It's a gripping battle of David vs. Goliath: a cattle farmer and a lawyer against DuPont, a massive chemical company.
Discover how Rob Bilott uncovered a shocking environmental scandal, battled corporate giants, and revealed the hidden dangers of the "forever chemicals" found in non-stick pans.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about a battle of David vs. Goliath.
[00:00:29] This is the story of a farmer and a lawyer fighting DuPont, a multibillion-dollar chemical company.
[00:00:37] It’s a story of perseverance, deceit, poison, bravery, corporate greed, and one of the greatest cover-ups in American history.
[00:00:47] So, let’s not waste a minute and get right into it.
[00:00:52] The 1950s and 1960s were a golden era for new kitchen gadgets.
[00:01:00] Armed with disposable income and a lust for convenience, American consumers snapped up microwaves, fridge freezers, and Tupperwares.
[00:01:11] Adverts proclaimed that new cheap plastic forks and knives would mean families would never have to wash up again; you’d unwrap a new set of cutlery with every meal, then simply throw it away when you were done with it.
[00:01:27] And there was more.
[00:01:29] One company, DuPont, produced a magical type of frying pan that food wouldn’t stick to.
[00:01:36] No longer would your morning fried egg get stuck to the pan and burn, no longer would you have to scrub and soak the pan after every meal.
[00:01:47] These pans, Teflon pans, they were called, were “non-stick”.
[00:01:53] The adverts boasted of “saving you a load of dirty work”, and showed quite how easily even the toughest of foods could be simply wiped away.
[00:02:04] Unsurprisingly, they were an immediate hit.
[00:02:08] By the early 1960s, these pans were everywhere.
[00:02:13] In the US, it’s estimated that by the end of that decade, over 60% of households had at least one Teflon-coated pan in their kitchen; tens of millions of families flipping pancakes and frying bacon on this miracle surface.
[00:02:31] DuPont couldn’t make them fast enough; production soared, and by the 1970s, Teflon was a global phenomenon.
[00:02:41] The company’s own figures suggest that by the late 20th century, over 90% of American kitchens had embraced nonstick cookware.
[00:02:52] It was cheap, it was clever, and it promised a life free of culinary drudgery.
[00:02:59] What was not to like?
[00:03:02] Well, it turns out that there was something.
[00:03:05] But before we get into exactly what it was, we must move out of the kitchen and fast forward a few decades, to the 9th of October, 1998, to the office of Rob Bilott, a 33-year-old lawyer.
[00:03:21] He had gone to law school and landed a job at a prestigious firm in Cincinnati, Ohio.
[00:03:28] He hadn’t gone to Harvard or Yale or any of the typical universities that lawyers at his firm had attended.
[00:03:36] He had gone to Ohio State, a large public university.
[00:03:41] He was something of an anomaly, but he was hardworking, trustworthy, and he was a few months away from being made partner.
[00:03:51] It was a good job. Long hours, of course.
[00:03:54] But it was very well-paid, and with a young family and a wife who had taken a career break to look after their young boy, and plans to move to a much bigger house, well, the money would come in handy.
[00:04:09] And on the 9th of October, 1998, Bilott was sitting at his desk in his office. His phone rang, his direct personal line.
[00:04:20] Usually, it was a secretary, sometimes a family member, or a longstanding client. The number wasn’t public information, you see.
[00:04:30] But today, it was a voice he did not recognise.
[00:04:35] It was a man, and he spoke in an accent unlike any of Bilott’s typical clients.
[00:04:41] He spoke with a distinctive southern drawl, the strong accent of the Appalachian Mountains in West Virginia, and he called him “Robbie” instead of “Rob”.
[00:04:54] Nobody called him Robbie. Only his nearest and dearest.
[00:04:58] The man went straight into it. He was a farmer, a cow farmer. His cows were dying, and he needed Rob’s help.
[00:05:08] Bilott was confused. He wasn’t a farmer, he wasn’t a vet, he was a lawyer. The man must have the wrong number.
[00:05:16] He was just about to hang up, then the man mentioned the name of Bilott’s grandmother.
[00:05:23] His ears pricked up, and the man continued.
[00:05:27] He was a farmer outside Parkersburg, in West Virginia.
[00:05:32] He'd got Bilott’s number through a friend who knew Bilott’s grandmother, and, being proud of her grandson working at a fancy law firm in the big city, although she didn’t really know what Billot did, she'd told her friend to tell the farmer to “give Robbie a call”.
[00:05:50] The farmer’s name was Wilbur “Earl” Tennant, and his cows had been mysteriously dying in terrible ways.
[00:05:59] Their teeth had turned black, their eyes sunk inside their head.
[00:06:05] In two years, at least 150 had died, inexplicably.
[00:06:11] Earl knew something was wrong, and he had even been performing primitive autopsies on the dead cows, cutting them open to see if there were any clues.
[00:06:24] What he found was horrifying.
[00:06:27] Swollen organs, the build-up of strange yellow liquid, dark spots on the lungs.
[00:06:34] Earl couldn’t be sure, but it looked like cancer to him.
[00:06:39] He thought it was coming from the water the cows were drinking. The stream that ran through his land, water that had once been crystal clear, was a murky kind of colour and had a strange foam.
[00:06:55] The cows drank this water, then died in their droves.
[00:07:02] Earl thought the water was poisoned, and he knew who was doing it.
[00:07:08] There was a landfill that was leaking into the stream. It was meant to be a landfill for non-hazardous waste: paper, general rubbish, and so on, but clearly, something very nasty was coming out of that landfill, something that was killing his cows.
[00:07:28] The landfill was owned by DuPont, one of the largest chemical companies in the world.
[00:07:36] Earl wasn’t the sort of man to sit idly by while his livelihood crumbled.
[00:07:42] He’d been raising cattle for decades, and he knew his land like the back of his hand.
[00:07:48] This wasn’t a case of bad luck or poor farming; something was seriously amiss.
[00:07:56] He’d gone to the local authorities, spoken to neighbours, even called in a vet or two, but no one could give him a straight answer.
[00:08:06] The stream, which had once been a lifeline for his herd, was now a suspect, and the landfill upstream, owned by DuPont, was the only thing that made sense.
[00:08:19] But DuPont wasn’t just any company. It was a titan: billions in revenue, tens of thousands of employees, a name synonymous with corporate America.
