Dark Waters: The True Crime Of Teflon & Nonstick Pans | Robert Bilott, Esq.

Summary

Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark
Episode: Dark Waters: The True Crime Of Teflon & Nonstick Pans | Robert Billott, Esq.
Host: Alex Clark
Guest: Robert Bilott, Esq.
Release Date: February 18, 2025

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Introduction: Unveiling a Corporate Nightmare

In this compelling episode of Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark, host Alex Clark welcomes environmental attorney Robert Bilott, famously known as DuPont's worst nightmare. Bilott's relentless 20-year battle against the chemical giant DuPont has not only reshaped environmental litigation but also brought to light the devastating impacts of "forever chemicals" like PFOA on communities and ecosystems.

The Genesis of a Battle: From Defending to Defying

Robert Bilott begins by recounting his unexpected transition from a lawyer representing chemical companies to one fighting them on behalf of those poisoned by their actions.

“I started what I normally would do for our chemical company clients...until a farmer showed up at my office with evidence that they were poisoning him.”
[00:03]

Bilott emphasizes the turning point when Wilbur Tennant, a farmer from Parkersburg, West Virginia, approached him with alarming evidence of chemical contamination affecting his livestock.

“Mr. Tennant and his cows were being poisoned by chemicals draining from a nearby DuPont landfill...”
[04:20]

Discovery of PFOA: The Invisible Threat

As Bilott delves deeper into the case, he uncovers that the culprit isn't just any chemical, but PFOA—a precursor to Teflon—that was "completely unregulated" at the time.

“The chemical that was actually getting into the water? Teflon...a chemical DuPont was using in the manufacture of Teflon...since early 1960s.”
[04:05]

This revelation highlighted a significant regulatory oversight, as PFOA had been manufactured and utilized extensively before the establishment of stringent EPA guidelines in the 1970s.

Litigation and Corporate Resistance: A David vs. Goliath Struggle

Bilott narrates the arduous journey of taking on DuPont, detailing the company's initial attempts to withhold information and manipulate scientific data to downplay the chemical's dangers.

“DuPont tried to withhold information...we had to go to court to get court orders to force them to turn over their records.”
[26:17]

The legal battle extended beyond defense to active investigation, revealing that DuPont had long been aware of PFOA's toxic effects but chose corporate secrecy over public safety.

“Companies were controlling what got sent out for publication...ensuring that only studies saying there's no problem with these chemicals were published.”
[35:59]

Environmental and Health Impacts: A Widespread Crisis

The episode sheds light on the pervasive nature of PFOA and related PFAS chemicals, detailing their persistence in the environment and accumulation in human bodies.

“These chemicals persist in the environment for extraordinary periods...they get into our water, our soil, our air...and build up over time in our bodies.”
[40:28]

Bilott outlines the severe health implications linked to PFOA exposure, including various cancers, thyroid disease, and even potential impairment of vaccine efficacy.

“These chemicals are being linked with an incredible array of potentially serious adverse human health impacts...including testicular cancer, kidney cancer...”
[42:39]

Regulatory Shifts and Public Awareness: A Ray of Hope

After decades of litigation and advocacy, significant strides have been made in regulating these harmful chemicals. The EPA, influenced by Bilott's persistent efforts, has established stringent guidelines limiting PFOA levels in drinking water.

“The US EPA is now recommending no more than 4 parts per trillion in drinking water...declaring these as human carcinogens.”
[44:17]

Bilott remains cautiously optimistic, highlighting the power of public awareness and consumer advocacy in driving corporate responsibility and legislative change.

“Consumers voices are having an incredible impact...individuals can make choices to try to avoid these products.”
[48:46]

Current Status and Ongoing Litigation: The Battle Continues

While significant progress has been made, Bilott underscores that the fight is far from over. PFAS chemicals continue to contaminate water supplies globally, leading to ongoing litigation against major chemical corporations.

“We're representing hundreds of cities and public water suppliers...settling those cases has resulted in some of the largest settlements in US history.”
[55:33]

Practical Remedies and Empowering Change: Steps Forward

In the concluding segment, Bilott offers actionable advice for listeners to mitigate their exposure to these toxins:

1. Test Your Water: Ensure your drinking water is free from PFAS by utilizing advanced filtration systems such as granular activated carbon or reverse osmosis.
2. Educate and Advocate: Spread awareness about PFAS and advocate for stricter regulations and corporate accountability in your community.
3. Make Informed Choices: Opt for products free from PFAS by choosing alternatives like stainless steel or cast iron cookware and supporting brands committed to non-toxic manufacturing.

“Understand what's in your drinking water...make choices to avoid those products or choose companies that are committed not to use PFAS.”
[73:02]

Conclusion: Harnessing Collective Power for a Healthier Future

Robert Bilott's heartfelt testimony serves as a clarion call to listeners, emphasizing the critical role of informed consumer choices and proactive advocacy in combating environmental injustice. His unwavering dedication exemplifies how individual courage can catalyze monumental societal change.

“Recognizing that we have the power to make a change within us...bringing the story out and making informed choices ourselves.”
[78:06]

As the episode wraps up, Bilott and Clark underscore the importance of continued vigilance and community action in safeguarding public health and restoring environmental integrity.

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Notable Quotes:

• “The chemical that was actually getting into the water? Teflon...”
  Robert Bilott — [00:03]

• “Consumers voices are having an incredible impact...”
  Robert Bilott — [48:46]

• “Recognizing that we have the power to make a change within us...”
  Robert Bilott — [78:06]

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This episode of Culture Apothecary not only narrates the gripping true story behind the battle against DuPont but also educates listeners on the broader implications of chemical contaminants in everyday life. For those unfamiliar with the dark intricacies of corporate malfeasance and environmental degradation, Bilott's insights offer both a warning and a roadmap for initiating meaningful change.

Transcript

[Alex Clark]

What was the chemical that dupont was dumping in this community?

[Robert Bilott]

The chemical that was actually getting into the water? Teflon. Something that was completely unregulated, nonstick, grease resistant, waterproof. From fast food wrappers and packaging to clothing and carpeting and cosmetics. There was data going back decades telling 3M and Dupont this chemical. PFOA did present a substantial risk, but the companies chose not to tell epa.

[Alex Clark]

He was a lawyer in Cincinnati working for the chemical companies until a farmer showed up at his office with evidence that they were poisoning him. Environmental attorney Robert Billett has now spent more than 20 years litigating hazardous dumping of what are known as forever chemicals in our products and in our drinking water. The 2018 documentary the Devil We Know and the 2019 feature film Dark Waters with Mark Ruffalo and Anne Hathaway play Billet and his wife and they are.

[Unknown]

Both about his story today.

[Alex Clark]

He still works at his firm, Taft, Stentinius and Hollister and is the author of his own memoir titled Exposure, Poisoned Water, corporate greed and one lawyer's 20 year battle against Dupont. Watch this episode on the Real Alex.

[Unknown]

Clark YouTube channel or culture Apothecary on Spotify.

[Alex Clark]

This podcast is made possible by donations from listeners like you who believe in our mission to heal a sick culture physically, mentally and spiritually. Give a tax deductible donation through the link in the show notes or leave.

[Unknown]

A five star review saying why others.

[Alex Clark]

Should listen to the show for free. Please welcome attorney Robert Billet to Culture Apothecary. You are known as dupont's worst nightmare. You went from being a lawyer defending the chemical companies to actually fighting them on behalf of people that they were poisoning. Now you've been fighting the biggest chemical companies in court for over 20 years, over 20 years now. And it all started with your wife finding you going crazy, sifting through your kitchen, the pots and pans or what.

