought this would be a fairly straightforward thing that we could pull these permits, pull the records for this landfill, and surely there must be something that was out of black, you know, something that was being emitted and way too high of concentration, you know, and that we would be able to find that through going through these government permits. And that's what we focused on with DuPont initially as well, was their records relating to what was permitted, what was regulated at that landfille, and we simply didn't see anything that was explaining what we were seeing through those permit records.
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Speaker 5: I'm fascinated by this whole concept of allowable limits of toxins and the process of you know, how the EPA decides what is it is not acceptable in terms of you know, impurities in or in contaminations and environments and drinking water, et cetera. Is that like, can you speak to that a little bit, to someone with your expertise as to what that process is like and why we sometimes see you know, rollbacks of EPA standards for example, that oh no, actually, wait, we don't need to be this rigorous, we're over overdoing it, you know, or re examining something like this where maybe it goes in the opposite direction.
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Speaker 4: Well, you know, it's an extremely complex process. You know, we're talking about a regulatory system that really, if you look at the grand scheme of events here, hasn't been around all that long. You know, the US EPA didn't even come into existence until nineteen seventy in some of the first laws at the federal level regulating chemicals going out into the market and how you test them and how you assess their safety really didn't come out until nineteen seventy six. And you know, it's a fairly limited group of chemicals that have actually been assessed and have been deemed worthy to be regulated at a federal level or state level. And you know, with standards being set under different federal laws and regulations, and really what we came to find a help through this case, you know, was there's much larger world of unregulated chemicals. Chemicals that have escaped that process. Either they were already out in our world, in our environment decades before these new federal laws came into play, before the EPA even existed, or somehow they skated through or bypassed the system altogether.
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Speaker 5: And we're going to talk more about this topic after a quick word from our sponsor.
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Speaker 2: And we're back. So at this point, we see, of course, the what many people would think of as the looming shadow of the gigantic company DuPont, and the firm has done some I believe the firm has in its past done some corporate work on the plaintiff side. What was the prospect, like, what was the conversation like on your side when you when you had to choose shall we take on DuPont? Shall we take on this enormous corporate entity. Was there any hesitation, any any sense of that that this could endanger your livelihood or anything like that.
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Speaker 4: Well, I think that that was a conversation that's definitely evolved over time. You know, when when mister Tennant first came to US, and we were first looking into this issue, you know, we assumed this would be something that would be rather straightforward. You know, it's it was a regulated, permitted landfill, something that was being controlled by the state of West Virginia. We thought we would be able to to find out what what you know, hazardous materials we're in that landfill and assume that we could get to the bottom of it relatively quickly. We had no idea at the time that this was going to evolve some unregulated mystery chemical. But even even in those initial stages where we were talking with mister Tennant and trying to decide whether to take the case and actually sue dupot, you know, it was clear mister Tenant in his family probably were not going to be able to, you know, afford the kind of rates we typically charged our corporate clients. So that was one of the first times we ever took on a case on what they call contingency, you know, where the client only pays at the end, uh if there's actually a recovery. But again, we thought it was a fairly straightforward We hoped it would be a rather straightforward case. It wasn't until you know, it was getting into the discovery and getting into the documents that we realized we were dealing with a much much bigger issue, one that went way beyond just this farmer's family and his property, but what something that was impacting the entire community and eventually realized entire country, if not the entire world, it's going to be a much bigger undertaking.
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Speaker 1: And in the movie at least it's it's depicted as when you stumble upon something within the discovery all these documents, something that is referred to as PFOA or PFOA related with regards to the driver R and landfill. Can you just talk about that, like what that was, what your journey was to figuring out what the heck that substance was, because there wasn't nobody actually had anything written down in these documents about what it was, and you didn't really learn about it until you were at the at least it appears like you were at that Chemical Alliance dinner where you saw the reaction to pfoas. So let's just talk about how you found it, what it is, and that Chemical Alliance dinner.
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Speaker 4: Well. I I have also recently published a book called Exposure, which I try to go into more detail about the discovery of this chemical and how it was we came to find out it even existed in what documents we saw this in and how I really started to understand what was going on here was a pretty complicated process, But what I can tell you is we were, you know, getting nowhere really with focusing on the regulated listed materials in this landfill and their permits. So I got to the point where I finally decided I would ask to POD for all of their records relating to anything that was going to this landfill from the plant, and we met with great pushback from the company at that point, now you need to keep focused on these hazardous listed materials, and we had to go to court and we eventually got a court order that required the company to start turning over this broader group of documents, and it was pouring through all of those materials, and it was a lot that I stumbled upon a document one day that mentioned this chemical referred to as a p f O or p f O a UH, and I tried to find out what was this because it was indicating that there was a lot of that material that had been used at the plant and that it had been some of that waste had been sent to this landfill. Uh, So it was finding that reference really changed everything. I tried to find information, you know, that was available publicly online or in our library and really couldn't find much of anything about this chemical. I wasn't even sure it was a chemical at that point. So that really launched us down a whole new road. And really, you know, it's something I have been had to focus on for the next several years, is finding out what is this stuff and why is so much of it being used at that plan, and why did it why did the waste end up at this landfill? What does it do to the cows that are drinking people?
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Speaker 2: And the fall or autumn of two thousand you had to You took them to court. You took DuPont to court to comply with that request that they share all documentation related to PFOA, and that this feels like the watershed moment because you find that not only is there, not only is their correspondence internally or documentation eternally onto Pont's side, but it is robust, I believe, more than one hundred and ten thousand pages. And the thing that was scary to me is that some of this paperwork is uh, what' fifty years old at that point. What did you do when you got this? This just mass info dump of all these different things from it feels like they're from different sources, right, medical reports.
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Speaker 1: Just like thousands of boxes, right?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, what how did you how did you begin to digest that?
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Speaker 4: Well? As you indicated, I mean, that process really began after we were able to get the courts, you know, to order the company to start turning over its internal files about this material, and it eventually ended up being millions of pages of documents. And those were the days really before things were produced on electronic discs or thumb drives, So we were getting physical, hard copy paper, which frankly I think ended up being a blessing in the end, because we didn't necessarily know exactly what terms, you know, we were looking for, how it do not refer to this chemical. In fact, we eventually learned they were referring to it a four or five different ways that we wouldn't have even known to ask for documents about FC one three or C eight. You know. It only was going through all those documents that we were able to piece that together that that took many years sitting through, you know, I physically printed these things out or organized all those hard copies, read through every page and trying to put together, put it in chronological order, and try to piece together the history of what happened here. And as you indicate it, we saw documents going back to the nineteen fifties. The company started purchasing this material in nineteen fifty one from the three M Company, and had started extensive toxicology studies on it in the sixties, and human studies in the seventies, and cancer studies in the eighties. So there was a wealth of information, and the most disturbing aspect of it was realizing there was a lot known about the toxicity of the chemical. Not only was it in the waste that had been sent to this landfill and that the cows were drinking, but it had been found in the drinking water of the community in the eighties, and nobody else outside the company. He seemed to be aware of this. It did not look like the community had been told, did not look like the regulators were aware. In fact, they're even draft standby press releases in case somebody found out that apparently never went out. So it was very disturbing information and realized we were dealing with what we've realized was a public health threat that had gone unnoticed.
