The Teflon Toxin, Part 2: Wilbur Tennant vs. DuPont. No one would help him. His pleas for help fell on deaf ears, according to the Huffington Post's article, "Welcome to Beautiful Parkersburg, West Virginia." Wilbur Earl Tennant and his siblings took over the land when their father abandoned them in the 1950s, according to the Huffington Post. Thats why they called it Dry Run. Yes, the household name used as a cookware coating agent that is advertised to make food not stick and is known for its durability in . This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. There also are related substances called precursors that transform into PFOA and PFOS in the body or the environment. And, based on Centers for Disease Control data, PFAS chemicals were found the blood of 98 percent of people studied. If Wilbur Earl Tennants cows hadnt died from a mysterious wasting disease during the 1990s, the world might have never learned about the secret history of toxic forever chemicals. Black smoke curled into the daylight. By that point, 153 animals died had died grisly deaths on his property . He was speaking to the camcorder pressed to his eye. According to the book, DuPont had commissioned a photographer to take aerial photos of the property as part of its defense. DuPont's Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia. A variation of the _gat cookie set by Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager to allow website owners to track visitor behaviour and measure site performance. Wilbur Tennant shot this video on his property in the 1990's. Tennant was a farmer who sold part of his land in Parkersburg, West Virginia, to DuPont, for what the company had assured him would be a non-hazardous landfill. DuPont's statement said the film "depict[s] wholly imagined events," calling implications of a cover up "inaccurate," and claimed that it "grossly misrepresents" what happened. Despite internal debate, it declined to make the information public," the magazinenotes. Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. And I burn them all. Tennant told him that DuPont had bought land from his family that was adjacent to his farm, for what the company had assured him would be a non-hazardous landfill, according to a letter Bilott later filed with the Environmental Protection Agency. As a man, he had walked its banks with his wife. working in the garden and around the farm with his grandson . After this sale, Tennant's cattle started to become sick and Tennant began to understand that . As luck would have it, the company bought 66 acres from one of their employees, Wilbur Tennant. The following is an excerpt of Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyers Twenty-Year Battle against DuPont by Robert Bilott and Tom Shroder. This cookie, set by YouTube, registers a unique ID to store data on what videos from YouTube the user has seen. Bilott has spent more than twenty years litigating hazardous dumping of the chemicals perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS). Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. Dark Waters tells a story that in many ways is still being written, and itwill likely take years for this latest lawsuit to be resolved. Its dumping pits were unlined, designed for the disposal of nonhazardous wasteoffice paper and everyday trash. In 1999, a farm farmily sued DuPont for the death of their cattle and the ill health of exposed family and farm workers. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. Tennant recounted to anyone who would listen that he'd lost about 100 calves and 50 cows over the years. It smelled rotten. Deer, birds, fish and other wildlife were turning up dead in and around Dry Run. Copyright 2019 by Robert Bilott. Tennant stated that . . (Chicago Tribune Handout). Bilott is back in court again. Excerpt from Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyers Twenty-Year Battle against DuPont. Wilbur Tennant is on Facebook. For example, New Hampshire sued 3M and DuPont, along with a handful of companies that make firefighting foam containing PFAS. Wilbur Tennant's family farm was located next to a "non-hazardous" landfill operated by the chemical company. A key component of Teflon was C8, also known as perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). But now it seemed they were ignoring him. That calf had died miserable. He knew his neighbors and his community was being poisoned, Bilott told the Post. One tooth had an abscess so large he reckoned he could stick an ice pick clear under it. He was an excellent marksman, and his family had always had enough meat to eat. I dont recall him drinking, Deitzler says. DuPont established a presence along the Ohio River in 1948 with the Washington Works plant near Parkersburg. Her eyes were sunk deep in her head. