The Small Towns That Exposed the Dangers of Forever Chemicals - Lawless Planet

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[00:00]
Zach Goldbaum
Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of Lawless Planet ad free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app. Wondering. Okay, I guess we're ready to begin then. As World War II rages overseas, scientist Malcolm Renfrew is toiling away in his lab at the chemical company DuPont. That's when he's summoned to a very important meeting in New York City. Here he is recalling that moment in an interview with the Science History Institute.
[00:41]
Malcolm Renfrew
My then boss came to me one day and he said, we've been invited to go over and talk to Professor J.R. dunning at Columbia. I don't know how much he knew in advance of what we were going to hear, but I was quite poppy by the conversations we had with Dunning.
[00:56]
Zach Goldbaum
Professor Dunning, the Columbia University physicist who had called the meeting, was interested in Renfrew's work on a new material called polytechnic. It wasn't invented on purpose. A few years earlier, a researcher was trying to make a new refrigerant when he stumbled on a slippery material that was so tough it wouldn't burn or break down. That gave dupont the formula, but not the purpose. That's where Columbia's Professor Dunning comes in.
[01:25]
Malcolm Renfrew
He told us that there was a development now coming on in this country and in Germany which would determine who would win the war. He knew that we were making polytetrafluoroethylene at Arlington and that this was going to be vital to the war effort.
[01:43]
Zach Goldbaum
The professor tells Renfrew he needs dupont to have a plant up and running in a matter of weeks, and they need to pump out £1 million of this stuff a year. At that point in time, they could barely make a few ounces at once. The demand sounds impossible. When Renfrew returns to Columbia with samples, he realizes they're dealing with some sort of top secret project. There are security guards everywhere, a thorough checkpoint, and signing in ahead of him is another physics professor, the guy who literally figured out how to split the atom. As it turns out, the Columbia research is the start of what will become known as the Manhattan Project. The scientists are working on the problem of separating uranium particles. To do so, they need to pump hazardous gases and liquids through a system strong enough to withstand them. And they need a material to seal the valves that won't fail. Enter dupont. Eventually, the Manhattan Project does what it set out to do. The first atomic bombs are built, the war ends, and the nuclear age begins, thanks in part to this new, virtually indestructible chemical and others like it, developed as part of the war effort. But after the fighting stops, dupont is suddenly faced with a problem. They have all these new chemicals in need of a second life. And soon they'll find one as consumer products in homes in every corner of the globe. Because polytetrafluoroethyle, you might know it as Teflon Cookware never needs scouring if it has dupont. Teflon. From wondry. I'm zach goldaum, and this is lawless planet. Each week we tell a new story about the true crimes fueling the climate crisis and the people fighting to save the planet or destroy it.
[03:56]
Mariah Blake
All of these executives have these chemicals in their blood. Every molecule they put out there will be in the environment indefinitely.
[04:21]
Zach Goldbaum
After the atomic bombs ended World War II, America was left with a new arsenal of not just weapons, but chemicals. Teflon became the face of a larger class of substances called pfas, or pfas, also known as forever chemicals, because that's pretty much how long they linger in the environment. There are nearly 15,000 synthetic chemicals that fall under the banner of PFAS. But the most widely studied are PFOS and PFOA. PFOA is also known as C8, and it's used to give Teflon its non Stick Properties. Dupont and another company called 3M became the leading manufacturers of PFAS. And they began repurposing PFAS into all kinds of everyday consumer products. Nonstick pans, Tupperware, grocery bags, shower curtains, pizza boxes, carpets, dental floss. The list was endless. And the marketing for these products, that was endless too. Don't make a meal without that seal. Dupont, dupont, dupont. It ain't no deal without that no steak seal. Here's what you want without these seals, you're out of luck. I'll be the first to admit it, that's a catchy jingle. But as these products spread through American homes, scientists started raising concerns. Dupont's own chief toxicologist warned that Teflon should be handled with extreme care. But dupont ignored any concerns, pushing Teflon products onto the market until it became a billion dollar a year business. When lawmakers tried to institute regulations and safety testing, agreements were made with the chemical companies to grandfather in any chemicals already in production. It became widely accepted that the industry could be trusted to police itself. But that policy backfired in a major way. By the early 2000s, a CDC study found forever chemicals in the blood of 98% of Americans. When I say these chemicals are everywhere, I really mean everywhere. Today, we're telling the story of how two communities pushed back against the presence of PFAs in their land and water, and what those fights cost them. Mariah Blake is an investigative journalist and author of the book they Poison the Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals, which we relied on heavily for this episode. In 2010, while pregnant with her son, Mariah became fixated on toxic chemicals in the environment. The stakes felt deeply personal. She knew some chemicals were especially dangerous to developing fetuses and she was determined to shield her child from them. So she researched everything she could.
[07:11]
Mariah Blake
It became clear to me that the problem was much more dire and widespread than most people realized, that consumers were exposed to hundreds if not thousands of toxic chemicals on a regular basis. The moment I began reporting on these chemicals, it was almost like a complete paradigm shift. The way I thought about the world changed.
[07:36]
Zach Goldbaum
Through her research, she learned about a small town in West Virginia called Parkersburg and a family there, the tenants who had sued dupont more than a decade earlier. Jim and Della Tennant's farm had been in Jim's family for over a century. They raised cattle and grew corn and life was pretty simple, but it was good. Then in the 1980s, Dupont came calling. The chemical company had a plant in Parkersburg which manufactured Teflon using the Forever Chemical C8. And they wanted to buy some of the tenants farm to use as a landfill for the plant. The tenants were wary about the idea of a chemical waste dump so close to their home and their livestock. But dupont insisted that the landfill would not be used for anything hazardous, just non toxic materials like scrap metal. So eventually Jim and Della agreed to sell their land. Almost immediately afterward, their two young daughters got sick. They were constantly wheezing and coughing. It got bad enough that Jim and Della moved off the farm and into a house in town, hoping the girls health would improve. But they kept on farming their land as usual. Over the next decade, things got worse. The creek their kids once played in turned black and foamy. Cows started going blind, spreading tumors and vomiting blood. When Jim cut the livestock open to try to figure out what was going on, he found the cow's insides had turned bright green. Suddenly, in the mid-1990s, the tenants lost more than 150 animals in quick succession.
[09:22]
Mariah Blake
Pretty soon the cows were dying faster than the farmers could bury them. Now the farmers were convinced that the landfill was to blame.
[09:31]
Zach Goldbaum
And it wasn't just livestock. Family members were hospitalized for breathing problems and chemical burns. Here's Della Tennant.
[09:40]
Della Tennant
When I think back on everything that's happened, it's very sad. My children has been sick and My grandchildren's been sick and my husband's been sick.
[09:56]
Zach Goldbaum
The tenants pleaded with the state environmental agency to help, but they got nothing. They searched for a lawyer, but no one was willing to take the case. Dupont wasn't just a company in town. It was the company, the local employer, the concert sponsor, the builder of parks. And everything revolved around the factory's existence. Without it, Parkersburg would be in economic ruin. But the tenants felt they had to do something.
[10:24]
Mariah Blake
They were not people you would consider the likeliest candidates to go up against the most powerful company in their community and one of the most powerful companies in the world. But their livelihoods were on the line and their health was on the line.
[10:40]
Zach Goldbaum
The tenants suspected there was something disastrous going on, and they felt compelled to speak out. They shared videos of what was happening on their farm, and one of the tenants even accused officials of trying to bury the truth.
[10:53]
Malcolm Renfrew
They need the EPA of the state of West Virginia to try to cover this stuff up, but it's not going to be covered up because I'm going to bring it out in the open for people to see.
[11:04]
Zach Goldbaum
To most, it might seem like a lost cause to take on dupont. But eventually the tenants found one lawyer who was willing to try. On paper, Rob Balat didn't seem like the kind of attorney who would help a bunch of farmers fight a major chemical company.
[11:22]
Mariah Blake
Rob Bellott was this mild mannered young lawyer working at a white shoe law firm. He represented corporate clients and never considered doing anything else until he met the Tennant family.
[11:37]
Zach Goldbaum
But this case hit close to home. His grandmother lived in Parkersburg. Some of his best childhood memories were spent there, riding horses and milking cows on the farm next to the tenants. So he agreed to hear them out. The tenants brought in their boxes of videos and records, and when Balat reviewed them all, he realized there was definitely a problem.
[11:59]
Rob Bellott
You could see the white foaming water coming out of a discharge pipe marked dupont Company. So we agreed to take that case
[12:08]
Zach Goldbaum
on Balat, and the tenants officially filed suit in 1999. But that didn't go over well with some of their neighbors who thought they were threatening the town's livelihood.
[12:18]
Mariah Blake
They were completely ostracized by many members of the community. When they would walk into a restaurant, sometimes all the other diners would get up and leave.
[12:28]
Zach Goldbaum
And all the while, dupont was trying to bury the tenants accusations before the family had even filed suit. Back when they originally went to the EPA for help, DuPont lobbied to quietly pay the agency a $250,000 fine and nothing more. And the EPA staffer who negotiated that deal. He later became a consultant for DuPont. The leniency toward the chemical company didn't end there. When the EPA investigated the tenant's cattle deaths, it was done in collaboration with dupont's own scientists. The official report later said the livestock health issues were due to the farmer's poor herd management. Balat knew there was far more to it than that. But it wasn't until August 2000 that he finally found something that proved it.
[13:17]
Mariah Blake
Once he started digging into the dupont papers, he just couldn't let it go.
[13:23]
Zach Goldbaum
Balat uncovered a DuPont document mentioning still wasn't well known to the general public, but dupont executives were well aware of its prevalence, not just in Parkersburg, but everywhere.
[13:39]
Rob Bellott
What really impressed upon me the scope and scale of what we were dealing with is when I saw the documents dating back to the 1970s, that these companies understood that this chemical was getting into the blood of the entire population of the United States.
[14:01]
Zach Goldbaum