[00:08:31] And Earl Tennant, well, he was a small-time cow farmer.
[00:08:37] Bilott listened as the man on the phone poured out his story.
[00:08:42] He could hear the desperation in the man’s voice, the rough edge of someone who’d been fighting a losing battle for too long.
[00:08:50] Earl explained how he’d tried to get help locally–lawyers, officials, anyone–but no one would touch it.
[00:08:59] DuPont was too big, too powerful, and Parkersburg was its town.
[00:09:06] The plant employed half the area, directly or indirectly, and the idea of challenging them was unthinkable.
[00:09:15] But Earl wasn’t most people. He’d tracked down Bilott through this tenuous family connection, hoping “Robbie” might be the one to listen.
[00:09:27] Bilott wasn’t sure what to make of it.
[00:09:29] He wasn’t an environmental lawyer, nor did he have any experience with cows or water quality. His world was contracts and boardrooms.
[00:09:40] And, what’s more, his job was to defend companies like DuPont, against people like Earl.
[00:09:47] Hanging up would’ve been the easy thing; politely excuse himself, wish the man luck, and get back to his day.
[00:09:55] But that mention of his grandmother stuck with him. It wasn’t just a name drop; it was a nod to his own past, a reminder of where he’d come from.
[00:10:07] So, against his better judgement, he said he’d take a look.
[00:10:13] “Send me what you’ve got,” he told Earl, expecting maybe a few letters or a water sample.
[00:10:20] What arrived was something else entirely.
[00:10:23] A few days later, boxes landed on Bilott’s desk, tattered, heavy, and stuffed to the brim.
[00:10:31] There were handwritten notes, photographs, and, most unsettlingly, video tapes Earl had recorded himself.
[00:10:41] The footage was shaky but vivid: dead cows sprawled across the field, their bloated bodies a stark contrast to the green grass.
[00:10:53] There were close-ups of blackened teeth, hollowed-out eyes, and those amateur autopsies: Earl cutting into the carcasses with a kitchen knife, pulling out blackened or bloated organs.
[00:11:08] Alongside the tapes were jars of murky water from the stream, labelled with dates and angry scrawls. It was a mess, but it was a compelling one.
[00:11:22] Bilott couldn’t unsee it.
[00:11:25] He started digging. His first step was cautious. He used his position as a corporate lawyer to request information from DuPont.
[00:11:36] He knew the system, he knew how to phrase things to get a response without raising too many eyebrows.
[00:11:44] What came back was a trickle of paperwork–standard reports about the landfill, assurances it was all above board, nothing hazardous.
[00:11:54] But Bilott wasn’t satisfied.
[00:11:58] He pushed harder, filing formal legal requests, and that’s when he stumbled across something odd: a chemical name buried in the documents. PFOA. Perfluorooctanoic acid.
[00:12:14] It didn’t mean much to him at first, just another jargon term in a sea of corporate babble, but it kept cropping up, tied to the Parkersburg plant and the production of Teflon.
[00:12:30] Teflon, that nonstick wonder from the 1950s, the one that had taken over kitchens worldwide, relied on PFOA.
[00:12:41] It was the secret sauce, the thing that made Teflon slick and effortless.
[00:12:48] DuPont had been using it since the 1940s, churning it out in massive quantities at plants like the one near Earl’s farm.
[00:12:58] By the 1990s, it was a cornerstone of their business, a multi-billion-dollar industry built on frying pans and convenience.
[00:13:10] But as Bilott sifted through the papers, he began to suspect there was more to PFOA than met the eye. He wasn’t a chemist, but he could read between the lines, and something seemed off.
[00:13:27] But he was conflicted.
[00:13:30] He was a company man, or at least, he had been.
[00:13:33] His job was to protect firms like DuPont, not fight them.
[00:13:39] Chemical companies paid his bills, which paid for his house, his car, his very comfortable life.
[00:13:46] But this was different; it seemed deliberate, callous, and right there in black and white.
[00:13:55] He couldn’t walk away.
[00:13:57] In August 1999, he took a leap: he filed a federal lawsuit against DuPont on behalf of Earl Tennant, the cow farmer.
[00:14:09] It was a small case, focused on one farmer and his cows, but it was a start.
[00:14:17] At first, Bilott only had hints; PFOA in the water, dead cows, DuPont’s denials.
[00:14:25] But as the case unfolded, he dug deeper, and what he found was staggering.
[00:14:33] DuPont’s own records, internal studies they hadn’t intended for public eyes, showed they’d known about the dangers of PFOA for years.
[00:14:45] As far back as the 1960s, their scientists had flagged it as toxic.
[00:14:52] Lab tests on rats and rabbits linked it to liver damage, cancer, and birth defects.
[00:15:00] By the 1980s, they had data on their own workers–women at the Parkersburg plant who’d given birth to babies with eye deformities, others reporting strange illnesses.
[00:15:15] When he saw what DuPont had been doing, he paused for a moment.
[00:15:20] He saw that DuPont hadn’t just ignored the red flags; it had built a wall around them.
[00:15:27] In 1981, after two workers’ babies were born with eye defects, DuPont had quietly moved pregnant staff off PFOA lines. No public word, no recall.
[00:15:40] Studies piling up in the labs–cancer in rats, liver damage–were stamped ‘confidential,’ locked away from prying eyes.
[00:15:50] By 1984, it had tested Parkersburg’s water and found sky-high PFOA levels, yet told no one, claiming its own safe limit was flexible.
[00:16:04] When Bilott came knocking, DuPont sent him 100,000 pages of documents and reports, contracts, memos, and faxes, hoping it would be too much for him, or at least it would take him too long to sift through, and perhaps his colleagues would pull him off the project.
[00:16:24] It almost did.
[00:16:26] As you might imagine, few people at Billot’s law firm were particularly pleased with the young lawyer’s interest in this case.
[00:16:35] His firm thrived on corporate clients, and there he was, biting the hand that fed them.
[00:16:43] DuPont fought back, naturally.
[00:16:47] It commissioned a study with the Environmental Protection Agency, claiming the landfill was fine, the cows’ deaths a fluke, Earl’s fault, not the fault of the company.
[00:16:58] It painted him as an incompetent farmer who didn’t know his trade.
[00:17:04] Bilott saw through it.
[00:17:06] He kept pressing, demanding more documents, and what he uncovered next was staggering.
