Rob blot. [applause] [applause] good morning. Good morning. Thank you so much for inviting me here. I want to thank everyone with the book festival, this is an amazing event and im honored to be here, you know, its really moving for me to be part of this group, im looking through all of the other folks that are here , and youre wondering, this guy is a lawyer. You know whats going on here. And thats what i want to talk about today, is why i ended up writing this book, exposure and whats the story about and why i believe its an important story for all of us. Most of the people in the room have probably heard of flint, michigan and the lead crisis, right . Im curious how many people heard of substances . Some, good. You know, i think most of us realized that we turn on the television, we are watching the news, we saw nonstop coverage of the flint, michigan lead crisis for a good reason, we had contaminated water, children drinking contaminated water, all National News networks, 24 7 coverage yet what we are going to be talking about is con tam contamination that spans the entire planet and have been going on for decades and affect ing everyone not just in one city, not just in one country but the entire planet. We are talking about chemicals now that are in the air and water all over the globe and likely in the flood of every person in this room and every person listening today. In the blood of children, babies , as they are born. We are talking about an un precedented global contamination that has gone under the radar for decades. There hasnt really been much talk about this at all. Most people were completely una ware that these chemicals existed. Most people still remain unaware of the chemicals. And so i wanted to really try to put that story together to try to explain and help people understand how did that happen, how does this Something Like this happen in the United States during our lifetime and this is not a story of something that happened back in 1900s, i mean, this is modern day contamination going on worldwide that we are all pretty much completely una ware of. And unfortunately its a story that involves effort frankly to keep that information from the rest of us. How does that happen . You know, how does Something Like that occur . You know, this started for me about 20 years ago. I started practicing law in 1990 , started with the law firm in cincinnati, ohio, i was doing primarily corporate defense work , representing big Chemical Companies and other corporations that were trying to figure out how how do we comply with state and federal and environmental laws and how to help them manage that system. So for the next 8 years, i work ed within that system, all the different rules and regulations that identified all the toxic has adder hazardous chemicals and as long as we were getting right permits, complying with rules and limits and standards for identified regulated materials, hopefully things were okay and that we were protecting the environment and we were doing what was required to prevent unnecessary risks and harm to folks. The world i lived in for 8 years , one day i got a call on my telephone at work and the man on the other end of the line started rattling on about cows dying on his property, had no idea why he was calling me, this is not what i did and i was about to hang up the phone when he mentioned i got your name from your grandmother. [laughter] so at that swing i decided i would listen and try to figure out why was he calling me and how did this relate to my grandmother, what he explained was he was raising cows on property outside of parkersburg West Virginia and he was having trouble with over 100 of his animals had died. He was watching them waste away, tomb tumors and wasnt just cows, beer deer, fish, and he had gone to anyone he could think of; in town, the epa, the federal epa, the company that he believed was responsible for causing this and what he told me was, he owned property right next to a landfill and he could see white foaming water coming out of the landfill pulling into a creek that animals drank out of, these animals would stand in the water, drink foaming water and he was convinced something is in the white foaming water and why wouldnt anybody Pay Attention to him or listen to him, then he explained, well, the landfill was owned by Dupont Company and it so happened that dupont operated one of the largest manufacturing plants in that town, right up the river, a few miles away where most of the people in that community either worked there, knew somebody that worked there, related to somebody in that town, when they when this farmer had gone, hey, i think dupont is causing a problem here, people were shut ting him down, didnt want to talk about it, told him to go talk to somebody else. My mom and her entire family had grown up in parkersburg and so happened this this farmer whose name was willbert had been on the phone with my grandmother that day bragging about our son being an environmental lawyer, so certainly he could help, right . [laughter] i got that call and i said, well, im happy to take a look at whatever you have, come up to cincinnati, bring whatever you have, we will take a look at this and we will see if theres something that we could help you with. That was october 1998, he arriv ed in our office, this is the day of vhs tapes, all the big black video tapes, boxes of photographs, we sat down and started watching tapes and it was clear to me, yeah, something very wrong was happening here, it was pretty obvious, you could see the white foaming water, you could see it coming out of a pipe marked Dupont Company, so to me i thought, okay, this is what i do. [laughter] this is what ive been doing for years. This is a regulated landfill, regulated by the state of West Virginia, we can pull the permit s, we can figure out whats regulated, what materials are in the landfill and we can certainly get to the bottom of this pretty quickly. Now, this was somebody that couldnt afford our rates and our law firm typically represent