Balat uncovered even more documents after that. They showed that dupont had used the landfill near the tenants farm to dump about 14 million pounds of C8 laced sludge. And DuPont executives had voiced concerns about the effects of the chemical on the tenants cows as well, early as 1991, nine years earlier. But instead of doing anything about it, they kept dumping hazardous waste into the landfill, which then ran down into the creek that went through the tenant's farm. Eventually, the levels of C8 in the creek soared to more than 80 times DuPont's own internal safety limit. And that's saying something, because the company had devised a testing method that grossly underestimated C8 levels. One of their own lawyers called the test's accuracy very poor. And all of that would have been bad enough. But there was more. In the 1980s, Dupont quietly launched a health study focusing on 50 female plan employees, seven of whom were pregnant. Two of the women ended up giving birth to children with eye and nostril deformities. Instead of alerting regulators, DuPont shut down the study, reassign the women and bury the results. Dupont could get away with all of this because as Maria Blake discovered in her research, up until this time, chemical companies basically wrote their own rules.
[15:26]
Mariah Blake
The chemical industry, and DuPont specifically has played a major role in shaping the way we regulate these chemicals. So it was a DuPont funded scientist who first articulated the principle that underlies our system for regulating potentially toxic substances, namely, that they should be presumed safe until proven otherwise.
[15:47]
Zach Goldbaum
Presumed safe until proven otherwise. Just think about that for a second.
[15:53]
Mariah Blake
So as a result, the vast majority of the 80,000 chemicals that are in circulation in the United States today have never undergone any form of safety testing, at least not that the public and regulators know about, because industry has been secretly testing the health effects of the chemicals it manufactures for decades.
[16:16]
Zach Goldbaum
By the time Balat put all of the pieces together, dupont was scrambling. One dupont lawyer wrote in an email to a friend, quote, the shit is about to hit the fan in West Virginia. The lawyer for the farmer is threatening to go to the press. Then he writes, fuck him. Dupont eventually settled the tenant's case. But Balat couldn't bring himself to walk away. He knew there were other victims out there who had been exposed. So he put together a letter that ran 972 pages long, and he sent it off to the EPA.
[16:53]
Mariah Blake
And he did it in a way that ensured the material ended up in the public record. And that is really the moment that that these chemicals registered with regulators.
[17:06]
Zach Goldbaum
Soon after, a resident from a neighboring town approached Balat. This time, Balat agreed to represent not just one family, but the entire community. So in 2002, Balat filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of thousands of West Virginia plaintiffs, charging DuPont with contaminating the local water supply with Forever Chemicals C8 and PFOS. It was time to make things right. In 2004, the EPA filed its own landmark lawsuit against DuPont. The agency accused DuPont of concealing information about C8 and its contamination of public drinking water for more than two decades. The class action lawsuit that Rob Balat was spearheading got settled that same year, DuPont agreed to pay 374 million to more than 80,000 plaintiffs. They also paid 70 million to fund health and education projects for the community, plus another 30 million for a health study to evaluate the effects of C8. And they were probably banking on that study amounting to not much.
[18:13]
Mariah Blake
Now, nobody thought this study would find anything because the way epidemiological studies work is you need a pretty large number of participants to establish connections, and you usually need a much larger pool of people than you get in a smallish community like Parkersburg.
[18:35]
Zach Goldbaum
But the researchers knew how to get around a lack of participation. They offered to pay residents to partake in the study. Using money from the settlement. Almost the entire town signed up. The result was an incredibly successful health study with. With findings that were impossible to ignore. C8 was linked to six serious testicular cancer, kidney cancer, thyroid disease, ulcerative colitis, high cholesterol, and pregnancy induced hypertension.
[19:05]
Mariah Blake
There was a spate of news stories about the situation in Parkersburg, and then activists in various communities began getting their water tested and detecting PFAS.
[19:19]
Zach Goldbaum
Soon, companies like McDonald's and Walmart were pledging to remove C8 from their supply chains. And New Jersey became the first state to explore setting limits on C8 and PFOS in drinking water. But pretty quickly, the chemical companies began pushing back.
[19:35]
Mariah Blake
Dupont and 3M undertook this massive tobacco industry style campaign to downplay the emerging science on the threats the of of these chemicals. They lobbied very aggressively to avoid regulatory action.
[19:53]
Zach Goldbaum
They lobbied so aggressively, in fact, that they convinced the EPA to agree to a voluntary phase out of the chemicals by 2015. They also agreed to pay 16 and a half million to settle the EPA's lawsuit, which made it the largest fine in the EPA's history at that point. But it barely made a dent out of the billion dollar a year revenue that Dupont was earning from products containing C8. The tenants, Rob Bellott and the residents of Parkersburg had exposed the truth about Forever Chemicals. And it had barely made a difference. The companies profiting off of them had no plans on scaling back anytime soon. And a decade later, there would be another town hundreds of miles away with the same alarming problems. As Mariah Blake reported on Parkersburg, she learned about another small industrial town in the middle of their own fight with chemical giants. A place called Hoosick Falls.
[21:05]
Mariah Blake
Hoosick Falls is a small town in upstate New York. It is set in this gorgeous countryside. It's been an industrial town. Some of the factories brought quite a bit of wealth into the community. And so it's got this grand architecture.
[21:22]
Zach Goldbaum
But like a lot of factory towns, it had fallen on hard times.
[21:26]
Mariah Blake
A lot of those beautiful buildings had deteriorated. There weren't a lot of businesses downtown. But the community had something that I found really special and that was the fact that it was incredibly close knit. So a lot of the people who lived there, their families had lived there for generations.
[21:51]
Zach Goldbaum
It was also home to a manufacturing plant owned first by Honeywell and then by a French company called Saint Goban. But both Dupont and 3M manufactured Teflon products at the facility. Pots, pans, other consumer products, plus treatments to make fabric and clothing stain resistant, all processes that use Forever chemicals. It was there that Mariah met Michael Hickey, an insurance underwriter and avid golfer.
[22:21]
Mariah Blake
He's an unassuming young professional who had no real interest in politics or environmental issues. He liked to joke that he got his political news from espn.
[22:33]
Zach Goldbaum
During college, Michael worked summers at the local factory where he scrubbed thick brown sludge from the exhaust pipes. The job wasn't glamorous, but the factory was close to home and the pay was steady. And Michael got to work alongside his dad, Ursul Hickey, who he adored.
[22:50]
Mariah Blake
Michael's father was a school bus driver. He also worked nights at the local factory, and he went out of his way to buy gifts for the children on his bus every Christmas. He was known for just picking up the tabs of people he ran into at restaurants or buying coffee for anyone he ran into at the convenience store downtown. So he was this incredibly beloved figure.
[23:18]
Zach Goldbaum
Ursul had dreams of retiring and traveling in the country in an RV with his wife, Sue. That was why he worked extra shifts at the factory, running the controls of a machine that fused Teflon to fabric. But then, in 2010, Ursul got sick. The first thing he noticed was blood in his urine. Then he got the diagnosis, kidney cancer. Here's Michael talking about the day his dad went into surgery.
[23:47]
Michael Hickey
He actually had his kidney out the day my son was born. So my dad went into surgery, had his kidney out, and I went upstairs and had my son. So it was pretty difficult at that point in time.
[24:00]
Zach Goldbaum
For a while after that, it seemed like he was recovering. But by the summer of 2012, the cancer came back, and Ursul declined quickly. Months of grueling treatments wore him down. In February of 2013, Ursul died in agony at the age of 70. Michael was haunted by his dad's death.
[24:26]
Mariah Blake
Michael, who had played a big role in managing his care, felt he was responsible in some way. He felt guilty, and so he began staying up to all hours researching various cancer treatments.
[24:42]
Zach Goldbaum
And Michael noticed something else. His dad wasn't the only one in town getting sick. Cancer seemed to be everywhere. In Hoosick Falls, when a beloved teacher died at just 40, Michael decided he couldn't ignore it anymore.
[24:57]
Michael Hickey
It was always kind of a thought in our village that there was a lot of cancer. So I decided to look into it a little bit, see if there was anything with it. And people always assumed, oh, there's something in the water, it must be right with all this cancer that we have.
[25:12]
Zach Goldbaum
He was wondering if these illnesses had something to do with the factory where he and his father worked. So he googled Teflon and cancer. What came back stopped him cold. One of the first Results was a C8 science panel commissioned and after the Dupont case in Parkersburg, West Virginia. That was the same study that found C8 was linked to six serious health conditions, including kidney cancer, the disease that killed his father. And that was the light bulb moment for Michael. He Pored over the documents, reading every night after work into the early hours of the morning.
[25:51]
Michael Hickey
Probably the most driven I've ever been about anything, ever. And I kept reading because it's a big accusation to blame your local employer about, you know, you contaminated our water. You contaminated the people. You're making people sick.
[26:05]
Zach Goldbaum
Michael shared his findings with Marcus Martinez, the Hickeys family doctor who was also an influential figure in town. He agreed it was troubling.
[26:16]
Mariah Blake
Marcus thought there might be something to Michael's theory because an unusually high share of patients seem to develop rare, aggressive cancers. And so they approached the mayor about testing the drinking water. The mayor consulted with state officials, and state officials determined that since this chemical wasn't regulated, there was no need to test for it.
[26:38]
Zach Goldbaum
But Michael refused to let it end there. He ordered a water testing kit himself. Then he collected samples from the sink at his mom's house, the local McDonald's, and the Dollar Store. The results were clear. There were high levels of forever chemicals in the water. Michael and Marcus bring the test results back to the mayor's office. This time, the mayor agrees to look into it. He orders his own tests and discovers that Michael was right. The C8 levels in one of the town's wells are above federal guidelines. So he orders that well shut down and contacts state health officials for further guidance. But the only guidance he gets comes in the form of a document that says the presence of PFOA in the town's drinking water does not constitute an immediate health hazard. So according to state bureaucrats, there's nothing to see here. Everything's fine, no action required. Based on that response, the mayor feels like his hands are tied when you judge him.
[27:41]
Mariah Blake
In hindsight, it can seem like he didn't act in the best interest of the village. But I think there was also so little information available about these chemicals at the time that it wasn't as easy to educate yourself as it is now.
[27:53]
Zach Goldbaum
He doesn't want to shut down the town's water supply and cause a panic. And technologies for filtering PFOA out of the water are expensive and out of reach. So for the time being, the mayor does nothing. As the town's government dragged its feet, Michael Hickey was losing his patience. He wanted everyone to know what was happening in who sick falls. So in 2015, he formed a group called Healthy Hoosick water to start raising awareness. He pointed to what happened years earlier in Parkersburg, West Virginia, warning that history was repeating itself. But at first, his message seemed to fall on deaf ears. It didn't Help that the mayor and factory representatives kept insisting that the water was totally safe for normal use. But it wasn't just that. According to Mariah, many were suspicious of Michael himself.
