Exposure
An unforgettable David and Goliath-style legal drama about malice and manipulation, the failings of environmental regulation, and one lawyer's quest to expose the truth about this previously unknown--and still unregulated--chemical that presents one of the greatest human health crises of the 21st century.
Stats for nerds
2recommend
6mentions
5people
2020–2023years
33% recommend67% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- For anyone interested in this topic, I recommend season 41 of the podcast American Scandal, which depicts the DuPont cover-up of C8 dumping and how it was discovered. Great narration.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/american-scandal/id143...
There is also a less dramatic version in book form, called Exposure by Robert Bilott, the attorney who prosecuted DuPont.
- Also watch The Devil We Know, which you can watch free at ThoughtMaybe: https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-devil-we-know.
The Intercept and New York Times cover the issue well.
Robert Bilott's book Exposure https://www.amazon.com/Exposure-Be-Confirmed/dp/1501172816 covers the story of the lawyer who successfully sued DuPont and is continuing that legal pursuit.
I also recommend my podcast with Robert Bilott: https://joshuaspodek.com/guests/robert-bilott
- This story is a broken record that just repeats over and over again in different forms and industries. It follows the general form of:
1. Develop some profitable product
2. years later people report horrible effects
3. Big co denies and stalls for years/decades
4. Hundreds of thousands /millions of people are negatively effected
5. Science eventually overwhelms any counter argument and product in taken off market
6. Go back to step 1 with different product
Some other examples:
1. Big tobacco
2. Teflon(PFOAs) [1]
3. Generic drugs [2]
4. Regular drugs [3]
5. Leaded gasoline [4]
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Exposure-Poisoned-Corporate-Lawyers-T...
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Bottle-Lies-Inside-Story-Generic/dp/0...
[3]https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/8963867/Green.ht...
[4] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/leaded-gas-poison-...
- I find it disconcerting that this has apparently been known since the 1970s. Seems like the Big Tobacco playbook all over again (only with even worse effects).
From the book “Exposure” by Robert Bilott, the real-life lawyer portrayed in the “Dark Water” movie:
> The internal alarm bells had first been sounded at 3M and DuPont after the publication of a scientific paper by the American Chemical Society in 1976. The paper had a curious impetus: Donald Taves, a University of Rochester toxicologist, had discovered two different kinds of fluoride in his own blood. Finding inorganic fluoride was not surprising—it is routinely put into the public water supply as an aid in preventing cavities. But the other form, organic fluoride, is man-made in industrial labs. What was it doing in his blood? Dr. Taves wanted to find out. So he teamed up with W. S. Guy, a faculty member of the College of Dentistry at the University of Florida. They gathered plasma from blood banks in five cities and tested them for the presence of both kinds of fluoride. They also obtained records of how much fluoride was put into the water of those cities. As expected, the levels of “regular” (inorganic) fluoride in blood correlated with the levels of fluoride in the public water. But the levels of synthetic fluoride (organic) did not. Where was it coming from? Guy and Taves noticed that the compounds found in the blood had a chemical structure consistent with compounds “widely used commercially for their potent surfactant properties.” In their publication of those findings, they hypothesized that the source was industrial fluorochemicals manufactured by 3M.
- A lot longer than 30 years.
I'm reading Exposure by the lawyer who helped blow the case open, Robert Bilott, portrayed in the movie Dark Waters, which I recommend -- the book and movie.
What DuPont knowingly did, sacrificing our health for their profit, would be unbelievable except that it happened.
Over 99 percent of us have these known carcinogens and causers of birth defect in our blood. As they knew, our bodies don't know how to get rid of them nor process them into anything benign.
And that's just one class of known-to-be-dangerous but profitable chemicals they create and dump. If they had to pay the externalities, Teflon would cost . . . well, what price do you put on testicular cancer, or a baby born with half a nose or eyes in the wrong place?
- Well. It’s a guardian opinion piece. While I often find guardian language stilted, I find that there is value in reading it.
DuPont is one of the big daddies of the chemical industry. The few who control the poisons of the world also control our seeds.
Having said that, learning about the author is also important to understand the motivation :
[..] Rob Bilott is a partner at the law firm of Taft Stettinius & Hollister, LLP and author of Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer’s Twenty-Year Battle Against DuPont.
His book was the story behind the film, Dark Waters and the documentary, The Devil We Know.
Rob is also a 2017 recipient of the 2017 Right Livelihood Award, also known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize,” for his work on Forever Chemicals.
On Thursday, Rob Bilott is participating in an online discussion on the need to regulate PFAS titled Dark Waters no more! Is it time for a global agreement on toxic chemicals?[..]