[Robert Bilott]

Actually started about, gosh, over 25 years ago when, as you mentioned, I had started out working for years working representing big chemical companies. I started my legal career in 1990 and about eight years into that career, I got a phone call one day from a gentleman that started telling me about cows dying on his property in West Virginia and saying I needed to help him. You know, this was not the kind of case that I typically handled. I usually was representing companies that, you know, were chemical companies or folks that were seen as polluters at the time. And I was about to hang that phone up when he said, well, your grandmother said you'd help me. And so I was trying to figure out, well, what, you know, who is this guy and how is this relating to my grandmother? And what he explained was his name was Wilbur Tennant, and he was raising cows in Parkersburg, West Virginia. And that was where my mom and her entire family had grown up. My dad had been in the air force, so we moved around a lot as a kid, but every family holiday, every birthday, we went to Parkersburg. So when I heard that connection, you know, that this guy was calling me from Parkersburg, and somehow it was from my grandmother that, well, at least listen, you know, to what he has to say.

[Alex Clark]

And who are the top chemical companies in America?

[Robert Bilott]

Well, at the time, back when Mr. Tennant called me, you know, some of the top chemical companies out there were folks like the dupont company. It was one of the world's largest chemical companies. 3M BASF. There were a lot of big chemical companies back then.

[Alex Clark]

When this farmer called you from West Virginia, did he say, you know, I'm going to send a bunch of stuff through the mail to you to look at. Did he say, I want you to come out right away and see what is going on, why my cows are dying? What exactly happened on that call?

[Robert Bilott]

He started to tell me that he knew what was happening here. He could see white foam coming out of a landfill next to his property that was flowing into a creek that his cows were drinking from. And he was saying, I know what's happening. There's something in this white foam coming out of this landfill that's killing my cows, but nobody will help me. He'd called the state of West Virginia's epa. He'd called the federal epa. He had called the company that owned the landfill, which he revealed was dupont, one of those big chemical companies. Nobody was giving him any help. So what I suggested he do was that he come on up to our offices, come on up and bring whatever he had so we could see what kind of evidence did he have that this was happening. So he and his wife drove up to our offices back, gosh, October of 1998. And at the time, what he brought with him were boxes full of VHS tapes. All right, the old technology, VHS tapes, a video that he had started taking as far back as 1996 of what was happening out there. And photographs, stacks of photos.

[Alex Clark]

And what was on those tapes?

[Robert Bilott]

Well, it was pretty disturbing. He had photographed what was happening to these animals. He had video of his cow standing in the creek, and you could see white foam around their feet. And what he had videoed over time was how sick these animals Were getting after drinking this white foam in the water. And you could see them, like, these animals look like they were all skin and bones, or they had tumors on them, or you could see that their teeth had turned black. So he had actually, at one point, started cutting those animals open. And so he had videotape of what he was seeing inside of the animals as well. Deformed organs and these. These black teeth and other problems. So it was pretty compelling video.

[Alex Clark]

When he walked into your law office in Cincinnati at the time, I mean, this is a farmer who drove up from West Virginia. Were your colleagues, like, who in the world is this? What is this guy doing here?

[Robert Bilott]

Right. You know, I was working for the law firm of Taft, Stetinius, and Hollister, which is where I still work some 34 years later. And at the time, most of the clients that we were representing at Taft were corporations or big companies, Usually people wearing business suits in meetings. But when Mr. Tennant and his wife arrived, they were dressed as they would normally be dressed on their farm, you know, in their overalls or in their casual clothes. So it was not the typical client meeting that we had at the firm. And in fact, that's what actually attracted the attention of my boss, who happened to be walking down the hall that day when Mr. Tennant and his wife had come in, and he thought this looked like an unusual meeting. So he had stopped to poke his head in the door, and I told him, come on in. Take a look at this. That was a great stroke of luck, actually, because he was then able to come in and see all these videos and photographs for himself as well. So he became part of the decision making on whether this was something we could help this guy on now, something.

[Alex Clark]

That was depicted in the movie, which I really loved and thought was interesting. And I'm like, is this, you know, something that they just decided to do or is true to the story, is that you were at a work gala and decided to confront some of the people from these chemical companies to be like, what? What are you guys doing? Do you understand what's going on here? Is that something that really happened?

[Robert Bilott]

Well, a lot of that happened initially through back in the day, telephone calls. Okay, all right. And emails, you know, where when we finally had agreed we would take this case on for Mr. Tenant and his family, that we would bring a case against the owner of this landfill creating all this foam, which was DuPont. And that was a big step, you know, to agree to take on a case against a chemical company when our firm was defending a lot of Chemical companies. But after we had agreed to take that case on, and we had started the legal process and started asking them for documents and started getting some pushback from them, we had to actually get a little adversarial with the folks on the other side to get these documents. So a lot of what you see in the film that was made years later, Dark Waters, you know, that was based on this story, you know, that. That actually happened. A lot of that occurred over telephone calls and emails, but there was a lot of fighting back and forth.

[Alex Clark]

Was that a huge personal career risk for you to call out these companies that you defended? I mean, were you putting a lot of money and different things on the line by doing this?

[Robert Bilott]

It certainly became that way. You know, when we first agreed to take on this case, we had no idea what it would eventually turn into. You know, at the time, we thought, here's a farmer in West Virginia who's got contamination on this small farm. You know, it's really just involving one family. Yes, dupont's on the other side, but this is something we could probably resolve and get wrapped up pretty quickly for these folks. So when we first agreed to take that case on, we thought it was something that would be fairly quick and easy to wrap up. And unfortunately, what we learned was this was a problem, contamination that was impacting not just that one farmer and one farm in West Virginia, but was potentially impacting thousands of people, if not millions, across the globe. So over time, the potential scope and scale of what we were dealing with only kind of gradually emerged and that we became aware of. And so over time, we had to make a series of decisions to take on even bigger cases that presented even bigger risks.

[Alex Clark]

So the law firm that you were working for, because you said your boss overhears what's going on and is interested, I mean, it sounds to me, especially because you're still working there today, the same place in Cincinnati, that everybody was on board with this and was like, we need to change, you know, the types of cases that we're doing. This is so important.

[Robert Bilott]

That was something that gradually occurred over time. When we first took on the case for Mr. Tennant, probably the rest of the firm was really not paying too much attention to this. Again, it was just a small case for one farm, one farmer. But when we found out that the chemical that was poisoning these cows was also in the drinking water of the entire surrounding community, tens of thousands of people, and we had to make the decision whether we would take this to the next step, which was bringing a class action Lawsuit on behalf of the entire surrounding community. Well, then we had to get decision making and buy in from a lot more folks within the firm, and that was a bigger decision. And you see that process portrayed, for example, in the film Dark Waters, when the partners are having to decide, do we do this? Do we actually file a class action against one of the world's biggest chemical companies on something that we found out was an unregulated chemical at the time? So that was a. That was a big step, and it was something that probably not a lot of law firms would have done. But what really compelled us, and I think what really changed the minds of a lot of my partners was when we saw the documents that were showing this was a massive public health threat that was going completely unnoticed, that not only did the surrounding community not know this was happening, but neither did the regulators, neither did the scientific community and the general public. Nobody had any idea this was happening. And so we really felt we had an obligation to alert the public, to alert the government into the scientific community, to let them know we may have massive poisoning of the entire country, if not the entire world, going on here that has gone unnoticed.

[Alex Clark]

So eventually, you go to West Virginia to see for yourself what's going on on this farm, right? What do you see? That first visit in person, that was.

[Robert Bilott]

Pretty compelling for me. Again, most of my career up to that point, I had spent the first eight years of my career dealing primarily with big corporate clients. And a lot of what I did was talking with them over the phone or in sitting in business meetings in corporate boardrooms, and to actually go out and see this family's farm and to see what was happening there, how important that was to these people on an individual basis. These weren't just livestock that were being damaged. These were like family members to them. This was their entire livelihood. And you could see the passion that these people had for not only these animals, but for their land and their community. And that was the really compelling part of that, was to get the sense that these people were really looking to us for help.

