A baby born with only one nostril, and this "poison of the century" that was concealed for 50 years

In 1980, a worker at chemical giant DuPont gave birth to a baby with a single nostril, and a colleague's baby was born with eye and tear duct defects. Strangely, the tragedy was quickly forgotten.

Buck Bailey was born with only one nostril. His mother is a DuPont employee. | earthisland.org

Until 1998, a herd of cattle at a cattle farm near the DuPont plant began to show strange phenomena: their teeth gradually turned black, they had diarrhea, walked unsteadily, and eventually died in groups. The farmer suspected that there was something wrong with the nearby DuPont plant, so he commissioned lawyer Robert Bilott to file a lawsuit against DuPont.

They would never have thought that the lawsuit would last for 17 years. During this period, they discovered a more terrifying secret: this mysterious pollutant, PFAS, has spread all over the world, existing in the rainwater of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the sea fish under the Arctic ice cap, and in you, me, and the bodies of most people in the world...

What are PFAS?

PFAS (Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) is a general term for tens of thousands of chemical substances. They are all organic substances with fluorine atoms scattered on the carbon chain.

The carbon-fluorine bond is known as the strongest bond in organic chemistry. It is not only very stable, but also can protect the carbon skeleton. Therefore, PFAS is also called "forever chemicals ". The famous Teflon is one of the best. It is waterproof, anti-fouling, cold-resistant, heat-resistant, and extremely smooth. Even geckos can't catch it! From the enriched uranium of atomic bombs to artificial organs, to the non-stick pans in thousands of households, it is indispensable.

Teflon non-stick pan advertisement from the 1960s | wikipedia

However, stability is a double-edged sword, meaning that such substances are extremely difficult to degrade. In daily use scenarios, Teflon is relatively safe (it will not decompose into toxic substances at temperatures not exceeding 260°C), but other members of the PFAS family are not like this - including the raw materials used in the manufacturing process of Teflon, and the culprit of this case is among them.

lawsuit

The litigation of the case was destined to be an uphill battle from the beginning.

As a century-old chemical giant, DuPont has created world-famous products such as Teflon, nylon, and Kevlar. Naturally, it is a super-large contributor to local tax revenue and employment, and its interest network is intricate. When farmer Wilbur Tennant decided to sue, almost no lawyers, politicians, and doctors around him were willing to lend a hand, and even his old friends avoided him.

Farmer Tennant went around in circles and heard that the grandson of another farmer's neighbor, Bilott, was a lawyer, so he contacted him in desperation.

They didn't know that Bilott's law firm usually only accepted orders from large corporate clients, and Bilott's specialty was defending chemical companies, and DuPont was his potential client. They talked to Tennant purely for his grandmother's sake.

A legend of a brave dragon quest has begun.

Report on Bilott "The Lawyer Who Became DuPont's Ultimate Nightmare" | The New York Times

Farmer Tennant's brother, an employee of DuPont, suffered from a strange disease that doctors could not diagnose, and sold a piece of land to raise money.

The land was used by DuPont as a landfill, and the nearby creek happened to flow through Tennant's farm. Soon after the land was sold, the cows on Tennant's farm began to "go crazy". Everything was recorded on videotape: the creek with white foam, the sick cows staggering, the strangely colored organs in the dead cows... The video was comparable to a horror movie, which left a deep impression on Bilott.

Farmer video shows dying cow

Bilott made a somewhat difficult decision - to take the lawsuit.

In response to the lawsuit, DuPont conducted a joint investigation with the local environmental protection department. The investigation report pointed out that the cattle on the farm were malnourished, the veterinary care was inadequate, and the pest control was ineffective... The subtext was that the farmer didn't know how to raise cattle at all, so what did DuPont have to do with it?

As the trial approached, a turning point came. Bilott found a letter from DuPont to the US Environmental Protection Agency, which mentioned a mysterious substance: PFOA . It was not on the list of controlled substances, and there was no toxicity data. Bilott asked DuPont to provide all the information on PFOA, and was not surprisingly rejected.

In the fall of 2000, Bilott applied to the court for compulsory execution, and this time he finally got what he wanted.

lawsuit

Under the court's mandatory order, Bilott received "relevant information" one after another. DuPont seemed unaware of what he had given away - a small mountain of disorganized internal letters, health reports, and research records, covering thousands of documents, more than 110,000 pages, and spanning nearly half a century.

At this point, Bilott had no choice but to sit in his office for several months, sorting through the vast amount of information and discovering the shocking truth.

It turns out that PFOA (Perfluorooctanoic acid) is a surfactant used to prevent caking when making Teflon. It is also a type of PFAS and is manufactured by another chemical giant, 3M. DuPont began purchasing it in 1951. Over the next few decades, they discharged hundreds of thousands of pounds of PFOA powder directly into rivers and dumped more than 7,000 tons of PFOA-containing sludge into waste pools without any isolation measures, eventually contaminating the drinking water of tens of thousands of local people.

