The West Virginia-based farmer was convinced a toxic river that ran into his farmland was to blame, since the animals' strange symptoms began when his brother sold some land to a chemical company to use as a landfill site a . They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. DuPont did not tell this to the Tennants at the time." He died of cancer in 2009. He was an excellent marksman, and his family had always had enough meat to eat. This cow died about twenty, thirty minutes ago, Earl said. The local employer wanted to buy some of their property for a landfill for its Washington Works plant nearby, where it produces, among other things, Teflon, which contains the chemical C8. oh, two-thirds bigger than it should be., The kidneys, too, looked abnormal. The symptoms shown in the movieincluding such discolorations as blackened teethare also similar to the ones that Tennant really did videotape before sending the tapes to Bilott. . Sue Bailey was pregnant when she worked in the Teflon division of the plant. The Kiger family, teacher Joseph Kiger and his wife, Darlene, really did receive a cagey and curiously worded letter from the local Lubeck water district in October 2000 notifying them that an unregulated chemical named PFOA was present in their drinking water at low concentrations. And, as the film intimates, this letter, delivered on the public utilitys letterhead, was first reviewed by DuPont and started the clock on the statute of limitations. Much of the biographical information about the Kiger family, including Darlenes first marriage to a DuPont engineer who came home sick and called it the Teflon flu, also checks out. DuPont also discovered that pollution containing PFOA vented from the Washington Works plant affected the surrounding area, allegedly contaminating the local water supply, according to the New York Times Magazine. Not even buzzards and scavengers would eat them. DuPont established a presence along the Ohio River in 1948 with the Washington Works plant near Parkersburg. It does not store any personal data. The edge in his voice was anger. Location of conflict: Little Hocking, City of Belpre, Tuppers Plains, Village of Pomeroy, Lubeck Public Service District, and Mason County Public Service District: . LinkedIn sets this cookie from LinkedIn share buttons and ad tags to recognize browser ID. Wilbur Tennant and his family had recently sold part of their farmland to a company and had no idea what would end up coming of it. By that point, 153 animals died had died grisly deaths on his property . He often walked through the woods shirtless and shoeless, his trousers rolled up, and he moved with an agile strength built by a lifetime of doing things like lifting calves over fences. For decades it had been the backbone of 3Ms Scotchgard brand of stain-resistant products. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. He toldThe Intercept in 2015 that it bubbled up out of glass containers and "was everywhere." Copyright 2019 by Robert Bilott. And theyre going to find out one of these days that somebodys tired of it.. He was born at New England, a son of the late Blaine Tennant and Lydia (Wildman) Tennant. He believed that the DuPont chemical company, which until recently operated a site in Parkersburg that is more than 35 times the size of the Pentagon, was . But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience. At fifty-four, Earl was an . It's the messy, real story behind Focus Features' Dark Waters movie, starring Mark Ruffalo as Robert Bilott, the corporate lawyer turned environmental activist who led an epic legal fight against chemical titan DuPont. He zoomed in. Two weeks after he filmed the foamy water, Earl aimed the camcorder at one of his cows. DuPont's Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia. A few years after the sale, Tennant suspected DuPont had filled the landfill with more than just garbage. Around here, that economic engine was DuPont, known for innovations like nylon, Tyvek, and Teflon. Photos by Focus Features and Mike Coppola/Getty Images. LinkedIn sets the lidc cookie to facilitate data center selection. The pattern element in the name contains the unique identity number of the account or website it relates to. Tennant's farm is close to a newly DuPont-owned landfill. Maps, Driving Directions & Local Area Information In 2005, the company agreed to fund studies on the health effects of C8. This cookie is set by Facebook to display advertisements when either on Facebook or on a digital platform powered by Facebook advertising, after visiting the website. But you just give me time. In 1973 she [took] him to the cattle farm belonging to the Tennants' neighbors, the Grahams, with whom White was friendly. Its something I have never run into before., He reached back into the cow and pulled out a liver that looked about right. Rob Bilott's Exposure is a real-life whodunit, a page-turning courtroom