[Alex Clark]

What was the most disturbing thing that stood out to you?

[Robert Bilott]

At first, seeing for myself what was happening to the animals, Seeing how many animals had been lost, Seeing the remains that Mr. Tenant and his brothers and family members had collected and were trying to preserve, you know, the bones and things from these animals that had been killed. And just seeing how. How this was impacting these people, these were real people. This was having a huge emotional toll on these folks. So really made me feel like, you know, if if there's any way I can help them, I really wanted to do it.

[Alex Clark]

And what was the chemical that dupont was dumping in this community?

[Robert Bilott]

You know, it took us a while to figure that out. I did what I normally would do for our chemical company clients. I was focusing on the world of regulated, toxic, hazardous chemicals and asking DuPont, you know, to provide whatever information they had about the regulated toxic materials that were in the landfill. The chemical that was actually getting into the water that the cows were drinking, the chemical that was creating this foam was something that was completely unregulated. It had escaped our entire system of regulations that really began in the United States with the creation of the EPA in 1970 and the first federal statutes regulating what goes into the air and the water in the late 70s. So this chemical that we found out we were dealing with was called pfoa, Perfluorooctanoic acid. Something I had never heard of. And it wasn't on any of our lists of regulated toxic chemicals, because the chemical had been invented back at the time of World War II, back in the 1940s, kind of an outgrowth of the Manhattan Project research. And this chemical, created really by the 3M company in Minnesota that they started selling to DuPont as early as 1951, was a chemical DuPont was using in the manufacture of Teflon, the non stick cookware and the nonstick coating that started going out into American homes and all over the world as early as 1962. So this was a chemical that was being made and used in massive quantities before any of these EPA and regulatory standards started coming into play in the United States decades later.

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[Robert Bilott]

That was what happened in the United States prior to essentially the 1970s, when one of the very first federal laws that was enacted to start regulating what kind of testing do you have to do on chemicals before they start going out into the environment. That was the Toxic Substances control Act, or TOSCA, which came out in 1976. But when that law got passed, it focused on new chemicals from that point forward. So if companies started making something new after 1976, the law required you to start doing all kinds of tests on animals and all kinds of toxicity testing, you know, to look into the safety of those chemicals. But unfortunately for the chemicals that were already out there, and there were tens of thousands of chemicals that were already out being used before that law came in place, the law essentially left it up to the companies making and using those chemicals to tell EPA if there was some new information that required them to go back and look at the toxicity.

[Alex Clark]

And what chemical company is going to do that?

[Robert Bilott]

Well, you know, unfortunately what we found out, this case was a prime example of what happens if they don't tell, because the law required the companies to report anything that presented a substantial risk to human health or the environment. And in this case, there was data going back decades telling 3M and DuPont this chemical PFOA did present a substantial risk, but the companies chose not to tell epa. Well, the problem is, how do we ever know that? Right?

[Alex Clark]

Right.

[Robert Bilott]

Well, we only found that out in this case because of Mr. Tennant and his cows dying. And the fact that gave us an ability through Litigation to find these documents and to see what the companies had known and didn't report. And we became the ones who then told the EPA decades later that this data existed even with new chemicals. Unfortunately, yes, the law is there that says you have to do these tests. But the reality is that law doesn't necessarily always get followed. The companies cut deals with the EPA now that allow them to avoid a lot of that testing and to go ahead and bring their chemical out on the market before the testing's done.

[Alex Clark]

So is the EPA another three letter health agency in the government that is really corrupt.

[Robert Bilott]

The terminology I think a lot of folks use when talking about what's going on with the EPA is corporate capture. This is an agency again, that was first created in 1970, was supposed to be this federal agency that would oversee what's going out into our environment, into our air, into our water, into the soil, into implement and oversee implementation of the laws that were to protect our air and water. Unfortunately, what's happened is we've seen an agency that has become captured by the very industries it was supposed to be regulating. You see this revolving door a lot between folks that maybe go to work for the agency but then end up going to go work for the companies they were to regulate, or vice versa.

[Alex Clark]

The reason that's a red flag is that these people can then cut deals for these chemical companies knowing that if they cut them some slack, they're going to get some cushy crazy six figure job to then move over and start working for the chemical companies. And I do know that that's one thing, I mean definitely when it comes to the FDA and other agencies that RFK Jr. Is really wanting to stop. So hopefully that would also go over to the EPA as well. Do you have hope for that?

[Robert Bilott]

Yeah, that's a real concern. And in fact, it's one of the reasons I wrote the book Exposure. All right. Which kind of gives you the history of how all of this happened. Because so often if I'm telling people about the story of how this Teflon chemical and these related chemicals we now call PFAS per and polyfluoroalkylated substances, these forever chemicals, how in the world did these chemicals get created, get out there into all these products, get out and contaminate our entire environment and all of this happened for decades and decades and none of them were regulated. How did this happen when we have an agency like the USEPA that's supposed to be regulating all this? So one of the things I try to explore in that book is, why did that happen? How does that happen? How is that continuing to happen? And a lot of that is just the history of how the agency was set up, who was actually involved in setting the agency up, and how a lot of these rules were put into place and the burdens that are put in place for how you have to prove whether this chemical is harmful enough. And who has the burden? Who is the one who has to prove whether it's harmful enough? You know, you've got this situation, for example, where if you're exposed to chemicals through food or through drugs, you've got an agency like the FDA that require testing to prove what's the safe level for humans before it goes out on the market. Well, what if you're exposed to chemicals like these, these forever chemicals that stay in our bodies forever? What if you're exposed to these chemicals, but it's not through directly taking that in a food or a drug, it's through the environment? Well, we have a separate agency, the usepa, and there's very different standards that apply to those chemicals that come to us through the environment versus through our food or drugs. And unfortunately, the burden gets placed a lot of times on the exposed people to prove that these environmental chemicals are actually causing harm.

[Alex Clark]

You decide to go ahead and file this lawsuit on behalf of the Tennant family with dupont. What did dupont do in response to.

[Robert Bilott]

Your lawsuit about several decades of litigation? One of the very first things dupont tried to do was to try to withhold information from us. You know, when we first filed this case for Mr. Tennant and his family, we had no idea what chemical might be involved, what was in this water? And when I finally started to figure out that it might be this unregulated material, we faced incredible pushback from the company. We had to go to court to get court orders to force them to turn over their records about this unregulated PFOA chemical, and had to fight a long time in court to get access to these documents. And then once we finally got those documents and I finally started to see what was really happening here, that you had companies like 3M and Dupont that had created an incredibly toxic, persistent, bioaccumulative, carcinogenic chemical and had put it out into the world where it's being used in all kinds of consumer products, everything that's essentially nonstick, grease resistant, waterproof, from fast food wrappers and packaging to clothing and carpeting and cosmetics, and you name it, and the companies that created these chemicals knew they were toxic and bioprosist in carcinogenic, yet covered that up and didn't tell the rest of us.

[Alex Clark]

How did they know?

[Robert Bilott]

They did their own studies. Remember, this is before the US EPA even existed, that this chemical was created. Yet 3M and Dupont had their own scientists internally who understood this was unique. This chemical had never existed on the planet prior to the 1940s. In fact, 3M had created a whole new type of chemistry. They were able to connect carbon and fluorine together to create organic fluorines that had never existed on planet Earth.

[Alex Clark]

And what was the reason they wanted to create this chemical?