[28:51]
Mariah Blake
A lot of people thought that he was just in it for the money, so that he was trying to gin up pretext for a time long lawsuit that he was trying to enrich himself at the village's expense.
[29:05]
Zach Goldbaum
The accusations stung. Michael wasn't after the money. He was trying to do the right thing. But in a company town like Hoosick, loyalty ran deep and skepticism followed anyone who challenged the factory. Michael had to devote every part of himself to the fight. But his obsession threatened to get out of hand.
[29:26]
Mariah Blake
The fight also took a toll on him personally. He was so checked out from family because it consumed every waking hour thinking about this, researching it, talking to other people. His wife started tuning him out when he talked about the drinking water, they started fighting. He started drinking heavily.
[29:48]
Zach Goldbaum
But Michael kept up his crusade. Together with a local doctor, Marcus Martinez, he continued pressuring local officials to act when they didn't. Michael and Marcus finally went to the press. Instead, toward the end of 2015, they began talking to a reporter.
[30:05]
Mariah Blake
That reporter published a story about the situation in Hoosick Falls, which included some details about the mayor and state officials failing to act on the drinking water contamination.
[30:18]
Zach Goldbaum
The Flint water crisis was already dominating headlines and suddenly Hoosick Falls was part of a national conversation.
[30:26]
Mariah Blake
The situation in Flint had been very similar to the situation in Hoosick Falls, you know, where officials had known about the contamination for two years but hadn't acted on it. The officials at every level had failed to act.
[30:37]
Zach Goldbaum
Back in town, acting on new advice from the epa, the mayor finally agreed to take the village off the public water supply. The local factory began providing bottled water water and residents started listening to Michael and his healthy hoosig water group. They wanted to know what they'd been exposed to and what they could do next. That all came 15 months after Michael discovered contaminated drinking water in the first place. But finally people were getting angry and the community really started to understand the gravity of the situation. Once they tested their blood and learned from that, forever chemicals were coursing through their own bodies.
[31:18]
Mariah Blake
I think it's hard to overstate how violated people felt when they learned that these chemicals were in their drinking water, in their blood, that it was being passed on to their children through breast milk. It felt deeply personal in a way that a lot of environmental issues. Just
[31:42]
Zach Goldbaum
in response to the outrage, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declared an environmental Emergency and released funding to install a new water filtration system and offer blood testing for residents. The EPA designated the manufacturing plant as a federal Superfund site. That meant the EPA could investigate and require the chemical companies to clean up any contamination they were responsible for. It felt like a victory for the residents of Hoostick Falls. But for Michael Hickey and others, it wasn't enough. They were still determined to hold the chemical companies accountable. But as they were about to learn, that would be easier said than done. In 2016, Michael Hickey and the residents of Hoosick Falls filed a class action lawsuit against Sangoban, Honeywell, Dupont, and 3M, arguing that exposure to toxic chemicals in their drinking water was a form of injury. But the wheels of justice turned slowly, and the process took years. So it wasn't until early 2019 that one of Sangoban's lawyers came across a document that shocked him. Emil Gross had been preparing for the upcoming hearings when he learned that Sangoban had been purchasing massive quantities of PFOA without including it in their emissions reports. In fact, they'd been using PFOA at multiple plants across the country. Without notifying regulators or investigating possible water contamination in those communities. Gross assumed it was a mistake. He scheduled a meeting with the CEO and suggested a simple fix. They should test the water near every plant, find out if there was a problem, and get ahead of it. According to Gross, the CEO shut him down. Quote, don't do that. If you look, you will find it. If you don't, you can say you didn't know. Gross could not believe what he was hearing.
[33:57]
Mariah Blake
He thought that if he brought the issue to their attention, they would want to deal with it because the potential liability and even potential criminal liability was so, so huge. But they did not. And he ultimately came to see the mentality he was witnessing as a generational passing of the buck is how he described it. By the time the bill becomes due, I will be retired in the Hamptons.
[34:22]
Zach Goldbaum
For the record, San Gaban calls Gross's claims meritless and denies the conversation between Gross and the CEO ever took place. After Gross raised his concerns, he was fired in 2020. The following year, he filed a whistleblower complaint. That case was dismissed. But when plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit against Sangoban threatened to call Gross to testify, the company quickly settled for $34 million before he could take the stand. And while all that was going on, the residents of Hoosik Falls were waging their own legal battle. And the bigger chemical companies, like Dupont were fighting by the mid-2010s, Dupont was facing a flood of bad press and lawsuits tied to pfas. The company pivoted, phasing out some of its most notorious chemicals while quietly replacing them with new, little studied compounds. At the same time, dupont restructured itself, spinning off new companies in an intentional strategy that makes it harder for victims to pin responsibility on any one entity. One of those new businesses would assume liability for DuPont's most polluted sites, but it would do so with only a quarter of DuPont's revenue. Many worried it was a way to delay payouts or avoid paying damages altogether. Meanwhile, Congress amended the Toxic Substances control Act of 1976. It now requires the EPA to screen all new PFAs for safety prior to manufacture and review old ones that are now considered higher risk. Which is great, except that doesn't change the fact that huge quantities of these chemicals are already out there and there is no way of getting rid of them.
[36:14]
Mariah Blake
Our grandchildren and great grandchildren and their great grandchildren are going to have to live with these chemicals. So yes, we have made some progress towards restricting them, but it is not nearly enough because as long as they continue to be produced, they will continue to accumulate in the environment and that accumulation is irreversible.
[36:41]
Zach Goldbaum
In one shred of good news, the residents of Hoosick Falls finally reached a $65 million settlement with 3M Saint Goban and Honeywell. Dupont, however, refused to participate in the deal. Still, for Hoosick Falls, the settlement marked a historic milestone. The money would fund long term medical monitoring and compensate homeowners for lost property value. It was the largest per person payout in any PFAS lawsuit to date. In April 2025, Husick Falls finally got a fresh start. A brand new water system came online, pumping safe drinking water into residents homes for the first time in decades.
[37:27]
Mariah Blake
The water superintendent in Hoosick Falls turned a valve that turned the community in a new direction. With safe, clean drinking water from a new permanent source finally flowing into their homes. It marked the end of an agonizing nightmare.
[37:42]
Zach Goldbaum
The whole town gathered to celebrate. When a reporter asked Michael Hickey what his dad would think of all of this, he answered without hesitation, I think
[37:52]
Michael Hickey
he'd be incredibly proud. He was a bus driver. So it was all about the kids in the community and making sure that it was safe for the future generations. And I think that that's what we've accomplished.
[38:04]
Zach Goldbaum
The victory didn't come without cost. Michael lost friends and neighbors to diseases linked to the contamination. His obsession with researching PFAS strained his marriage. For years, the fight had consumed him, but the results of his determination were undeniable. Hoosick Falls finally had clean water. And this July, after years of resistance, dupont finally agreed to settle with the town's residents for an additional $27 million. The stories of Parkersburg and Hoosick Falls show what it takes to fight these chemical companies, Years of organizing, legal battles, and personal sacrifice. But it also shows what's possible when regular people refuse to give up. And that part of this story gives Mariah Blake hope.
[39:01]
Mariah Blake
You do have ordinary citizens taking on this issue, sometimes at great personal expense and making remarkable headway. I do see the possibility of us actually getting to a tipping point where continuing to manufacture these chemicals is not as lucrative as developing alternatives, where the financial incentives lead to a complete phase out of these chemicals.
[39:27]
Zach Goldbaum
There are some things we can do to minimize our consumption of forever chemicals. You can use a PFAS filter for your drinking water. You can avoid waterproof and grease resistant products. You can use natural materials like stainless steel and glass for cooking and food storage. But the truth is, no matter what we do on an individual level, forever chemicals are a problem we'll continue to deal with for the rest of our lives.
[39:54]
Mariah Blake
We are all contaminated. You know, every human being is contaminated from, from the moment of conception until death. And that is not going to change. That is certainly not in our lifetimes and maybe not ever.
[40:07]
Zach Goldbaum
And even though we're now well aware of the dangers of forever chemicals, new ones are still being invented. In 2024, the EPA issued nationwide limits on PFAS in drinking water, including the new chemicals that had replaced them. Those protections have already been rolled back by the Trump administration. Some companies are voluntarily phasing out these chemicals, not necessarily because of health concerns, but because litigation has become too expensive. Still, that doesn't erase the damage already done, especially for people who live closest to where this stuff is made. By definition, these chemicals don't break down. They're here to stay. And for those who've lost their loved ones because of these chemicals, like Della and Jim Tennant from Parkersburg and Michael Hickey in Hoosick Falls, there will never be a big enough dollar amount to take away their grief. Here's Dela Tennant.
[41:09]
Della Tennant
I wish I had never knew that Dupont, the word dupont, even existed. You can go buy a new cow or you can go buy your beef at a store, but you can't buy your mother, you can't buy your brothers, and you can't buy. You can't buy your family when they're gone. They're gone.
[41:54]
Zach Goldbaum
Follow Lawless Planet on the Audible app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to all episodes of Lawless Planet ad free by joining Audible. On the next episode of Lawless Planet, the story of another chemical company responsible for the worst industrial accident in history and how a city in India is still living with the consequences. The first thing that came to their mind was that the people who died were luckier than those who survived. This episode relied heavily on the new book they Poisoned the Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals by Mariah Blake, as well as Ms. Blake's 2015 article in the HuffPost Highline. Welcome to beautiful Parkersburg, West Virginia, home to one of the most brazen, deadly corporate gambits in US History. Lawless Planet is produced and hosted by me, Zach Goldbaum. This episode was written by Alex Burns. Our senior producer and senior story editor is Derek John. Senior producer for Wondery is Andy Herman. Our senior managing producer is Nick Ryan. Our managing producer is Sarah K. Kenny Corrigan. Our associate producer is Lexi Piri. Sound design by Kyle Randall. Music by Kenny Kuziak. Our music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Frisson Sync Fact checking by Naomi Barr. Our legal counsel is Deb Droze. Executive producers are Marshall Louie and Jenny Lauer. Beckman the One Dream thanks for listening. We'll catch you next week.