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Speaker 5: I don't want to come off to naive here, but I mean the implication as this went to the very top of this company in terms of covering up these studies and just absolute brazen disregard for people's safety.
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Speaker 4: We're talking about information that was definitely within the corporate files, within the scientific files, within the lawyers were aware of it. The lawyers were even advising the client that this was a problem going back to years. And you know, there's a point where I eventually even sat down with the CEO of the company and showed him all of these internal documents after he was standing up and publicly saying that there was no information suggesting there were any health issues. So I sat down with him and went through all of those internal documents that showed just the opposite. So it was there was a wealth of information within the company's own files.
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Speaker 2: And this is this is something that we want to want to emphasize. Is it true that when you were when you were looking through all this extensive uh documentation that literally no one else outside DuPont had ever seen before. Is it true that you found they were contradicting their own recommendations about how to handle PFOA.
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Speaker 4: You know, there were internal recommendations and you know, discussion about whether to switch frankly, away from the chemical to a different one in order to avoid some of the problems they were seeing with PFOA. And then these discussions went back into the eighties and there were recommendations from three M, the company that was making the PFOA and sending it to Dupot since nineteen fifty one. You know, the three M was recommending that it not be put into waterways, you know, that it should be incinerated, and unfortunately DuPont was not solving those recommendations.
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Speaker 1: Just going to take a quick break here and hear a word from our sponsor, and we're back talking about dark Waters and Rob a Lot's experience. Okay, so we're really starting to get into the direness of this story and the effects of what was going on there. Let's jump to I want to kind of focus in on the individuals, the people in the community who are working, you know, in these facilities where they're actually creating the chemicals. And then the people living that are drinking that water. And you know, in the movie, it's just kind of a known thing that if you go and you work at the chemical plant, your life is going to be shortened. It's just something that people in the community would talk about in that it's a known thing. You're going to make a good living for a fairly shortened amount of time. And it was almost as if it's a trade off and a known thing, at least as depicted in the movie. And I had a conversation with some of my family from Ohio and like the Akron area, Chigo Falls that area, and there it was just even and within my relatives it was a known thing that if you go and you work at a chemical company, you're basically risking your life to get a good, stable job. Is that we found in Parker's Burg And what were what were the effects on the people working in these plants.
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Speaker 4: I think as you see in the film Dark Waters, you know that there was definitely pushback within the community when the lawsuits began. Uh you know, this was one of the major employers in town. It had been a contributor and uh you know, had provided funding for a lot of the local organizations. So there were a lot of folks that we were not happy with the idea, you know, that that there was litigation being brought against you know, this this this employer in the community, and there was there was pushback you know, from the against the folks that were speaking out, and you know, even among the employees, you know, there were folks that were that we were definitely becoming thick. In fact, in the book we discussed one of the former employees u you know, who used to work at the lab, who you know, for for decades was working with these chemicals who developed ulst of colitis and just the severe personal impact you know, that that has on folks like that, you know. And I think that's one of the great things about the film Dark Waters is that it really gives you a good insight into how something like this really impacts the real people in the community that are dealing with it on a day to day basis. You know, we're talking about something that was dragging on for years and years. In the meantime, real people are living there, you know, real people are drinking this, and real people are getting sick and dying, and I think, you know, it's something I think it was powerful. It's powerful to see what that really does to folks.
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Speaker 2: I tremendously appreciate that point. I think we all do, because one thing the film does a fantastic job of depicting is is the human costs, the very real human costs of this sort of contamination and pollution and cover up with You know, it could be so easy for us, you know, just as people everyday people to see a headline on the news or to hear a statistic and for us to relegate that to the realm of abstraction. We can also tell that this had a clear dare I say, personal impact on you, specifically as as an individual and as an attorney, because while this is moving through court, while you're aggregating this evidence, while you're finding this documentation, eventually, if we just if we jump to two thousand again, eventually you call the attorney on DuPont's side and you have this conversation that results in the tenants settling their case. And as as we as noted, right, there's there's this one moment where it could have stopped. There as that one single case, right, and the firm gets as as you had indicated earlier, it's contingency fee. But that's not where it stops, because you make the decision to continue unraveling this strange web. Could could you tell us a little bit about what compelled you or what propelled you forward after the settlement.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, by the time I had that conversation that we were able to resolve the case for mister Tennant and his family, you know, we had I'll say, I had been looking through enough of the documentation at that point realized this went far beyond mister Tennant's property. And you know, mister Tenant, even in his family, were extremely concerned about their community and their neighbors who you know, were drinking this and had no idea. You know, we had found out, you know, by looking at these documents that this was not just on their property, not just in the landfill, but was in the local drinking water and nobody was being told. So you know, he was very passionate about finding a way that we could get this information out to the broader community, and that that really bothered me as well, knowing that, you know, I may be one of the only people had seen this information, was aware of this public health threat, and nobody else seemed to know it. So I did make the decision to sit down and put all that information, at least most of what I could find, into a letter that I sent to the U s e. P A and various different governmental agencies back on March sixth, two thousand and one, where I hoped by laying out what I had been seeing in these documents, these agencies would see the same thing and realized there was a public health threat here. People were drinking this material. This was out there in the environment. You know. The agencies really hadn't been given this information, and they would come in and stop it and take action to clean it up, get the water filtered, and regulate it, you know. And I, looking back, realized how naive I was to think that the government agencies would actually swoop in and do something. But to me, that was a critical step. We needed to alert these agencies and the public to this public health threat. And that happened, and Duplant actually went to court to truck get a gag order to stop us and talking about it, and luckily the court rejected that and I was allowed to go and provide the information to the EPA, and eventually, you know, EPA started digging through it and realized this information had been withheld, sued DuPont and one of the few times that's ever happened, or suing a company for withholding information like this from the agency, and that began the process of looking into these chemicals and starting to regulate them where we unfortunately that process is still grinding on some eighteen years later.
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Speaker 1: And you said chemicals there, right, because for a lot of this and a lot of people maybe think tefline, this one product, this one singular thing is the issue. The carbon is a repeating carbon chain. I believe that's how it's referred to. It's this one thing, But no, no, it's it's numerous chemicals that are very similar to this one.