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. 'Dark Waters' is an upcoming American legal thriller helmed by Todd Haynes. Behind him, white-faced Herefords grazed in . Cows that drank from the creek had been healthy. Bilott created a timeline that showed what DuPont and 3M knew about the chemicals. They concluded that 'the study was valid' and that 'the observed fetal eye defects were due to C8,' according to internal DuPont documents. This cookie is set by the provider Akamai Bot Manager. Join Facebook to connect with Wilbur Tennant and others you may know. None of this information was shared with the public. He knew the folks at the DNR, because they gave him a special permit to hunt on his land out of season. 30 Broad Street, Suite 801 Dark Waters tells the true story of American farmer Wilbur Tennant who calls on lawyer Rob Bilott (Mark Ruffalo) to help him sue a chemical company Credit: Focus Features. That things about . Wilbur's brother, Jim, was also employed as a laborer at the Washington Works plant, along with hundreds more who found steady work at the area's largest employer. Even though he sold them to be finished and slaughtered for beef, he didnt have the heart to kill one himself, unless it had a broken leg and he needed to end its suffering. In the 1980s, Jim Tennant and his wife, Della, got an offer from DuPont. In his memoir, Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyers Twenty-Year Battle Against DuPont, published earlier this year, Bilott says that doctors could only really diagnose the issue as unusual brain activity after an MRI similar to the one he undergoes in the film. Wilbur's brother, Jim, was also . Wilbur Tennant showed Bilott alarming video footage in which his previously docile animals had turned . It dont do you any good to go to the DNR about it. . He panned again: a bonfire on a grassy slope, a pyre of logs as fat as garbage cans. This cookie is used to manage the interaction with the online bots. It all started with Wilbur Tennant's dying cows. In 1998, cattle farmer Wilbur Tennant of Parkersburg, West Virginia, contacted Bilott and claimed that his livestock was dying because the runoff from a DuPont landfill had contaminated a creek on . When the Grahams heard in 1998 that Wilbur Tennant was looking for legal help, they remembered Bilott, White's grandson, who had grown up to become an environmental . PFOA (C8) and PFOS were the long-chain, more commonly used substances in a larger group of more than 4,000 man-made chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Now, he was feeding them twice as much and watching them waste away. Wilbur Earl Tennant, 67 of New England passed away suddenly at his residence May 15, 2009. izuku has a rare quirk fanfiction; novello olive oil trader joe's; micah mcfadden parents; qatar airways 787 9 business class; mary holland married; spontaneous novel ending explained Late in the film, a disillusioned Bilott (Mark Ruffalo), up against a wall, imagines that the multinational corporation, the likes of which he once defended, might be setting him up to be a cautionary tale for all their would-be litigants: Look, everybody, even he cant crack the maze, Bilott says, and hes helped build it.. When she returned to work at DuPont, Bailey learned about a study by 3M (the manufacturer of C8) that found similar deformities in unborn rats exposed to the chemical, according to the Huffington Post. Wilbur Tennant. The farm would have stretched even longer if one of Wilbur Tennant's brothers, Jim, did not sell 66 acres to the DuPont company in the early 1980's for a landfill they were going to create for their factory. Among the files, many mentions of the chemical PFOA, also known as C8, a slippery surfactant, that was first produced by DuPont in 1938, appeared. It turned out 3M also made PFOA and sold it to DuPont, which used the chemical cousin of Scotchgard to keep Teflon from clumping during production. Flies. C8 is a "surfactant," a chemical compound that reduces surface tension. It's the messy, real story behind Focus Features' Dark Waters movie, starring Mark Ruffalo as Robert Bilott, the corporate lawyer turned environmental activist who led an epic legal fight against chemical titan DuPont. The suit alleges negligence claiming the chemicals contaminated the state's natural resources, according to New Hampshire Public Radio. However, the company didn't tell employees or regulators and ended the study, the Huffington Post reports. And after Bilott watched and listened, he took action. He zoomed out and panned over to an industrial pipe spewing froth into the creek. DuPont's scientists understood that the landfill drained into the Tennants' remaining property, and they tested the water in Dry Run