ed big corporate clients, hundreds of dollars an hour. I thought, again, this is a family friend referred to me by family friend, straightforward case and we agreed to take the case on on contingency fee. We thought straightforward. Started digging into the case 1999, getting all the permits, reviewing everything that i thought i could review, nothing was jumping out, nothing explaining what we were seeing, ended up filing a lawsuit against dupont in 1999. Started asking we want all the records, tell us whats in the landfill. We will have to give you everything about whats regulat ed, listed in the landfill, again, couldnt figure out what was going on, nothing was jumping out. So i then said, well, what are you making at the plant down the river thats sending this waste to this landfill, maybe something thats not on your permit, well then we got push back to put mildly from dupont. Wild fishing expedition, stick to the permit, we went to court, we had to get order, finally dupont to turn documents over and i start pouring through these, nowadays if youre in a case like this, everything is done electronically, searches on the computers, everything was paper, so i started getting all the paper file, started putting order, walking through walkthrough and figure out whats going on here, one day a document that jumped out at me, dupont talking to the u. S. Ep arvecion about this epa about landfill and never heard of this , all of the information about regulated chemicals, couldnt find anything about it. Yet this is summer of 2000, at that swing i called one of our chemistry experts that we had worked on for corporate clients, never heard of it. But you know i just saw an article about the 3m company pulling something similar sound ing call pfos off the market, chemical that they were using to make scotch guard, if they are pulling that chemical off the market this stuff sounds similar, maybe we should ask about that, we started asking dupont, what is f pfoa stuff. Court order to turn materials over, lots and lots of paper. Many hours spent going through all of this and when i started to piece together looking through that information, pretty disturbing, really opened my eye s to realize there was a whole world out there that exist ed outside of this regulat ed listed chemical world that i had been dealing for 8 years. What i saw was we were dealing with a chemical that was completely unregulated, and was outside the scope federal rules, okay, well, its probably harm ful, if it was harmful and toxic it would be regulated. I started going through the documents, internal studies from dupont, what i would see is this story, this is a complete man made chemical, did not exist on the planet prior to world war ii, right after world war ii the 3m company up in minnesota developed chemicals, im not a chemistry expert, excuse description of these, but apparently when you combine carbons and flourines together its strong chemical bonds, the chemicals invented right after the war, two of them in particular 3m started making, pf os, they were using that to make things like scotch guard, over chemicals pf orvecion a they were sell to go dupont, plant was the Worlds Largest manufacturing facility, it had been built right in 1940s and dupont started purchasing this stuff from 3m as early as 1951 because it was useful, it helped the manufacturing process. So you think about, 1951; thats decades before the u. S. Epa even existed. It didnt come into existence until 1970. First federal regulations and didnt come out until 1976. Dupont start purchasing this stuff decades before the rules go into effect. They start shipping it down to West Virginia where its used in manufacturing plant, thousands of pounds of that are used a year. Since it wasnt regulated at the time, the waste are going direct ly into the ohio river, not being filtered in any way, emissions from the manufacturing process go up smoke and blowing right across the river to ohio and then the liquid sludges that were being generated being dump ed into pits all over the plant, so they would filter directly into the water. Dupont even though there wasnt an epa at the time, dupont had the biggest lab in the world, most sophisticated scientific laboratories that existed. Thousands of scientists, so when scientists in the world, they started looking at this unique chemical and bringing it down to their plant and they started realizing this stuff is really unique. Chemical bond, once it gets out in the environment, it doesnt break down, stays there forever, we are now hearing about the chemicals being referred to as forever chemicals, cant break down under natural conditions. So once they get out there, they stay there, dupont start looking at whats the toxic effect to this stuff. In 1960 they do studies on all laboratory animals, rats, dogs, monkeys eventually and seeing all toxic effects, by the 1980 s they start doing cancer study and find out that the chemical causes cancer in laboratory rats, not just might be related to, their own scientists say, this is a confirmed animal carcinogen. They start tracking the workers, they see work efers start workers start getting similar problems. In 1970s particularly disturb ing piece of information comes out. This stuff not only stays there, gets out to living things that are exposed to chemical; absorb it and gets into the blood and stays there. Not only persists in the environment, persists in living things and every little bit will build up in your blood, in your body, by 1970s 3m and dupont were aware that this stuff was getting into human blood, okay, im looking at the studies; they knew this was getting into human blood not just work efers but a cross the United States. Okay. And they start monitoring the workers to see what kind of effect this has, by the 1970s , its toxic and getting into people, the tinniest amount s are building up, so dupont is very concerned about this and start saying, well, we are admitting this into the air and water, they do modeling, they see the air emissions are