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Speaker 4: Right. Well, the chemical that we were focused on in particular was one of these chemicals called PFOA, and it is one of a large group of chemicals that we now know as p FOSS. P f A s a group of man made chemicals that were invented right after World War Two, primarily by three M. You know, there these man made carbon and flooring combination chemicals that share similar characteristics and at the time we were focused on one of them, PFOA. But what we've now come to know is that there's a large number of these out there, and they're being found also in drinking water across the country, and in all of our blood and in the environment.
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Speaker 1: So let's let's talk about what that means for us. There, the three of us sitting in this room talking to you, are our super producer Paul out there in the booth. We all grew up with with my parents and I making omelets in our you know, our saucepans that had were covered with teflon, and we do I'd use a fork to make my omelet, and I know for a fact that I've ingested that stuff in that way, outside of the drinking water, outside of all you know, all the other ways are being contaminated. Like what what does that big what does the big picture really look like for for all of humanity, for all of organic life.
00:37:15
Speaker 4: Well, you know, that's the thing that's really very disturbing about this whole story is we're talking about contamination on a global scale that I'm not sure we've seen before. Where you know, this this this chemical and this family of chemicals, the pithos chemicals, have been used in an enormous variety and array of different products over the decades, where you know, not just nonstick cookwar but fast food wrappings, stained resistant carpeting, clothing, UH wire cabling, firefighting foams, microwave, popcorn, bag coatings, I mean, you name it. And so these chemicals have been used in such a vast array of products that it's out there and not only in our water, but it's gotten into soils, it's gotten into food. It's unfortunately, these chemicals have a great ability to stay out in the environment. Once they're out there, they have a great inability to be broken down by natural conditions, so you hear them now referred to as forever chemicals. PFOA for example, it just really doesn't break down under natural conditions and would be there for millions of years. So pretty much everything that's been pumped out in the last sixty seventy years is still there in our soil and our water and now getting into us. And not only does the stuff get out and stay in the environment, it has the unique ability to get into living things where it tends to stick into the blood. PFOA for example, into our blood, and even the tiniest amounts will build up over time, so it's persistent and bioaccumulative, and now we also know toxic. So you know, these these chemicals, in their their great persistence, their ability to be basically contaminating the whole planet and people on the planet, are presenting really tremendous challenges and concerns to the scientific community right now, particularly as we just now start sampling and finding out exactly where this stuff is. It's been being pumped out there for decades, but we're only just now really starting to sample and find it and really realize the extent of exntamination.
00:39:41
Speaker 5: And I certainly see and share your concern about the big picture of contamination issues involved here. But to Matt's question, you know, you know, your story involves high levels of contamination literally being pumped into water supplies and environments, the whole flaking off of teflong with a fork. Well, you know, over time that would necessarily be something as much to worry about as the big picture of things that you're addressing. Or maybe I'm wrong, I just wanted to put that to you.
00:40:07
Speaker 4: Well, but drinking these chemicals you know, in the water has certainly been recognized by the scientific world is one of the primary sources of getting exposed. I mean, if you're living in a community where these chemicals are in your drinking water, that's going to be one of your primary ways of getting it into your body. These other exposures are probably going to be less significant, but they'll still you know, manage to get into you somehow. But really, you know, if you're in an area where it's made it into the water, that's really a prime concern to stop that exposures. That's a direct exposure into the body.
00:40:45
Speaker 2: And I believe one thing that if there's one takeaway that everyone listening to today's episode needs to carry with them after the audio has stopped playing, it's this we're talking about the genesis of an investigation that expands, you know, to these vast parameters. But we're not really talking about something that happened in the past. We're not only talking about that because as as you establish, Rob, this is this is going on, These chemicals, these substances are still out there in multitudes of different let's sae, multitudes of different applications, multitudes of different illicit distributions. Right whether in drinking water or in DuPonts so called digestion ponds. We now are looking toward the future, and I'd love to hear your perspective on what the future of PFOA and these related contaminants may actually be. What, because you know that directly translates to the health of the public and the health of livestock and even perhaps not to be alarmist about it, the health of generations to come. Could you speak with us a little bit about what you see in the near to mid future as the state of America's health as it applies to these substances, or any action, whether environmental recovery actions or whether legal actions that might mitigate potential future harm.
00:42:31
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, as the information finally started coming out about these chemicals, actually three m back in two thousand announced that it was going to stop making PFOA and the related one PFOS that was used in Scotch Guard and firefighting films. So they very quickly announced they would stop making two of these Dupon unfortunately then jumped in at that point and started making and continued to make PFOA. You know, as more of this information came out to our litigation and the EPA got more involved in more concerns to PONT and the other companies that we're still using and making PFOA at the time announced in two thousand and six that they would stop making PFOA and phased it out over the next ten years by twenty fifteen. During that period of time, companies have brought out what they referred to as alternatives or safer replacements for these longer chain C eights, ones that have eight carbons, things like sixes C fours, and the hopes that they're less persistent, less bioaccumulative, and unfortunately, the data that's coming out suggests they might share very similar toxicities and hopefully won't last in the environment though as long. And I think what we're seeing is as this data is coming out about this broader class of chemicals and more testing is occurring, people are finally becoming aware that these chemicals even exist and what their exposures have been or might be. And you know, that's one of the things I'm very encouraged about with the release of Dark Waters in the book, is that that information will now be out to a wider group of people who will now understand that they've been exposed at least have the tools to start beginning to avoid those exposures hopefully going forward at least be aware of what kind of products and where in the environment these chemicals might be, so that they can choose to avoid it if they want. And we are now finally seeing regulatory authorities start to finally take action. It's taken a long time. The US EPA still has not regulated these chemicals on a federal level, but the states are moving forward setting drinking water guidelines on their own in order to protect people. So we're seeing action begin, and I think we're seeing increased awareness so that people can take steps to protect themselves, and hopefully we'll also see technologies being developed to help us get these things out of our environment and hopefully find ways to make sure that our exposures are minimized going forward.
00:45:13
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having something positive to talk about in this story, Rob because, uh man, it's it's we get into very dark waters here when we're when we're doing this. Sorry, I just have one in there, No for real, it's it's it's this movie and this story and your experience. It's it's very intense and at times it can be disheartening at very many weeks.
00:45:39
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, for sure, it really points to a real lack of humanity on the parts of folks that can really that that are the ones who are most empowered to really make a difference and just choose not to, it would seem I believe.
00:45:55
Speaker 2: The euphemism is self regulation.
00:45:57
Speaker 1: Well yes, so, so I don't want to spoil the the ending of the movie. If you've read the article, you know how it turns out for the people of Parkersburg and a lot of the other people affected. But I just really quickly, for my money, the biggest the biggest issue is the self regulation of these chemical companies with their proprietary chemicals. And the problem is that the EPA and all these regulatory bodies won't know what chemicals to regulate if the chemical company doesn't come forward and give them those guidelines. At least that's the way it was when these lawsuits began. Have you seen any change in that respect or is it still kind of the way it was?