[Robert Bilott]

They were able to create this chemistry because they were able to make materials that were then incredibly useful for industrial processes and products. So they create this chemistry in the 1940s. And two of the chemicals in particular that they created had eight carbons attached to fluorine. These things they called C8s. One of them was this PFOA chemical that they sold to dupont, used to make Teflon, another closely related one with eight carbons they called pfos. Well, that went into things like Scotchgard that everybody used in their homes for decades, spraying their furniture, spraying their clothing, and firefighting foams that were then used for decades by our military personnel, our firefighters. So. But 3M and Dupont realized this unique chemical structure made it so that these chemicals were likely to not break down if they got into the world. They would not break apart. In fact, some of the scientists at these companies testified in court years later. It may take millions of years for those chemicals to start to break down on their own once they got into the world. So when the companies realized you've got this really strong chemical that might break apart, which why they're called forever chemicals, they started doing their own studies looking at the toxicity of these. Because folks like 3M, I mean, in Dupont, remember they were about to put this in Teflon, which is going to go out to the entire world, right? They wanted to know what would happen if this chemical started reaching living things. So they start doing their own studies on animals in the 1960s, again, before the EPA exists, because they've got their own massive lab with some of the world's best scientists. They start studying mice, rats, rabbits, guinea pigs, dogs, even monkeys. And they're seeing these incredibly toxic effects. And then they start monitoring their own workers looking for cancers and other health effects. Because one of the animal studies they do is a cancer study that shows the chemical can cause testicular tumors. This is in the early 1980s.

[Alex Clark]

So the companies making Teflon were seeing effects in their own employees on the assembly line and still put it out to the public.

[Robert Bilott]

They're monitoring all this internally, but they're not disclosing this to the scientific community. They're not publishing a lot of these studies. If they see bad results, that doesn't get published. And what they do instead is there's a point in time in the 1970s when in the United States we started putting fluoride in the drinking water, water to help with cavities. And some researchers went out looking to see, hey, I wonder if that stuff gets into people's blood. We're putting it into everybody's drinking water across the United States. I wonder if that gets into people's blood. So these researchers went out, collected samples from US Blood banks looking for this fluoride, and they found it. But they also found something they weren't expecting. They found a different type of fluoride. They also found organic fluoride, which didn't exist in nature. So these researchers are wondering, this is 1975, they're wondering, where's that coming from? Because that doesn't exist in the natural world. They find the patents that 3M has for these C8s, PFOA and PFOS, they go to 3M and tell them, hey, we found this stuff in the general US Population's blood. Could it be your chemical? And we have documents from later litigation where 3M says we pled ignorance, of course, but internally they confirm, yes, it is their chemical. By the late 70s, 3M starts testing its own workers. And that's when they find out this chemical, these C8s, are getting into the blood of humans that are exposed to it. They notify dupont, who's buying this for Teflon. Dupont's tests, its workers, they see the same thing. So by the 70s, they not only know from the animal studies this stuff's really toxic, but they also now know it gets into people and it stays there. Because the human body doesn't know how to get rid of this man made chemical. You know, we're exposed to so many chemicals all the time, and a lot of them our body may flush out after a couple hours, like the caffeine and coffee or tea. But this chemical, the body doesn't know how to get rid of. So when it gets into people, it sticks in our blood and it then circulates throughout the whole body, coating all the organs. And the body doesn't know how to excrete it. So not only does it stay there, every additional exposure builds up over time. That's what we mean by bio persistence and persistence bioaccumulation. What I'm seeing is you've got decades of research showing this toxicity, persistence, bioaccumulation, cancer impacts. Nobody's being told this. And in fact what we see is a conscious effort to cover that up. We actually have these companies adopting. One of them in particular adopts the strategy of trying to control the science to make sure that what does get published is only studies saying there's no problem with this shocker.

[Alex Clark]

And that is the thing that dupes so many Americans, especially moms, is that, okay, well, I'm googling, I'm trying to research and all this, but if the.

[Unknown]

Research is all corrupt, what are they supposed to do?

[Alex Clark]

And people don't even realize that, that the person paying for the study to.

[Unknown]

Say your product is safe, they were.

[Alex Clark]

Paid for by a chemical company or a food company.

[Robert Bilott]

I'm not a scientist. I have a. I went to liberal arts college, you know, political science and then law school. When I started into this world, I went in thinking, you know, the science is the science, the facts are the facts. If there's something harmful, it gets published in a peer reviewed literature. And what I really started to understand, sort of learning the hard way as I dug through all these internal documents from Dupont and 3M, is that process can be manipulated, the science. Because what we saw happening is the companies were controlling what got sent out for publication. And then you end up having all of the articles about that chemical might be published by either the companies themselves or people that they were paying to do the research on it. So that when somebody new came in and tried to publish something about the chemical, who would do the peer review? The guys that had published it already before by the companies. And then the new people would be told, oh, you are a junk scientist. We're not going to allow that data to be published. So they could effectively control what got published and peer reviewed. And I was seeing that's what was happening. So by the time I'm looking at all these documents in the late 90s, early 2000s, the scientific literature had been completely manipulated by the companies so that what was out there for the public, the scientific community, regulators, was all essentially saying, there's no problem with these chemicals. But what I was seeing in, in the company's own internal documents was completely the opposite and had been intentionally covered up.

[Alex Clark]

So speaking of buying and paying for the science, one of the things that was happening was didn't dupont say that they wanted to choose their own veterinarians to conduct different studies as far as this Tenet case goes. And they wanted to choose their own members of the EPA to look into things or something.

[Robert Bilott]

When we first started taking on the case for Mr. Tenant, one of the very first things DuPont did was they came to us and said, hey, you know, there's really no need to get into a big fight through the litigation, and we're going to set up a scientific team to investigate these cows and to really find out what's happening here. And we're going to create what they called the cattle team. DuPont would appoint three of its top scientists, veterinarians, and the USEPA would appoint three of its top scientists. Now, at the time, I thought that sounded great. I mean, dupont had some of the best scientists around usepa. They were also. They should have been the top folks.

[Alex Clark]

Understanding how nice of these people to just offer to do this right?

[Robert Bilott]

So this team was created, and their job was to investigate what was happening to these cows. What we found out years later was These folks, the DuPont scientists, one of them in particular knew that PFOA was in the water these cows were drinking. In fact, he was one of the scientists that had actually been looking at some of the cancer studies back in the 80s. They never sampled the cows for the chemical at all. And in fact, they ended up issuing a report that essentially said, we can't find any chemical problem connected to whatever the cows are drinking here. It must just be that Mr. Tennant and his family know how to raise cattle in so many words, you know, that, or else they're even abusing these animals. So this report was issued that looked like, you know, you had some of the best scientists saying nothing to see here. And it wasn't until we actually were able to get into the internal documents that we found out that whole team, that whole process was a sham.

[Unknown]

Are you feeling. Feeling uggo. Like you fell out of Kamala's coconut tree and hit every branch on the way down In a constant battle with your skin. One minute it's clear, the next, it's like a battlefield. Don't even get me started on hair. I mean, it's thinning, it's brittle. It's just sad. But after incorporating cowboy Colostrum into my routine, my skin got more glowy. My hair, it feels like it's making a comeback finally. And if you don't believe me, others have noticed, too, you can look at the comments under my episodes. Cowboy Colostrum is loaded with vitamins A and E, two powerhouse nutrients that are absolute game changers for Your skin. These vitamins fight fine lines and wrinkles. They give you smoother, more radiant skin. And for your hair, colostrum stimulates your follicles to grow healthier, stronger strands. You're not just dealing with the surface. This stuff nourishes your hair from within. Plus it's made from full fat. First milking colostrum from grass fed cows, meaning you get all the bioactive goodness without any additives or fillers. It's pure, potent and 100% natural. Want glowing skin and hair that feels as good as it looks? Head over to cowboycolostrum.com and use code ALEX for 15 off. That's cowboycolostrum.com code ALEX for 15 off. Flossing is that thing we're all supposed to do but always forget to do. But listen, I just realized that I've been putting plastic, yes, plastic between my teeth for years. How did I find out? Well, you know those natural flosses that they sell at Whole Foods and places like that? I bought a pack thinking, you know, I'm being so eco friendly, only to find out it was made from polyester, which if you didn't know, is based basically just a microplastic bomb waiting to explode on your gums. So great, right? Well, that's when I discovered zebra floss. And it's a total game changer. The stuff is silk. Yeah, silk, peppermint oil, xylitol. Not plastic, not polyester, not anything that you can't pronounce. It's actually healthy for your gums and it's so much better than anything that you're probably using right now. Plus, zebra is free from all the gross chemicals like pfas, which some other natural flosses still have. Yikes. You will not find that in zebra. Just a clean, silky experience that'll make you feel like you're flossing in a spa. If you want to floss the right way, go to yay zebra.com use code Alex for 10% off. That's yay zebra.com code Alex.