drama, a David-and-Goliath story of one man against an industrial colossus and a shocking expos of America's utterly broken environmental policy.You should also take this book personally - because the "exposure" of the title is yours. Thats Hollywood, I guess. (Bilott has not yet responded to my email and telephone inquiries about whether he has ever enjoyed a celebratory Mai Tai or any other tropical, rum-based cocktail.). In short, I was playing for the opposite team, Bilott recalled in his memoir about the lawsuit he ended up filing against DuPont and the explosive aftermath. C8 and other long-chain per-fluorinated chemicals are used in a myriad of household, industrial, and commercial products. Back in the '90s, Tennant noticed something strange was happening to his cows. The campaign coincided with the release of the film "Dark Waters" starring Mark Ruffalo inspired by the true story of Bilott, who discovered a community had been dangerously exposed for decades to deadly chemicals. Patches of missing hair, discolorations in their . The company told the family that they wanted to use the land to . DuPont appeared to be concerned enough about PFOA that the company tested employees at the Teflon plant and found the chemical in their blood, the letter to the EPA revealed. DuPont settled the Tennant case for an undisclosed amount. His cattle were dying inexplicably, and in droves. And of course, he knew all about Dry Run Landfill, a DuPont waste site near his farm that largely served the company's chemical plant near Parkersburg. Attorney Rob Bilott discusses the Fight Forever Chemicals campaign on Nov. 19, 2019. As a man, he had walked its banks with his wife. It also helps in fraud preventions. June 14, 2022; salem witch trials podcast lore Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. The olive green water had a greenish brown foam encrusting the grassy bank. The Teflon Toxin, Part 2: Wilbur Tennant vs. DuPont. This is the hundred and seventh calf thats met this problem right here. wilbur tennant farm location . May 15, 2009; Location: Washington, West Virginia; Tribute & Message From The Family. Edit your search or learn more. Dont understand that at all. He knew his neighbors and his community was being poisoned, Bilott told the Post. Vacillating Wildly From Dispiriting to Exhilarating, A New Biopic Reduces One of Historys Greatest Writers to a Cottagecore Emo Girl, How Steven Spielbergs Autobiographical New Movie Rewrites His Story, The Lawyer Who Became DuPonts Worst Nightmare, He knew his neighbors and his community was being poisoned, commissioned a photographer to take aerial photos. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. Published by Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc. June 14, 2022. This cookie is used for storing country code selected from country selector. Did they think he would just sit by? The cookie is a session cookies and is deleted when all the browser windows are closed. The TiPMix cookie is set by Azure to determine which web server the users must be directed to. Tennant stated that . All Public Member Trees results for Wilbur Tennant. July 7, 1996 Washington, West Virginia. Did they think no one would notice? Her calf, black and white, lay dead on its side in a circle of matted grass. Joseph and Darlene Kiger in Park City, Utah, in 2018. That looks a little bit like cancer to me.. Tennant and his brother Jim wanted to get to the bottom of it, so they dissected some carcasses. . These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. And if it weren't for one West Virginia farmer, Wilbur Tennant, we still might not know much about them. There also are related substances called precursors that transform into PFOA and PFOS in the body or the environment. As in the movie, these events really did lead to a large class-action suit that triggered a massive epidemiological study that, after a yearslong wait, showed there really was a probable link between PFOA and certain conditions, including high cholesterol, kidney cancer, and testicular cancer, though the movie depicts one scientist going so far as to tell Bilott that the results are irrefutable. (DuPont has continued to deny that it did anything wrong.). And the man who started it all, Wilbur Tennant, won't see that resolution. Bilott, with begrudging support of his firm (Tim Robbins plays his boss), confirms Wilbur's worst fears: the local DuPont plant has been dumping toxic waste on land next to the Tennant farm. Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet. He knew the folks at the DNR, because they gave him a special permit to hunt on his land out of season. In the spring, he would run and catch the calves so his daughters could pet them. The smell was odd. DuPonts lawyers had a different perspective on the incident, however, writing in an email, It is a federal offense to threaten violence against an aircraft carrying passengers and Please be advised that the helicopter pilot has indicated that he will pursue todays incident with federal authorities.. Up until about a decade ago, few in the public knew about C8, let alone its potential health effects, but DuPont allegedly knew its toxic effects for decades and purportedly failed to tell employees or the public, according to The Intercept. In April 2000, after 3M conducted tests and studies on a similar, sister chemical to C8 (PFOA) called PFOS, the company notified the Environmental Protection Agency it found that "even modest exposure could have devastating health effects" and started to phase out PFOS use, as well as PFOA, according to the Huffington Post. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". It was different from the regular dead-cow smells he had dealt with all his life. That calf had died miserable. Bilott created a timeline that showed what DuPont and 3M knew about the chemicals. Over the course of that lawsuit, Bilott discovered that DuPont had been using a chemical called PFOA in the production of Teflon for decades, while quietly studying its effects on lab animals and factory workers. The cattle farmer stood at the edge of a creek that cut through a sun-dappled hollow. . Born: March 6, 1942 . "Though PFOA was not classified by the government as a hazardous substance, 3M sent DuPont recommendations on how to dispose of it. A variation of the _gat cookie set by Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager to allow website owners to track visitor behaviour and measure site performance. . Standing walleyed in an open field was a polled Hereford red with a white face and floppy ears. Teflon came into prominence in the 1940s, and with it came DuPont's rise as a chemical giant. The goal of the merger was to combine two businesses that dabbled in . Cows that drank from the creek had been healthy. A key component of Teflon was C8, also known as perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). Studies have found potential links between PFOA exposure and high cholesterol, thyroid disorders, and testicular and kidney cancers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. The farmer, Wilbur Tennant of Parkersburg, W.Va., said that his cows were dying left and right. In November 2019, the Washington Post hosted a podcast with Mark Ruffalo and Robert Bilott to discuss the film and the lawsuit. The sometimes contentious tenor of Bilotts relationship with Wilbur Tennant is also true to life. Excerpt from Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyers Twenty-Year Battle against DuPont. In a statement to Time, DuPont said it does not produce PFAS but does use them and defended the company's environmental and safety record, noting it has "announced a series of commitments around our limited use of PFAS, including the [sic] eliminating the use of all PFAS-based firefighting foams from our facilities." The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". Much like many river cities, Parkersburg's history speaks of a working class, industrial heritage, which saw companies set up shop on the shores of the Ohio River, bringing jobs and economic stability. When he noticed his cows were mysteriously dying, he filmed what was happening on the farm, and the toxic legacy of C8 - DuPont's Teflon chemical - was discovered. On August 31st of 2017, E. I. Dupont de Nemours Company and the Dow Chemical Company merged as part of a $130 billion merger. Wilbur Tennant had become desperate. They're in virtually everything we use, including stain-resistant fabric and carpets, nonstick cookware, water-repellent clothing, and firefighting foam. Ken Wamsley spent nearly 40 years working at DuPont Washington Works plant, and some of that time, he measured levels of the chemical C8 (PFOA). LinkedIn sets this cookie to remember a user's language setting. The story started in Parkersburg, West Virginia, home to about 32,000 people and about a three-hour drive due east of Cincinnati. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. W. Earl Tennant Wilbur Earl Tennant, 67 of New England passed away suddenly at his residence May 15, 2009. . They had seven cows then. During the years before DuPont settled the lawsuit paying the Tennants an undisclosed amount without assigning blame for the dead cows the company sent Bilott boxes of documents he requested through the normal court process. Dry Run was less than a miles walk from the home place, across Lee Creek, through an open field, and along a pair of tire tracks. His hand shook as he pressed the zoom button, zeroing in on a stagnant pool. All rights reserved. When she returned to work at DuPont, Bailey learned about a study by 3M (the manufacturer of C8) that found similar deformities in unborn rats exposed to the chemical, according to the Huffington Post. Wilbur Earl Tennant and his siblings took over the land when their father abandoned them in the 1950s, according to the