[00:17:14] PFOA wasn’t just in Earl’s stream, it was in the drinking water for 70,000 people in the Ohio River Valley, stretching across West Virginia and Ohio.
[00:17:28] This wasn’t a lone farmer’s problem; it was a public health crisis, hidden in plain sight.
[00:17:36] The water that was killing the cows was the same water that was being drunk by tens of thousands of unsuspecting nearby residents.
[00:17:47] By 2001, Bilott escalated things.
[00:17:51] He filed a class-action lawsuit, representing everyone whose water had been tainted.
[00:17:59] It was a monumental shift; tens of thousands of people, all potentially poisoned by the same chemical that made their pans nonstick.
[00:18:10] DuPont doubled down, burying him in legal motions and paperwork, hoping he’d buckle under the weight.
[00:18:19] But Bilott was relentless.
[00:18:22] He worked late nights, poring over files, building a case that couldn’t be ignored.
[00:18:29] His family saw less of him, his wife and son adjusting to a man increasingly consumed by this fight, but he couldn’t stop. The evidence was too damning.
[00:18:42] In 2004, after years of wrangling, DuPont settled.
[00:18:48] The figure was over $300 million, a hefty sum, but Bilott had insisted on something more valuable: the truth.
[00:19:00] Part of the deal funded something called the C8 Health Project, a massive study to test the blood and health records of 69,000 people in the affected area.
[00:19:15] It took seven years, but the results, which were finally released in 2011 and 2012, were unequivocal.
[00:19:25] PFOA was linked to six diseases: kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, ulcerative colitis, and pregnancy-induced hypertension.
[00:19:40] This wasn’t guesswork; it was science, and it was devastating.
[00:19:46] Armed with this, Bilott went back to court.
[00:19:50] Between 2015 and 2017, he filed over 3,500 personal injury lawsuits for individuals who’d suffered: people with cancer, children with defects, families shattered by illness.
[00:20:08] DuPont and its spinoff, Chemours, settled again in 2017, this time for $671 million. It was a victory, of sorts, financial compensation for thousands, but Bilott still wasn’t done.
[00:20:27] He’d learned something bigger: PFOA, and its family of “forever chemicals” called PFAS, didn’t go away.
[00:20:37] They lingered in water, soil, and blood forever, hence the name.
[00:20:45] Studies showed the presence of these chemicals in 99% of people worldwide, a silent legacy of nonstick convenience.
[00:20:56] In 2018, Bilott took his boldest step yet.
[00:21:02] He filed a lawsuit against DuPont, 3M, and others, this time for every American with PFAS in their system; essentially, a lawsuit on behalf of the whole country.
[00:21:17] He wasn’t after damages, not yet, but answers: a court-ordered panel to study the full toll of these chemicals.
[00:21:27] That case is still dragging on, a testament to the scale of what he’d uncovered.
[00:21:35] Earl Tennant sadly didn’t live to see it; he died of cancer in 2009, most probably from the very poison he’d fought, but his call to “Robbie” was the thing that had started it all.
[00:21:51] So what’s happened since then?
[00:21:54] DuPont has paid out hundreds of millions, and PFOA has been phased out in the US.
[00:22:02] It's been replaced by alternatives that are supposedly much less harmful.
[00:22:07] But PFAS are still everywhere: in rivers, wildlife, and, almost certainly, you and me.
[00:22:17] Fortunately, there is growing awareness of the dangers of these chemicals and more information on what can be done to minimise your exposure to them.
[00:22:27] Much like in previous decades, when awareness grew about the dangers of smoking, alcohol, and processed foods, perhaps “forever chemicals” will be the next thing the world wakes up to.
[00:22:41] For Earl Tennant, for his cows, for the countless children born with birth defects and for the Parkersburg residents who died of strange cancers, unfortunately, it is too late.
[00:22:55] For them, there truly was a hidden cost to a cheap non-stick pan.
[00:23:02] OK then, that is it for today's episode on Rob Bilott, Earl Tennant, and the fight against DuPont.
[00:23:09] If you’re interested in diving into this story, Rob Bilott wrote an excellent book on the subject, called Exposure, which a lot of the material from this episode comes from.
[00:23:20] There is also a movie about this called Dark Waters, which I would certainly recommend.
[00:23:25] And there are a bunch of other interesting websites and videos that talk more about the safety levels of PFAS and have some guidance on what you can do if you want to minimise your exposure to them.
[00:23:38] I’d just recommend googling “PFAS” to find out more.
[00:23:42] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:23:48] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about a battle of David vs. Goliath.
[00:00:29] This is the story of a farmer and a lawyer fighting DuPont, a multibillion-dollar chemical company.
[00:00:37] It’s a story of perseverance, deceit, poison, bravery, corporate greed, and one of the greatest cover-ups in American history.
[00:00:47] So, let’s not waste a minute and get right into it.
[00:00:52] The 1950s and 1960s were a golden era for new kitchen gadgets.
[00:01:00] Armed with disposable income and a lust for convenience, American consumers snapped up microwaves, fridge freezers, and Tupperwares.
[00:01:11] Adverts proclaimed that new cheap plastic forks and knives would mean families would never have to wash up again; you’d unwrap a new set of cutlery with every meal, then simply throw it away when you were done with it.
[00:01:27] And there was more.
[00:01:29] One company, DuPont, produced a magical type of frying pan that food wouldn’t stick to.
[00:01:36] No longer would your morning fried egg get stuck to the pan and burn, no longer would you have to scrub and soak the pan after every meal.
[00:01:47] These pans, Teflon pans, they were called, were “non-stick”.
[00:01:53] The adverts boasted of “saving you a load of dirty work”, and showed quite how easily even the toughest of foods could be simply wiped away.
[00:02:04] Unsurprisingly, they were an immediate hit.
[00:02:08] By the early 1960s, these pans were everywhere.
[00:02:13] In the US, it’s estimated that by the end of that decade, over 60% of households had at least one Teflon-coated pan in their kitchen; tens of millions of families flipping pancakes and frying bacon on this miracle surface.
[00:02:31] DuPont couldn’t make them fast enough; production soared, and by the 1970s, Teflon was a global phenomenon.
[00:02:41] The company’s own figures suggest that by the late 20th century, over 90% of American kitchens had embraced nonstick cookware.
[00:02:52] It was cheap, it was clever, and it promised a life free of culinary drudgery.
[00:02:59] What was not to like?
