PFAS are ubiquitous. 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. In the 1980s, Jim and his wife, Della, would sell acreage to DuPont for use as a landfill for scrap metal, according to the New York Times Magazine. Jim Tennant and his wife, Della, sold DuPont a 66-acre tract of land that became part of the Dry Run Landfill. June 14, 2022; salem witch trials podcast lore Wilbur Tennant showed Bilott alarming video footage in which his previously docile animals had turned . 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. GRAPHIC CONTENT: An excerpt from Wilbur Earl Tennant's video showing the mysterious wasting disease affecting his cows in the 1990s. Thats whats so scary about these chemicals, said Jamie DeWitt, a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at East Carolina University who studies PFAS. It was really his dedication to bringing that out that really inspired me to try to find a way to address the bigger problem., Amazingly, the Pakula-esque paranoid thriller scene, in which Wilbur Tennant spots a low-level helicopter hovering ominously over his property, uses the scope of his hunting rifle to better examine the vehicle, and scares it off in the process, did in fact occur. 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 own instructions specified that it was not to be flushed into surface water or sewers," according to the New York Times Magazine. . Theres been fifty-six cows thats been burnt just like this.. The problem had to be Dry Run, he thought. 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. Standing walleyed in an open field was a polled Hereford red with a white face and floppy ears. Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better experience for the visitors. DuPont immediately removed all female workers from areas where they might come into contact with the chemical.". We'll assume you're okay with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Bilott soon discovered that Dry Run Creek, the offshoot of the Ohio River that Tennant's livestock drank from, was full of C8, an industry name for perfluorooctanoic acid or PFOA, one of the . He had formerly worked for the Wood County Schools as a bus. He didnt believe it anymore. As unbelievable as it may sound, DuPont really did, in the 1960s, offer some of its staff Teflon-laced cigarettes as a human experiment into the potential side effects of the PFOA-produced nonstick material, as the movie recounts. During manufacturing processes, PFAS chemicals are released into the air, soil, and water around industrial facilities, the EPA reports. The films portrayal of the physical toll that the excruciating, decadeslong legal battle against DuPont seems to have had on Bilotts health is also accurate. Despite internal debate, it declined to make the information public," the magazinenotes. The underdog was a farmer whose family worked the land for generations, building it from a small operation to a thriving livelihood. Washington, West Virginia. Something is the matter right there. After this sale, Tennant's cattle started to become sick and Tennant began to understand that . Dark Waters'messed up true story reveals an emerging public health and environmental threat, the pervasiveness of "forever chemicals," and an alleged corporate cover-up. If you do not allow these cookies we will not know when you have visited our site, and will not be able to monitor its performance. 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. 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. 3M and DuPont have argued in court and in public statements that neither chemical is harmful to people at typical levels of exposure. Still, in other scenes, such as when Bilott falsely suspects his car might be rigged with an explosive, its made clear that the events of the film are leading some of its characters to fear things that arent really there. SiteLock sets this cookie to provide cloud-based website security services. Science Friday is produced by the Science Friday Initiative, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Call him, they suggested. Tennant stated that . Bilott also discovered that years before he sued DuPont on behalf of the Tennants, company scientists had tested the creek running through the familys pasture. Tennant was a farmer who sold part of his land in Parkersburg, West Virginia, to DuPont, for Wilbur Tennant vs. DuPont on Vimeo GRAPHIC CONTENT: An excerpt from Wilbur Earl Tennant's video showing the mysterious wasting disease affecting his cows in the 1990s. Where they should have been smooth, they looked ropy, covered with ridges. DuPont and the family settled the lawsuit soon after Bilott shared that information with one of the companys lawyers, who had referred to PFOA in an email as the material 3M sells us that we poop into the river and into drinking water.. 