Summary7 min read

Lawless Planet: The Small Towns That Exposed the Dangers of Forever Chemicals

Host: Zach Goldbaum
Guest/Featured Voice: Mariah Blake
Date: April 6, 2026

Episode Overview

This episode of "Lawless Planet" explores the true stories of two American towns—Parkersburg, West Virginia, and Hoosick Falls, New York—that discovered their land and water contaminated by “forever chemicals,” hazardous substances that don't break down in the environment. Host Zach Goldbaum, joined by investigative journalist Mariah Blake, chronicles how ordinary citizens and families faced off against chemical industry giants DuPont, 3M, Honeywell, and Saint Gobain. The episode walks listeners through decades of cover-ups, personal tragedy, legal battles, and incremental regulatory change, highlighting both the profound cost and possibility of grassroots resistance to environmental crimes.

Origins of Forever Chemicals and Postwar Proliferation

[00:00–04:21]

Backstory: Teflon and the Manhattan Project
- Scientific development of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE, later known as Teflon) by DuPont during WWII to aid Manhattan Project efforts.
- Afterwards, DuPont seeks commercial uses for the new, nearly indestructible chemical, unleashing it into consumer products (nonstick pans, Tupperware, etc.).
Public Health Concerns Ignored
- Early warnings from DuPont’s chief toxicologist about Teflon are disregarded.
- In the absence of regulation, thousands of chemicals including PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, aka "forever chemicals") spread through countless products.
Rapid Industry Expansion and Lax Oversight
- Agreements allowed "grandfathering" of existing chemicals, trusting industry self-policing—a critical failure.
- By early 2000s, CDC finds 98% of Americans have detectable levels of PFAS in their blood.

“Every molecule they put out there will be in the environment indefinitely.”
— Mariah Blake, 03:56

Parkersburg, West Virginia: The Tennant Family’s Fight Against DuPont

[07:36–19:19]

Chemical Dumping and Family Tragedy

[07:36–09:55]

Jim and Della Tennant sell land to DuPont, believing claims it will only be used for non-hazardous waste.
Immediately after, their children become chronically ill; cows begin dying with alarming symptoms (blindness, tumors, green organs).
Losses mount, with 150+ animals dying in the mid-1990s. Human health impacts follow (breathing issues, chemical burns).

“Pretty soon the cows were dying faster than the farmers could bury them.”
— Mariah Blake, 09:22

Local officials and lawyers dismiss their concerns due to DuPont’s immense economic influence.
Ostracization
- Family faces social backlash for threatening the town's main employer.

Whistleblowing and Legal Breakthrough

[10:40–16:52]

The Tennants document evidence and finally find attorney Rob Bilott (a corporate lawyer with Parkersburg ties).
Bilott discovers video evidence, takes the case in 1999; initial attempts to involve the EPA are quietly buried (EPA staffer later becomes a DuPont consultant).
Bilott uncovers damning DuPont documents showing decade-old internal knowledge of C8 (PFOA) contamination, knowingly exceeding safety limits and hiding worker birth defect studies.

“What really impressed upon me the scope and scale of what we were dealing with is when I saw the documents dating back to the 1970s, that these companies understood that this chemical was getting into the blood of the entire population of the United States.”
— Rob Bilott, 13:38

Settlement reached for the Tennants' case; Bilott broadens focus, submitting findings to the EPA (972 pages). Regulators are finally forced to pay attention.

Class Action and Revelations

[17:06–19:19]

Bilott launches a class action in 2002 representing thousands of residents.
In 2004, DuPont pays $374 million in settlements, health funds, and study grants. A massive epidemiological study links C8 to testicular cancer, kidney cancer, thyroid disease, ulcerative colitis, high cholesterol, and pregnancy-induced hypertension.

Industry Counteroffensive and Regulatory Gaps

[19:19–21:05]

Corporate Pushback
- DuPont and 3M mimic “tobacco playbook” to downplay risk, aggressively lobbying regulators.

“DuPont and 3M undertook this massive tobacco industry style campaign to downplay the emerging science on the threats … They lobbied very aggressively to avoid regulatory action.”
— Mariah Blake, 19:35

EPA agrees to a “voluntary phase out” by 2015; DuPont pays what was then the largest EPA fine, $16.5 million—a fraction of their profits.
Despite landmark revelations, chemical production continues and regulatory progress is minimal.

Hoosick Falls, New York: Michael Hickey’s Personal Crusade

[21:05–33:57]

Factory Town, Lost Generations

[21:05–23:18]

Description of Hoosick Falls’ industrial past and close-knit community.
Michael Hickey, a local insurance underwriter and son of a beloved bus driver/factory worker, loses his father to kidney cancer in 2013, after years of work with Teflon-coated products.

Connecting the Dots: Scientific Discovery

[24:25–26:37]

Michael researches increased cancer rates, links them to exposure to C8 (inspired by Parkersburg’s science panel).
Water testing—through his own initiative—finds high PFAS contamination at homes and local businesses.