[Alex Clark]

What do you believe will be the ramifications of us creating this man made chemical?

[Robert Bilott]

You know, unfortunately, I think we've been seeing those ramifications play out if you start to look at what this chemical, PFOA and the related family of chemicals called pfas, which when I talk about the family, it's any of these chemicals that have this man made carbon fluorine bond. And we now know there could be up to 14,000 of these in this family of chemicals with PFOA what we're seeing is these chemicals persist in the environment for extraordinary periods of time. You know, when they get out into the world, they get into our water, they get into the soil, they stay there, they move through the air, they move through the groundwater, they move through the oceans, through the rivers, and they get into living things. They get taken up through the soil, into crops, they get into livestock, and most importantly, they get into all of us. They get into human blood, where they then stay there and build up over time. And the problem with that is, we know from the science that's been done by the companies themselves, again going back to the 1960s, but also from the last couple of decades, when the scientific community finally found out these chemicals exist, started being able to do their own research, we now know these chemicals are being linked with an incredible array of. Of potentially serious adverse human health impacts. Things like testicular cancer, kidney cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, preeclampsia, high cholesterol. These were diseases that were linked to these chemicals through a process we actually set up through our litigation a decade ago. But since then, there's been additional studies that show these chemicals also, even more disturbingly, may impact our immune system. That can lead to a whole cascade of events throughout life if you start impacting the immune system, particularly in the early, early stages of development.

[Alex Clark]

Wow.

[Robert Bilott]

And one of the more disturbing aspects of that, too, that came up actually during the COVID period was the concern that these chemicals might actually impair the effectiveness of vaccines.

[Alex Clark]

Oh, my gosh.

[Robert Bilott]

If you take a step back, you know, what we now know are we're dealing with chemicals that are now being found in the drinking water all over the United States and all over the globe. They are falling in the rain water. All right? These chemicals are literally everywhere. We're finding them in the polar ice caps. We're finding them in the blood of polar bears. You're finding them in the blood of tribes that have never interacted with the outside world. So we're really dealing with global contamination. So these are chemicals that are getting into our drinking water and our food and our products. They're getting into our blood. And the concern was, particularly during COVID you know, this is in everybody's blood, in everybody's water. If it could impact the ability to respond to vaccines, that's a real concern. So that's when you saw suddenly the US EPA in particular, taking a really serious second look at these chemicals. And that's what led them. This whole immune system problem led them to come out and recently come out with some of the strictest drinking water guidelines for any chemical in the history of our country.

[Alex Clark]

And this just happened in 2024, correct?

[Robert Bilott]

Yes. Yeah. It took us almost 25 years to get there.

[Alex Clark]

So this is actually fantastic. And it's good. We should all be excited about this.

[Robert Bilott]

Yes. Because what's. Is we finally. I mean, it took us decades to get this science out from these internal corporate files, to get it out to the rest of the world and to get it out to the public and to get it out to the scientific community in a way that has finally forced the US EPA to respond and has forced the agency to take a close look at this. And when they did, they're now coming out and saying these CA chemicals, in particular, the ones we've been talking about, PFOA and pfos, are human carcinogens. And so they have now recommended no more than 4 parts per trillion in drinking water.

[Alex Clark]

Oh, my gosh.

[Robert Bilott]

Which is about down as low as you can detect it.

[Alex Clark]

But why do we have to include any at all?

[Robert Bilott]

Well, their goal. All right, because they're human carcinogens. U.S. ePA is saying that the maximum level goal for these chemicals in drinking water should be zero.

[Alex Clark]

Okay.

[Robert Bilott]

So that gives you an idea of how serious the toxicity and the potential health impacts from these chemicals are when you have the top agency in the United States.

[Alex Clark]

Right.

[Robert Bilott]

Making statements like that.

[Alex Clark]

But here's my question, and this is what a lot of my audience I know is thinking. If it's literally now at this point falling from the rainwater, if it's in the blood of polar bears in Antarctica, I mean, we can't escape this stuff. Why does it actually matter if my personal family is using a nonstick pan or not? I mean, is it just kind of like, you know, a drop in the bucket at this point? Like, is it really going to make a difference?

[Robert Bilott]

Well, I think what's important is that this information is finally going out to people so that people can start making their own choices. Up to now, none of us had the choice on whether or not we were exposed to these chemicals. None of us knew we were being exposed. I mean, remember, these chemicals started getting pumped out into the world in the 1940s and really, really escalated in the 70s and 80s. And again, we're now seeing these chemicals, this family of chemicals being used in all of these different processes. And again, not only the products we've already mentioned, but also things like computer chips and firefighting foams and all this stuff that's all over the place.

[Alex Clark]

And I heard, is this true that one of the most toxic things are toys or utensils made with black plastic?

[Robert Bilott]

In particular, I've seen the headlines that have come out recently about the black plastic. I haven't seen the. I haven't looked into that in depth enough to know whether that's connected to the PFAS chemicals. Okay. There's a real concern that, again, none of us knew we were exposed. But now that this story has finally come out, and it took an incredible effort to get that story out, I mean, back when I first sent my very first letter to the US EPA to warn them this was happening, it was March 6th of 2001. All right? It took 24 years for the US EPA to actually come out and adopt the first drinking water standards that we've just been talking about. Because part of what was happening, dupont goes in to get a gag order to try to prevent that. We fight in court for years. There's this attempt to keep this covered up. It took fighting and fighting to bring this story out. And it was through the power of things like film, documentary, like the Devil We Know, that was released in 2018. I brought the book out in 2019. And then the feature film with Mark Ruffalo and Anne Hathaway and Tim Robbins, Dark Waters, came out. That really pushed the needle where the public finally started to understand what was happening here. That's what finally pushed the regulators to have to respond as well. The public is now finally becoming aware these chemicals are out there. And, yeah, it is difficult to avoid exposure because they're in all these different products. But now that at least we know where these chemicals were used, the types of products they were used in, people can start making a choice to try to avoid those. Or what we're seeing happen as well is consumers are now reaching out to companies saying, we don't want these chemicals in our children's clothing. We don't want them in our food wrappers. And a lot of the world's biggest companies with the best known brand names are now coming out involuntarily saying, we will stop using these. We will pull them out of these products.

[Alex Clark]

So we really do have a lot of power.

[Robert Bilott]

Consumers voices are having an incredible impact.

[Alex Clark]

That is, we are at the moment.

[Robert Bilott]

You know, it takes individuals standing up and speaking out like that. And the companies are responding because that's their market and they're seeing the opportunity there as well. And I hope that's going to result in less exposure to people in the long term, because at least we now know, hey, maybe I should avoid this type of product because it's used these types of chemicals in the past, or this company is at least saying they're not using them anymore. Maybe I'll switch over to that. That's a choice we didn't have five, 10 years ago.

[Alex Clark]

There's so many things running through my brain. I mean, one, this really reminds me of what happened with big tobacco and just the way culture shifted on how we viewed cigarettes. When it comes to our food pharma and then also big chemical, we talk a lot about big food and big pharma. Big chemical is another big that we should be equally concerned about. It's crazy that we really do have so much power once we have this information, to make these changes. So. So when you were looking into this town in west Virginia, did you also see for yourself? Was there a lot of unexplained cancer diagnosis in this town? Were there unexplained deaths that you saw going back years, just in this one little area where they were dumping the chemical?