Creek. The Teflon Toxin, Part 2: Wilbur Tennant vs. DuPontNot Yet Rated. Around here, that economic engine was DuPont, known for innovations like nylon, Tyvek, and Teflon. The primary coordinates for Tennants Farm Pond Dam places it within the WV 26184 ZIP Code delivery area. Just because there really is something in the water doesnt mean you cant also be paranoid. It is a chemical used in the manufacturing process of Teflon. It was small and ephemeral, fed by the rains that gathered in the creases of the ancient mountains that rumpled West Virginia and gave it those misty blue, almost-heaven vistas. Patches of missing hair, discolorations in their . The sp_landing is set by Spotify to implement audio content from Spotify on the website and also registers information on user interaction related to the audio content. The same year, the EPA fined DuPont more than $10 million for "failing to report 'substantial risk of injury to human health' from C8 (PFOA)," according to The Intercept. I noticed that in at least one of the scenes where I was portrayed. The farmhouse stood at the foot of a sloping meadow that rose into a bald knob. Similarly, DuPonts presence in the Ohio and West Virginia Chemical Valley regions really did resemble the company town vibe portrayed in Dark Waters, with citizens frequently too enthralled by the multinationals economic benefits to question its impact on their health and safety. The saga began for Bilott when Wilbur Tennant, a cattle farmer from Parkersburg, West Virginia, called Bilott a few months before he made partner at a white-shoe Cincinnati law firm. (He later would be played by actor Mark Ruffalo in the 2019 film Dark Waters.). . No one believed him when he told them about the things he saw happening to his land. In another field, a grown cow lay dead. Bilott later determined it was one of the forever chemicals perfluorooctanoic acid, commonly referred to today as PFOA. It flowed through a corner of the three-hundred-acre farm, in a place Earl called the holler. A small valley cut between hillsides, the holler was where he moved the herd to graze throughout the summer. . I could find no record of any such incident taking place. At 72, Jim is so slight that he nearly . May 15, 2009; Location: Washington, West Virginia; Tribute & Message From The Family. In 1998, a farmer named Wilbur Earl Tennant knocked on the door of a lawyer named Robert Bi-lott on the grounds that the vegetation structure of the land he owned was impaired, the cattle he was breeding were affected and the only responsible was the factory located next to the river, ow-ning a wasteland adjacent to his property. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. Google DoubleClick IDE cookies are used to store information about how the user uses the website to present them with relevant ads and according to the user profile. So, the couple sold about 60 acres to DuPont. Thats whats so scary about these chemicals, said Jamie DeWitt, a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at East Carolina University who studies PFAS. 3M and DuPont have argued in court and in public statements that neither chemical is harmful to people at typical levels of exposure. The muscle looked fine, but a thin, yellow liquid gathered in the cavity where it once beat. Maybe if he filmed it, they could see for themselves and realize he was not just some crazy old farmer. Records obtained by Bilott showed DuPont had determined in 1961 that PFOA is toxic in animals. Now it looked like dirty dishwater. Anne Hathaway as Sarah Bilott and the real-life Sarah Bilott. All rights reserved. Company officials told one of Tennants brothers in person and in writing they planned to turn it into a landfill for office garbage nothing hazardous. At the end of the movie, I had a revelation. He started the legal process in 1999 against DuPont by filing motions compelling it to turn over documents pertaining to hazardous materials used at the Washington Works plant near Parkersburg. Shorty after that, DuPont started to medically monitor female workers at the Washington Works plant to, as the company's medical director noted, "answer a single question does C8 cause abnormal children?" Details of what DuPont allegedly knew and when came to light in pages and pages of documents, initially as part of the lawsuit Bilott filed against the company on behalf of Wilbur Tennant and then in more than 3,000 subsequent personal injury suits that have followed in the past two decades. DuPont's Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Wamsley suffered from ulcerative colitis, a condition that can lead to rectal cancer, which, in his case it, did. He sliced open the chest cavity, pulled out a lung, and turned the camera back on. The company turned this land