Huffington Post. Sometimes the cattle watered at a spring-fed bathtub trough at the farthest end of the field, but mostly they drank from Dry Run. The document, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, called on global scientists, manufacturers, and retailers to work together to limit the use of PFASs and develop safer alternatives. Wilbur's brother, Jim, was also employed as a laborer at the Washington Works plant, along with hundreds more who found steady work at the area's largest employer. Tennant recounted to anyone who would listen that he'd lost about 100 calves and 50 cows over the years. We lurched down a rutted dirt road past the old clapboard farmhouse where he grew up. I could find no record of any such incident taking place. As one of Bilotts colleagues told the New York Times, To say that Rob Bilott is understated is an understatement. Its also true that Bilott did not have the same Ivy League pedigree of many of his colleagues at Taft, having been raised on Air Force bases across the continental United States and West Germany, and it was through these working-class connections that he was introduced to the Tennant family farm case. Photo illustration by Slate. "Mysterious wasting disease" and. . Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better experience for the visitors. YouTube sets this cookie to store the video preferences of the user using embedded YouTube video. No one believed him when he told them about the things he saw happening to his land. The sp_landing is set by Spotify to implement audio content from Spotify on the website and also registers information on user interaction related to the audio content. Dry spells shrank it to a necklace of pools that winked with silver minnows. Bilott did marry a fellow lawyer, Sarah Barlage, who left her career defending corporations against workers compensation claims to raise their sons. apples, bread, green beans and ground beef. His freezer had brimmed with venison, wild turkey, squirrel, and rabbit. Its surface was matte with a crusty film that wrinkled against the shore. Black smoke curled into the daylight. Her white hide was crusted with diarrhea, and her hip bones tented her hide. Yes, DuPont is still in business, although it has struggled slightly to survive independently from time to time due to its poor public reputation. It dont do you any good to go to the DNR about it. LinkedIn sets this cookie to store performed actions on the website. Hard labor was his birthright. Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. Of Bilotts Famous Letter to the EPA, Terp told the Times that he didnt recall if there was any particular reaction internally and that the partners at Taft were proud of the work that he has done.. Tennant was a farmer who sold part of his land in Parkersburg, West Virginia, to DuPont, for Wilbur Tennant vs. DuPont on Vimeo Sometimes it ran so dry hed find them glittering dead in the mud. In 1998, a farmer named Wilbur Earl Tennant knocked on the door of a lawyer named Robert Bi-lott on the grounds that the vegetation structure of the land he owned was impaired, the cattle he was breeding were affected and the only responsible was the factory located next to the river, ow-ning a wasteland adjacent to his property. Thats very unusual. The federal agency notes that it has made significant progress in addressing the public health concerns "from issuing groundwater cleanup guidance to proposing a positive regulatory determination for both PFOA and PFOS, EPA has made progress under every aspect of the Action Plan.". A thicker foam gathered in eddies, trembling like egg whites whipped into stiff peaks so high they sometimes blew off on a breeze. Even though the Tennant case had already settled, Bilott pushed on, building a larger case against DuPont on behalf of residents in a Parkersburg-area water district. Isnt that lovely?. These cookies help provide anonymized information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. These cookies do not allow the tracking of navigation on other websites and the data collected is not combined or shared with third parties. The same year, DuPont found that water in one local district contained PFOA levels at three times that figure. Wilbur Tennant is on Facebook. This cookie is used for load balancing purposes. He didnt believe it anymore. Wilbur Earl Tennant was a cattle farmer in Parkersburg, Virginia, who was known to his family and friends as Earl. From playing with computers to building networks: How the space for Black Software was made. The pipe flowed out of a collection pond at the low end of a landfill. Then one autumn day in 2000, local schoolteacher Joe Kiger . Company officials told one of Tennants brothers in person and in writing they planned to turn it into a landfill for office garbage nothing hazardous. 