[Robert Bilott]

Absolutely. In fact, you know, as I mentioned, my mom and her family grew up in Parkersburg. And I remember as a kid, you know, when we would visit, people would joke about the area being cancer alley, Cancer valley. Whoa. And, you know, it was just sort of an accepted thing.

[Alex Clark]

Did that moment in dark waters really happen where you were driving and saw a little girl on her bike and was like, oh, how cute. A little kid on her bike. And then she smiled and you see black teeth?

[Robert Bilott]

Well, it relates to actually a story that Mr. Kiger, who you may remember from the film dark waters, he was the local teacher in parkersburg who came to us what became the second case, the big class action lawsuit on behalf of the entire community. Because one of the concerns he was seeing in the school were children with blackened teeth.

[Alex Clark]

Oh, my gosh. Is it a rare occurrence that chemical companies knowingly poison towns, or is there currently a mass poisoning happening of the American people?

[Robert Bilott]

I started my career working with chemical companies, and one of the reasons we actually agreed to take on the case for Mr. Tennant and then took it to the next step of bringing that big class action on behalf of the whole community is because what we saw here was unusual. We had not seen companies behave this way. In fact, this was hopefully an unusual situation where you had companies that knew there was a risk and were covering it up or were intentionally trying to withhold information. I'm hopeful that that is not a pattern that repeats. But the concern we have, of course, is we only know about what happened here with 3M and DuPont because of lawsuits, where we were able to get access to internal documents that otherwise nobody would have seen. And was only through access to those internal documents that we learned this information had been covered up and withheld.

[Alex Clark]

Part of this, too, which I really am trying to educate my audience on, is knowing your body. There are so many things now that we are told are normal, you know, different illnesses, whatever. Oh, this is just a part of life. This is just a part of growing older. Everyone in your family, you know, suddenly getting cancer. I mean, that's just. I don't know. It was just chance. Just because things are common doesn't necessarily make them normal. So what you're saying is we need people to speak up in lawsuits and to reach out to people like you to say, like, hey, this is going on in my community. Can you look into this? Right. Because how are we going to know to do anything?

[Robert Bilott]

Absolutely. And I think one of the reasons why the story you see in dark waters, you know, where the devil we know has such a powerful impact on people, is seeing that somebody like Mr. Tenant or like Mr. Kiger, you know, a single individual can stand up and by speaking out, you know, put into motion incredible change, you know, that we're now seeing happen. It took a long time, took us way too long to get there, but we're finally seeing those changes occur.

[Alex Clark]

I'm pretty sure he passed away before he even got to see where this. I mean, is it even over?

[Robert Bilott]

You know, unfortunately not. You know, Mr. Tenet. Yes. Did unfortunately pass away back in 2009, 2008. He. His wife did as well. So they weren't able to see this story finally come out. But I think he would have been very happy to see that this story finally is making its way out to not just the American public, but now the entire world.

[Alex Clark]

Because I understand that these cases, they take on different legs, and it just keeps going and going and going. So did you win? I mean, how would you explain what all has happened with it?

[Robert Bilott]

After we were able to settle Mr. Tenet's case for his property, we brought that class action on behalf of the entire community. We settled that as well, which got everybody clean water. We set up this massive series of studies that were able to confirm the chemical was linked with these serious diseases. I mentioned the six different diseases. So those people were able to then go into court and get compensation. That took several years more litigation. We were able to settle those cases. We've recovered about 750 million for the folks in that one community who were impacted. But since then, what we've learned, unfortunately, is the chemical and related chemicals are now in the drinking water all over the country. So that led to a whole new phase of litigation that started around 2017, 2018. We're representing hundreds of cities and public water suppliers all across the country. We're representing states that are claiming impacts to the fish, the wildlife, the natural resources. There are now thousands of cases being brought by firefighters, military personnel, other people who've been exposed by using firefighting foam or related materials that are now concerned that their cancer may have been caused by this. So all of these cases are now working their way through the courts, and we're helping to lead the process to try to resolve those. And we were actually about to take the very first case to trial for a public water system, the city of Stuart, Florida. And we were able to reach settlements, which actually became some of the largest settlements in US history.

[Unknown]

Wow.

[Robert Bilott]

For public water providers, with 3M and DuPont agreeing to pay up to another 13, $14 billion just for the public water systems. And we settled the case for the state of Ohio for another 110 million. So we are trying to work those cases through. Through.

[Alex Clark]

So in these communities where you find that the drinking water is toxic or chemicals are being dumped, you know, unbeknownst to citizens, are they ever savable? Are these areas ever truly safe to live there, to drink that water? Even if you bring in these different purifying systems or whatever? I mean, would you live there?

[Robert Bilott]

Well, I think what we're unfortunately finding out is it's very difficult to avoid exposure to these chemicals. What you can do is there are effective ways, at least to filter out those C8s from the water.

[Alex Clark]

Because I want to know exactly what water filter system you use in your home.

[Robert Bilott]

Well, the most effective thing to do is to have filtration systems put on at the public water supply. And that's what we're seeing now going on across the country. And that's why all this litigation is going forward, is because these public water systems are having to spend potentially millions of dollars to put in these treatment systems. But it's technology like granular activated carbon systems, reverse osmosis filters, ion exchange systems, devices that can pretty Effectively take these C8s out of our drinking water before they make it to the home. There are also systems out there that have been developed if you're on a private well, you know, that can treat the water before it goes into the house.

[Alex Clark]

That's a question my audience has asked before that. I didn't know the answer. Well, water safe. Do you need to have a water filter system if you do have a private well?

[Robert Bilott]

Well, it depends.

[Alex Clark]

Okay.

[Robert Bilott]

Unfortunately, most of the wells across this country probably have not been tested yet for these chemicals. Most of the testing that's occurred, and keep in mind, testing really didn't begin in the United States for any of these chemicals until 2013.

[Unknown]

Oh my God.

[Robert Bilott]

That's when the US EPA finally started going out and was after these links with disease had been confirmed by this scientific panel that we had set up to settle this class action lawsuits.

[Alex Clark]

So almost certainly people listening that have a well, they need to go get it tested.

[Robert Bilott]

Most of the testing that's been done has been on public water systems and most of that has been for the larger systems serving more than 10,000 people. A lot of the private wells haven't been tested yet. Some states have started going out, starting testing private wells. But that's the real concern as well, that you may have people on private wells that don't realize that that water's been impacted.

[Alex Clark]

So can people advocate in their own community to have the state come out and pay for this testing for their own private well?

[Robert Bilott]

Is that something we should be doing that's been happening? There are communities, there are places all over the country where that's been going on there, as I mentioned, there are states that are already going out and doing that testing. It really requires education. People need to understand first that this is even an issue because in a lot of places nobody's testing because they don't know that there's any, you know, that there's any concern about these chemicals.

[Alex Clark]

As a lawyer who's fighting the top chemical companies for problems in our environment, does your family ever drink tap water?

[Robert Bilott]

You know, we're fortunate that we have public water that is now being provided through one of these fuel filtration systems I mentioned. We live along the Ohio River. We live in one of those communities downstream from the same plant that we've been talking about up in West Virginia that was making Teflon. Our public water system fortunately has one of the filtration systems in place so our water is filtered. That's to me, critically important to get this information out, which is one of the reasons we're here talking is it's important for people to understand these chemicals are out there and to ask, hey, has my water been tested for this? Because if it has and these chemicals have been found, you may want to make sure that it's being filtered particularly for the C8s, you and the EPA.

[Alex Clark]

Worked together to do this massive water testing initiative. It's one of the biggest human health studies ever conducted when it comes to contaminated drinking water. What did you guys find out?

[Robert Bilott]

We set this new process up. We called it the C8 science panel. They were able to confirm in 2012 that drinking the chemical was in fact linked with these six diseases. We mentioned testicular cancer, kidney cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, preeclampsia and high cholesterol. That was a seven year process.