“Probably the most driven I've ever been about anything, ever. And I kept reading because it's a big accusation to blame your local employer…”
— Michael Hickey, 25:51

Initial state response is dismissive because the chemicals are unregulated.

Persistence, Backlash, and Breakthrough

[27:40–31:17]

Michael forms advocacy group Healthy Hoosick Water; rallies against skepticism and personal toll on his well-being and marriage.

“He was so checked out from family because it consumed every waking hour…His wife started tuning him out when he talked about the drinking water, they started fighting. He started drinking heavily.”
— Mariah Blake, 29:25

Ultimately, a press exposé (2015) draws national attention as the Flint water crisis unfolds.
After 15 months, town shifts off contaminated water, state declares emergency, EPA designates factory as Superfund site.

Corporate Evasion and Settlement

[33:57–36:14]

Lawyers discover companies bought and used PFOA extensively without disclosure; internal discussions focus on plausible deniability:

“Don’t do that. If you look, you will find it. If you don’t, you can say you didn’t know.”
— alleged quote from Saint Gobain CEO, recalled by whistleblower Emil Gross, 33:57
Whistleblower is fired; legal case settles for $34 million to avoid his testimony.
DuPont and other companies use corporate restructuring to limit liability.

Lasting Impacts and Continuing Struggles

[36:14–41:53]

Legal progress: Congress amends the Toxic Substances Control Act to screen all new and high-risk PFAS before manufacture.
The Hoosick Falls settlement ($65 million) provides for medical monitoring and property loss—largest per-person PFAS suit result.
In 2025, a new water system is finally installed.
Additional DuPont settlement of $27 million in 2026.
Yet, chemicals remain “forever”: They persist in the environment and bodies for generations.

“Our grandchildren and great grandchildren and their great grandchildren are going to have to live with these chemicals…that accumulation is irreversible.”
— Mariah Blake, 36:14

Personal toll:
- Michael Hickey’s advocacy cost him friends and strained his family, but ultimately saved lives.
- Della Tennant reflects on irreversible losses:
  
  “You can go buy a new cow or you can go buy your beef at a store, but you can't buy your mother, you can't buy your brothers, and you can't buy...you can't buy your family. When they're gone, they're gone.”
  — Della Tennant, 41:08

Key Quotes and Memorable Moments

“Every molecule they put out there will be in the environment indefinitely.”
— Mariah Blake, 03:56
“The shit is about to hit the fan in West Virginia. The lawyer for the farmer is threatening to go to the press. Then he writes, fuck him.”
— DuPont lawyer’s email, 16:15
“Probably the most driven I've ever been about anything, ever. And I kept reading because it's a big accusation to blame your local employer…”
— Michael Hickey, 25:51
“Don't do that. If you look, you will find it. If you don't, you can say you didn't know.”
— Saint Gobain CEO, as recalled by Emil Gross, 33:57
“Our grandchildren and great grandchildren and their great grandchildren are going to have to live with these chemicals…”
— Mariah Blake, 36:14
“You can go buy a new cow or you can go buy your beef at a store, but you can't buy your mother, you can't buy your brothers ... When they're gone, they're gone.”
— Della Tennant, 41:08

Timestamps for Core Segments

WWII Origins/Manhattan Project: 00:00–04:21
Consumer Product Explosion & Early Warnings: 04:21–07:36
Parkersburg: The Tennants' Fight: 07:36–17:06
Class-Action Legal Battles: 17:06–19:19
Industry Pushback & Policy Inertia: 19:19–21:05
Hoosick Falls: Michael Hickey’s Story: 21:05–33:57
Corporate Evasion and Settlements: 33:57–36:14
Long-Term Impact/Environmental Legacy: 36:14–41:53

Episode Tone and Style

The narrative is investigative, driven by both scientific history and emotional personal stories. Goldbaum’s approach is urgent and empathetic, intercut with Blake’s heavily researched reporting and first-person reflections from the towns’ residents. The language is vivid, with descriptions likening the post-industrial landscape to a crime scene, and the tone oscillates between cynicism about regulatory failures and hope inspired by citizen activism.

Conclusion – Legacy and Ongoing Danger

Even after landmark lawsuits and new regulations, forever chemicals persist in the environment, bodies, and the manufacture of everyday products.
Promising changes are occurring as individuals band together and as companies face mounting lawsuits, but grassroots vigilance remains crucial.
Hope persists that future innovation and activism can tip the financial incentives toward safer alternatives, but “forever chemicals” are here to stay for generations to come.

Recommended Actions for Listeners
[39:27]

Use PFAS water filters
Avoid waterproof/grease-resistant products
Favor glass/stainless steel for cooking/storage

“We are all contaminated…from the moment of conception until death.”
— Mariah Blake, 39:54

This episode draws upon Mariah Blake’s book "They Poisoned the Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals" and extensive original reporting.