'Dark Waters' is slated to release on November 22, 2019, and has Mark Ruffalo playing the role of a tenacious attorney, who takes the fight to a big chemical company. . He panned the camera a few degrees. When DuPont settled that lawsuit in 2004, the company agreed to finance a study of PFOAs health effects. The saga began for Bilott when Wilbur Tennant, a cattle farmer from Parkersburg, West Virginia, called Bilott a few months before he made partner at a white-shoe Cincinnati law firm. The films portrayal of the physical toll that the excruciating, decadeslong legal battle against DuPont seems to have had on Bilotts health is also accurate. The carcasses lay where they fell. You notice them dark place there, all down through? It looked, at most, a few days old. Now, he was feeding them twice as much and watching them waste away. Calf born dead. Earl loved his cows, and the cows loved Earl. Bilott tries to communicate to Tennant that he "isn't that kind of environmental lawyer," yet Tennant's exasperated resilience strikes a chord with the compassionate . Next door to Tennant's farm was a landfill owned by E.I. I fed her at least a gallon of grain a day. I dont recall him drinking, Deitzler says. death of 260 cattle in West Virginia. Cookie used to remember the user's Disqus login credentials across websites that use Disqus. Jim Tennant and his wife, Della, sold DuPont a 66-acre tract of land that became part of the Dry Run Landfill. With no one from the government or even local veterinarians willing to do it, Earl decided to do an autopsy himself. As a father, he had watched his little girls splash around in its shallow ripples. "Hold on to something," Jim Tennant warned as he fired up his tractor. The tongue looked normal, but some of the teeth were coal black, interspersed with the white ones like piano keys. ATSDR/CDC also notes that more studies need to be done in the area of health effects, particularly on shorter-chain substances. Bilott had now discovered the cause in the deaths of the cattle on Tennant's farm and had called DuPont regarding this information. Wilbur Earl Tennant, 67 of New England passed away suddenly at his residence May 15, 2009. Bill Pullman was portraying me, and hes taller and younger, and everyone appeared to be drinking. Wamsley suffered from ulcerative colitis, a condition that can lead to rectal cancer, which, in his case it, did. Given the fact that the events depicted on the Tennant cattle farm in Parkersburg, West Virginia, are Dark Waters' most important evidence, the filmmakers should have treated them with the utmost authenticity - to their credit, they did for the most part.Wilbur Tennant's brother Jim really was a DuPont employee who got sick with a disease the doctors couldn't diagnose; and the chemical . You could poke it with a stick and leave a hole. Quite soon after DuPont establishes their landfill, weird things start happening to his cattle. . DuPont and the family settled the lawsuit soon after Bilott shared that information with one of the companys lawyers, who had referred to PFOA in an email as the material 3M sells us that we poop into the river and into drinking water.. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. DuPont later paid more than $750 million to settle lawsuits filed by Teflon plant neighbors with PFOA-linked diseases, including testicular and kidney cancer, high cholesterol, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease and pregnancy-induced hypertension. Wilbur Tennant, a cattle farmer in Parkersburg, W.Va., the site of a huge DuPont plant, had over many years gradually built up his herd. Shorty after that, DuPont started to medically monitor female workers at the Washington Works plant to, as the company's medical director noted, "answer a single question does C8 cause abnormal children?" The same year, the EPA fined DuPont more than $10 million for "failing to report 'substantial risk of injury to human health' from C8 (PFOA)," according to The Intercept. But what about the alarming moment when a fire breaks out at the home of Joseph Kigers father, who shares his name? wilbur tennant farm location. Then he wrote a 19-page letter, attached some of the industry documents and mailed the package to officials at the EPA and the Department of Justice. Sure, bitters make cocktails taste great. The muscle looked fine, but a thin, yellow liquid gathered in the cavity where it once beat. The Devil We Know: Directed by Stephanie Soechtig, Jeremy Seifert. As company scientists noted in internal documents, Nine out of ten people in the highest-dosed group were noticeably ill for an average of nine hours with flu-like symptoms that included chills, backache, fever, and coughing.. The use of these cookies is strictly limited to measuring the site's audience. Wilbur's brother, Jim, was also . Jim still calls it "the home place," although its windows are now boarded up and the outhouse is crumbling into the field. DuPont initially refused, but a court order ultimately forced them to