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. Just months before Rob Bilott made partner at Taft Stettinius & Hollister, he received a call on his direct line from a cattle farmer. riding horses, milking cows and watching Secretariat win the Triple Crown on TV. Shes poor as a whippoorwill. Yet to this day the companies deny responsibility, Bilott said in an interview. Wilbur Tennant and his family had recently sold part of their farmland to a company and had no idea what would end up coming of it. Join Facebook to connect with Wilbur Tennant and others you may know. He believed that the DuPont chemical company, which until recently operated a site in Parkersburg that is more than 35 times the size of the Pentagon, was . They just turn their back and walk on. When DuPont settled that lawsuit in 2004, the company agreed to finance a study of PFOAs health effects. The tongue looked normal, but some of the teeth were coal black, interspersed with the white ones like piano keys. Did they think no one would notice? Edit Search New Search Filters (1) To get better results, add more information such as Birth Info, Death Info and Locationeven a guess will help. "If we can't get where we need to go to protect people through our regulatory channels, through our legislative process, then unfortunately what we have left is our legal process," Bilott told Time in November 2019. He panned again: a bonfire on a grassy slope, a pyre of logs as fat as garbage cans. Anyone could see that something was terribly wrong, not only with the landfill itself but with the agencies responsible for monitoring it. Issued by Microsoft's ASP.NET Application, this cookie stores session data during a user's website visit. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience. Turns out his grandmother lived in the same town as the farmer and that's the connection that brought the underdog and the hero together. Two of seven babies born to Teflon plant employees in 1981 had facial deformities similar to what 3M had found in newborn rats. death of 260 cattle in West Virginia. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. Black smoke curled into the daylight. He had carried a rifle as he went about the farm, always ready to shoot dinner. This cookie is set by the provider Akamai Bot Manager. Listen to an interview with Bilott about the chemical lawsuits on Science Friday. "The innards was bright green.". DuPont's response was they would settle with the Tennant's however Bilott was . LinkedIn sets the lidc cookie to facilitate data center selection. At 72, Jim is so slight that he nearly . The film seems to imply that the fire might have been an arson attempt that hit the wrong house, though it doesnt suggest who might have lit it. Jim still calls it "the home place," although its windows are now boarded up and the outhouse is crumbling into the field. Bilott, whose story was chronicled in an engrossing and detailed 2016 New York Times story by Nathaniel Rich, goes from a 1999 lawsuit on behalf of Tennant to a 2001 class action involving several . These emerging contaminants linger, breaking down only when incinerated at very high temperatures. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. Like the movie, Richs article portrays Bilott as an unassuming and understated man driven by an innate sense of decency. This cookie is native to PHP applications. He made for an imposing figure at six feet tall, lean and broad shouldered, his . Wilbur Earl Tennant, 67 of New England passed away suddenly at his residence May 15, 2009. wilbur tennant farm location. He was an excellent marksman, and his family had always had enough meat to eat. When he cut out the other lung, he noted dark purple splotches where they should have been fluffy and pink. About 600 are in use today, according to the EPA. He focuses on the froth-covered creek before the tape cuts to a dissected calf with blackened teeth and oddly colored organs. The document, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, called on global scientists, manufacturers, and retailers to work together to limit the use of PFASs and develop safer alternatives. No one believed him when he told them about the things he saw happening to his land. Yes, DuPont is still in business, although it has struggled slightly to survive independently from time to time due to its poor public reputation. Tennant and his brother Jim wanted to get to the bottom of it, so they dissected some carcasses. The Intercept notes that the legal process "uncovered hundreds of internal communications revealing that DuPont employees for many years suspected that C8 was harmful and yet continued to use it, putting the company's workers and the people who lived near its plants at risk.". The JSESSIONID cookie is used by New Relic to store a session identifier so that New Relic can monitor session counts for an application. The edge in his voice was anger. Bryan Schutmaat for The New York Times. He owned 200 cows that grazed on 600 acres. As in the movie, these events really did lead to a large class-action suit that triggered a massive epidemiological study that, after a yearslong wait, showed there really was a probable link between PFOA and