The Devil We Know (2018) Hazards from perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA, also known as C8)

The Devil We Know (2018)—Here is an excellent documentary that shows how large corporations abuse the public. Parkersburg, West Virginia has a population of 30,000, with almost everyone in the town connected in some way to the DuPont plant (today it still employs about 3,000 from this rural area). DuPont had been in Parkersburg for over 70 years. Many saw it as a member of the family. This is precisely why corporations set up in small towns—because the population is more pliant and so will likely not challenge them for polluting the environment.

Since the early 1950s, DuPont had its own researchers study the effects of the chemicals used in Teflon. The most important was Ammonium Perfluorooctane Sulfonate (FC-143), “PFOA C-8” for short (it is called C-8 because it has 8 carbon molecules). This chemical, and others related to it, were called “miracle chemicals,” since these were non-stick, oil repellent, and water repellent. The context is the 1950s, when most believed that chemical combinations could solve many of the world’s challenges. Needless to say, chemical companies had ideas other than solving world challenges—their goal was greater corporate profits. 3M and DuPont knew early on that this chemical was seeping into the blood of everyone and that it always remained there.

By the 1970s it was used in so many products that we lose count (it numbers in the hundreds): in airplane and car manufacturing (especially in the outside finishing), in dental floss, water resistant clothes, carpets, furniture, waterproof wraps for sandwiches, bags for cookies, pizza boxes, electric cables, coatings in eye-glasses, surfboard wax, in Gore Tex materials for water-proofing running shoes, raincoats, jackets, tents, camping gear, backpacks, ski wax, and tennis rackets.

The challenge was what to do with all the waste. In the 1960s DuPont buried 200 barrels of it along the banks of the Ohio River, even dropping barrels of it into the Atlantic Ocean (some fishermen were catching these barrels in their nets). By 1965, DuPont began digging up the barrels and using landfills to dump it—one landfill they had bought from Earl Tennant’s brother.

In 2001, Rob Bilott filed a Class Action Lawsuit on behalf of 80,000 people in the region. As we saw with the people of Hinkley, success depends on community cooperation. Webster’s Dictionary describes this as “a legal action undertaken by one of more plaintiffs on behalf of themselves and all other persons having an identical interest in the alleged wrong.” Rob also sent 900 pages of incriminating information from its own internal documents to the Environmental Protection Agency. DuPont went to court to stop Rob from sending any more.

In order for the science panel to do its job effectively, it needed to have a board cross-section of those in the Class Action suit to undergo blood tests. The lawyers thought that the townspeople, who tended to be individualists, would not cooperate, but Rob came up with an idea. Use the some of the money to pay each man, woman, and child $400 to participate. It worked. They began testing just before Christmas when families needed money most. 70,000 of the 80,000 people in the Class Action showed up to give blood samples. The study, then, was thorough and comprehensive—in fact it was the largest such study of its kind in world history. It took 7 years to complete and the time lag created a great deal of stress, since those who had won the case had to wait and wait and wait. In 2012, the results showed that drinking water with C-8 directly caused 6 potentially deadly diseases: ulcerative colitis, testicular cancer, kidney cancer, thyroid disease, preeclampsia (hypertension during pregnancy), and high cholesterol.

Rob Bilott persevered for 17 years to hold DuPont to account and this villainous company did everything it possibly could to wiggle out of any responsibility for the colossal damage it caused to people, to the environment, and to the wildlife. This is the result of corporate laws that create psychopathic organizations that are menaces to civilization, a threat, not just to public health but to humanity. DuPont, throughout, only cared about profits.

The film also features moving interviews with those who suffered from the effects of poisoning, Bucky Bailey, who was disfigured for life (his mother had worked in the Teflon section while she was pregnant). https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7689910/