turn over what amounted to more than 100,000 pages, some dating back 50 years. Photos by Focus Features and EPK. His mothers grandfather had bought this land, and it was the only home he had ever known. (Maddie McGarvey/for the Washington Post) If Wilbur Earl Tennant's cows hadn't died from a mysterious wasting disease during the . The sp_t cookie is set by Spotify to implement audio content from Spotify on the website and also registers information on user interaction related to the audio content. Thunderstorms occasionally swelled the creek so much that he couldnt wade across it. "We have always and will continue to work with those in the scientific, not-for-profit and policy communities who demonstrate a serious and sincere desire to improve our health, our communities, and our planet.". In another field, a grown cow lay dead. It was contaminated with high levels of PFOA. GRAPHIC CONTENT: An excerpt from Wilbur Earl Tennant's video showing the mysterious wasting disease affecting his cows in the 1990s. Other testing by 3M found the compounds in apples, bread, green beans and ground beef. A downstate Illinois native, Hawthorne joined the Tribune in 2004 after covering the environment and state government in Ohio, Illinois and Florida. No matter how much he fed them, they always looked to be wasting away, and some even bled from their mouth as they bellowed, according to the New York Times Magazine. Twitter sets this cookie to integrate and share features for social media and also store information about how the user uses the website, for tracking and targeting. Wilbur Tennant shot this video on his property between 1995 and 1997. Earl had sought help, but no one would step up. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. The unlikely hero was an Ohio-based corporate defense lawyer paid to protect chemical companies, just like the one the farmer suspected of foul play. Home. In the 1990s Wilbur began to notice weird deformities in his cows and some of them were even dying. Dark Waters tells a story that in many ways is still being written, and itwill likely take years for this latest lawsuit to be resolved. Somebodys not doing their duty, he said to the camera, to anyone who would listen. Recently, the cows had started charging, trying to kick him and butt him with their heads, as this one had before she died. The state vet wouldnt even come out to the farm. Ill do something about it.. It had paid for the 150 acres of land his great-grandfather had bought and for the two-story, four-room farmhouse pieced together from trees felled in the woods, dragged across fields, and raised by hand. They were green like the foamy water that ran out of a pipe from the nearby Dry Run Landfill and into the creek from which the Tennant cattle drank. He had stopped feeding his family venison from the deer he shot on his land. Bilott, whose story was chronicled in an engrossing and detailed 2016 New York Times story by Nathaniel Rich, goes from a 1999 lawsuit on behalf of Tennant to a 2001 class action involving several . He requested all documents that DuPont had related to PFOA. Parkersburg is also home to the Tennant family, who, for nearly a century, have worked land that eventually grew to 700-plus acres and raised more than 200 head of cattle. Call him, they suggested. But you just give me time. The campaign coincided with the release of the film "Dark Waters" starring Mark Ruffalo inspired by the true story of Bilott, who discovered a community had been dangerously exposed for decades to deadly chemicals. Some of the more surprising moments in the film were in fact real and confirmed by Bilott in his memoir about the case, like when the farmer Wilbur Tennant (Bill Camp), who brought the case to . DuPont and 3M kept the U.S. EPA in the dark for years, company and government records show. It contained an extraordinarily high concentration of PFOA. The first thing Im gonna do is cut this head open, check these teeth.. Because I was feeding her enough feed that she shoulda gained weight instead of losing weight. The problem had to be Dry Run, he thought. They are everywhere. As unbelievable as it may sound, DuPont really did, in the 1960s, offer some of its staff Teflon-laced cigarettes as a human experiment into the potential side effects of the PFOA-produced nonstick material, as the movie recounts. She had spent the summer in the hollow, drinking out of Dry Run until shed started to act strangely. He zoomed out and panned over to an industrial pipe spewing froth into the creek. DuPont de Nemours & Co., used to dump chemical waste from the company's . PFAS are ubiquitous. Wilbur Tennant's family farm was located next to a "non-hazardous" landfill operated by the chemical company. He suspected one of his town's largest employers was up to no good, allegedly dumping chemicals and contaminating his farm's water supply, and the result was hundreds of sickened and dead cattle.