certain conditions, including high cholesterol, kidney cancer, and testicular cancer, though the movie depicts one scientist going so far as to tell Bilott that the results are irrefutable. (DuPont has continued to deny that it did anything wrong.). a series of Camcorder videos showing "soapy froth" in a creek running through DuPont's landfill property and into Tennant's farm. By the late 1990s, West Virginia farmer Wilbur Tennant was at his wits end. He zoomed in. As a linchpin bolstering Dark Waters case as a message movie, the events depicted on the Tennant cattle farm in Parkersburg, West Virginia, really ought to be accurate, and for the most part, they are. Bilott tries to communicate to Tennant that he "isn't that kind of environmental lawyer," yet Tennant's exasperated resilience strikes a chord with the compassionate . On the other side of his property line, Dry Run Landfill was filling up the little valley that had once belonged to his family. It stars Mark Ruffalo as Bilott, along with Anne Hathaway, Tim Robbins, Bill Camp, Victor Garber, Mare . From playing with computers to building networks: How the space for Black Software was made. As company scientists noted in internal documents, Nine out of ten people in the highest-dosed group were noticeably ill for an average of nine hours with flu-like symptoms that included chills, backache, fever, and coughing.. Birds sang through the white-hot humidity as he panned the camcorder across the creek. This time he is seeking to force 3M and DuPont to pay for medical monitoring of every American exposed to PFAS. AWSALB is an application load balancer cookie set by Amazon Web Services to map the session to the target. Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyers Twenty-Year Battle against DuPont. In time, the connection between the Tennants and DuPont would run as deep as the Ohio River. 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. The cows grazed on a mixed pasture of white Dutch clover, bluegrass, fescue, red clover . But you just give me time. 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. It is based on a shocking true story, where a series . Wilbur Tennant shot this video on his property between 1995 and 1997. He was born at New England, a son of the late Blaine Tennant and Lydia (Wildman) Tennant. The farmer's name was Wilbur Earl Tennant. But now it seemed they were ignoring him. 0 Comments Comments 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 . These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Her eyes were sunk deep in her head. The campaign coincided with the release of the film "Dark Waters" starring Mark Ruffalo inspired by the true story of Bilott, who discovered a community had been dangerously exposed for decades to deadly chemicals. He suspected one of his town's largest employers was up to no good, allegedly dumping chemicals and contaminating his farm's water supply, and the result was hundreds of sickened and dead cattle. Tennants Farm Pond Dam, Wood County, West Virginia. This cookie is managed by Amazon Web Services and is used for load balancing. The farmer, Wilbur Tennant of Parkersburg, W.Va., said that his cows were dying left and right. Facebook gives people the power to share and makes the world more open and connected. Dont understand that at all. The substance is stable, persistent, and very difficult to break down. Wilbur Tennant had become desperate. It was to be incinerated or sent to chemical-waste facilities. And it takes immense courage and conviction to do that. Thats Hollywood, I guess. (Bilott has not yet responded to my email and telephone inquiries about whether he has ever enjoyed a celebratory Mai Tai or any other tropical, rum-based cocktail.). 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. Tennant was a West Virginia farmer whose family owned land near a DuPont factory on the Ohio River where the chemical giant made one of its signature inventions: Teflon nonstick and anti-stain coatings used in carpets, clothing, cookware and hundreds of other products. Wilbur Earl Tennant. C8 and other long-chain per-fluorinated chemicals are used in a myriad of household, industrial, and commercial products. Sometimes it ran so dry hed find them glittering dead in the mud. 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. 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.. He panned the camera a few degrees. Bilott, with begrudging support of his firm (Tim Robbins plays his boss), confirms Wilbur's worst fears: the local DuPont plant has been dumping toxic waste on land next to the Tennant farm. A cookie set by YouTube to measure bandwidth that determines whether the user gets the new or old player interface. For decades it had been the backbone of 3Ms Scotchgard brand of stain-resistant products. . Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer's Twenty-Year Battle against DuPont. A videotape Tennant shot with a VHS camcorder shows emaciated cows with tumors on their hides. All rights reserved. 