[Alex Clark]

We talked about fluoride in the drinking water. Do you trust fluoride in toothpaste?

[Robert Bilott]

I think I am of the opinion that more studies and more analysis of exactly what is the benefit. All right. Versus what is the risk. And I would love to see more analysis done on that. That.

[Alex Clark]

How important is it to use a filter on your shower head?

[Robert Bilott]

Well, I think there's new science, at least with respect to these chemicals. We're talking about these PFAS chemicals. There's been a real concern. We know that it gets into people if you drink it. All right, so the concern has now shifted to, well, what about can it get into you through the skin? What if you're taking a shower? What if it comes off of clothing? There is some emergent science that is starting to show that there might be exposure also through the skin as well. So that's why when we talk about filtering the water, a lot of folks are saying, you know, it's not good enough just to be filtering at your sink through a filter at the sink. You want to make sure that all of the water coming into the house is being filtered.

[Alex Clark]

From what you've seen, which state is the most chemically dangerous to live in?

[Robert Bilott]

I don't know if I could answer that. You know, my focus during my career, the last 25 years of it, I guess, have definitely been on PFAS chemicals. And what I can tell you is, unfortunately, it's a pretty uniform, widespread threat.

[Alex Clark]

We're all screwed.

[Robert Bilott]

Well, fortunately, there are things we can do. You know, we can at least filter the water, we can get it out of the drinking water. We can try to make sure that we stop putting these materials into the products going forward instead of having to focus on how do we clean it up, how do we stop getting it out there to start with.

[Alex Clark]

Right. Because like you said, could be millions of years for this stuff to break down. So there's no real getting rid of it. But we can do is stop producing more.

[Robert Bilott]

Correct.

[Unknown]

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[Alex Clark]

Give us your elevator pitch for why we have to stop using nonstick cookware.

[Robert Bilott]

What I would suggest is we need to stop using PFAS in making products like nonstick cookware.

[Alex Clark]

And is it true that they are still using Teflon in a lot of these nonstick pans? And they're saying, oh, we're it's without pfas, but now they've named it something else to trick people.

[Robert Bilott]

Well, yeah, it gets very confusing because a lot of what we've been talking about has been this chemical that was used to make Teflon called pfoa. Well, what's happened is that chemical eventually, once the story finally came out, that chemical was eventually phased out of production in the United States.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Alex Clark]

Because it was a PR nightmare and everybody was aware of it.

[Robert Bilott]

Dupont finally agreed to a 10 year phaseout in 2006. They said by 2015, we will agree to stop using or making it. Well, what happened is during that phaseout period, they simply came up with an alternative. Essentially, they took C8, they knocked two carbons off, and they started making and using C6.

[Alex Clark]

I knew it.

[Robert Bilott]

They Renamed it Gen X. And that chemical was then shipped to the same plant in West Virginia where it was then used to make Teflon. That chemical now goes into the Ohio River. It's now being found in public water supplies downstream. It's going into the air. It's being used in. In manufacturing in Europe, now being found in the water there as well.

[Alex Clark]

It's like Mr. Pibb, Dr. Pepper, remember.

[Robert Bilott]

I mentioned we've got these laws that say new chemicals have to go through all this testing?

[Unknown]

Yes.

[Robert Bilott]

Well, it's one of these that's used as this example of how that law doesn't necessarily work the way it's supposed to in reality.

[Alex Clark]

Are they calling it PFOEs?

[Robert Bilott]

This new one they're referring to as simply a C6, that. It's a PFOS. It's part of the family of chemicals that have carbons attached to fluorine. It just has fewer carbons.

[Alex Clark]

So what are the ingredients that you're looking for on your pan set that you're like, I can't get this.

[Robert Bilott]

Well, that's why it becomes really confusing. Because remember, dupont was using PFOA to make Teflon, Right. Then it switched. It started using Gen X to make Teflon. It still makes Teflon. So what you started to see happen was you would see pans advertised on television or you go to the store, and then you started to see labels that would say PFOA free.

[Alex Clark]

Yes.

[Robert Bilott]

Well, that's the original chemical that got phased out 10 years ago.

[Alex Clark]

It's all fake news.

[Robert Bilott]

That doesn't mean it doesn't have the new chemical Gen X in it or one of these other chemicals. So what you started to see happen is places like in California where they adopted a law that said you've got to. You can't advertise this way. It gets confusing to consumers. All right? And so the focus has now become on whether it's got any of that family of chemicals that we call pfas. Now think about that as a consumer. How confusing is this?

[Alex Clark]

No, this is so confusing.

[Robert Bilott]

And that's why it's acronym. Sue. Pfoa, pfas. What's the difference? Nobody. So people don't understand, you know, when they see PFOA free, that doesn't mean it doesn't have one of the other chemicals.

[Alex Clark]

Exactly. So I think the easiest advice, the simplest way. Okay, well, now what am I supposed to do now? I'm so confused. Stainless steel or cast iron? I mean, that's what I tell everybody. Would you agree?

[Robert Bilott]

Well, I can tell you that we use cast iron.

[Alex Clark]

Okay, okay.

[Robert Bilott]

It's very difficult.

[Alex Clark]

Even glass bakeware.

[Robert Bilott]

Right. It's very difficult even to this day to actually find where these chemicals are being used, which products, because they're still technically not regulated in most places. So it's not like they've been on ingredient labels or warning labels. So you're not going to see them on an ingredient list. Oh, it's got PFOA or it was used with pfoa. That's not going to be there. And for many years the companies making these chemicals, they claimed that their formulas were secret, confidential business information. So they didn't even tell the companies downstream that they were selling the stuff to. So when it ended up in the products, the consumer would have no idea it was there. But what you can do is look for certain buzzwords like nonstick, stain resistant, waterproof, grease resistant. With these PFAS chemicals, they've tended to be on things that keep water off or keep grease off or make it slippery and non stick. Correct.

[Alex Clark]

Should we even be buying raincoats?

[Robert Bilott]

It's important to look at who's making it and whether or not it's a company that's committed not to use PFAs. And a lot of them have, a lot of these folks have now started coming out and on their websites you'll see whether or not they've taken a stand on whether their materials use PFAS or not. What's becoming sort of the big debate now though is what is a PFAS? Remember I said there's about 14,000 of them. Well, different people are defining that differently and oh well, it doesn't have PFAS if you don't detect it below a certain level. And so you may see something that says PFAS free, but it's only because they used a detection level that was too high, there might be PFAS in it. So you've got this, this, this confusion going on. Now even when you see something saying PFAS free, is it really PFAS free or is it just because they're using a different definition or they're using a different detection level to say anything below that, it's not there.

[Alex Clark]

Is there anything that RFK Jr. Is saying that he would like to do when it comes to tox environment as the new Health and Human Services director that you support?

[Robert Bilott]

Well, I definitely support the whole idea of refocusing on human health, public health. And I think, you know, bringing attention to these issues is critically important.

[Alex Clark]

Have you heard anything as far as his plans on regulating environmental toxins that align with your mission and what you've done, like, is there anything we could be excited about that you've heard?

[Robert Bilott]

I'm definitely in favor of the emphasis on making sure that information like this is brought to light and that the public is informed of what's going on. And we try to crack down on corporate capture of these agencies, and we try to make sure that we focus on the public health implications of what's going on here.

[Alex Clark]

And that's why you believe this is really a. A cause for optimism? Absolutely, because a lot of people hear this and they just feel totally hopeless.

[Robert Bilott]

Now. I think, if anything, you hear the story and yes, I mean, you're talking about global contamination on an unprecedented scale. You know, if you compare to things like tobacco or opioids, you know, these massive public health, again, those are situations where really you're impacting people that knew they were taking it or chose to take these or be exposed to these materials. Here you're talking about chemicals that have gotten virtually into everyone, whether they chose to be exposed to these materials or not. So you're dealing with a truly global impact here.