Loading summary

Transcript83 lines

[00:00]
Zach Goldbaum
Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of Lawless Planet ad free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app. Wondering. Okay, I guess we're ready to begin then. As World War II rages overseas, scientist Malcolm Renfrew is toiling away in his lab at the chemical company DuPont. That's when he's summoned to a very important meeting in New York City. Here he is recalling that moment in an interview with the Science History Institute.
[00:41]
Malcolm Renfrew
My then boss came to me one day and he said, we've been invited to go over and talk to Professor J.R. dunning at Columbia. I don't know how much he knew in advance of what we were going to hear, but I was quite poppy by the conversations we had with Dunning.
[00:56]
Zach Goldbaum
Professor Dunning, the Columbia University physicist who had called the meeting, was interested in Renfrew's work on a new material called polytechnic. It wasn't invented on purpose. A few years earlier, a researcher was trying to make a new refrigerant when he stumbled on a slippery material that was so tough it wouldn't burn or break down. That gave dupont the formula, but not the purpose. That's where Columbia's Professor Dunning comes in.
[01:25]
Malcolm Renfrew
He told us that there was a development now coming on in this country and in Germany which would determine who would win the war. He knew that we were making polytetrafluoroethylene at Arlington and that this was going to be vital to the war effort.
[01:43]
Zach Goldbaum
The professor tells Renfrew he needs dupont to have a plant up and running in a matter of weeks, and they need to pump out £1 million of this stuff a year. At that point in time, they could barely make a few ounces at once. The demand sounds impossible. When Renfrew returns to Columbia with samples, he realizes they're dealing with some sort of top secret project. There are security guards everywhere, a thorough checkpoint, and signing in ahead of him is another physics professor, the guy who literally figured out how to split the atom. As it turns out, the Columbia research is the start of what will become known as the Manhattan Project. The scientists are working on the problem of separating uranium particles. To do so, they need to pump hazardous gases and liquids through a system strong enough to withstand them. And they need a material to seal the valves that won't fail. Enter dupont. Eventually, the Manhattan Project does what it set out to do. The first atomic bombs are built, the war ends, and the nuclear age begins, thanks in part to this new, virtually indestructible chemical and others like it, developed as part of the war effort. But after the fighting stops, dupont is suddenly faced with a problem. They have all these new chemicals in need of a second life. And soon they'll find one as consumer products in homes in every corner of the globe. Because polytetrafluoroethyle, you might know it as Teflon Cookware never needs scouring if it has dupont. Teflon. From wondry. I'm zach goldaum, and this is lawless planet. Each week we tell a new story about the true crimes fueling the climate crisis and the people fighting to save the planet or destroy it.
[03:56]
Mariah Blake
All of these executives have these chemicals in their blood. Every molecule they put out there will be in the environment indefinitely.
[04:21]
Zach Goldbaum
After the atomic bombs ended World War II, America was left with a new arsenal of not just weapons, but chemicals. Teflon became the face of a larger class of substances called pfas, or pfas, also known as forever chemicals, because that's pretty much how long they linger in the environment. There are nearly 15,000 synthetic chemicals that fall under the banner of PFAS. But the most widely studied are PFOS and PFOA. PFOA is also known as C8, and it's used to give Teflon its non Stick Properties. Dupont and another company called 3M became the leading manufacturers of PFAS. And they began repurposing PFAS into all kinds of everyday consumer products. Nonstick pans, Tupperware, grocery bags, shower curtains, pizza boxes, carpets, dental floss. The list was endless. And the marketing for these products, that was endless too. Don't make a meal without that seal. Dupont, dupont, dupont. It ain't no deal without that no steak seal. Here's what you want without these seals, you're out of luck. I'll be the first to admit it, that's a catchy jingle. But as these products spread through American homes, scientists started raising concerns. Dupont's own chief toxicologist warned that Teflon should be handled with extreme care. But dupont ignored any concerns, pushing Teflon products onto the market until it became a billion dollar a year business. When lawmakers tried to institute regulations and safety testing, agreements were made with the chemical companies to grandfather in any chemicals already in production. It became widely accepted that the industry could be trusted to police itself. But that policy backfired in a major way. By the early 2000s, a CDC study found forever chemicals in the blood of 98% of Americans. When I say these chemicals are everywhere, I really mean everywhere. Today, we're telling the story of how two communities pushed back against the presence of PFAs in their land and water, and what those fights cost them. Mariah Blake is an investigative journalist and author of the book they Poison the Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals, which we relied on heavily for this episode. In 2010, while pregnant with her son, Mariah became fixated on toxic chemicals in the environment. The stakes felt deeply personal. She knew some chemicals were especially dangerous to developing fetuses and she was determined to shield her child from them. So she researched everything she could.
[07:11]
Mariah Blake
It became clear to me that the problem was much more dire and widespread than most people realized, that consumers were exposed to hundreds if not thousands of toxic chemicals on a regular basis. The moment I began reporting on these chemicals, it was almost like a complete paradigm shift. The way I thought about the world changed.
[07:36]
Zach Goldbaum
Through her research, she learned about a small town in West Virginia called Parkersburg and a family there, the tenants who had sued dupont more than a decade earlier. Jim and Della Tennant's farm had been in Jim's family for over a century. They raised cattle and grew corn and life was pretty simple, but it was good. Then in the 1980s, Dupont came calling. The chemical company had a plant in Parkersburg which manufactured Teflon using the Forever Chemical C8. And they wanted to buy some of the tenants farm to use as a landfill for the plant. The tenants were wary about the idea of a chemical waste dump so close to their home and their livestock. But dupont insisted that the landfill would not be used for anything hazardous, just non toxic materials like scrap metal. So eventually Jim and Della agreed to sell their land. Almost immediately afterward, their two young daughters got sick. They were constantly wheezing and coughing. It got bad enough that Jim and Della moved off the farm and into a house in town, hoping the girls health would improve. But they kept on farming their land as usual. Over the next decade, things got worse. The creek their kids once played in turned black and foamy. Cows started going blind, spreading tumors and vomiting blood. When Jim cut the livestock open to try to figure out what was going on, he found the cow's insides had turned bright green. Suddenly, in the mid-1990s, the tenants lost more than 150 animals in quick succession.
[09:22]
Mariah Blake
Pretty soon the cows were dying faster than the farmers could bury them. Now the farmers were convinced that the landfill was to blame.
[09:31]
Zach Goldbaum
And it wasn't just livestock. Family members were hospitalized for breathing problems and chemical burns. Here's Della Tennant.
[09:40]
Della Tennant
When I think back on everything that's happened, it's very sad. My children has been sick and My grandchildren's been sick and my husband's been sick.
[09:56]
Zach Goldbaum
The tenants pleaded with the state environmental agency to help, but they got nothing. They searched for a lawyer, but no one was willing to take the case. Dupont wasn't just a company in town. It was the company, the local employer, the concert sponsor, the builder of parks. And everything revolved around the factory's existence. Without it, Parkersburg would be in economic ruin. But the tenants felt they had to do something.
[10:24]
Mariah Blake
They were not people you would consider the likeliest candidates to go up against the most powerful company in their community and one of the most powerful companies in the world. But their livelihoods were on the line and their health was on the line.
[10:40]
Zach Goldbaum
The tenants suspected there was something disastrous going on, and they felt compelled to speak out. They shared videos of what was happening on their farm, and one of the tenants even accused officials of trying to bury the truth.
[10:53]
Malcolm Renfrew
They need the EPA of the state of West Virginia to try to cover this stuff up, but it's not going to be covered up because I'm going to bring it out in the open for people to see.
[11:04]
Zach Goldbaum
To most, it might seem like a lost cause to take on dupont. But eventually the tenants found one lawyer who was willing to try. On paper, Rob Balat didn't seem like the kind of attorney who would help a bunch of farmers fight a major chemical company.
[11:22]
Mariah Blake
Rob Bellott was this mild mannered young lawyer working at a white shoe law firm. He represented corporate clients and never considered doing anything else until he met the Tennant family.
[11:37]
Zach Goldbaum
But this case hit close to home. His grandmother lived in Parkersburg. Some of his best childhood memories were spent there, riding horses and milking cows on the farm next to the tenants. So he agreed to hear them out. The tenants brought in their boxes of videos and records, and when Balat reviewed them all, he realized there was definitely a problem.
[11:59]
Rob Bellott
You could see the white foaming water coming out of a discharge pipe marked dupont Company. So we agreed to take that case
[12:08]
Zach Goldbaum
on Balat, and the tenants officially filed suit in 1999. But that didn't go over well with some of their neighbors who thought they were threatening the town's livelihood.
[12:18]
Mariah Blake
They were completely ostracized by many members of the community. When they would walk into a restaurant, sometimes all the other diners would get up and leave.
[12:28]
Zach Goldbaum
And all the while, dupont was trying to bury the tenants accusations before the family had even filed suit. Back when they originally went to the EPA for help, DuPont lobbied to quietly pay the agency a $250,000 fine and nothing more. And the EPA staffer who negotiated that deal. He later became a consultant for DuPont. The leniency toward the chemical company didn't end there. When the EPA investigated the tenant's cattle deaths, it was done in collaboration with dupont's own scientists. The official report later said the livestock health issues were due to the farmer's poor herd management. Balat knew there was far more to it than that. But it wasn't until August 2000 that he finally found something that proved it.
[13:17]
Mariah Blake
Once he started digging into the dupont papers, he just couldn't let it go.
[13:23]
Zach Goldbaum
Balat uncovered a DuPont document mentioning still wasn't well known to the general public, but dupont executives were well aware of its prevalence, not just in Parkersburg, but everywhere.
[13:39]
Rob Bellott
What really impressed upon me the scope and scale of what we were dealing with is when I saw the documents dating back to the 1970s, that these companies understood that this chemical was getting into the blood of the entire population of the United States.
[14:01]
Zach Goldbaum