[00:03:02] Well, it turns out that there was something.
[00:03:05] But before we get into exactly what it was, we must move out of the kitchen and fast forward a few decades, to the 9th of October, 1998, to the office of Rob Bilott, a 33-year-old lawyer.
[00:03:21] He had gone to law school and landed a job at a prestigious firm in Cincinnati, Ohio.
[00:03:28] He hadn’t gone to Harvard or Yale or any of the typical universities that lawyers at his firm had attended.
[00:03:36] He had gone to Ohio State, a large public university.
[00:03:41] He was something of an anomaly, but he was hardworking, trustworthy, and he was a few months away from being made partner.
[00:03:51] It was a good job. Long hours, of course.
[00:03:54] But it was very well-paid, and with a young family and a wife who had taken a career break to look after their young boy, and plans to move to a much bigger house, well, the money would come in handy.
[00:04:09] And on the 9th of October, 1998, Bilott was sitting at his desk in his office. His phone rang, his direct personal line.
[00:04:20] Usually, it was a secretary, sometimes a family member, or a longstanding client. The number wasn’t public information, you see.
[00:04:30] But today, it was a voice he did not recognise.
[00:04:35] It was a man, and he spoke in an accent unlike any of Bilott’s typical clients.
[00:04:41] He spoke with a distinctive southern drawl, the strong accent of the Appalachian Mountains in West Virginia, and he called him “Robbie” instead of “Rob”.
[00:04:54] Nobody called him Robbie. Only his nearest and dearest.
[00:04:58] The man went straight into it. He was a farmer, a cow farmer. His cows were dying, and he needed Rob’s help.
[00:05:08] Bilott was confused. He wasn’t a farmer, he wasn’t a vet, he was a lawyer. The man must have the wrong number.
[00:05:16] He was just about to hang up, then the man mentioned the name of Bilott’s grandmother.
[00:05:23] His ears pricked up, and the man continued.
[00:05:27] He was a farmer outside Parkersburg, in West Virginia.
[00:05:32] He'd got Bilott’s number through a friend who knew Bilott’s grandmother, and, being proud of her grandson working at a fancy law firm in the big city, although she didn’t really know what Billot did, she'd told her friend to tell the farmer to “give Robbie a call”.
[00:05:50] The farmer’s name was Wilbur “Earl” Tennant, and his cows had been mysteriously dying in terrible ways.
[00:05:59] Their teeth had turned black, their eyes sunk inside their head.
[00:06:05] In two years, at least 150 had died, inexplicably.
[00:06:11] Earl knew something was wrong, and he had even been performing primitive autopsies on the dead cows, cutting them open to see if there were any clues.
[00:06:24] What he found was horrifying.
[00:06:27] Swollen organs, the build-up of strange yellow liquid, dark spots on the lungs.
[00:06:34] Earl couldn’t be sure, but it looked like cancer to him.
[00:06:39] He thought it was coming from the water the cows were drinking. The stream that ran through his land, water that had once been crystal clear, was a murky kind of colour and had a strange foam.
[00:06:55] The cows drank this water, then died in their droves.
[00:07:02] Earl thought the water was poisoned, and he knew who was doing it.
[00:07:08] There was a landfill that was leaking into the stream. It was meant to be a landfill for non-hazardous waste: paper, general rubbish, and so on, but clearly, something very nasty was coming out of that landfill, something that was killing his cows.
[00:07:28] The landfill was owned by DuPont, one of the largest chemical companies in the world.
[00:07:36] Earl wasn’t the sort of man to sit idly by while his livelihood crumbled.
[00:07:42] He’d been raising cattle for decades, and he knew his land like the back of his hand.
[00:07:48] This wasn’t a case of bad luck or poor farming; something was seriously amiss.
[00:07:56] He’d gone to the local authorities, spoken to neighbours, even called in a vet or two, but no one could give him a straight answer.
[00:08:06] The stream, which had once been a lifeline for his herd, was now a suspect, and the landfill upstream, owned by DuPont, was the only thing that made sense.
[00:08:19] But DuPont wasn’t just any company. It was a titan: billions in revenue, tens of thousands of employees, a name synonymous with corporate America.
[00:08:31] And Earl Tennant, well, he was a small-time cow farmer.
[00:08:37] Bilott listened as the man on the phone poured out his story.
[00:08:42] He could hear the desperation in the man’s voice, the rough edge of someone who’d been fighting a losing battle for too long.
[00:08:50] Earl explained how he’d tried to get help locally–lawyers, officials, anyone–but no one would touch it.
[00:08:59] DuPont was too big, too powerful, and Parkersburg was its town.
[00:09:06] The plant employed half the area, directly or indirectly, and the idea of challenging them was unthinkable.
[00:09:15] But Earl wasn’t most people. He’d tracked down Bilott through this tenuous family connection, hoping “Robbie” might be the one to listen.
[00:09:27] Bilott wasn’t sure what to make of it.
[00:09:29] He wasn’t an environmental lawyer, nor did he have any experience with cows or water quality. His world was contracts and boardrooms.
[00:09:40] And, what’s more, his job was to defend companies like DuPont, against people like Earl.
[00:09:47] Hanging up would’ve been the easy thing; politely excuse himself, wish the man luck, and get back to his day.
[00:09:55] But that mention of his grandmother stuck with him. It wasn’t just a name drop; it was a nod to his own past, a reminder of where he’d come from.
[00:10:07] So, against his better judgement, he said he’d take a look.
[00:10:13] “Send me what you’ve got,” he told Earl, expecting maybe a few letters or a water sample.
[00:10:20] What arrived was something else entirely.
[00:10:23] A few days later, boxes landed on Bilott’s desk, tattered, heavy, and stuffed to the brim.
[00:10:31] There were handwritten notes, photographs, and, most unsettlingly, video tapes Earl had recorded himself.
[00:10:41] The footage was shaky but vivid: dead cows sprawled across the field, their bloated bodies a stark contrast to the green grass.
[00:10:53] There were close-ups of blackened teeth, hollowed-out eyes, and those amateur autopsies: Earl cutting into the carcasses with a kitchen knife, pulling out blackened or bloated organs.
[00:11:08] Alongside the tapes were jars of murky water from the stream, labelled with dates and angry scrawls. It was a mess, but it was a compelling one.
[00:11:22] Bilott couldn’t unsee it.