00:46:41
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean for existing chemicals like this, chemicals that were out there before a lot of these rules and laws came into play. In fact, this situation was cited as an example of why those laws needed to be changed. In fact, in twenty sixteen, the federal law regulating chemicals coming out of the market was beefed up in order to try to address that very issue. I think it remains to be seen how effective you know, that's going to be going forward, But to me, it's encouraging. What's really encouraging is to see this information come out, and because I think once you give people the facts and this information, you know, even if it's going to take a while for these things to grind through the regulatory system or the political system, people on an individual basis, once they know the information, they can at least take steps to protect themselves. And I think that's something you see in the movie as well. It's just the power of information in individuals to stand up and do things to protect themselves in their communities.
00:47:53
Speaker 2: Well said, and we completely agree. We've seen Dark Waters for ourselves.
00:47:59
Speaker 1: Freedom.
00:47:59
Speaker 2: What listening? If you would like more information, because information is power and in this case it's also self empowerment. If you would like to learn more about this again ongoing story, then check out the film Dark Waters. Additionally, find Exposure, which is Rob Bolott's book coming out via Simon and Schuster.
00:48:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, Rob, thank you so much. Is there anything else you want to leave us with.
00:48:30
Speaker 4: No and I really appreciate the opportunity. Again. You know, anything like this that helps people understand what has actually happened, What is happening, believe it or not, in the United States in today's world is as you indicated, not something that happens, you know, back in the nineteen tens or twenties. This is modern day United States and for people to understand this is what's happening, and here are the things we need to do that hopefully will make things better.
00:49:02
Speaker 2: And that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't wait to hear your thoughts.
00:49:08
Speaker 5: It's right let us know what you think. You can reach to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on Facebook x and YouTube on Instagram and TikTok work Conspiracy Stuff Show.
00:49:17
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00:49:34
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00:49:36
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00:50:05
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Speaker 1: Folks.
00:00:00
Speaker 2: Every so often between the episodes we do, between the segments we do, will have an interview that just needs to be communicated with the world. And in tonight's classic, we're airing an interview segment we had with an absolute legend, a guy named Rob Ballot. Take any stereotypes you've ever heard about lawyers and throw them out the third story window. This guy is the real deal. He spoke truth to power and I was surprised by how personable this guy is.
00:00:43
Speaker 1: Oh, for sure, for sure, this is a guy that books have been written about him. You can look up The Lawyer who Became DuPont's Worst Nightmare. That is a book by Nathaniel Rich about this gentleman we're talking to. You can watch the movie Dark Waters, as we did in preparation for this discussion. This case out in Parker's Parkersburg or Parker, Yeah, Parkersburg, West Virginia. That's a small town where this takes place. It's a it's an intense story and it's about Forever Chemicals.
00:01:17
Speaker 2: Right, It's about it's about DuPont, it's about speaking truth to power. As we said, Rob finds a local farmer in West Virginia, a guy named Wilburt Tenant who ask honest questions, why are my livestock dying? Why are authorities ignoring the points I'm bringing up? And this is something that will continue to be relevant now in twenty twenty five as much as it was in twenty nineteen. So we sat down with Rob and we asked him for his first hand experience facing.
00:01:59
Speaker 3: Due from UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
00:02:26
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noal.
00:02:29
Speaker 3: They call me Ben.
00:02:30
Speaker 2: We are joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission Control deck, and most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know now, Matt Noel. As we know, we cover a wide range of topics here on the show, and some topics are things that occurred way back in the day, in the years of your and some topics are things that may occur in the future. And some topics, like today's show, are things where we enter into an ongoing conversation and ongoing debate, and as you know, anytime that we are able to do so, we aim to go toward our primary sources.
00:03:16
Speaker 1: Right.
00:03:17
Speaker 2: You want firsthand experience, You want people who have had their boots on the ground, as it were. And that is why today we are immensely fortunate to welcome to the show Rob Blot, who is a corporate defense attorney, or was for eight years, and took on an environmental suit that would ultimately expose a decade long, like multiple decades long history of intense chemical pollution. You may be familiar with Rob from the headline of a New York Times article in twenty sixteen titled the lawyer who became DuPont's worst nightmare. Rob, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
00:04:00
Speaker 4: Well, thank you for having me.
00:04:01
Speaker 1: Rob. Let's jump right into this. We got a chance to see the movie Dark Waters that is based on your experience, and I would say much of that film is told through your perspective and really your story, and it is largely, at least according to director Todd Haynes, based on that New York Times magazine article that we mentioned at the top, and the way it gets started. The way the movie gets started, it takes us to nineteen ninety eight. So let's go ahead and just go there. What was your position? It's called Taft Law in the movie. I believe it has a slightly different name. But what was your position there at Taft Law? What kinds of clients were you representing? And what kinds of lawsuits were you fighting at that time?
00:04:49
Speaker 4: Yeah, the full name of the law firm, it's the shorthand is now referred to as Taft Law, but it's tasted at tinyuson Hollister and I actually started there at a law school nineteen ninety working in the environmental group along with folks like Tom Turp, who you also see in the film. And I was working on environmental matters for primarily our corporate clients, helping them understand and comply with the vast array of federal and state environmental rules, statutes, regulations. And that's primarily what I was doing up until nineteen ninety eight, right about the time I became a partner at the law firm, when I received a call from Wilburtennant.
00:05:35
Speaker 5: Out of West Virginia and explain to us a little bit of the contents of that call and the problem that was sort of posed to you that you were able to kind of step in to address.
00:05:46
Speaker 4: Yeah, In nineteen ninety eight, I was contacted by a gentleman who was starting to describe all kinds of problems he was having with cows on his property in West Virginia. And I really wasn't sure why he was content me what this had to do with anything I was working on. And then he mentioned the name of my grandmother and that he had gotten my name through my grandmother, And so I paid a little more attention at that point and found out that he apparently owned property that was right next to land that one of my grandmother's good friends owned, and they apparently had been talking earlier that day and mister Tennant was complaining about cow's dying on his property. Nobody locally there outside of Purpose for West Virginia would really talk to him. He had tried contacting the States, the federal EPA folks at the plant and wasn't getting very far. As was looking for a lawyer who might be able to help him, And so the neighbor had just been talking to my grandmother who had mentioned that I was a environmental lawyer. Up in Cincinnati, and surely I could help him. So he was calling me, and so we agreed to you know, once I heard this from my grandmother, I agreed to sit down and look at what he had.
