| Contents Notes |
"1998: Rob Bilott is a young lawyer specializing in helping big corporations stay on the right side of environmental laws and regulations. His life and career take an unexpected turn when he gets a phone call from a West Virginia farmer named Earl Tennant. Earl is convinced the creek on his property is being poisoned by runoff from a neighboring DuPont landfill. His cattle are dying in hideous ways, as is much of the surrounding wildlife. Earl hasn't even been able to get a water sample tested by any state or federal regulatory agency or find a local lawyer willing to take the case. As soon as they hear the name DuPont-the area's largest employer-they shut him down. Once Rob sees the thick, foamy water that bubbles into the creek, the gruesome effects it seems to have on livestock, and the disturbing frequency of cancer and other health problems in the surrounding area, he's persuaded to fight against the type of corporation his firm routinely represents. After intense legal wrangling, Rob ultimately gains access to hundreds of thousands of pages of DuPont documents, some of them fifty years old, that reveal the company has been holding onto decades of studies proving the harmful effects of a chemical called PFOA, used in making Teflon. PFOA is often called a "forever chemical," because once inside the body, it remains there for a long period of time, building up faster than the body can excrete it, and once in the environment, it does not break down or degrade for millions of years, contaminating the planet forever. Although aware of these properties, DuPont kept its scientific findings from the public while at the same time dumping hundreds of thousands of pounds of PFOA waste into the Ohio River and landfills. The case of one farmer soon spawns a class action suit on behalf of seventy thousand residents-and the shocking realization that virtually every person on the planet has been exposed to PFOA and carries the chemical in his or her blood. What emerges is an unforgettable, David and Goliath-style legal drama about malice and manipulation, the failings of environmental regulation; and one lawyer's twenty-year struggle to expose the truth about this previously unknown-and still unregulated-chemical that we all have inside us"-- Act 1. The farmer: Dry run ; The call ; Parkersburg ; The farm ; The secret ingredient ; Paper trail ; The scientist ; The letter ; The meeting ; The cows come home ; The settlement -- Act 2. The town: Crossroads ; First blood ; Privileged ; Alternative data ; Appetite for destruction ; Of mouse and man ; Teflon pawns ; Actual malice ; Hail Mary ; Narrative warfare ; Epidemiology ; "No known human health effects" ; Corporate knowledge ; The perfect storm ; The big idea -- Act 3. The world: The study ; The second wave ; Dark science ; Burden of proof ; Shaken ; Road to a reckoning ; The trial ; The reckoning -- Epilogue. |