[00:11:25] He started digging. His first step was cautious. He used his position as a corporate lawyer to request information from DuPont.
[00:11:36] He knew the system, he knew how to phrase things to get a response without raising too many eyebrows.
[00:11:44] What came back was a trickle of paperwork–standard reports about the landfill, assurances it was all above board, nothing hazardous.
[00:11:54] But Bilott wasn’t satisfied.
[00:11:58] He pushed harder, filing formal legal requests, and that’s when he stumbled across something odd: a chemical name buried in the documents. PFOA. Perfluorooctanoic acid.
[00:12:14] It didn’t mean much to him at first, just another jargon term in a sea of corporate babble, but it kept cropping up, tied to the Parkersburg plant and the production of Teflon.
[00:12:30] Teflon, that nonstick wonder from the 1950s, the one that had taken over kitchens worldwide, relied on PFOA.
[00:12:41] It was the secret sauce, the thing that made Teflon slick and effortless.
[00:12:48] DuPont had been using it since the 1940s, churning it out in massive quantities at plants like the one near Earl’s farm.
[00:12:58] By the 1990s, it was a cornerstone of their business, a multi-billion-dollar industry built on frying pans and convenience.
[00:13:10] But as Bilott sifted through the papers, he began to suspect there was more to PFOA than met the eye. He wasn’t a chemist, but he could read between the lines, and something seemed off.
[00:13:27] But he was conflicted.
[00:13:30] He was a company man, or at least, he had been.
[00:13:33] His job was to protect firms like DuPont, not fight them.
[00:13:39] Chemical companies paid his bills, which paid for his house, his car, his very comfortable life.
[00:13:46] But this was different; it seemed deliberate, callous, and right there in black and white.
[00:13:55] He couldn’t walk away.
[00:13:57] In August 1999, he took a leap: he filed a federal lawsuit against DuPont on behalf of Earl Tennant, the cow farmer.
[00:14:09] It was a small case, focused on one farmer and his cows, but it was a start.
[00:14:17] At first, Bilott only had hints; PFOA in the water, dead cows, DuPont’s denials.
[00:14:25] But as the case unfolded, he dug deeper, and what he found was staggering.
[00:14:33] DuPont’s own records, internal studies they hadn’t intended for public eyes, showed they’d known about the dangers of PFOA for years.
[00:14:45] As far back as the 1960s, their scientists had flagged it as toxic.
[00:14:52] Lab tests on rats and rabbits linked it to liver damage, cancer, and birth defects.
[00:15:00] By the 1980s, they had data on their own workers–women at the Parkersburg plant who’d given birth to babies with eye deformities, others reporting strange illnesses.
[00:15:15] When he saw what DuPont had been doing, he paused for a moment.
[00:15:20] He saw that DuPont hadn’t just ignored the red flags; it had built a wall around them.
[00:15:27] In 1981, after two workers’ babies were born with eye defects, DuPont had quietly moved pregnant staff off PFOA lines. No public word, no recall.
[00:15:40] Studies piling up in the labs–cancer in rats, liver damage–were stamped ‘confidential,’ locked away from prying eyes.
[00:15:50] By 1984, it had tested Parkersburg’s water and found sky-high PFOA levels, yet told no one, claiming its own safe limit was flexible.
[00:16:04] When Bilott came knocking, DuPont sent him 100,000 pages of documents and reports, contracts, memos, and faxes, hoping it would be too much for him, or at least it would take him too long to sift through, and perhaps his colleagues would pull him off the project.
[00:16:24] It almost did.
[00:16:26] As you might imagine, few people at Billot’s law firm were particularly pleased with the young lawyer’s interest in this case.
[00:16:35] His firm thrived on corporate clients, and there he was, biting the hand that fed them.
[00:16:43] DuPont fought back, naturally.
[00:16:47] It commissioned a study with the Environmental Protection Agency, claiming the landfill was fine, the cows’ deaths a fluke, Earl’s fault, not the fault of the company.
[00:16:58] It painted him as an incompetent farmer who didn’t know his trade.
[00:17:04] Bilott saw through it.
[00:17:06] He kept pressing, demanding more documents, and what he uncovered next was staggering.
[00:17:14] PFOA wasn’t just in Earl’s stream, it was in the drinking water for 70,000 people in the Ohio River Valley, stretching across West Virginia and Ohio.
[00:17:28] This wasn’t a lone farmer’s problem; it was a public health crisis, hidden in plain sight.
[00:17:36] The water that was killing the cows was the same water that was being drunk by tens of thousands of unsuspecting nearby residents.
[00:17:47] By 2001, Bilott escalated things.
[00:17:51] He filed a class-action lawsuit, representing everyone whose water had been tainted.
[00:17:59] It was a monumental shift; tens of thousands of people, all potentially poisoned by the same chemical that made their pans nonstick.
[00:18:10] DuPont doubled down, burying him in legal motions and paperwork, hoping he’d buckle under the weight.
[00:18:19] But Bilott was relentless.
[00:18:22] He worked late nights, poring over files, building a case that couldn’t be ignored.
[00:18:29] His family saw less of him, his wife and son adjusting to a man increasingly consumed by this fight, but he couldn’t stop. The evidence was too damning.
[00:18:42] In 2004, after years of wrangling, DuPont settled.
[00:18:48] The figure was over $300 million, a hefty sum, but Bilott had insisted on something more valuable: the truth.
[00:19:00] Part of the deal funded something called the C8 Health Project, a massive study to test the blood and health records of 69,000 people in the affected area.
[00:19:15] It took seven years, but the results, which were finally released in 2011 and 2012, were unequivocal.
[00:19:25] PFOA was linked to six diseases: kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, ulcerative colitis, and pregnancy-induced hypertension.
[00:19:40] This wasn’t guesswork; it was science, and it was devastating.
[00:19:46] Armed with this, Bilott went back to court.
[00:19:50] Between 2015 and 2017, he filed over 3,500 personal injury lawsuits for individuals who’d suffered: people with cancer, children with defects, families shattered by illness.
[00:20:08] DuPont and its spinoff, Chemours, settled again in 2017, this time for $671 million. It was a victory, of sorts, financial compensation for thousands, but Bilott still wasn’t done.
[00:20:27] He’d learned something bigger: PFOA, and its family of “forever chemicals” called PFAS, didn’t go away.
[00:20:37] They lingered in water, soil, and blood forever, hence the name.