into the unlined Dry Run Landfill. Listen to an interview with Bilott about the chemical lawsuits on Science Friday. . Birds sang through the white-hot humidity as he panned the camcorder across the creek. The symptoms shown in the movieincluding such discolorations as blackened teethare also similar to the ones that Tennant really did videotape before sending the tapes to Bilott. PFAS are ubiquitous. Behind him, white-faced Herefords grazed in rolling meadows. The carcass was starting to smell. A creek connects the landfill and the fields of Tennant's farm. Bilott found studies that potentially linked PFOA with a variety of cancers, birth defects, and illnesses. DuPont's Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Born: March 6, 1942 . This video contains graphic imagery. . He walked there every day to count heads and check fences. The unlikely hero was an Ohio-based corporate defense lawyer paid to protect chemical companies, just like the one the farmer suspected of foul play. Wilbur Tennant had become desperate. As he does in the film, the real Bilott did begin to experience strange symptoms in 2010 similar to the strokelike transient ischemic attack seen in the movie. Photo illustration by Slate. His mothers grandfather had bought this land, and it was the only home he had ever known. The West Virginia-based farmer was convinced a toxic river that ran into his farmland was to blame, since the animals' strange symptoms began when his brother sold some land to a chemical company to use as a landfill site a . This time he is seeking to force 3M and DuPont to pay for medical monitoring of every American exposed to PFAS. He had stopped feeding his family venison from the deer he shot on his land. Cookie used to remember the user's Disqus login credentials across websites that use Disqus. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. While the character of the hand-wringing Taft lawyer James Ross, portrayed by The Good Places William Jackson Harper, seems to have been invented, along with the scene where Ross suggests that Bilotts class-action suit might read to the public as nothing more than a shakedown of an iconic American company, Bilott did tell the New York Times that he perceived that there were some What the hell are you doing? responses within the firm. He toldThe Intercept in 2015 that it bubbled up out of glass containers and "was everywhere." The cookie is used to store and identify a users' unique session ID for the purpose of managing user session on the website. ATSDR/CDC also notes that more studies need to be done in the area of health effects, particularly on shorter-chain substances. It also helps in fraud preventions. You could poke it with a stick and leave a hole. riding horses, milking cows and watching Secretariat win the Triple Crown on TV. PFOA is part of a larger class of PFAS chemicals. July 7, 1996 Washington, West Virginia. Parkersburg is also home to the Tennant family, who, for nearly a century, have worked land that eventually grew to 700-plus acres and raised more than 200 head of cattle. By the late 1990s, West Virginia farmer Wilbur Tennant was at his wits end. Wilbur Earl Tennant and his siblings took over the land when their father abandoned them in the 1950s, according to the Huffington Post. The flies hummed as loud as bees. In 2005, DuPont agreed to phase out its use of C8 (PFOA) by 2015, according to The Intercept. The state vet wouldnt even come out to the farm. Sure, bitters make cocktails taste great. LinkedIn sets this cookie to remember a user's language setting. Theres been fifty-six cows thats been burnt just like this.. He couldnt quite place it. apples, bread, green beans and ground beef. . This cow died about twenty, thirty minutes ago, Earl said. Washington, West Virginia. Invest in quality science journalism by making a donation to Science Friday. The cattle farmer stood at the edge of a creek that cut through a sun-dappled hollow. A videotape Tennant shot with a VHS camcorder shows emaciated cows with tumors on their hides. When the cattle on Wilbur Earl Tennant's farm began to mysteriously fall ill and die, he suspected it wasn't what the animals were eatingit was what they were drinking. Initial data showed evidence that it did. Tennant and his brother Jim wanted to get to the bottom of it, so they dissected some carcasses. Something is the matter right there. DuPont's own instructions specified that it was not to be flushed into surface water or sewers," according to the New York Times Magazine. Did they think no one would notice? We lurched down a rutted dirt road past the old clapboard farmhouse where he grew up. The Tennants were initially reluctant, especially because of its intended use, but DuPont promised it would house only nonhazardous