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