Rob Bilott, esteemed “Dark Waters” lawyer, discussed the power individuals hold in enacting environmental change during Willeke Lecture

Introduced as the infamous chemical company DuPont’s “worst nightmare,” Rob Bilott took the stage on Wednesday, Sept. 11 to give Miami’s 17th annual Gene and Carol Willeke Frontiers in Environmental Sciences Distinguished lecture.

Bilott’s 26-year battle against Dupont garnered national attention in a 2016 New York Times exposé that inspired the 2019 film “Dark Waters.” Before the lecture, Miami’s Institute for the Environment and Sustainability hosted a small-group discussion with Bilott for students within the department.

During both the lecture and the discussion, Bilott focused on the chronology of his renowned class-action lawsuits against DuPont and 3M in which he defended civilians whose water supplies were tainted with toxic chemicals in Ohio, West Virginia, and beyond. At the beginning of the lecture, Bilott described the family that these chemicals belonged to per and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).

“We’re talking about an entire family of thousands of completely man-made toxins that never existed on this planet prior to World War II; chemicals that have managed to permeate into virtually every corner of the planet: our air, our water, our soil, food, wildlife, polar bears and arctic ice,” Bilott said.

After introducing these chemicals, Bilott posed the question that he centered his entire lecture around:

“How is it that something like this — the accumulation of PFAS — happened . . . and that we’re just now beginning the process to regulate these chemicals?” Billot said.

To answer this question, Bilott traced his career trajectory up to the moment in 1998 when he received a life-changing call from a farmer — Wilbur Tennant — who first brought the issue of PFAS to his attention.

Tennant’s farm rested on land adjacent to a landfill site where DuPont secretly dumped PFAS chemicals, specifically PFOAs, without notifying Tennant or the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Bilott concluded that these chemicals were causing the cows’ deaths after sifting through mounds upon mounds of court-ordered DuPont records.

Due to their strong carbon-fluorine bonds, DuPont used these chemicals to make household products like Teflon, which coated virtually every frying pan in the United States. Discussing the product launch of Teflon, Bilott examined how DuPont’s scientific team knew the risks associated with Teflon and still decided to go through with the launch.

Photo by Sarah Frosch | The Miami Student
Lecture attendees learn about the biological harm of PFOAs, a forever chemical used in products such as Teflon.

“DuPont is looking at this chemical [PFOA], and they’re looking at the fact that it’s being used on this product that’s about to go out into the world. They’re a little concerned about the chemistry here,” Bilott said. “Its chemical bond is extremely strong; it’s not going to break apart. If this stuff gets out into the world, they don’t think it’s ever going to break down,”

Faced with these risks that were covered up by DuPont and possibly affecting tens of thousands of people beyond just the Tennant case, Bilott recognized legal action needed to be taken.

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“We could have just walked away at that point, but we realized that there’s a massive public health threat here and we may be the only people on the planet outside of these companies who knew about it,” he said.

Bilott then discussed how his firm, Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP, backed his decision to morph the Tennant case into a class-action lawsuit. Because of the scope of the case, Bilott had to prove that these chemicals were pervasive on a national scale.

Alongside an EPA water-testing initiative and one of the biggest human health studies ever conducted, Bilott proved that these chemicals were not only widespread but also toxic at a scale equivalent to “one drop of water in an Olympic-sized swimming pool.” These findings led to national EPA restrictions and around $700 million in DuPont’s first settlement.

Beyond the success of his case, Bilott discussed how the film inspired by his battle with DuPont — “Dark Waters” — was rooted in the need to bring the issue of PFAS chemicals to the forefront of public consciousness.

Photo by Sarah Frosch | The Miami Student
Bilott and his lawsuit against Dupont were the inspiration for the 2019 film "Dark Waters" which featured Mark Ruffalo.

PFOA is just one of the thousands of PFAS chemicals that have been manufactured, the majority of which are still being used today in daily products. Bilott equated the replacement of PFOA with slightly modified PFAS chemicals to a “whack-a-mole game” in which “history repeats itself” and a game in which the public should be in the know.

Despite the acknowledgement that these PFAS chemicals — aptly nicknamed forever chemicals — have continued their invasive streak regardless of recent regulations on PFOA, Bilott concluded his lecture with optimism .

“Yes, this is a big problem,” Billot said. “It’s global contamination on an unprecedented scale. But I think that, if anything, this story is a great story of optimism. It shows the power of individuals being able to stand up, speak out, and put into motion incredible change.”

kwiatksk@miamioh.edu