waste, like scrap metal and ash, according to the Huffington Post. Today, that site is home to Chemours Washington Works, a spinoff of DuPont that employs more than 600 people and produces a variety of products used in construction, aerospace, and household goods. The sometimes contentious tenor of Bilotts relationship with Wilbur Tennant is also true to life. DuPont detected PFOA in the drinking water of communities near the Teflon plant. DuPont also discovered that pollution containing PFOA vented from the Washington Works plant affected the surrounding area, allegedly contaminating the local water supply, according to the New York Times Magazine. That day had never come, so he decided he would make them watch a video. DuPont named this sight Dry Run Landfill after the creek that ran onto the Tennant farm. He was born at New England, a son of the late Blaine Tennant and Lydia (Wildman) Tennant. He was certain that DuPont was fouling the waters that his cattle drank, and he'd already lost more than half of his herd to bizarre illnesses. This cookie is used to detect and defend when a client attempt to replay a cookie.This cookie manages the interaction with online bots and takes the appropriate actions. W. Earl Tennant Wilbur Earl Tennant, 67 of New England passed away suddenly at his residence May 15, 2009. . 1998: Wilbur Tennant contacts Taft's and Hollisters' (Taft) lawyer, Robert Billot, to assist in his case against DuPont for dumping chemical waste into the river that his cows drink from, causing them severe health problems. Thats where theyre supposed to come down here and pull water samples, to see whats in that water. He pointed the camera at a stagnant pool of water flanked by knee-high grass. The chemical companies are appealing the decision. And the money came in handy, too, since Jim, a Washington Works employee, had for years suffered from flu-like symptoms and illnesses that baffled doctors, as outlined in a Delaware Online article from 2016. Tennant didnt live to witness the scope of what unfolded after he persuaded Bilott to file the lawsuit about his dead cows. Facebook sets this cookie to show relevant advertisements to users by tracking user behaviour across the web, on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin. In March, a federal judge limited the case to Ohio residents with a specific amount of the chemicals in their blood, which alone could include up to 11 million people. Bubbles formed as it tumbled over stones in a sudsy film. We'll assume you're okay with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Then he wrote a 19-page letter, attached some of the industry documents and mailed the package to officials at the EPA and the Department of Justice. Taking on the case of Wilbur Tennant (played by Bill Camp in the film), a West Virginian farmer whose land is contaminated from toxic run-off dumped near his premises by DuPont Company, Bilott (Ruffalo) quickly encounters the gargantuan machine of corporate disinformation, negligence, cover-up, and strong-arm tactics that allow the company to . Michael Hawthorne is a Pulitzer-finalist investigative reporter who focuses on the environment and public health for the Chicago Tribune. The substance is stable, persistent, and very difficult to break down. In the 1990s Wilbur began to notice weird deformities in his cows and some of them were even dying. Photos by Focus Features and EPK. With Sue Bailey, Bucky Bailey, Ken Wamsley, Wilbur Tennant. Bilott's grandmother had lived close by, and as a child he had spent a summer on a neighbouring farm, where family members recalled that Bilott had grown up to become an environmental lawyer, and put his name forward to the Tennants. Tennants Farm Pond Dam, Wood County, West Virginia. The same year, DuPont found that water in one local district contained PFOA levels at three times that figure. His cattle were dying inexplicably, and in droves. DuPont later paid more than $750 million to settle lawsuits filed by Teflon plant neighbors with PFOA-linked diseases, including testicular and kidney cancer, high cholesterol, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease and pregnancy-induced hypertension. The problem, he thought, was not what they were eating but what they were drinking. And it takes immense courage and conviction to do that. The cows grazed on a mixed pasture of white Dutch clover, bluegrass, fescue, red clover . The farmer, Wilbur Tennant of Parkersburg, W.Va., said that his cows were dying left and right. Sometimes it ran so dry hed find them glittering dead in the mud. These cookies help provide anonymized information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Police Seized Boats For Sale, Difference Between Medical Terminology And Lay Terminology, Articles W