Balat uncovered even more documents after that. They showed that dupont had used the landfill near the tenants farm to dump about 14 million pounds of C8 laced sludge. And DuPont executives had voiced concerns about the effects of the chemical on the tenants cows as well, early as 1991, nine years earlier. But instead of doing anything about it, they kept dumping hazardous waste into the landfill, which then ran down into the creek that went through the tenant's farm. Eventually, the levels of C8 in the creek soared to more than 80 times DuPont's own internal safety limit. And that's saying something, because the company had devised a testing method that grossly underestimated C8 levels. One of their own lawyers called the test's accuracy very poor. And all of that would have been bad enough. But there was more. In the 1980s, Dupont quietly launched a health study focusing on 50 female plan employees, seven of whom were pregnant. Two of the women ended up giving birth to children with eye and nostril deformities. Instead of alerting regulators, DuPont shut down the study, reassign the women and bury the results. Dupont could get away with all of this because as Maria Blake discovered in her research, up until this time, chemical companies basically wrote their own rules.
[15:26]
Mariah Blake
The chemical industry, and DuPont specifically has played a major role in shaping the way we regulate these chemicals. So it was a DuPont funded scientist who first articulated the principle that underlies our system for regulating potentially toxic substances, namely, that they should be presumed safe until proven otherwise.
[15:47]
Zach Goldbaum
Presumed safe until proven otherwise. Just think about that for a second.
[15:53]
Mariah Blake
So as a result, the vast majority of the 80,000 chemicals that are in circulation in the United States today have never undergone any form of safety testing, at least not that the public and regulators know about, because industry has been secretly testing the health effects of the chemicals it manufactures for decades.
[16:16]
Zach Goldbaum
By the time Balat put all of the pieces together, dupont was scrambling. One dupont lawyer wrote in an email to a friend, quote, the shit is about to hit the fan in West Virginia. The lawyer for the farmer is threatening to go to the press. Then he writes, fuck him. Dupont eventually settled the tenant's case. But Balat couldn't bring himself to walk away. He knew there were other victims out there who had been exposed. So he put together a letter that ran 972 pages long, and he sent it off to the EPA.
[16:53]
Mariah Blake
And he did it in a way that ensured the material ended up in the public record. And that is really the moment that that these chemicals registered with regulators.
[17:06]
Zach Goldbaum
Soon after, a resident from a neighboring town approached Balat. This time, Balat agreed to represent not just one family, but the entire community. So in 2002, Balat filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of thousands of West Virginia plaintiffs, charging DuPont with contaminating the local water supply with Forever Chemicals C8 and PFOS. It was time to make things right. In 2004, the EPA filed its own landmark lawsuit against DuPont. The agency accused DuPont of concealing information about C8 and its contamination of public drinking water for more than two decades. The class action lawsuit that Rob Balat was spearheading got settled that same year, DuPont agreed to pay 374 million to more than 80,000 plaintiffs. They also paid 70 million to fund health and education projects for the community, plus another 30 million for a health study to evaluate the effects of C8. And they were probably banking on that study amounting to not much.
[18:13]
Mariah Blake
Now, nobody thought this study would find anything because the way epidemiological studies work is you need a pretty large number of participants to establish connections, and you usually need a much larger pool of people than you get in a smallish community like Parkersburg.
[18:35]
Zach Goldbaum
But the researchers knew how to get around a lack of participation. They offered to pay residents to partake in the study. Using money from the settlement. Almost the entire town signed up. The result was an incredibly successful health study with. With findings that were impossible to ignore. C8 was linked to six serious testicular cancer, kidney cancer, thyroid disease, ulcerative colitis, high cholesterol, and pregnancy induced hypertension.
[19:05]
Mariah Blake
There was a spate of news stories about the situation in Parkersburg, and then activists in various communities began getting their water tested and detecting PFAS.
[19:19]
Zach Goldbaum
Soon, companies like McDonald's and Walmart were pledging to remove C8 from their supply chains. And New Jersey became the first state to explore setting limits on C8 and PFOS in drinking water. But pretty quickly, the chemical companies began pushing back.
[19:35]
Mariah Blake
Dupont and 3M undertook this massive tobacco industry style campaign to downplay the emerging science on the threats the of of these chemicals. They lobbied very aggressively to avoid regulatory action.
[19:53]
Zach Goldbaum
They lobbied so aggressively, in fact, that they convinced the EPA to agree to a voluntary phase out of the chemicals by 2015. They also agreed to pay 16 and a half million to settle the EPA's lawsuit, which made it the largest fine in the EPA's history at that point. But it barely made a dent out of the billion dollar a year revenue that Dupont was earning from products containing C8. The tenants, Rob Bellott and the residents of Parkersburg had exposed the truth about Forever Chemicals. And it had barely made a difference. The companies profiting off of them had no plans on scaling back anytime soon. And a decade later, there would be another town hundreds of miles away with the same alarming problems. As Mariah Blake reported on Parkersburg, she learned about another small industrial town in the middle of their own fight with chemical giants. A place called Hoosick Falls.
[21:05]
Mariah Blake
Hoosick Falls is a small town in upstate New York. It is set in this gorgeous countryside. It's been an industrial town. Some of the factories brought quite a bit of wealth into the community. And so it's got this grand architecture.
[21:22]
Zach Goldbaum
But like a lot of factory towns, it had fallen on hard times.
[21:26]
Mariah Blake
A lot of those beautiful buildings had deteriorated. There weren't a lot of businesses downtown. But the community had something that I found really special and that was the fact that it was incredibly close knit. So a lot of the people who lived there, their families had lived there for generations.
[21:51]
Zach Goldbaum
It was also home to a manufacturing plant owned first by Honeywell and then by a French company called Saint Goban. But both Dupont and 3M manufactured Teflon products at the facility. Pots, pans, other consumer products, plus treatments to make fabric and clothing stain resistant, all processes that use Forever chemicals. It was there that Mariah met Michael Hickey, an insurance underwriter and avid golfer.
[22:21]
Mariah Blake
He's an unassuming young professional who had no real interest in politics or environmental issues. He liked to joke that he got his political news from espn.
[22:33]
Zach Goldbaum
During college, Michael worked summers at the local factory where he scrubbed thick brown sludge from the exhaust pipes. The job wasn't glamorous, but the factory was close to home and the pay was steady. And Michael got to work alongside his dad, Ursul Hickey, who he adored.
[22:50]
Mariah Blake
Michael's father was a school bus driver. He also worked nights at the local factory, and he went out of his way to buy gifts for the children on his bus every Christmas. He was known for just picking up the tabs of people he ran into at restaurants or buying coffee for anyone he ran into at the convenience store downtown. So he was this incredibly beloved figure.
[23:18]
Zach Goldbaum
Ursul had dreams of retiring and traveling in the country in an RV with his wife, Sue. That was why he worked extra shifts at the factory, running the controls of a machine that fused Teflon to fabric. But then, in 2010, Ursul got sick. The first thing he noticed was blood in his urine. Then he got the diagnosis, kidney cancer. Here's Michael talking about the day his dad went into surgery.
[23:47]
Michael Hickey
He actually had his kidney out the day my son was born. So my dad went into surgery, had his kidney out, and I went upstairs and had my son. So it was pretty difficult at that point in time.
[24:00]
Zach Goldbaum
For a while after that, it seemed like he was recovering. But by the summer of 2012, the cancer came back, and Ursul declined quickly. Months of grueling treatments wore him down. In February of 2013, Ursul died in agony at the age of 70. Michael was haunted by his dad's death.
[24:26]
Mariah Blake
Michael, who had played a big role in managing his care, felt he was responsible in some way. He felt guilty, and so he began staying up to all hours researching various cancer treatments.
[24:42]
Zach Goldbaum
And Michael noticed something else. His dad wasn't the only one in town getting sick. Cancer seemed to be everywhere. In Hoosick Falls, when a beloved teacher died at just 40, Michael decided he couldn't ignore it anymore.
[24:57]
Michael Hickey
It was always kind of a thought in our village that there was a lot of cancer. So I decided to look into it a little bit, see if there was anything with it. And people always assumed, oh, there's something in the water, it must be right with all this cancer that we have.
[25:12]
Zach Goldbaum
He was wondering if these illnesses had something to do with the factory where he and his father worked. So he googled Teflon and cancer. What came back stopped him cold. One of the first Results was a C8 science panel commissioned and after the Dupont case in Parkersburg, West Virginia. That was the same study that found C8 was linked to six serious health conditions, including kidney cancer, the disease that killed his father. And that was the light bulb moment for Michael. He Pored over the documents, reading every night after work into the early hours of the morning.
[25:51]
Michael Hickey
Probably the most driven I've ever been about anything, ever. And I kept reading because it's a big accusation to blame your local employer about, you know, you contaminated our water. You contaminated the people. You're making people sick.
[26:05]
Zach Goldbaum
Michael shared his findings with Marcus Martinez, the Hickeys family doctor who was also an influential figure in town. He agreed it was troubling.
[26:16]
Mariah Blake
Marcus thought there might be something to Michael's theory because an unusually high share of patients seem to develop rare, aggressive cancers. And so they approached the mayor about testing the drinking water. The mayor consulted with state officials, and state officials determined that since this chemical wasn't regulated, there was no need to test for it.
[26:38]
Zach Goldbaum
But Michael refused to let it end there. He ordered a water testing kit himself. Then he collected samples from the sink at his mom's house, the local McDonald's, and the Dollar Store. The results were clear. There were high levels of forever chemicals in the water. Michael and Marcus bring the test results back to the mayor's office. This time, the mayor agrees to look into it. He orders his own tests and discovers that Michael was right. The C8 levels in one of the town's wells are above federal guidelines. So he orders that well shut down and contacts state health officials for further guidance. But the only guidance he gets comes in the form of a document that says the presence of PFOA in the town's drinking water does not constitute an immediate health hazard. So according to state bureaucrats, there's nothing to see here. Everything's fine, no action required. Based on that response, the mayor feels like his hands are tied when you judge him.
[27:41]
Mariah Blake
In hindsight, it can seem like he didn't act in the best interest of the village. But I think there was also so little information available about these chemicals at the time that it wasn't as easy to educate yourself as it is now.
[27:53]
Zach Goldbaum
He doesn't want to shut down the town's water supply and cause a panic. And technologies for filtering PFOA out of the water are expensive and out of reach. So for the time being, the mayor does nothing. As the town's government dragged its feet, Michael Hickey was losing his patience. He wanted everyone to know what was happening in who sick falls. So in 2015, he formed a group called Healthy Hoosick water to start raising awareness. He pointed to what happened years earlier in Parkersburg, West Virginia, warning that history was repeating itself. But at first, his message seemed to fall on deaf ears. It didn't Help that the mayor and factory representatives kept insisting that the water was totally safe for normal use. But it wasn't just that. According to Mariah, many were suspicious of Michael himself.