00:07:04
Speaker 1: So let's pull back just a little bit here before we get to deep into the case itself and what you were exploring at the around that time, you know, in nineteen ninety eight, in the nineties, how would you describe DuPont at that time, Like how big of a player were they in the chemical industry, what kind of products were they producing, and ultimately what was their relationship to Parkersburg, West Virginia.
00:07:28
Speaker 4: Yeah, at that point in time, back in the late nineties, DuPont was one of the world's largest chemical companies. You know, had a sterling reputation. They had an immense amount of scientists within the company that had a good reputation for scientific work over the years on toxicity of chemicals. I knew them fairly well. Run across their lawyers over the years at various super fun cleanup sites where we were representing our other clients, and DuPont was not one of our clients, but their attorneys would be in the same room with US, and we were discussing which companies ought to be cleaning up various sites across the country. So we knew them well. They had a good reputation. They were a very large company, well known in the chemical world, and they happened to own the world's largest tetlon manufacturing facility and it was located in Parkersburg, West Virginia, a long the Ohio River.
00:08:37
Speaker 1: So we were talking about Wilburtenant. He's he's the farmer that contenty, the man who owned farmland that contacted you and you were talking about that land that was immediately adjacent to his. It was something called the dry Run landfill, I believe, or at least that's what it's referred to in the movie as and what. So you initially sued to pont just to find out at least the ways depict in the movie, just to find out what was inside that landfill that could possibly be contaminating Wilbur's land. Correct, that's right.
00:09:12
Speaker 4: When we sat down with mister Tennant and looked at videotapes and photographs that he had, what we found out was there was a landfill right next to mister Tennant's property that DuPont was using. It was supposed to be just routine trash and regular non hazardous waste from the plant, and we were trying to figure out why the water coming out of this landfill, the runoffs out of a landfill had white foam, and it appeared that that foam was making the cows that were drinking the water sick, wildlife in the area sick. And so we started digging into what exactly was going into this landfill because what we were seeing in the records and the permits for the landfill from the state weren't weren't revealing any anything that would explain what was happening to the animals and what we were seeing with the white foaming water.
00:10:14
Speaker 1: So just let's talk in particular what was occurring to the cows. So the evidence that mister Tennant brought to you was a ton of videotapes, right, like a bunch of VHS tapes of him documenting his cattle as they are dying off, and he's showing that they have appear to have enlarged organs and blackened teeth, and he's also noticing that some of the rocks within his creek that's running on his property are bleached or at least appear to be, you know, discolored, discolored. Yeah, So, like, talk to me about how you felt when you saw that, Like what was your reaction to seeing those things and did you immediately think there was something really really bad going on there.
00:10:59
Speaker 4: Yeah. Mister tim had been ticking videotape of what he was seeing on his property and in the creek for years. He had started seeing problems in the mid to late nineties, around nineteen ninety five or so, and had been trying to get somebody to pay attention, and so he figured he'd start videotaping it and so at least people could see what he was talking about. And so he brought these tapes up to us, and as you indicated, I mean, it was pretty powerful video. It showed animals that were wasting away, you know, just we're skin and bones, that had tumors, that had blackened teeth, their eyes were sunken back in their head or just colored. There were other wildlife in the area, you know, fish and frogs and deer that seemed to be suffering as well. And there were actually portions of those tapes or mister Tennant was cutting into the animals that had died to try to find out what had happened. Did you see misshape and miscolored organs and tumors and blackened teeth in these animals? So it was pretty powerful when we looked at that videotape and you can see these animals standing in water with white foam, that something clearly was wrong, something was very wrong there. So we figured, yes, we would try to help.
00:12:25
Speaker 2: So this is the pivotal moment right where you decide that, yes, we will take this case. For anyone who's unfamiliar with the way these sorts of investigations involved, like how they evolve over time, what were the next early steps, like as soon as as soon as you decide we will take on this matter. What is the first the first iteration of the investigation? Do we identify the foam? Do we take samples? How does it work?
00:13:00
Speaker 4: Well? You know, the first things I did was try to go to the state agency that was regulating that landfill that has given the company a permit and pull the permits and find out what types of materials are being disposed there, What are they monitoring for in the water? You know, are we seeing detections of those chemicals above the limits that the state has set. You know, in my world up to that point that I've been dealing with all these different federal state laws, you know, my understanding was if there were toxic or hazardous materials of concern, those are the ones that would be listed in the permits, or those would be the ones that you would have to be monitoring for. So I thought this would be a fairly straightforward thing that we could pull these permits, pull the records for this landfill, and surely there must be something that was out of black, you know, something that was being emitted and way too high of concentration, you know, and that we would be able to find that through going through these government permits. And that's what we focused on with DuPont initially as well, was their records relating to what was permitted, what was regulated at that landfille, and we simply didn't see anything that was explaining what we were seeing through those permit records.
00:14:27
Speaker 5: I'm fascinated by this whole concept of allowable limits of toxins and the process of you know, how the EPA decides what is it is not acceptable in terms of you know, impurities in or in contaminations and environments and drinking water, et cetera. Is that like, can you speak to that a little bit, to someone with your expertise as to what that process is like and why we sometimes see you know, rollbacks of EPA standards for example, that oh no, actually, wait, we don't need to be this rigorous, we're over overdoing it, you know, or re examining something like this where maybe it goes in the opposite direction.
00:15:05
Speaker 4: Well, you know, it's an extremely complex process. You know, we're talking about a regulatory system that really, if you look at the grand scheme of events here, hasn't been around all that long. You know, the US EPA didn't even come into existence until nineteen seventy in some of the first laws at the federal level regulating chemicals going out into the market and how you test them and how you assess their safety really didn't come out until nineteen seventy six. And you know, it's a fairly limited group of chemicals that have actually been assessed and have been deemed worthy to be regulated at a federal level or state level. And you know, with standards being set under different federal laws and regulations, and really what we came to find a help through this case, you know, was there's much larger world of unregulated chemicals. Chemicals that have escaped that process. Either they were already out in our world, in our environment decades before these new federal laws came into play, before the EPA even existed, or somehow they skated through or bypassed the system altogether.
00:16:22
Speaker 5: And we're going to talk more about this topic after a quick word from our sponsor.
00:16:33
Speaker 2: And we're back. So at this point, we see, of course, the what many people would think of as the looming shadow of the gigantic company DuPont, and the firm has done some I believe the firm has in its past done some corporate work on the plaintiff side. What was the prospect, like, what was the conversation like on your side when you when you had to choose shall we take on DuPont? Shall we take on this enormous corporate entity. Was there any hesitation, any any sense of that that this could endanger your livelihood or anything like that.