PFOA ball-and-stick model, hydrophilic and hydrophobic at both ends is a typical surfactant structure | wikipedia

What is even more outrageous is that chemical giants such as DuPont and 3M have not failed to study the toxicity of PFOA, but have also used various means of capital manipulation of academic research, including but not limited to:

· Manipulation research direction:

In 1978, DuPont's occupational doctors noticed abnormally elevated liver enzymes in their employees, but the study ended there;

Funding beneficial research:

In 1996, 3M funded a study of occupational exposure and claimed that it had no clinical hepatotoxicity;

Suppression of unfavorable research:

These included the discovery of rat liver enlargement in 1961;

In 1970, it was found to be highly toxic when inhaled;

Corneal opacity and ulceration in rats discovered in 1979;

Testicular tumors in rats were discovered in 1990;

Prostate cancer risk was discovered in 1994;

…

All of the above research has become internal confidential information and none of it has been made public .

And what do they say in public or semi-public settings?

In 1980, 3M reported internally that the toxicity of such substances was "similar to that of table salt";

In 1981, 3M and DuPont jointly reported to employees that they denied the results of infant deformities;

In 1991, DuPont issued a press release denying any adverse health effects…

That’s right, the giants are dumping poison, and they actually know what they are doing, while blocking information and distorting the facts.

Even in 1993, when a possible alternative to PFOA was discovered, DuPont decided not to switch, considering the potential profits of up to $1 billion a year - there was no need to take such a big risk.

Of course, what is referred to here is only the risk of making money.

Public Investigation

In August 2000, Bilott made a brief phone call to DuPont's lawyer and introduced his "research results". Faced with the dark history that was dug up, DuPont finally gave in and agreed to compensate the farmer. But Bilott did not intend to give up, because this was no longer a matter of a few cows.

Lawyers and farmers in the movie "Dark Waters" | Stills from "Dark Waters"

In the same year, 3M stopped producing PFOA, so DuPont built a new factory in another state to produce it for its own use.

Bilott worked hard for several months again, drafting a 972-page report, attached 136 pieces of evidence, and sent it to all regulatory agency heads, including EPA Administrator Christie Whitman and U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft. An angry DuPont demanded a gag order against Bilott, but was rejected by the court.

In 2005, the EPA fined DuPont $16.5 million, the largest civil penalty in the EPA's history, but only 2% of DuPont's profits from PFOA-related products that year.

Next, Bilott filed a class-action lawsuit against DuPont on behalf of all residents whose drinking water was contaminated. There were more than 70,000 people living around the farm alone, many of whom had been drinking contaminated water for decades.

**But there is still an outrageous problem ahead - PFOA is not on the list of pollutants. **Legally speaking, dumping PFOA is no different from dumping water, and the reports that prove PFOA is toxic are all internal data of DuPont and 3M. DuPont, realizing this, immediately announced that it would re-evaluate the safe exposure threshold of PFOA as low as 1 ppb (parts per billion). After a re-study, a joint research team composed of DuPont scientists and local environmental protection departments announced a new threshold: 150 ppb.

Now, there is only one way to completely lock in the truth - invite a new research team to conduct a comprehensive assessment of PFOA intake and health effects of 70,000 residents . This huge study cost $33 million and took 7 years.

During the long wait, Bilott lost all his company clients, his income continued to decline, and under tremendous pressure he developed symptoms such as blurred vision and numbness in his arms.

There are also many residents suffering from cancer who did not live to see the truth come out.

Diseases associated with PFAS. | wikipedia

Since December 2011, the research team has successively announced the results of the investigation: there is a probable link between PFOA and kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, preeclampsia and ulcerative colitis. Bilott began to file lawsuits against DuPont on behalf of each victim family, totaling 3,535 cases, and won compensation of US$670 million.

Unfinished Battle

It was an outcome in which justice was served, but you could hardly call it a “victory.”

Decades of production and emissions by countless companies have caused PFOA to spread around the world. According to the strictest new standard released by the US Environmental Protection Agency in 2022, the upper limit of PFOA in drinking water for life is 0.004ng/L, while the PFOA content in rainwater on the remote Qinghai-Tibet Plateau has reached 0.055ng/L.

These substances accumulate in animals' bodies, so many scientists worry that even low concentrations of pollution can harm health over time.

By the way, like highly toxic heavy metals such as lead and mercury, the ideal recommended intake value of PFOA is 0.

PFAS has been widely used, and modern people can hardly avoid using related products. | sundanceusa.com

What’s even more frightening is that although PFOA has been basically discontinued, it is only one of the tens of thousands of members of the PFAS family. These substances, including PFOA substitutes, generally lack comprehensive safety assessments and supervision. However, PFAS-related products have spread to countless fields such as daily necessities, aerospace, electronics, and medical care, and have become the livelihood of millions of workers.

Do you dare to move? Can you move?

Regulation always lags behind the market. When the benefits become huge, capital is unwilling to pay a high price to prevent unknown risks.

There will always be people who hope for the best and think: Maybe they are safe?

On January 24, 2023, Amara Strande, a girl suffering from cancer, attended a legislative hearing on regulating PFAS in Minnesota, where PFAS manufacturers are mainly 3M. Amara died three months later. | Bloomberg Originals

Author: Zhang Shuaiyan

Editor: Luna Youshiyou