PFOA was only one of more than 60,000 synthetic chemicals that companies produced and released into the world without regulatory oversight. But it was to me.’’ The same DuPont lawyers tasked with writing the safety limit, Bilott said, had become the government regulators responsible for enforcing that limit.Meanwhile the E.P.A., drawing from Bilott’s research, began its own investigation into the toxicity of PFOA. was particularly alarmed to learn that PFOA had been detected in American blood banks, something 3M and DuPont had known as early as 1976. The footage, shot on a camcorder, was grainy and intercut with static. At the time, it was the largest civil administrative penalty the E.P.A. ‘‘I’m not stupid, and the people around me aren’t stupid,’’ he said. After the settlement, the legal team pushed to make receipt of the cash award contingent on a full medical examination. It did not appear on any list of regulated materials, nor could he find it in Taft’s in-house library. Bilott was tormented by ‘‘the thought that we still hadn’t been able to hold this company responsible for what they did in time for those people to see it.’’Where scientists have tested for the presence of PFOA in the world, they have found it. They struck suddenly, without warning, and their effects lasted days. These were bad facts.’’ He had seen what the PFOA-tainted drinking water had done to cattle. in leadership positions. Until the scientific study came back with its results, class members were forbidden from filing personal-injury suits against DuPont.Wilbur called the office nearly every day, but Bilott had little to tell him. The scientists, freed from the restraints of academic budgets and grants, had hit the epidemiological jackpot: an entire population’s personal data and infinite resources available to study them. It is in your parents’ blood, your children’s blood, your lover’s blood. is an extraordinary remedy. This point was made to Terp by Bernard Reilly, DuPont’s in-house lawyer, according to accounts from Bilott’s plaintiff’s-lawyer colleagues; they say Reilly called to demand that Bilott back off the case. It would fund a scientific study to determine whether there was a ‘‘probable link’’ — a term that delicately avoided any declaration of causation — between PFOA and any diseases. ‘‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he got a raise.’’The best metric Bilott had to judge a safe exposure level was DuPont’s own internal limit of one part per billion. office finally took his call.‘‘There was a reason why I was interested in helping out the Tennants,’’ he said after a pause.
Ultimately, DuPont and its 2015 spinoff, Chemours, agreed in 2017 to settle more than 3,500 lawsuits related to pollution in the state for $671 million. In 1961, DuPont researchers found that the chemical could increase the size of the liver in rats and rabbits.
Because of the sheer quantity of data provided by the community health study and the unlimited budget — it ultimately cost DuPont $33 million — the panel took longer than expected to perform its analysis. But if you are a sentient being reading this article in 2016, you already have PFOA in your blood.