[00:20:45] Studies showed the presence of these chemicals in 99% of people worldwide, a silent legacy of nonstick convenience.
[00:20:56] In 2018, Bilott took his boldest step yet.
[00:21:02] He filed a lawsuit against DuPont, 3M, and others, this time for every American with PFAS in their system; essentially, a lawsuit on behalf of the whole country.
[00:21:17] He wasn’t after damages, not yet, but answers: a court-ordered panel to study the full toll of these chemicals.
[00:21:27] That case is still dragging on, a testament to the scale of what he’d uncovered.
[00:21:35] Earl Tennant sadly didn’t live to see it; he died of cancer in 2009, most probably from the very poison he’d fought, but his call to “Robbie” was the thing that had started it all.
[00:21:51] So what’s happened since then?
[00:21:54] DuPont has paid out hundreds of millions, and PFOA has been phased out in the US.
[00:22:02] It's been replaced by alternatives that are supposedly much less harmful.
[00:22:07] But PFAS are still everywhere: in rivers, wildlife, and, almost certainly, you and me.
[00:22:17] Fortunately, there is growing awareness of the dangers of these chemicals and more information on what can be done to minimise your exposure to them.
[00:22:27] Much like in previous decades, when awareness grew about the dangers of smoking, alcohol, and processed foods, perhaps “forever chemicals” will be the next thing the world wakes up to.
[00:22:41] For Earl Tennant, for his cows, for the countless children born with birth defects and for the Parkersburg residents who died of strange cancers, unfortunately, it is too late.
[00:22:55] For them, there truly was a hidden cost to a cheap non-stick pan.
[00:23:02] OK then, that is it for today's episode on Rob Bilott, Earl Tennant, and the fight against DuPont.
[00:23:09] If you’re interested in diving into this story, Rob Bilott wrote an excellent book on the subject, called Exposure, which a lot of the material from this episode comes from.
[00:23:20] There is also a movie about this called Dark Waters, which I would certainly recommend.
[00:23:25] And there are a bunch of other interesting websites and videos that talk more about the safety levels of PFAS and have some guidance on what you can do if you want to minimise your exposure to them.
[00:23:38] I’d just recommend googling “PFAS” to find out more.
[00:23:42] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:23:48] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about a battle of David vs. Goliath.
[00:00:29] This is the story of a farmer and a lawyer fighting DuPont, a multibillion-dollar chemical company.
[00:00:37] It’s a story of perseverance, deceit, poison, bravery, corporate greed, and one of the greatest cover-ups in American history.
[00:00:47] So, let’s not waste a minute and get right into it.
[00:00:52] The 1950s and 1960s were a golden era for new kitchen gadgets.
[00:01:00] Armed with disposable income and a lust for convenience, American consumers snapped up microwaves, fridge freezers, and Tupperwares.
[00:01:11] Adverts proclaimed that new cheap plastic forks and knives would mean families would never have to wash up again; you’d unwrap a new set of cutlery with every meal, then simply throw it away when you were done with it.
[00:01:27] And there was more.
[00:01:29] One company, DuPont, produced a magical type of frying pan that food wouldn’t stick to.
[00:01:36] No longer would your morning fried egg get stuck to the pan and burn, no longer would you have to scrub and soak the pan after every meal.
[00:01:47] These pans, Teflon pans, they were called, were “non-stick”.
[00:01:53] The adverts boasted of “saving you a load of dirty work”, and showed quite how easily even the toughest of foods could be simply wiped away.
[00:02:04] Unsurprisingly, they were an immediate hit.
[00:02:08] By the early 1960s, these pans were everywhere.
[00:02:13] In the US, it’s estimated that by the end of that decade, over 60% of households had at least one Teflon-coated pan in their kitchen; tens of millions of families flipping pancakes and frying bacon on this miracle surface.
[00:02:31] DuPont couldn’t make them fast enough; production soared, and by the 1970s, Teflon was a global phenomenon.
[00:02:41] The company’s own figures suggest that by the late 20th century, over 90% of American kitchens had embraced nonstick cookware.
[00:02:52] It was cheap, it was clever, and it promised a life free of culinary drudgery.
[00:02:59] What was not to like?
[00:03:02] Well, it turns out that there was something.
[00:03:05] But before we get into exactly what it was, we must move out of the kitchen and fast forward a few decades, to the 9th of October, 1998, to the office of Rob Bilott, a 33-year-old lawyer.
[00:03:21] He had gone to law school and landed a job at a prestigious firm in Cincinnati, Ohio.
[00:03:28] He hadn’t gone to Harvard or Yale or any of the typical universities that lawyers at his firm had attended.
[00:03:36] He had gone to Ohio State, a large public university.
[00:03:41] He was something of an anomaly, but he was hardworking, trustworthy, and he was a few months away from being made partner.
[00:03:51] It was a good job. Long hours, of course.
[00:03:54] But it was very well-paid, and with a young family and a wife who had taken a career break to look after their young boy, and plans to move to a much bigger house, well, the money would come in handy.
[00:04:09] And on the 9th of October, 1998, Bilott was sitting at his desk in his office. His phone rang, his direct personal line.
[00:04:20] Usually, it was a secretary, sometimes a family member, or a longstanding client. The number wasn’t public information, you see.
[00:04:30] But today, it was a voice he did not recognise.
[00:04:35] It was a man, and he spoke in an accent unlike any of Bilott’s typical clients.
[00:04:41] He spoke with a distinctive southern drawl, the strong accent of the Appalachian Mountains in West Virginia, and he called him “Robbie” instead of “Rob”.
[00:04:54] Nobody called him Robbie. Only his nearest and dearest.
[00:04:58] The man went straight into it. He was a farmer, a cow farmer. His cows were dying, and he needed Rob’s help.
[00:05:08] Bilott was confused. He wasn’t a farmer, he wasn’t a vet, he was a lawyer. The man must have the wrong number.
[00:05:16] He was just about to hang up, then the man mentioned the name of Bilott’s grandmother.
[00:05:23] His ears pricked up, and the man continued.
[00:05:27] He was a farmer outside Parkersburg, in West Virginia.
[00:05:32] He'd got Bilott’s number through a friend who knew Bilott’s grandmother, and, being proud of her grandson working at a fancy law firm in the big city, although she didn’t really know what Billot did, she'd told her friend to tell the farmer to “give Robbie a call”.