going to ohio, and also ohio river, theres a public water supply fill right next door. They go out and sampling Water Supplies, the chemical is in the Drinking Water in ohio and West Virginia. By 1984, though, this chemical still unregulated, the u. S. Epa and the state dont know its out there. Wait a minute, how does this happen . The law that came out in 1976, toxic substances control act, well, its focused on new ones, ones that come out after 1976, what about existing pfoa and prvecion f pfos. The Company Using and manufacturing chemicals; they have to tell epa if they think the chemical presents a risk to human health or the environment, despite all of these internal studies im seeing Congress Every being caused in the animal s, repeated discussion in the company, do report to epa and unfortunately the decision was no. And then when its found in the public water supply, thats also not reported. Im seeing all of this information and im realizing as im going through the documents, not only is this chemical one thats massive amount being used at the at the manufacturing plant, when dupont found it was getting into the public water supply in West Virginia, they thought it was coming from the pits, so in the 80s they dug up 7,000 tons of pfoa soaked sludge and dumped it. Guess where it was dumped; landfill, what does this stuff do when it hits the water, it foams and dupont had gone out and sampled the water coming out of the creek, by 1990, they were monitoring that. Dupont was aware it was in the landfill, in the creek water and public water. Dupont scientists, though, say what would be a safe level of this for people who are exposed to it. In 1988, their own scientists said to more than 0. 6 parts per billion. Okay, what does that mean, all right, the relevance of that is at the time the lowest you could probably even find in the water under duponts own method was 0. 6 parts per billion, in other words, if its in the water, you need to filter it out because bioaccumulation effect. Its like a ticking time bomb. Dupont took the number and round ed it up and compared to levels finding in public water supply, community wasnt told, government regulate ofers regulateovers the water. The cows were drinking a thousand times that level. Theres analysis, what would this do to cows, it was pretty clear what was going on in the landfill. After i solved all of this we were able to settle the case for family and at that swing we now know, im looking at information showing the chemical is in the Drinking Water of tens of thousands of people, likely have been there for years, decades, nobody knows. The public hasnt been told. We had draft press releases, what would we say if we are asked about this, they never went out. The Government Agencies havent been told. In 2001i sat down and decided this is a Massive Health threat. This chemical wasnt just used in taking trvecion fastfood wrappers, stain resistant carpet ing, Fire Fighting foams. Wide variety of Consumer Product s, the fact that it was found in human blood across the country was very concerning. The fact that nobody knew about this to me was equally concerning, so at that swing i put together a massive letter and sent it to u. S. Epa. Mr. Tenant was so convinced, people need to see whats going on, when you sit down and look at the facts, its clear. Hes right. Clearly there was a problem. So in 2001i assumed i need to lay this out for the u. S. Environmental protection agency, attach all the documents and surely theyll come in and set appropriate Drinking Water standards. I cited all the different federal laws, everything that ep a could do this to stop this. That was march of 2001. 19 years ago. Unfortunately contradict crickets; the Community Came to us and said, we want it out. If itll cause effects in animal s, we want it filtered out of our water and what would it do to us in the long term. As a lawyer im thinking, how do we do this, its not regulated. No federal standards, ended upbringing a lawsuit against dupont as class action for the entire community trying to seek Water Filtration and appropriate studies to tell people exactly what it would do to them over time. That was in 2001. Through that lawsuit we found out additional testing, 70,000 people were being affected by the chemical in Drinking Water. Communities all up and down of ohio river outside of plant. I continued to funnel that information to u. S. Epa as i was getting from dupont internally to try to warn this is a Public Health threat, you need to do something. In 2002 the u. S. Epa stepped in and we will initiate review of the chemical. This something went unregulated, we think we may have to ban this ; thats 2002. In 2004 u. S. Epa sued dupont say ing you withheld information from us, the fact that it was in Drinking Water, crosses the plac en trvecion placenta and that lawsuit gets filed in 2004. At this swing, something happens that hasnt happened yet. The media start for the first time publishing articles and actually information starts to trickling out to the public about whats going on with the chemical. Ab crrvecion wrote information started to come out. At that swing dupont settled lawsuit in West Virginia, settled case that u. S. Epa brought. Claimed to be the largest penalty in history of epa, 16 million, the company was making hundreds of millions a year off this product. Epa said its been settled, theres an announcement, dupont will stop making the chemical over the next 10 years. You think wait a minute. I thought 3m was making it. In 2000 they announced they would stop making both of them. Whats going on there, right . Think about it. All of theerksz all of that chemical thats been pumped out into the environment the preceding 50, 60 years was still there. Agreeing not to make more was great, but out didnt address what was already out there in our environment that was going to stay there forever in soil, in water, in landfills probably all over the country. Yet the epa backed off, the press went away, you never heard anything more about this.