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. . With no one from the government or even local veterinarians willing to do it, Earl decided to do an autopsy himself. ATSDR/CDC also notes that more studies need to be done in the area of health effects, particularly on shorter-chain substances. LOCATION. Now, he was feeding them twice as much and watching them waste away. They concluded that 'the study was valid' and that 'the observed fetal eye defects were due to C8,' according to internal DuPont documents. DuPonts lawyers had a different perspective on the incident, however, writing in an email, It is a federal offense to threaten violence against an aircraft carrying passengers and Please be advised that the helicopter pilot has indicated that he will pursue todays incident with federal authorities.. You could poke it with a stick and leave a hole. The first thing Im gonna do is cut this head open, check these teeth.. Per the article, "In March 1981, DuPont sent a pathologist and a birth defects expert to review the 3M data Bailey had read about in the locker room. Bilott's connection to Parkersburg dated back to his childhood, when he spent summers there visiting his grandmother, and her friend is the one who suggested to Wilbur Tennant that he call Bilott, an environmental lawyer at Cincinnati firm Taft Stettinius & Hollister, for help. DuPont determined that PFOA passed from pregnant employees to their fetuses. They were green like the foamy water that ran out of a pipe from the nearby Dry Run Landfill and into the creek from which the Tennant cattle drank. Nearly 70,000 people participated. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. He died of cancer in 2009. When they bought half of the farm from Wilbur they began to use it for a landfill to store the toxins being . He walked there every day to count heads and check fences. Invest in quality science journalism by making a donation to Science Friday. W. Earl Tennant Wilbur Earl Tennant, 67 of New England passed away suddenly at his residence May 15, 2009. . . Maps, Driving Directions & Local Area Information 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. 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. We consulted a variety of sources, including Nathaniel Richs 2016 New York Times Magazine feature The Lawyer Who Became DuPonts Worst Nightmare (upon which the movie is based), Bilotts own book, other longform articles, and attorney Harry Deitzler (the personal-injury lawyer played in the movie by Bill Pullman), to help sort out whats true and whats embellished. Her calf, black and white, lay dead on its side in a circle of matted grass. In another field, a grown cow lay dead. It had paid for the 150 acres of land his great-grandfather had bought and for the two-story, four-room farmhouse pieced together from trees felled in the woods, dragged across fields, and raised by hand. 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. LinkedIn sets this cookie from LinkedIn share buttons and ad tags to recognize browser ID. The farmer Wilbur Tennant had suspected that the chemical company DuPont was responsible for the death of many of his cows. Then, in 1998 Bilott received a phone call from Wilbur Tennant who lived on his farm in Parkersburg, West Virginia. In 2005, DuPont agreed to phase out its use of C8 (PFOA) by 2015, according to The Intercept. These cookies help provide anonymized information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. VigLink sets this cookie to show users relevant advertisements and also limit the number of adverts that are shown to them. The calf was engulfed in a black, humming mist. The same year, DuPont found that water in one local district contained PFOA levels at three times that figure. (Maddie McGarvey/for the Washington Post) If Wilbur Earl Tennant's cows hadn't died from a mysterious wasting disease during the . DuPont bought 66 acres of the Tennant's farm land from Wilbur Tennant's brother Jim and his wife Della [1]. Bilott is back in court again. Bilott is seeking class-action status in the case against several companies, including 3M and Chemours. The Teflon Toxin, Part 2: Wilbur Tennant vs. DuPont. DuPont initially refused, but a court order ultimately forced them to turn over what amounted to more than 100,000 pages, some dating back 50 years. The Taft offices are in Cincinnati, Ohio. Records obtained by Bilott showed DuPont had determined in 1961 that PFOA is toxic in animals. Dark Waters is a 2019 American legal thriller film directed by Todd Haynes and written by Mario Correa and Matthew Michael Carnahan.The story dramatizes Robert Bilott's case against the chemical manufacturing corporation DuPont after they contaminated a town with unregulated chemicals. One person can't always cause a change, but one person can set off a chain of reactions to cause change. 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. Ken Wamsley spent nearly 40 years working at DuPont Washington Works plant, and some of that time, he measured levels of the chemical C8 (PFOA).