00:17:20
Speaker 4: Well, I think that that was a conversation that's definitely evolved over time. You know, when when mister Tennant first came to US, and we were first looking into this issue, you know, we assumed this would be something that would be rather straightforward. You know, it's it was a regulated, permitted landfill, something that was being controlled by the state of West Virginia. We thought we would be able to to find out what what you know, hazardous materials we're in that landfill and assume that we could get to the bottom of it relatively quickly. We had no idea at the time that this was going to evolve some unregulated mystery chemical. But even even in those initial stages where we were talking with mister Tennant and trying to decide whether to take the case and actually sue dupot, you know, it was clear mister Tenant in his family probably were not going to be able to, you know, afford the kind of rates we typically charged our corporate clients. So that was one of the first times we ever took on a case on what they call contingency, you know, where the client only pays at the end, uh if there's actually a recovery. But again, we thought it was a fairly straightforward We hoped it would be a rather straightforward case. It wasn't until you know, it was getting into the discovery and getting into the documents that we realized we were dealing with a much much bigger issue, one that went way beyond just this farmer's family and his property, but what something that was impacting the entire community and eventually realized entire country, if not the entire world, it's going to be a much bigger undertaking.
00:19:05
Speaker 1: And in the movie at least it's it's depicted as when you stumble upon something within the discovery all these documents, something that is referred to as PFOA or PFOA related with regards to the driver R and landfill. Can you just talk about that, like what that was, what your journey was to figuring out what the heck that substance was, because there wasn't nobody actually had anything written down in these documents about what it was, and you didn't really learn about it until you were at the at least it appears like you were at that Chemical Alliance dinner where you saw the reaction to pfoas. So let's just talk about how you found it, what it is, and that Chemical Alliance dinner.
00:19:49
Speaker 4: Well. I I have also recently published a book called Exposure, which I try to go into more detail about the discovery of this chemical and how it was we came to find out it even existed in what documents we saw this in and how I really started to understand what was going on here was a pretty complicated process, But what I can tell you is we were, you know, getting nowhere really with focusing on the regulated listed materials in this landfill and their permits. So I got to the point where I finally decided I would ask to POD for all of their records relating to anything that was going to this landfill from the plant, and we met with great pushback from the company at that point, now you need to keep focused on these hazardous listed materials, and we had to go to court and we eventually got a court order that required the company to start turning over this broader group of documents, and it was pouring through all of those materials, and it was a lot that I stumbled upon a document one day that mentioned this chemical referred to as a p f O or p f O a UH, and I tried to find out what was this because it was indicating that there was a lot of that material that had been used at the plant and that it had been some of that waste had been sent to this landfill. Uh, So it was finding that reference really changed everything. I tried to find information, you know, that was available publicly online or in our library and really couldn't find much of anything about this chemical. I wasn't even sure it was a chemical at that point. So that really launched us down a whole new road. And really, you know, it's something I have been had to focus on for the next several years, is finding out what is this stuff and why is so much of it being used at that plan, and why did it why did the waste end up at this landfill? What does it do to the cows that are drinking people?
00:21:59
Speaker 2: And the fall or autumn of two thousand you had to You took them to court. You took DuPont to court to comply with that request that they share all documentation related to PFOA, and that this feels like the watershed moment because you find that not only is there, not only is their correspondence internally or documentation eternally onto Pont's side, but it is robust, I believe, more than one hundred and ten thousand pages. And the thing that was scary to me is that some of this paperwork is uh, what' fifty years old at that point. What did you do when you got this? This just mass info dump of all these different things from it feels like they're from different sources, right, medical reports.
00:22:52
Speaker 1: Just like thousands of boxes, right?
00:22:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, what how did you how did you begin to digest that?
00:23:00
Speaker 4: Well? As you indicated, I mean, that process really began after we were able to get the courts, you know, to order the company to start turning over its internal files about this material, and it eventually ended up being millions of pages of documents. And those were the days really before things were produced on electronic discs or thumb drives, So we were getting physical, hard copy paper, which frankly I think ended up being a blessing in the end, because we didn't necessarily know exactly what terms, you know, we were looking for, how it do not refer to this chemical. In fact, we eventually learned they were referring to it a four or five different ways that we wouldn't have even known to ask for documents about FC one three or C eight. You know. It only was going through all those documents that we were able to piece that together that that took many years sitting through, you know, I physically printed these things out or organized all those hard copies, read through every page and trying to put together, put it in chronological order, and try to piece together the history of what happened here. And as you indicate it, we saw documents going back to the nineteen fifties. The company started purchasing this material in nineteen fifty one from the three M Company, and had started extensive toxicology studies on it in the sixties, and human studies in the seventies, and cancer studies in the eighties. So there was a wealth of information, and the most disturbing aspect of it was realizing there was a lot known about the toxicity of the chemical. Not only was it in the waste that had been sent to this landfill and that the cows were drinking, but it had been found in the drinking water of the community in the eighties, and nobody else outside the company. He seemed to be aware of this. It did not look like the community had been told, did not look like the regulators were aware. In fact, they're even draft standby press releases in case somebody found out that apparently never went out. So it was very disturbing information and realized we were dealing with what we've realized was a public health threat that had gone unnoticed.
00:25:23
Speaker 5: I don't want to come off to naive here, but I mean the implication as this went to the very top of this company in terms of covering up these studies and just absolute brazen disregard for people's safety.
00:25:37
Speaker 4: We're talking about information that was definitely within the corporate files, within the scientific files, within the lawyers were aware of it. The lawyers were even advising the client that this was a problem going back to years. And you know, there's a point where I eventually even sat down with the CEO of the company and showed him all of these internal documents after he was standing up and publicly saying that there was no information suggesting there were any health issues. So I sat down with him and went through all of those internal documents that showed just the opposite. So it was there was a wealth of information within the company's own files.
00:26:24
Speaker 2: And this is this is something that we want to want to emphasize. Is it true that when you were when you were looking through all this extensive uh documentation that literally no one else outside DuPont had ever seen before. Is it true that you found they were contradicting their own recommendations about how to handle PFOA.
00:26:52
Speaker 4: You know, there were internal recommendations and you know, discussion about whether to switch frankly, away from the chemical to a different one in order to avoid some of the problems they were seeing with PFOA. And then these discussions went back into the eighties and there were recommendations from three M, the company that was making the PFOA and sending it to Dupot since nineteen fifty one. You know, the three M was recommending that it not be put into waterways, you know, that it should be incinerated, and unfortunately DuPont was not solving those recommendations.