[00:05:50] The farmer’s name was Wilbur “Earl” Tennant, and his cows had been mysteriously dying in terrible ways.
[00:05:59] Their teeth had turned black, their eyes sunk inside their head.
[00:06:05] In two years, at least 150 had died, inexplicably.
[00:06:11] Earl knew something was wrong, and he had even been performing primitive autopsies on the dead cows, cutting them open to see if there were any clues.
[00:06:24] What he found was horrifying.
[00:06:27] Swollen organs, the build-up of strange yellow liquid, dark spots on the lungs.
[00:06:34] Earl couldn’t be sure, but it looked like cancer to him.
[00:06:39] He thought it was coming from the water the cows were drinking. The stream that ran through his land, water that had once been crystal clear, was a murky kind of colour and had a strange foam.
[00:06:55] The cows drank this water, then died in their droves.
[00:07:02] Earl thought the water was poisoned, and he knew who was doing it.
[00:07:08] There was a landfill that was leaking into the stream. It was meant to be a landfill for non-hazardous waste: paper, general rubbish, and so on, but clearly, something very nasty was coming out of that landfill, something that was killing his cows.
[00:07:28] The landfill was owned by DuPont, one of the largest chemical companies in the world.
[00:07:36] Earl wasn’t the sort of man to sit idly by while his livelihood crumbled.
[00:07:42] He’d been raising cattle for decades, and he knew his land like the back of his hand.
[00:07:48] This wasn’t a case of bad luck or poor farming; something was seriously amiss.
[00:07:56] He’d gone to the local authorities, spoken to neighbours, even called in a vet or two, but no one could give him a straight answer.
[00:08:06] The stream, which had once been a lifeline for his herd, was now a suspect, and the landfill upstream, owned by DuPont, was the only thing that made sense.
[00:08:19] But DuPont wasn’t just any company. It was a titan: billions in revenue, tens of thousands of employees, a name synonymous with corporate America.
[00:08:31] And Earl Tennant, well, he was a small-time cow farmer.
[00:08:37] Bilott listened as the man on the phone poured out his story.
[00:08:42] He could hear the desperation in the man’s voice, the rough edge of someone who’d been fighting a losing battle for too long.
[00:08:50] Earl explained how he’d tried to get help locally–lawyers, officials, anyone–but no one would touch it.
[00:08:59] DuPont was too big, too powerful, and Parkersburg was its town.
[00:09:06] The plant employed half the area, directly or indirectly, and the idea of challenging them was unthinkable.
[00:09:15] But Earl wasn’t most people. He’d tracked down Bilott through this tenuous family connection, hoping “Robbie” might be the one to listen.
[00:09:27] Bilott wasn’t sure what to make of it.
[00:09:29] He wasn’t an environmental lawyer, nor did he have any experience with cows or water quality. His world was contracts and boardrooms.
[00:09:40] And, what’s more, his job was to defend companies like DuPont, against people like Earl.
[00:09:47] Hanging up would’ve been the easy thing; politely excuse himself, wish the man luck, and get back to his day.
[00:09:55] But that mention of his grandmother stuck with him. It wasn’t just a name drop; it was a nod to his own past, a reminder of where he’d come from.
[00:10:07] So, against his better judgement, he said he’d take a look.
[00:10:13] “Send me what you’ve got,” he told Earl, expecting maybe a few letters or a water sample.
[00:10:20] What arrived was something else entirely.
[00:10:23] A few days later, boxes landed on Bilott’s desk, tattered, heavy, and stuffed to the brim.
[00:10:31] There were handwritten notes, photographs, and, most unsettlingly, video tapes Earl had recorded himself.
[00:10:41] The footage was shaky but vivid: dead cows sprawled across the field, their bloated bodies a stark contrast to the green grass.
[00:10:53] There were close-ups of blackened teeth, hollowed-out eyes, and those amateur autopsies: Earl cutting into the carcasses with a kitchen knife, pulling out blackened or bloated organs.
[00:11:08] Alongside the tapes were jars of murky water from the stream, labelled with dates and angry scrawls. It was a mess, but it was a compelling one.
[00:11:22] Bilott couldn’t unsee it.
[00:11:25] He started digging. His first step was cautious. He used his position as a corporate lawyer to request information from DuPont.
[00:11:36] He knew the system, he knew how to phrase things to get a response without raising too many eyebrows.
[00:11:44] What came back was a trickle of paperwork–standard reports about the landfill, assurances it was all above board, nothing hazardous.
[00:11:54] But Bilott wasn’t satisfied.
[00:11:58] He pushed harder, filing formal legal requests, and that’s when he stumbled across something odd: a chemical name buried in the documents. PFOA. Perfluorooctanoic acid.
[00:12:14] It didn’t mean much to him at first, just another jargon term in a sea of corporate babble, but it kept cropping up, tied to the Parkersburg plant and the production of Teflon.
[00:12:30] Teflon, that nonstick wonder from the 1950s, the one that had taken over kitchens worldwide, relied on PFOA.
[00:12:41] It was the secret sauce, the thing that made Teflon slick and effortless.
[00:12:48] DuPont had been using it since the 1940s, churning it out in massive quantities at plants like the one near Earl’s farm.
[00:12:58] By the 1990s, it was a cornerstone of their business, a multi-billion-dollar industry built on frying pans and convenience.
[00:13:10] But as Bilott sifted through the papers, he began to suspect there was more to PFOA than met the eye. He wasn’t a chemist, but he could read between the lines, and something seemed off.
[00:13:27] But he was conflicted.
[00:13:30] He was a company man, or at least, he had been.
[00:13:33] His job was to protect firms like DuPont, not fight them.
[00:13:39] Chemical companies paid his bills, which paid for his house, his car, his very comfortable life.
[00:13:46] But this was different; it seemed deliberate, callous, and right there in black and white.
[00:13:55] He couldn’t walk away.
[00:13:57] In August 1999, he took a leap: he filed a federal lawsuit against DuPont on behalf of Earl Tennant, the cow farmer.
[00:14:09] It was a small case, focused on one farmer and his cows, but it was a start.
[00:14:17] At first, Bilott only had hints; PFOA in the water, dead cows, DuPont’s denials.
[00:14:25] But as the case unfolded, he dug deeper, and what he found was staggering.
[00:14:33] DuPont’s own records, internal studies they hadn’t intended for public eyes, showed they’d known about the dangers of PFOA for years.
