The Devil We Know

When a handful of West Virginia residents discover DuPont has been pumping its poisonous Teflon chemical into the air and public water supply of more than 70,000 people, they file one of the largest class action lawsuits in the history of environmental law.

As the citizens of Parkersburg rise up against the forces that polluted their town, the story builds out to dozens of other American cities. In fact, as many as 110 million Americans may be drinking water tainted with PFAS chemicals. Exposure to this class of chemicals has even become a global phenomenon, spreading to places like Italy, the Netherlands, and China.

Parkersburg is ground zero for this story, but this clearly is not about one place or one chemical: because of the power of the chemical lobby, PFOA is one of more than 80,000+ untested chemicals that have been approved for use, their dangers unknown.

Was I a guinea pig? What do you think? Were they thinking we're dumb enough that we don't know what's going on.

I said, something’s not right here. So, I called DuPont, and I was just fed the biggest line of BS I think I’ve ever been fed.

After they made the Teflon, it had water that was discharged from it. My job was to pump it out back, so it will go directly to the river.