[28:51]
Mariah Blake
A lot of people thought that he was just in it for the money, so that he was trying to gin up pretext for a time long lawsuit that he was trying to enrich himself at the village's expense.
[29:05]
Zach Goldbaum
The accusations stung. Michael wasn't after the money. He was trying to do the right thing. But in a company town like Hoosick, loyalty ran deep and skepticism followed anyone who challenged the factory. Michael had to devote every part of himself to the fight. But his obsession threatened to get out of hand.
[29:26]
Mariah Blake
The fight also took a toll on him personally. He was so checked out from family because it consumed every waking hour thinking about this, researching it, talking to other people. His wife started tuning him out when he talked about the drinking water, they started fighting. He started drinking heavily.
[29:48]
Zach Goldbaum
But Michael kept up his crusade. Together with a local doctor, Marcus Martinez, he continued pressuring local officials to act when they didn't. Michael and Marcus finally went to the press. Instead, toward the end of 2015, they began talking to a reporter.
[30:05]
Mariah Blake
That reporter published a story about the situation in Hoosick Falls, which included some details about the mayor and state officials failing to act on the drinking water contamination.
[30:18]
Zach Goldbaum
The Flint water crisis was already dominating headlines and suddenly Hoosick Falls was part of a national conversation.
[30:26]
Mariah Blake
The situation in Flint had been very similar to the situation in Hoosick Falls, you know, where officials had known about the contamination for two years but hadn't acted on it. The officials at every level had failed to act.
[30:37]
Zach Goldbaum
Back in town, acting on new advice from the epa, the mayor finally agreed to take the village off the public water supply. The local factory began providing bottled water water and residents started listening to Michael and his healthy hoosig water group. They wanted to know what they'd been exposed to and what they could do next. That all came 15 months after Michael discovered contaminated drinking water in the first place. But finally people were getting angry and the community really started to understand the gravity of the situation. Once they tested their blood and learned from that, forever chemicals were coursing through their own bodies.
[31:18]
Mariah Blake
I think it's hard to overstate how violated people felt when they learned that these chemicals were in their drinking water, in their blood, that it was being passed on to their children through breast milk. It felt deeply personal in a way that a lot of environmental issues. Just
[31:42]
Zach Goldbaum
in response to the outrage, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declared an environmental Emergency and released funding to install a new water filtration system and offer blood testing for residents. The EPA designated the manufacturing plant as a federal Superfund site. That meant the EPA could investigate and require the chemical companies to clean up any contamination they were responsible for. It felt like a victory for the residents of Hoostick Falls. But for Michael Hickey and others, it wasn't enough. They were still determined to hold the chemical companies accountable. But as they were about to learn, that would be easier said than done. In 2016, Michael Hickey and the residents of Hoosick Falls filed a class action lawsuit against Sangoban, Honeywell, Dupont, and 3M, arguing that exposure to toxic chemicals in their drinking water was a form of injury. But the wheels of justice turned slowly, and the process took years. So it wasn't until early 2019 that one of Sangoban's lawyers came across a document that shocked him. Emil Gross had been preparing for the upcoming hearings when he learned that Sangoban had been purchasing massive quantities of PFOA without including it in their emissions reports. In fact, they'd been using PFOA at multiple plants across the country. Without notifying regulators or investigating possible water contamination in those communities. Gross assumed it was a mistake. He scheduled a meeting with the CEO and suggested a simple fix. They should test the water near every plant, find out if there was a problem, and get ahead of it. According to Gross, the CEO shut him down. Quote, don't do that. If you look, you will find it. If you don't, you can say you didn't know. Gross could not believe what he was hearing.
[33:57]
Mariah Blake
He thought that if he brought the issue to their attention, they would want to deal with it because the potential liability and even potential criminal liability was so, so huge. But they did not. And he ultimately came to see the mentality he was witnessing as a generational passing of the buck is how he described it. By the time the bill becomes due, I will be retired in the Hamptons.
[34:22]
Zach Goldbaum
For the record, San Gaban calls Gross's claims meritless and denies the conversation between Gross and the CEO ever took place. After Gross raised his concerns, he was fired in 2020. The following year, he filed a whistleblower complaint. That case was dismissed. But when plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit against Sangoban threatened to call Gross to testify, the company quickly settled for $34 million before he could take the stand. And while all that was going on, the residents of Hoosik Falls were waging their own legal battle. And the bigger chemical companies, like Dupont were fighting by the mid-2010s, Dupont was facing a flood of bad press and lawsuits tied to pfas. The company pivoted, phasing out some of its most notorious chemicals while quietly replacing them with new, little studied compounds. At the same time, dupont restructured itself, spinning off new companies in an intentional strategy that makes it harder for victims to pin responsibility on any one entity. One of those new businesses would assume liability for DuPont's most polluted sites, but it would do so with only a quarter of DuPont's revenue. Many worried it was a way to delay payouts or avoid paying damages altogether. Meanwhile, Congress amended the Toxic Substances control Act of 1976. It now requires the EPA to screen all new PFAs for safety prior to manufacture and review old ones that are now considered higher risk. Which is great, except that doesn't change the fact that huge quantities of these chemicals are already out there and there is no way of getting rid of them.
[36:14]
Mariah Blake
Our grandchildren and great grandchildren and their great grandchildren are going to have to live with these chemicals. So yes, we have made some progress towards restricting them, but it is not nearly enough because as long as they continue to be produced, they will continue to accumulate in the environment and that accumulation is irreversible.
[36:41]
Zach Goldbaum
In one shred of good news, the residents of Hoosick Falls finally reached a $65 million settlement with 3M Saint Goban and Honeywell. Dupont, however, refused to participate in the deal. Still, for Hoosick Falls, the settlement marked a historic milestone. The money would fund long term medical monitoring and compensate homeowners for lost property value. It was the largest per person payout in any PFAS lawsuit to date. In April 2025, Husick Falls finally got a fresh start. A brand new water system came online, pumping safe drinking water into residents homes for the first time in decades.
[37:27]
Mariah Blake
The water superintendent in Hoosick Falls turned a valve that turned the community in a new direction. With safe, clean drinking water from a new permanent source finally flowing into their homes. It marked the end of an agonizing nightmare.
[37:42]
Zach Goldbaum
The whole town gathered to celebrate. When a reporter asked Michael Hickey what his dad would think of all of this, he answered without hesitation, I think
[37:52]
Michael Hickey
he'd be incredibly proud. He was a bus driver. So it was all about the kids in the community and making sure that it was safe for the future generations. And I think that that's what we've accomplished.
[38:04]
Zach Goldbaum
The victory didn't come without cost. Michael lost friends and neighbors to diseases linked to the contamination. His obsession with researching PFAS strained his marriage. For years, the fight had consumed him, but the results of his determination were undeniable. Hoosick Falls finally had clean water. And this July, after years of resistance, dupont finally agreed to settle with the town's residents for an additional $27 million. The stories of Parkersburg and Hoosick Falls show what it takes to fight these chemical companies, Years of organizing, legal battles, and personal sacrifice. But it also shows what's possible when regular people refuse to give up. And that part of this story gives Mariah Blake hope.
[39:01]
Mariah Blake
You do have ordinary citizens taking on this issue, sometimes at great personal expense and making remarkable headway. I do see the possibility of us actually getting to a tipping point where continuing to manufacture these chemicals is not as lucrative as developing alternatives, where the financial incentives lead to a complete phase out of these chemicals.
[39:27]
Zach Goldbaum
There are some things we can do to minimize our consumption of forever chemicals. You can use a PFAS filter for your drinking water. You can avoid waterproof and grease resistant products. You can use natural materials like stainless steel and glass for cooking and food storage. But the truth is, no matter what we do on an individual level, forever chemicals are a problem we'll continue to deal with for the rest of our lives.
[39:54]
Mariah Blake
We are all contaminated. You know, every human being is contaminated from, from the moment of conception until death. And that is not going to change. That is certainly not in our lifetimes and maybe not ever.
[40:07]
Zach Goldbaum
And even though we're now well aware of the dangers of forever chemicals, new ones are still being invented. In 2024, the EPA issued nationwide limits on PFAS in drinking water, including the new chemicals that had replaced them. Those protections have already been rolled back by the Trump administration. Some companies are voluntarily phasing out these chemicals, not necessarily because of health concerns, but because litigation has become too expensive. Still, that doesn't erase the damage already done, especially for people who live closest to where this stuff is made. By definition, these chemicals don't break down. They're here to stay. And for those who've lost their loved ones because of these chemicals, like Della and Jim Tennant from Parkersburg and Michael Hickey in Hoosick Falls, there will never be a big enough dollar amount to take away their grief. Here's Dela Tennant.
[41:09]
Della Tennant
I wish I had never knew that Dupont, the word dupont, even existed. You can go buy a new cow or you can go buy your beef at a store, but you can't buy your mother, you can't buy your brothers, and you can't buy. You can't buy your family when they're gone. They're gone.
[41:54]
Zach Goldbaum
Follow Lawless Planet on the Audible app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to all episodes of Lawless Planet ad free by joining Audible. On the next episode of Lawless Planet, the story of another chemical company responsible for the worst industrial accident in history and how a city in India is still living with the consequences. The first thing that came to their mind was that the people who died were luckier than those who survived. This episode relied heavily on the new book they Poisoned the Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals by Mariah Blake, as well as Ms. Blake's 2015 article in the HuffPost Highline. Welcome to beautiful Parkersburg, West Virginia, home to one of the most brazen, deadly corporate gambits in US History. Lawless Planet is produced and hosted by me, Zach Goldbaum. This episode was written by Alex Burns. Our senior producer and senior story editor is Derek John. Senior producer for Wondery is Andy Herman. Our senior managing producer is Nick Ryan. Our managing producer is Sarah K. Kenny Corrigan. Our associate producer is Lexi Piri. Sound design by Kyle Randall. Music by Kenny Kuziak. Our music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Frisson Sync Fact checking by Naomi Barr. Our legal counsel is Deb Droze. Executive producers are Marshall Louie and Jenny Lauer. Beckman the One Dream thanks for listening. We'll catch you next week.