[00:14:45] As far back as the 1960s, their scientists had flagged it as toxic.
[00:14:52] Lab tests on rats and rabbits linked it to liver damage, cancer, and birth defects.
[00:15:00] By the 1980s, they had data on their own workers–women at the Parkersburg plant who’d given birth to babies with eye deformities, others reporting strange illnesses.
[00:15:15] When he saw what DuPont had been doing, he paused for a moment.
[00:15:20] He saw that DuPont hadn’t just ignored the red flags; it had built a wall around them.
[00:15:27] In 1981, after two workers’ babies were born with eye defects, DuPont had quietly moved pregnant staff off PFOA lines. No public word, no recall.
[00:15:40] Studies piling up in the labs–cancer in rats, liver damage–were stamped ‘confidential,’ locked away from prying eyes.
[00:15:50] By 1984, it had tested Parkersburg’s water and found sky-high PFOA levels, yet told no one, claiming its own safe limit was flexible.
[00:16:04] When Bilott came knocking, DuPont sent him 100,000 pages of documents and reports, contracts, memos, and faxes, hoping it would be too much for him, or at least it would take him too long to sift through, and perhaps his colleagues would pull him off the project.
[00:16:24] It almost did.
[00:16:26] As you might imagine, few people at Billot’s law firm were particularly pleased with the young lawyer’s interest in this case.
[00:16:35] His firm thrived on corporate clients, and there he was, biting the hand that fed them.
[00:16:43] DuPont fought back, naturally.
[00:16:47] It commissioned a study with the Environmental Protection Agency, claiming the landfill was fine, the cows’ deaths a fluke, Earl’s fault, not the fault of the company.
[00:16:58] It painted him as an incompetent farmer who didn’t know his trade.
[00:17:04] Bilott saw through it.
[00:17:06] He kept pressing, demanding more documents, and what he uncovered next was staggering.
[00:17:14] PFOA wasn’t just in Earl’s stream, it was in the drinking water for 70,000 people in the Ohio River Valley, stretching across West Virginia and Ohio.
[00:17:28] This wasn’t a lone farmer’s problem; it was a public health crisis, hidden in plain sight.
[00:17:36] The water that was killing the cows was the same water that was being drunk by tens of thousands of unsuspecting nearby residents.
[00:17:47] By 2001, Bilott escalated things.
[00:17:51] He filed a class-action lawsuit, representing everyone whose water had been tainted.
[00:17:59] It was a monumental shift; tens of thousands of people, all potentially poisoned by the same chemical that made their pans nonstick.
[00:18:10] DuPont doubled down, burying him in legal motions and paperwork, hoping he’d buckle under the weight.
[00:18:19] But Bilott was relentless.
[00:18:22] He worked late nights, poring over files, building a case that couldn’t be ignored.
[00:18:29] His family saw less of him, his wife and son adjusting to a man increasingly consumed by this fight, but he couldn’t stop. The evidence was too damning.
[00:18:42] In 2004, after years of wrangling, DuPont settled.
[00:18:48] The figure was over $300 million, a hefty sum, but Bilott had insisted on something more valuable: the truth.
[00:19:00] Part of the deal funded something called the C8 Health Project, a massive study to test the blood and health records of 69,000 people in the affected area.
[00:19:15] It took seven years, but the results, which were finally released in 2011 and 2012, were unequivocal.
[00:19:25] PFOA was linked to six diseases: kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, ulcerative colitis, and pregnancy-induced hypertension.
[00:19:40] This wasn’t guesswork; it was science, and it was devastating.
[00:19:46] Armed with this, Bilott went back to court.
[00:19:50] Between 2015 and 2017, he filed over 3,500 personal injury lawsuits for individuals who’d suffered: people with cancer, children with defects, families shattered by illness.
[00:20:08] DuPont and its spinoff, Chemours, settled again in 2017, this time for $671 million. It was a victory, of sorts, financial compensation for thousands, but Bilott still wasn’t done.
[00:20:27] He’d learned something bigger: PFOA, and its family of “forever chemicals” called PFAS, didn’t go away.
[00:20:37] They lingered in water, soil, and blood forever, hence the name.
[00:20:45] Studies showed the presence of these chemicals in 99% of people worldwide, a silent legacy of nonstick convenience.
[00:20:56] In 2018, Bilott took his boldest step yet.
[00:21:02] He filed a lawsuit against DuPont, 3M, and others, this time for every American with PFAS in their system; essentially, a lawsuit on behalf of the whole country.
[00:21:17] He wasn’t after damages, not yet, but answers: a court-ordered panel to study the full toll of these chemicals.
[00:21:27] That case is still dragging on, a testament to the scale of what he’d uncovered.
[00:21:35] Earl Tennant sadly didn’t live to see it; he died of cancer in 2009, most probably from the very poison he’d fought, but his call to “Robbie” was the thing that had started it all.
[00:21:51] So what’s happened since then?
[00:21:54] DuPont has paid out hundreds of millions, and PFOA has been phased out in the US.
[00:22:02] It's been replaced by alternatives that are supposedly much less harmful.
[00:22:07] But PFAS are still everywhere: in rivers, wildlife, and, almost certainly, you and me.
[00:22:17] Fortunately, there is growing awareness of the dangers of these chemicals and more information on what can be done to minimise your exposure to them.
[00:22:27] Much like in previous decades, when awareness grew about the dangers of smoking, alcohol, and processed foods, perhaps “forever chemicals” will be the next thing the world wakes up to.
[00:22:41] For Earl Tennant, for his cows, for the countless children born with birth defects and for the Parkersburg residents who died of strange cancers, unfortunately, it is too late.
[00:22:55] For them, there truly was a hidden cost to a cheap non-stick pan.
[00:23:02] OK then, that is it for today's episode on Rob Bilott, Earl Tennant, and the fight against DuPont.
[00:23:09] If you’re interested in diving into this story, Rob Bilott wrote an excellent book on the subject, called Exposure, which a lot of the material from this episode comes from.
[00:23:20] There is also a movie about this called Dark Waters, which I would certainly recommend.
[00:23:25] And there are a bunch of other interesting websites and videos that talk more about the safety levels of PFAS and have some guidance on what you can do if you want to minimise your exposure to them.
[00:23:38] I’d just recommend googling “PFAS” to find out more.
[00:23:42] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:23:48] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