00:27:31
Speaker 1: Just going to take a quick break here and hear a word from our sponsor, and we're back talking about dark Waters and Rob a Lot's experience. Okay, so we're really starting to get into the direness of this story and the effects of what was going on there. Let's jump to I want to kind of focus in on the individuals, the people in the community who are working, you know, in these facilities where they're actually creating the chemicals. And then the people living that are drinking that water. And you know, in the movie, it's just kind of a known thing that if you go and you work at the chemical plant, your life is going to be shortened. It's just something that people in the community would talk about in that it's a known thing. You're going to make a good living for a fairly shortened amount of time. And it was almost as if it's a trade off and a known thing, at least as depicted in the movie. And I had a conversation with some of my family from Ohio and like the Akron area, Chigo Falls that area, and there it was just even and within my relatives it was a known thing that if you go and you work at a chemical company, you're basically risking your life to get a good, stable job. Is that we found in Parker's Burg And what were what were the effects on the people working in these plants.
00:29:06
Speaker 4: I think as you see in the film Dark Waters, you know that there was definitely pushback within the community when the lawsuits began. Uh you know, this was one of the major employers in town. It had been a contributor and uh you know, had provided funding for a lot of the local organizations. So there were a lot of folks that we were not happy with the idea, you know, that that there was litigation being brought against you know, this this this employer in the community, and there was there was pushback you know, from the against the folks that were speaking out, and you know, even among the employees, you know, there were folks that were that we were definitely becoming thick. In fact, in the book we discussed one of the former employees u you know, who used to work at the lab, who you know, for for decades was working with these chemicals who developed ulst of colitis and just the severe personal impact you know, that that has on folks like that, you know. And I think that's one of the great things about the film Dark Waters is that it really gives you a good insight into how something like this really impacts the real people in the community that are dealing with it on a day to day basis. You know, we're talking about something that was dragging on for years and years. In the meantime, real people are living there, you know, real people are drinking this, and real people are getting sick and dying, and I think, you know, it's something I think it was powerful. It's powerful to see what that really does to folks.
00:30:52
Speaker 2: I tremendously appreciate that point. I think we all do, because one thing the film does a fantastic job of depicting is is the human costs, the very real human costs of this sort of contamination and pollution and cover up with You know, it could be so easy for us, you know, just as people everyday people to see a headline on the news or to hear a statistic and for us to relegate that to the realm of abstraction. We can also tell that this had a clear dare I say, personal impact on you, specifically as as an individual and as an attorney, because while this is moving through court, while you're aggregating this evidence, while you're finding this documentation, eventually, if we just if we jump to two thousand again, eventually you call the attorney on DuPont's side and you have this conversation that results in the tenants settling their case. And as as we as noted, right, there's there's this one moment where it could have stopped. There as that one single case, right, and the firm gets as as you had indicated earlier, it's contingency fee. But that's not where it stops, because you make the decision to continue unraveling this strange web. Could could you tell us a little bit about what compelled you or what propelled you forward after the settlement.
00:32:44
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, by the time I had that conversation that we were able to resolve the case for mister Tennant and his family, you know, we had I'll say, I had been looking through enough of the documentation at that point realized this went far beyond mister Tennant's property. And you know, mister Tenant, even in his family, were extremely concerned about their community and their neighbors who you know, were drinking this and had no idea. You know, we had found out, you know, by looking at these documents that this was not just on their property, not just in the landfill, but was in the local drinking water and nobody was being told. So you know, he was very passionate about finding a way that we could get this information out to the broader community, and that that really bothered me as well, knowing that, you know, I may be one of the only people had seen this information, was aware of this public health threat, and nobody else seemed to know it. So I did make the decision to sit down and put all that information, at least most of what I could find, into a letter that I sent to the U s e. P A and various different governmental agencies back on March sixth, two thousand and one, where I hoped by laying out what I had been seeing in these documents, these agencies would see the same thing and realized there was a public health threat here. People were drinking this material. This was out there in the environment. You know. The agencies really hadn't been given this information, and they would come in and stop it and take action to clean it up, get the water filtered, and regulate it, you know. And I, looking back, realized how naive I was to think that the government agencies would actually swoop in and do something. But to me, that was a critical step. We needed to alert these agencies and the public to this public health threat. And that happened, and Duplant actually went to court to truck get a gag order to stop us and talking about it, and luckily the court rejected that and I was allowed to go and provide the information to the EPA, and eventually, you know, EPA started digging through it and realized this information had been withheld, sued DuPont and one of the few times that's ever happened, or suing a company for withholding information like this from the agency, and that began the process of looking into these chemicals and starting to regulate them where we unfortunately that process is still grinding on some eighteen years later.
00:35:30
Speaker 1: And you said chemicals there, right, because for a lot of this and a lot of people maybe think tefline, this one product, this one singular thing is the issue. The carbon is a repeating carbon chain. I believe that's how it's referred to. It's this one thing, But no, no, it's it's numerous chemicals that are very similar to this one.
00:35:50
Speaker 4: Right. Well, the chemical that we were focused on in particular was one of these chemicals called PFOA, and it is one of a large group of chemicals that we now know as p FOSS. P f A s a group of man made chemicals that were invented right after World War Two, primarily by three M. You know, there these man made carbon and flooring combination chemicals that share similar characteristics and at the time we were focused on one of them, PFOA. But what we've now come to know is that there's a large number of these out there, and they're being found also in drinking water across the country, and in all of our blood and in the environment.
00:36:36
Speaker 1: So let's let's talk about what that means for us. There, the three of us sitting in this room talking to you, are our super producer Paul out there in the booth. We all grew up with with my parents and I making omelets in our you know, our saucepans that had were covered with teflon, and we do I'd use a fork to make my omelet, and I know for a fact that I've ingested that stuff in that way, outside of the drinking water, outside of all you know, all the other ways are being contaminated. Like what what does that big what does the big picture really look like for for all of humanity, for all of organic life.
00:37:15
Speaker 4: Well, you know, that's the thing that's really very disturbing about this whole story is we're talking about contamination on a global scale that I'm not sure we've seen before. Where you know, this this this chemical and this family of chemicals, the pithos chemicals, have been used in an enormous variety and array of different products over the decades, where you know, not just nonstick cookwar but fast food wrappings, stained resistant carpeting, clothing, UH wire cabling, firefighting foams, microwave, popcorn, bag coatings, I mean, you name it. And so these chemicals have been used in such a vast array of products that it's out there and not only in our water, but it's gotten into soils, it's gotten into food. It's unfortunately, these chemicals have a great ability to stay out in the environment. Once they're out there, they have a great inability to be broken down by natural conditions, so you hear them now referred to as forever chemicals. PFOA for example, it just really doesn't break down under natural conditions and would be there for millions of years. So pretty much everything that's been pumped out in the last sixty seventy years is still there in our soil and our water and now getting into us. And not only does the stuff get out and stay in the environment, it has the unique ability to get into living things where it tends to stick into the blood. PFOA for example, into our blood, and even the tiniest amounts will build up over time, so it's persistent and bioaccumulative, and now we also know toxic. So you know, these these chemicals, in their their great persistence, their ability to be basically contaminating the whole planet and people on the planet, are presenting really tremendous challenges and concerns to the scientific community right now, particularly as we just now start sampling and finding out exactly where this stuff is. It's been being pumped out there for decades, but we're only just now really starting to sample and find it and really realize the extent of exntamination.