[Alex Clark]

What should people be fighting for in their own communities that would make the most immediate difference as far as toxins in their environment goes?

[Robert Bilott]

I think absolutely the most critical thing is public awareness, education, more discussions like what we're having today, all right. Where the ability to understand what do we know about these chemicals? Where do I get access to this information? How do I learn more about it? And importantly, how do I, as an individual make a difference? How can I do something? And I think, again, you see a great, hopefully optimistic story when you look at the PFAS story. Because what you see are people like Earl Tenet or Mr. Kiger or now we're seeing individuals in other communities all across the world who, when they're finding out they got contaminated this way, they're speaking up. And those voices are being heard by our regulators and our lawmakers. Now those laws are changing. Things I thought I would never see happen in my lifetime. The President of the United States talking about pfas, the US EPA actually adopting standards to limit them, declaring them carcinogens with a zero exposure goal. I mean, I never thought I would see that happen, or company like 3M coming out and publicly announcing, we will not make any more of these by the end of 2025.

[Unknown]

Okay, that's great.

[Robert Bilott]

All of that is a result of people being educated and saying, hey, now that we know about this this is bad. We shouldn't be doing this. Stop. What we've learned is how important it is and how powerful films can be. And so we've got a new film that's actually coming out called how to Poison a Planet through filmmakers in Australia that are showing. A lot of what we've talked about has been focused on dupont and what dupont knew. You see that in the Devil We Know, and in my book, Exposure and Dark Waters. It's really kind of the dupont side of the story. The rest of the world really hasn't seen what 3M has known about this. 3M was the one who invented this stuff and was selling it to dupont. And that story was about to come out. This trial I mentioned a year or so ago. Well, you see some of that now in this new film with Mark Ruffalo is in this as well. It should be coming out in the US Here in the spring.

[Alex Clark]

Three simple things somebody can do right now, today, to lessen their toxin load.

[Robert Bilott]

You definitely want to make sure you understand what's in your drinking water. And to make sure you understand, particularly with respect to the pfas forever chemicals, has your water been tested? And if it has, and if these chemicals are found there, you know, are the levels above the new EPA guidelines or. And if so, you know, what is your water system taking steps to address that are going to be putting filtration in? Or if you're on a private well, you know, should you be getting tested to make your. Well tested to make sure you understand? Because that's step one is knowing if you're drinking this directly. For those that are using public water, a lot of that information is typically available online through your public water system or is available by calling or asking folks, you know, for the test data that exists. But also, you can start by making choices now, you know, once you become informed about the types of products that these chemicals have been used in, you can finally start to make choices, to try to start avoiding some of those things or at least starting to look for companies that are saying they're not using these anymore. So that's at least a positive step. And speak out and start talking to your friends, your family and your neighbors so that they understand this as well. Because, you know, it's frustrating when you step back and look at this. This process has been going on for decades. And just since I got involved in 98, I mean, it has taken us decades to get this story out to where we're able to have this discussion today. And even still, even with the Films that are already out there. And with all the discussion that's going on, there's a huge portion of the population that still doesn't know what this stuff is, has never heard of it, has no idea why this is something they should be concerned about. So helping spread awareness is critical.

[Alex Clark]

What can somebody do if they believe that they are a victim in their community of something like this?

[Robert Bilott]

There are all kinds of options available. You know, if you're concerned about health impacts, you know, there's data out there that is available that tell you, like what kinds of testing might be available to discuss with your doctor, to look for the types of diseases that these chemicals might be linked with. You know, if you're concerned about your water being contaminated, you know, there are steps you can take again to get tested or to try to get that water cleaned up. Even though I'm a lawyer who litigates these, I would hope there are things you can do short of having to file a lawsuit.

[Alex Clark]

How accurate was the movie to what really happened?

[Robert Bilott]

You know, I think they did a fantastic. You know, it was so bizarre the way that all developed. You know, there was an article that came out in 2016 in the new York Times Magazine telling sort of the overview of this story. And it just so happened that Mark Ruffalo was one of the guys that read that story.

[Alex Clark]

Oh, really?

[Robert Bilott]

And he actually reached out to me, called because he had read the story and was was floored because he considered himself to be fairly knowledgeable on drinking water issues, environmental issues. He had never heard of this. And so the concern was, how is this happening in the US and nobody's heard of this? And why is this on the COVID of the New York Times Magazine but not on the front page of the New York Times? How do we get more attention to it? So he had reached out with the idea of doing a feature film that would help educate the public. As a lawyer, I was kind of resistant to this whole idea. I've never done anything. But he was so passionate about doing it, but also doing it the right way for the right reasons.

[Alex Clark]

And was your wife on board immediately or like. No.

[Robert Bilott]

It took some convincing as well, because I wanted to make sure that if we did this, we stuck to the facts, it was accurate, it wasn't over sensationalized that we told the true story of what happened to the real people. And he fortunately was able to. To pull together an incredible team. Director, Todd Haynes, the folks at Participant Media that were able to do the movie in a way that stuck to the true facts.

[Alex Clark]

And you guys have stayed friends.

[Robert Bilott]

Yeah. The great thing about Mark and the team that he put together was the folks at Participant, the studio that did the film, it wasn't just, we're going to do a movie and walk away. We're done. It was, we're gonna do a movie. And we're also going to engage in a public outreach campaign, some activism. So there were screenings on Capitol Hill. There were screenings in Europe. You know, there was a public education and awareness campaign as well. And that has continued to this day. Been incredible to see the amount of dedication that he and the others have had to keep helping bring the story out to the rest of the world.

[Alex Clark]

Now I'm excited for this new movie coming out this spring. If you could offer one remedy to heal a sick culture, and that could be physically, mentally, or spiritually, what would it be?

[Robert Bilott]

Recognizing that we have the power to make a change within us. You know, obviously that comes with being able to get access to information like this. You know, the critical importance of doing things, of bringing the story out, getting access to the information about what we've been exposed to, but then, you know, being able to start making those choices ourselves.

[Alex Clark]

Remind everybody the name of your firm.

[Robert Bilott]

Taftinius and Hollister.

[Alex Clark]

And are you on social media?

[Robert Bilott]

I am on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. My sons in their 20s have helped me figure out how to do that.

[Alex Clark]

So thank you so much, Robert, for coming on Culture Apothecary. I have been for months. I mean, I think bugging my producer weekly, like. Like, did we get Robert yet? Did we get Robert? You were one of the first people. I said, when we start, you know, transitioning into fully focusing on health and wellness, you were one of my top.

[Unknown]

Guests that I wanted to show you.

[Robert Bilott]

Well, thank you. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it was pleasure being here.

[Alex Clark]

Dark Waters is one of those movies.

[Unknown]

That I'm like, you watch this, you will become radicalized.

[Alex Clark]

All right? You're going to be just as crazy as me, and you're going to be.

[Unknown]

Rummaging through your kitchen like Mark, who's.

[Alex Clark]

Playing Robert in the movie, is doing in the middle of the night. Being like, we have to throw all.

[Unknown]

Of this crap out. Totally family friendly. Highly recommend new episodes of Culture Apothecary come out every Monday and Thursday at 6pm Pacific, 9pm Eastern, anywhere you get your podcast and the real Alex Clark YouTube channel. Please leave that five star review for free.

[Alex Clark]

If you haven't yet to tell others.

[Unknown]

Why they should listen to Culture Apothecary.

[Alex Clark]

We'Re on a mission to heal AIT.

[Unknown]

Culture physically, mentally and spiritually. Follow me on Instagram at real Alex Clark.

[Alex Clark]

And also you can shop merch for the show tpusamerch. Com.

[Unknown]

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[Alex Clark]

That'll get you 10% off.

[Unknown]

I'm Alex Clark, and this is Culture Apothecary.