00:39:41
Speaker 5: And I certainly see and share your concern about the big picture of contamination issues involved here. But to Matt's question, you know, you know, your story involves high levels of contamination literally being pumped into water supplies and environments, the whole flaking off of teflong with a fork. Well, you know, over time that would necessarily be something as much to worry about as the big picture of things that you're addressing. Or maybe I'm wrong, I just wanted to put that to you.
00:40:07
Speaker 4: Well, but drinking these chemicals you know, in the water has certainly been recognized by the scientific world is one of the primary sources of getting exposed. I mean, if you're living in a community where these chemicals are in your drinking water, that's going to be one of your primary ways of getting it into your body. These other exposures are probably going to be less significant, but they'll still you know, manage to get into you somehow. But really, you know, if you're in an area where it's made it into the water, that's really a prime concern to stop that exposures. That's a direct exposure into the body.
00:40:45
Speaker 2: And I believe one thing that if there's one takeaway that everyone listening to today's episode needs to carry with them after the audio has stopped playing, it's this we're talking about the genesis of an investigation that expands, you know, to these vast parameters. But we're not really talking about something that happened in the past. We're not only talking about that because as as you establish, Rob, this is this is going on, These chemicals, these substances are still out there in multitudes of different let's sae, multitudes of different applications, multitudes of different illicit distributions. Right whether in drinking water or in DuPonts so called digestion ponds. We now are looking toward the future, and I'd love to hear your perspective on what the future of PFOA and these related contaminants may actually be. What, because you know that directly translates to the health of the public and the health of livestock and even perhaps not to be alarmist about it, the health of generations to come. Could you speak with us a little bit about what you see in the near to mid future as the state of America's health as it applies to these substances, or any action, whether environmental recovery actions or whether legal actions that might mitigate potential future harm.
00:42:31
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, as the information finally started coming out about these chemicals, actually three m back in two thousand announced that it was going to stop making PFOA and the related one PFOS that was used in Scotch Guard and firefighting films. So they very quickly announced they would stop making two of these Dupon unfortunately then jumped in at that point and started making and continued to make PFOA. You know, as more of this information came out to our litigation and the EPA got more involved in more concerns to PONT and the other companies that we're still using and making PFOA at the time announced in two thousand and six that they would stop making PFOA and phased it out over the next ten years by twenty fifteen. During that period of time, companies have brought out what they referred to as alternatives or safer replacements for these longer chain C eights, ones that have eight carbons, things like sixes C fours, and the hopes that they're less persistent, less bioaccumulative, and unfortunately, the data that's coming out suggests they might share very similar toxicities and hopefully won't last in the environment though as long. And I think what we're seeing is as this data is coming out about this broader class of chemicals and more testing is occurring, people are finally becoming aware that these chemicals even exist and what their exposures have been or might be. And you know, that's one of the things I'm very encouraged about with the release of Dark Waters in the book, is that that information will now be out to a wider group of people who will now understand that they've been exposed at least have the tools to start beginning to avoid those exposures hopefully going forward at least be aware of what kind of products and where in the environment these chemicals might be, so that they can choose to avoid it if they want. And we are now finally seeing regulatory authorities start to finally take action. It's taken a long time. The US EPA still has not regulated these chemicals on a federal level, but the states are moving forward setting drinking water guidelines on their own in order to protect people. So we're seeing action begin, and I think we're seeing increased awareness so that people can take steps to protect themselves, and hopefully we'll also see technologies being developed to help us get these things out of our environment and hopefully find ways to make sure that our exposures are minimized going forward.
00:45:13
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having something positive to talk about in this story, Rob because, uh man, it's it's we get into very dark waters here when we're when we're doing this. Sorry, I just have one in there, No for real, it's it's it's this movie and this story and your experience. It's it's very intense and at times it can be disheartening at very many weeks.
00:45:39
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, for sure, it really points to a real lack of humanity on the parts of folks that can really that that are the ones who are most empowered to really make a difference and just choose not to, it would seem I believe.
00:45:55
Speaker 2: The euphemism is self regulation.
00:45:57
Speaker 1: Well yes, so, so I don't want to spoil the the ending of the movie. If you've read the article, you know how it turns out for the people of Parkersburg and a lot of the other people affected. But I just really quickly, for my money, the biggest the biggest issue is the self regulation of these chemical companies with their proprietary chemicals. And the problem is that the EPA and all these regulatory bodies won't know what chemicals to regulate if the chemical company doesn't come forward and give them those guidelines. At least that's the way it was when these lawsuits began. Have you seen any change in that respect or is it still kind of the way it was?
00:46:41
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean for existing chemicals like this, chemicals that were out there before a lot of these rules and laws came into play. In fact, this situation was cited as an example of why those laws needed to be changed. In fact, in twenty sixteen, the federal law regulating chemicals coming out of the market was beefed up in order to try to address that very issue. I think it remains to be seen how effective you know, that's going to be going forward, But to me, it's encouraging. What's really encouraging is to see this information come out, and because I think once you give people the facts and this information, you know, even if it's going to take a while for these things to grind through the regulatory system or the political system, people on an individual basis, once they know the information, they can at least take steps to protect themselves. And I think that's something you see in the movie as well. It's just the power of information in individuals to stand up and do things to protect themselves in their communities.
00:47:53
Speaker 2: Well said, and we completely agree. We've seen Dark Waters for ourselves.
00:47:59
Speaker 1: Freedom.
00:47:59
Speaker 2: What listening? If you would like more information, because information is power and in this case it's also self empowerment. If you would like to learn more about this again ongoing story, then check out the film Dark Waters. Additionally, find Exposure, which is Rob Bolott's book coming out via Simon and Schuster.
00:48:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, Rob, thank you so much. Is there anything else you want to leave us with.
00:48:30
Speaker 4: No and I really appreciate the opportunity. Again. You know, anything like this that helps people understand what has actually happened, What is happening, believe it or not, in the United States in today's world is as you indicated, not something that happens, you know, back in the nineteen tens or twenties. This is modern day United States and for people to understand this is what's happening, and here are the things we need to do that hopefully will make things better.
00:49:02
Speaker 2: And that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't wait to hear your thoughts.
00:49:08
Speaker 5: It's right let us know what you think. You can reach to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on Facebook x and YouTube on Instagram and TikTok work Conspiracy Stuff Show.
00:49:17
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00:49:34
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00:49:36
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00:50:05
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